JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
Jo appreciates your support to help her keep doing what she does. This blog is funded by donations. Thanks!
Follow Jo's Tweets To report "lost" comments or defamatory and offensive remarks, email the moderators at: support AT joannenova.com.au
Statistics
Still Earth Day here.
Firewood in stove; house warm.
Wine cool. 😊
120
Bud Light Marketing Executive Goes On Leave After Disastrous Trans-TikTok Stunt
Anheuser-Busch InBev has made an abrupt decision to change the marketing leadership of Bud Light just three weeks after the brand attempted to position itself as the king queen of “woke” beers with the help of a transgender TikTok influencer partnership.
Ad Age reported Friday that Alissa Heinerscheid, vice president of marketing for the beer, has taken a leave of absence. Bud Light confirmed she would be replaced by Todd Allen, who was recently the global marketing vice president for Budweiser.
Well, Heinerscheid’s out-of-touch perception of reality and lack of understanding of the all-important consumer cost Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser Busch more than $6 billion in market cap. It also led to a nationwide boycott of the beer as bar owners and distributors reported sharp declines in sales.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/bud-light-marketing-executive-goes-leave-after-disastrous-trans-tiktok-stunt
BUD = Bottoms Up Dylan
No doubt he/she/it is familiar with both interpretations. 😆
150
She won’t be fired. She will go into a witness protection scheme only to emerge somewhere else, in another well-remunerated role. Big corporates are terrified of the ‘woke’ progressives, thanks to the MSM.
70
Isn’t that good ( don’t shoot me – I’m only asking ) …
20
Steve: I made a similar comment two days ago (here in US, so- one day ago?). The company took 2 weeks to put her on leave, claiming she went “outside channels”. I submit AB is looking at the price of her silence on just how inside the channels she was.
10
…King Queen of Woke…
May I use that?
20
Karine Jean-Pierre: GOP Conditions On Debt-Ceiling Deal Will Give Kids Asthma And ‘Literally Melt Bones’
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed Friday that Republicans had put forth proposals that would cause more children to develop asthma and “literally melt bones.”
Jean-Pierre’s remarks, which she punctuated with a slide show during Friday’s press briefing, came in response to the ongoing battle over the debt ceiling. President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats have called for a “clean” debt ceiling increase, while House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) countered with an increase tied to some spending cuts and policy changes.
https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1649470235605364736
Would someone in the Biden admin please give this idiot a dictionary so she can look up “literally” and “melt”.
100
Karine is far from being the sharpest knife in the kitchen…
60
Queen King of Woke?
00
Don’t let those children go into the boiling oceans.
10
BBC Ignore Cold-Related Deaths In India
India saw a 55% rise in deaths due to extreme heat between 2000-2004 and 2017-2021, a recent study published in the medical journal, The Lancet, found. Exposure to heat also caused a loss of 167.2 billion potential labour hours among Indians in 2021, resulting in loss of incomes equivalent to about 5.4% of the country’s GDP.
[PLOS:
Public health interventions to mitigate temperature effects need to focus not only on extremely hot temperatures but also moderately cold temperatures. Future absolute totals of temperature-related deaths are likely to depend on the large absolute numbers of people exposed to both extremely hot and moderately cold temperatures. Similar large-scale and nationally representative studies are required in other low- and middle-income countries to better understand the impact of future temperature changes on cause-specific mortality.]
So cold-related deaths outnumber heat ones by about 7 to 1. Yet nowhere in the BBC article is there are any recognition of this. Neither do they ask the question of what the Indian government is doing to protect its people from cold weather.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2023/04/21/bbc-ignore-cold-related-deaths-in-india/
Extremely cold: 0.4C to 13.8C ???
For those in India maybe…
90
Germans face steep electricity costs as country ends nuclear energy
A survey of 1,024 German voters revealed that 60% of respondents oppose shutting down the plants, citing increasing energy costs. Their concerns were not shared by climate messianists, particularly those in the country’s environmental Greens Party who cheered the decision.
But on the same day the plants were shut down, Germany’s leading electric utilities company EON told customers their electricity bills would increase by 45%. The announcement came as a financial blow to Germans, who already pay some of the highest electricity costs in Europe.
Furthermore, while the decision to end nuclear energy in favor of more renewable forms was intended to reduce carbon emissions, the result has been disappointing. Germany’s wind farms, which create a total of 66.5 gigawatts of power, are not producing nearly enough energy for the German population. According to environmental consultant and nuclear energy expert Mark Nelson, there would need to be a 400% expansion of wind to accommodate just half the country’s energy needs.
In the meantime, says Nelson, Germany’s wind power is still producing about 50% of the net CO2 emissions emitted by an efficient gas-powered energy plant, while churning out only enough energy to match the three defunct nuclear plants.
https://frontline.news/post/germans-face-steep-electricity-costs-as-country-ends-nuclear-energy
What? No buying oil and LNG on the sly from Russia like some unnamed countries? Well at least they’ll be opening a LNG terminal hooked up to Nordstream in 2024 to feed the city of Ludmin.
No power, no heat, no food. I wonder what will happen.
120
Lung storage technique offers ‘paradigm shift’ for transplants
The gold standard for storing lungs for transplant procedures has been to pack them in ice in coolers, which keeps them at roughly 4 °C (39 °F). But a look back at lung transplant research has revealed that there’s an even better temperature at which to store donor lungs, which will dramatically improve the time during which they remain viable.
The data revealed that storing the lungs at 10 °C (50 °F), rather than at the approximately 4 °C (39 °F) temperature generated by ice in a cooler, was far and away the best approach. In fact, a further study of 70 patients conducted out of hospitals in Toronto, Vienna and Madrid revealed that the warmer temperature could increase storage time up to 36 hours.
“The clinical impact of this study is huge,” said lead author Dr. Marcelo Cypel. “It’s a paradigm shift for the practice of lung transplant. I have no doubt that this will become the gold standard practice of lung preservation for the foreseeable future.”
https://youtu.be/MIOqrlPGzJA
So how did medicine settle on 4°C in the first place?
They obviously didn’t do studies!
40
“So how did medicine settle on 4°C in the first place?”
Well it is the temperature of the average fridge and things keep better in the fridge.
Being silly, but its probably close to the truth
80
Apparently its also the best temperature for dry aging beef.
00
Some discussion at the following link.
SEE LINK FOR REST
00
Will sentient AI ever exist?
Blake Lemoine had been working with an AI called Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), designed to predict and generate natural-sounding language for chatbots based on large quantities of text scraped from the internet.
But he was suspended from his job for publishing conversations with the AI, which he claimed were evidence that it was actually sentient.
Patently, LaMDA is nothing of the sort.
“Neither LaMDA nor any of its cousins (GPT-3) are remotely intelligent,” writes Gary Marcus, a psychology professor at New York University and founder and former CEO of machine learning firm Geometric Intelligence.
“All they do is match patterns, draw from massive statistical databases of human language. The patterns might be cool, but language these systems utter doesn’t actually mean anything at all. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean that these systems are sentient.”
The definition of sentience, however, is somewhat different, with the Collins dictionary defining ‘sentient’ as ‘having the power of sense perception or sensation; conscious’.
When it comes to attributing sentience to animals, there’s some disagreement. In the UK, new legislation will soon come into force attributing sentience to all vertebrate animals and some invertebrates, such as octopuses and lobsters (problematic for those who like to boil them alive).
It goes slightly further than the EU and way further than the US, where there’s no federal recognition that animals are sentient at all.
And if we can’t agree on whether, say, a dog is sentient, it’s hard to see how a consensus will be reached if an AI does ever start to show what might be genuine signs of consciousness.
This hasn’t stopped pundits from making predictions about when artificial general intelligence (AGI) might be achieved. Forecasting body Metaculus, which aggregates expert opinion, makes a prediction of 2038.
However, there’s huge variation between opinions, with half of AI researchers saying there’s a 50 percent chance of high-level machine intelligence by 2040 – but one in five saying that 50 percent probability won’t be reached until 2100 or later.
https://cybernews.com/editorial/will-sentient-ai-ever-exist/
That’s odd that other animals aren’t considered sentient when they obviously are. Stupid humans.
Marcus is correct though and although the masses, in their ignorance, are impressed by the likes of GPT it’s not even close to true A.I. or sentience.
My estimate for A.I. is around 2040.
When true A.I. hits, like I said, you’ll know it.
Oh boy, will you know it. 4 million years in a few hours. 😁
50
Sentience in higher animals, including humans, involves coordination of sensory, cognitive, emotional, and volition processes supported by physiology.
AI has its counterpart of each.
01
When I watched 2001, A Space Odessey I thought sentient AI was already here.
Didn’t HAL interact with Dave in numerous ways; playing chess, spying on him, committing murder and then scheming to kill Dave as well by locking him out of the space ship?
Open the pod bay doors HAL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqCCubrky00
In the next scene Dave disconnects HAL’s brain, another Sci Fi movie master piece.
10
Sunday Darwin awards.
https://64.media.tumblr.com/26c794fa1033e86ccdc5b274e6edd9d1/cc19f63842cf748b-86/s500x750/3c8ba02f5f265d7dd1152c6b13a60dacaf23f7db.jpg
40
Excellent. I watched a guy change a flouro tube at my shooting club last weekend. The club room has a long row of ancient laminex topped tables. He places a matching rusty chrome and vinyl chair on top of the table and was standing on the lot changing the bulb. He’s 70. It was fine.
40
Even with all the safety precautions in the world, people still manage to hurt themselves.
I’ll never forget the incident where someone was dismantling a scaffolding platform about 3-4m tall. He had “correctly” tied himself off with his 2 safety lanyards, but he attached himself to the platform he was dismantling. He fell, somehow, and so did a lot of scaffolding. He was injured and off work for a few weeks.
60
“Even with all the safety precautions in the world, people still manage to hurt themselves.”
In my 20s I participated in a fairly dangerous sport (probably was back then , but less so now)
One of the icons of the sport generated multiple innovation/inventions that made things much safer, and other parallel developments also made things incrementally safer. For a while deaths and injuries did fall but then became suddenly stuck at a new level. A while ago Mr Innovator made a comment along the lines of “no matter what we do to make the sport safer, each generation will find new and creative ways to kill and maim themselves”
70
I have loved, followed and participated in motor racing since I was fourteen, when I watched the likes of Jackie Stewart and Pedro Rodriguz hurl their insanely-unsafe F1 projectiles round Oulton Park in the UK. Back then, motor racing was extremely dangerous and took many lives, amateurs and champions alike. It was even quite risky being a spectator, separated from a grid-full of lunatics in high-speed bathtubs full of high octane petrol by a dainty picket fence.
Following decades saw great strides made in terms of safety and fatalities are now rare. Which is great, right? Having witnessed some horrible incidents over the years, I have no desire whatsoever to see people maimed or killed, and yet …
With the reduction in danger we also lost much of the thrill and spectacle. There was a time when I truly thought of F1 drivers as some kind of gladiators, superhuman beings with not just crazy skill but also unbelievable bravery. I was rendered, from time to time back in the 70s, literally speechless by the risks those guys took. I actually experienced shivers, and despite my youth, knew that there was no way I could do that. Sure I dabbled, but there was a big difference between what I did in my rally cars and karts, and doing 200mph in a flimsy Porsche 917, in the rain, at night, two metres behind some other looney doing the same.
And most of those thrills are gone, especially in the case of F1. I am no longer in awe of the drivers, and no longer wonder how they can do what they do. Consequently, it’s all rather … dull. I guess we still have the Isle of Man TT races and, to a lesser extent, the WRC – two sports that still require planet-sized cojones but which still, to this day, take young lives. MotoGP is still terrifying.
I suppose I am once again grateful to have been born when I was, to have witnessed the casual daredevils like James Hunt and Gilles Villeneuve. It was real ‘Boy’s Own’ hero stuff and I loved it.
40
My favourite one is the tourist, in shorts, T-shirt and things, standing next to gents in full hazmat suits investigating a toxic incident.
80
Quick, build lots more windmills.
As we approach the April 28 closure of Liddell power station, Liddell continues to generate 970 MW 24×7.
But at 5.30pm on Saturday night, solar 960 MW, wind 1,200 MW (from nameplate 10,300 MW), big batteries 88 MW.
So to replace Liddell, double the number of windmills, or increase battery storage 11 times.
Of course we also have 7,900 MW of hydro power, typically peaks at around 4,000 MW, plus gas 1,900 MW and coal 15,500 MW.
Not to forget Snowy 2, 2,000 MW of peak power with 350,000 MWh of storage, was to deliver by 2025, now more like 2030, original cost $2 billion, latest $6 billion, plus network costs.
Ah yes, cheaper electricity, I’d like to see that.
160
pretty soon, cheap electricity will become a “right wing conspiracy theory”
90
Be comforted by the virtue we signal to the nations who build our wind turbines and solar arrays using the evil energy sources we shun.
50
The fact that the remaining three units are means they are offering the lowest price. Maybe just to get rid of any coal stocks. But it guarantees prices will rise by the end of April. Assuming they do shut them down, which is reported as being certain.
The contract to demolish is already in place so any delays to the site would add to the demolition costs.
40
Not sure how increasing battery units will help if the electricity generated by renewables is not enough to cover the electricity needs ….
20
There’s still hope for the USA:
President Trump Stops for Pizza in Ft. Myers, FL with Rep. Byron Donalds – Crowd Cheers “USA, USA, USA” and “Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump” (VIDEO)
But not Australia, I’m afraid. Has anyone heard a peep out of the ‘conservative’ parties about this:
Labor government ‘telling you what to buy’ under electric vehicle strategy (5m 42s video.)
Note: Sky needs to check their facts on the MG electric car. They list the MG ZS as an electric vehicle costing $22k, but MG’s website says it is a petrol powered car. I suspect it is being confused with the MG ZS EV, which indeed is an electric car. I couldn’t find a price for it on MG’s website, but this website says its price is around $44k.
Weren’t we told during the last election period that the government would see that cheaper models were brought to Australia?
and this:
Australia a ‘dumping ground’ for manufacturers who can’t offload vehicles in other countries (6m 13s video.)
Watch both videos as they contain interesting facts — things you won’t hear in the leftist media — such as replacement batteries costing over $20,000. And I wonder who has to pay for disposal of old batteries. Also, the warranty may be for 8 years but on the one car manufacturer’s website that I checked, the warranty was ‘whichever is the lesser of 8 years OR 160,000 klms. So, if my 15-year-old ute with 350k on the dial were an EV, I would be on my third battery already — $60k in batteries, which effectively doubles the price of the car.
And on the amusing side, I saw an article on EVs which stated that some EV owners are using charging stations for convenient parking while they do their shopping, even when their battery doesn’t need recharging.
70
May as well as the charging lead will have been chopped off for the copper content.
70
Someone noted in a previous post on “EV”s, that they’re not technically speaking “Electric vehicles”. That they are actually battery powered vehicles -” BPV’s”. Electric vehicles are actually modes of transport like trains, trams ( and buses in some countries) which are continually hooked up to the grid. Pedantic, I know, but true.
160
Thanks Ross,
I’ve often thought that pedantry and precision are synonyms.
Keep up the good work.
Cheers
Dave B
100
Speaking of precision, which once upon a time in a land far away, was often represented by math … a lost pre-apocalypse language …
shouldn’t 350.org be 0.0350.org?
If we’re following The Science.
Just sayin’.
Get the best interest rate at 350.bank.
The vaccine is 350.safeandeffective.
20
Just to clarify …
when enf … I mean, enhancing voluntary mandated compliance by convincing the public that you are faithful and final arbiters of science truth …
dropping or misplacing a decimal point here and there is no biggie.
00
The term “battery” is an abbreviation for a “battery of storage cells” and the cells in question are chemical storage cells which convert chemical energy into electrical energy (and vice versa).
It’s more accurate to call them chemical-electric vehicles, hybrid electric vehicles or just hybrid vehicles.
10
Where do you draw the line on using the source of the electricity as the powering name?
If an EV is a battery powered vehicle, why is a train an electric vehicle when it’s connected to a steam turbine powered by coal or gas?
Plus, the EV’s battery was charged with electricity from the same source (generally) as the train power source, so it too is just as electric as the train.
If an EV car is battery powered then a train is steam or coal powered and not electric.
10
That “line” should be drawn at the energy input to the primary stage energy conversion process on the vehicle while it is operating. If multiple energy conversions are involved, then a hybrid name is appropriate.
00
Peta Credlin is already my favourite reporter but the fact that she drives a diesel increase my admiration for her.
Credlin would do very well in federal politics. About time she had a chat to Peter Dutton and they decide who would be best to be the next PM.
60
Women are not meant to be leaders
00
Here’s a question for the members:
Open THIS
Which door should a woman enter if a big hairy man has entered the RH door? I think it’s a no-brainer.
00
Hotlinking denied.😜
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/04/the-week-in-pictures-the-unbearable-bud-lightness-of-being.php
Tranbo: First blood 😆😆😆
Confucius say: man who go through airport turnstile sideways, going to Bangkok.
40
It’s a link to Branco’s cartoon “truth in signs” taken at 18 April.
Can be seen at artist’s web site: https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-sign-of-the-times/
20
…and some more really good ones:
https://www.ranker.com/list/funny-bathroom-signs/ashley-reign
21
It would help us to answer that question, Hanrahan, if our politicians, chief medical officers and bureaucrats can publically explain/define what a woman is.
It shouldn’t be that hard.
The latest failure to do so, is linked below.
Titled: “‘What is a woman?’ The question Biden administration education secretary can’t answer”
Reported by James Morrow, 21/4/2023.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0IH7cL_lqA
The US Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona and his wife have two children: A son, Miguel, Jr., and a daughter, Celine.
I wonder if Miguel can explain/define, to his daughter and wife, what a woman is.
20
Couldn’t the doors be marked ‘Members’ and ‘Non-Members’?
You’re welcome.
Happy to help.
I am problem solver.
50
and for the drinkers of Bud Light “DISMEMBER”
10
.
Germany’s green energy delusion has an enormous environmental and economic price tag
Some excerpts:
The threat of energy shortages in Europe has led to a change in the perception of nuclear power among EU citizens. In Germany, for example, the percentage of people who oppose nuclear power has fallen from 65 to 20 percent.
… the Hungarian government continues to treat energy security as a physical and not an ideological issue. That means it is not willing to give up working, proven and reliable sources.
An ideology-driven energy policy is very expensive, has harmful consequences, and in the future, could even end with us freezing in our homes if an especially cold winter hits Europe.
30
Breaking: USA again decided to connect Russia to SWIFT
Washington decided to return Russian banks to the SWIFT system.
According to the agency, US authorities are ready to take extreme measures to save the grain deal.
UN Secretary-General spokesman Stephane Dujarric said negotiations are underway to reconnect Russian banks to the international payments system in order to realize the grain deal.
The author of the publication states that Washington is not ready to sacrifice its own well-being and therefore can refuse any sanctions if it benefits.
Formerly Poland and the Baltics He insisted The EU is separating Gazprombank from SWIFT.
The disconnection of Gazprombank from SWIFT will force European gas consumers to switch to alternative interbank systems for transmitting financial information – in Russian or Chinese.
The UN is also discussing the resumption of Russian banks’ work on the SWIFT system.
https://socialbites.ca/business/246861.html
Well now, ain’t that an interesting development…
40
What’s wrong with a little pragmatism?
The sanctions have done great harm to Russia, this won’t put them on easy street.
05
I think it’s more than grain. the USA is very scared of being replaced by another currency in oil trade. they’ve fought many a war and installed many a puppet regime (and then fought wars against said puppets) to protect their petrodollar.
90
But why do they think the Russians will want to go back to SWIFT, since their aim is to destroy the dollar?
30
“But why do they think the Russians will want to go back to SWIFT, since their aim is to destroy the dollar?”
Because they’re Yanks.. They’re so disconnected from reality they live on another planet!
They are slowly realising that the sanctions have done more to hurt America and Europe than Russia. The loss of the dollar’s status as a trading currency will wreck America.
10
While at the same time floating the idea of total trade bans at the G7 (with exceptions of course)
Would be interesting if the Russians just shrugged and decided to carry outside the whim of the US.
10
They would if they could but they cant.
05
Britain’s new emergency alert system ‘can be hacked with £1,000 of equipment and YouTube tutorial’
There are fears it would only take pranksters using basic technology to fake terror attack alerts to phones within a kilometre radius.
It may be possible to break into the system, which is set to be sent via mobile phone operators for the first time on Sunday.
A YouTube video created by US academics highlights system’s flaws, which have reportedly not been fixed since being pointed out several years ago, The Telegraph reports.
In a research paper, academics from the University of Colorado Boulder warned “fake alerts in crowded cities or stadiums could potentially result in cascades of panic”.
“We find that with only four malicious portable base stations of a single watt of transmit power each, almost all of a 50,000-seat stadium can be attacked with a 90 per cent success rate,” they said.
“This attack can be done with commercially available software-defined radios costing less than $1,000, and a few modifications to open-source software.”
A government spokesperson said: “Our emergency alerts system is extremely secure, having been developed in conjunction with government cyber experts.
“The system will only ever be used in a very limited number of circumstances where there is a risk to life and all alerts will be published on gov.uk at the same time they are broadcast.”
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/britain-new-emergency-alert-system-can-be-hacked/
And these emergency alerts can be easily disabled by going into your phone’s notifications settings anyway..
40
A couple on covid via
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2023/04/23/april-23-2023-reader-tips/#comment-1770684
“The Worst Atrocity in the History of the World has been Confirmed
https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/the-worst-atrocity-in-the-history ”
“Former Director Of National Intelligence Admits That Fauci Lied About Gain Of Function Research
https://ninetymilesfromtyranny.blogspot.com/2023/04/watch-former-director-of-national.html#more
30
More in the same vein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYmBAWtjoQw
10
Speaking of ‘admissions’ (under oath, under penalty of law, not that the ‘law’ will do didley) by ‘intelligence’ types … there’s this little nugget.
https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/biden-campaign-pushed-spies-to-write-false-hunter-laptop-letter/
20
Unseasonal weather is a regional cooling signal.
‘In Shanxi province, temperatures dropped by nearly 30 degrees Celsius within 24 hours, with accumulated snow depths reaching up to 24 centimeters in some areas. The province has issued a yellow warning for snowstorms across the entire region.
‘The cold front is expected to continue, with widespread rain and snow predicted in the north and central regions. While such strong cold fronts in April are not unusual, this particular front has been characterized by its longer duration and heavier than usual rainfall.’ (China Daily)
20
The worlds Lithium reserves are being nationalized. Electric cars are about to get more espensive:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/chile-stuns-markets-and-ev-makers-nationalizing-lithium-industry-overnight?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1429
20
Never mind, we’ll be using sodium batteries instead:
https://www.howtogeek.com/857572/what-are-sodium-ion-batteries-and-could-they-replace-lithium/
00
Not exactly a new battery technology – has been around for about 12 years but hasn’t made it. I see Simon Thompson’s comment here on 9 March about the batteries only having 300 recharges at 100% discharge, so it seems a bit more work is still required.
30
The Geological Survey of India reported in February the discovery of new lithium reserves in Jammu-Kashmir of 6 million tonnes. That adds about 40% to the world’s known reserves.
10
I would appreciate comments on the following.
In the following video by David Dilley it is claimed that historical CO2 measurements based on ice core data have been underestimated and that there has only been a modest increase in CO2 in recent times.
He also introduces his own theory about what drives climate.
Not that CO2 (what warmists call “carbon” (sic)) is a problem anyway, the more the better (up to a point), but the atmospheric CO2 level is of academic interest.
What do you think?
https://youtu.be/D_B10L9bV18
20
Always wondered why my Slushie (crushed ice carbonated softdrink) goes flat. The CO2 must diffuse from the ice slurry? I remember some discussion of this subject on ClimateAudit or Wattsupwiththat.
10
I also stumbled upon Dilley.
Unfortunately, he does not provide data and detail to assess his hypothesis. His web sites form a strong pay-wall to further consideration.
10
I’m not one to give data, but on this blog a month or two ago was a chart showing that over 150m years ( the number of millions could be out because I’m working from an 83yo memory, but what’s a 100m years +/- between friends) the [CO2]atm has dropped in almost a straight line from 2,500ppm to ~400ppm today. If so, any respiring creature with CO2 driving it is due for extinction in a relatively near future. Even the globe seems to prefer a bit of extra CO2 these days. It greens up deserts.
My reading on CO2 and climate say it’s parameters of action maybe exceedingly limited, already past it’s point of maximum effect. There appears to be little interest in this, but that point was almost at the level required to drive mammalian respiratory centres. Higher concentrations had minimal extra warming effect. That’s a bit like some drugs, like one of the statins for example.
It would seem to me that the limits of the [CO2] effect are as important or more so than it’s actual atmospheric concentrations.
If the above was to be proven the fact, then the entire argument on global warming is over.
40
The only argument for man made CO2 is from ice cores. But they are low resolution. A thousand years is short for ice cores. So rapidly changing CO2 is missed.
40
I think it’s highly hypocritical for Leftists to pretend to offer condolences for the late Barry Humphries because remember how they cancelled him in 2019 for supposedly being a “transphobe” and they even renamed the comedy festival “Barry Award” to the “Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award”?
But if it weren’t for the double standards of the Left they would have no standards whatsoever.
151
Something different
“Saturday Snippet: Pursuing thieves down a frozen river”
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/04/saturday-snippet-pursuing-thieves-down.html
A bit different to modern qualifiers for political rank
20
China’s massive food crisis goes totalitarian
https://twitter.com/songpinganq/status/1649264023442169856
00
Yet the group-think here says the US is toast and China and BRICS are taking over.
Strange, I thought it a sceptic’s site.
10
Lol- The comments.. People thinking China is some terrible Communist State controlling the people, yet just can’t see it happening in front of their eyes in the West.
“Why are they not allowed to plant these?
chao gao- because the gove need to pay for what is there. they plant the banana in night before counting the total number of refund, but they forget that the banana can’t grown in one night and they are mostly died. so the police pull them out.”
“chao gao
china Guanxi Suiyuan, that (land) will be used by gov, so they are counting the plant in there. but the banana shall not be there. the farmer plant them several days ago to cheat the gov. refund.”
“Songpinganq
Xi Jinping is hiring 87,000 agriculture police officers, ”
“𝐓𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐬⭐𝐆𝐨𝐥𝐝Is
87K some magic number of tyranny & dystopia? ‘Cause that’s the same number our #government forced people to pay to hire & arm agents for the #IRS.
The trouble with the internet is that so much of the world doesn’t speak English! Unless you understand what they’re saying, its impossible to sort out what is happening.
10
FWIW
“Demographics, food, and the Arab world”
https://youtu.be/chKYMM7dFbU
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/04/demographics-food-and-arab-world.html
00
Slayers reborn.
According to my internet searches, the slayers were slain by luke warmers many years ago. But it seems slayers are reborn. You can’t keep a good knight in white armour down.
Tom Shula has the best slayer argument IMHO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS55lXf4LZk
32
Oh dear: 2 down votes but no comments telling me why my post was down-voted. I suppose it must be because I did not explain it? So, …
The greenhouse effect is fraud.
How and Why?
The IPCC narrative tells us that 79% of earth’s surface cooling is due to infrared radiation emitted according to the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. The other 21% of surface cooling is due to conduction, convection and latent heat transport away from the surface to clouds. No evidence for this split exists.
Tom Shula, explains the behaviour of the Pirani gauge shows that no more than 0.4% of earth’s surface cooling can be due to radiation. Because, using this gauge, we can measure the real proportions (by which matter cools – in vacuum and outside it). IPCC and warmists exaggerate earth’s lower atmosphere radiative cooling at least 198 times over.
This blows the greenhouse effect out of the water and reveals it as a scientific fraud. Because it’s not as if Tom Shula is the only person in the world who knows how the Pirani gauge operates.
From the behaviour of this Pirani gauge, we can infer there’s no meaningful radiative cooling in the lower atmosphere either. Not below the tropopause.
If not radiative cooling, then there can’t be much trapping radiation going on nor any back-radiation warming the surface. So the humble Pirani gauge reveals the climate alarmist fraud.
I am NOT saying there’s no radiative cooling. Of course all cooling must eventually be to space via radiation.
Nor am I saying that CO2, methane, etc. are not radiatively active gases.
I’m not even saying there’s no back-radiation.
I did say: the greenhouse effect is insignificant in the climate system.
10
So how hard can it be? CO2 must go up 10 fold above local concentrations. NASA seems to have given up on a third satellite to measure global CO2 levels, but why when it would be so useful. And easy. We have had the technology to measure global CO2 levels from the side of a volcano since 1958.
Puzzling.
10
The motivation seems to be as follows:
But it shouldn’t be hard and is well established. Surveillance.
It seems to be a non-problem.
10
They never will learn, that high temperatures of about 40°C don’t ignite wildfires, that will be 99% men.
Wildfires are relatet to drought not to temperature.
20
Funny how “old fashioned technology” is seen as not adequate. We still put people up fire towers, and,surprise surprise these people spot fires with remarkable speed and location accuracy. You could do these observations from a satellite but is it quicker or more accurate. Whatever the out come it would be thought to be better because “technology” and of course the expense of such a system would be astronomical. Better out comes for emergency response, well probably not, but rest assured someone would make a lot of money.
Reminds me of when the Liberals in Victoria conducted a trial of alpine cattle grazing, studying where the cattle grazed and what areas of preference they occupied.
The study would simply require a few people to walk the areas noting where cow pats where and thus a grazing, bedding pattern could be established.
Not good enough screamed the Greens, each cow had to be fitted with a satelite tracking collar. Strangely the out come just proved that where the cattle wandered you could find cow pats.
40
Or possibly where Greens had been speaking?
20
Simple solution for Twiggy. A Win Win!
Hand the Forests and Park management back to Forestry Management. Selective logging provides a renewable resource funding the maintenance and protection of the region. The Rangers have skills and the ability to burn at the safe times.
Funded and no need to have a warning system if the problem does not exist.
Speaking from recent experience, The parks staff are learning fast and appear to have evolved from the zealots who originally filled the vacancies with the expansion of parks and the shift of the milling industries to Asia. They currently have access to funding and resources when a fire is threatening property.
I am pretty sure this is about to evaporate along with any other budget item that is not going into the pockets of the comfortable fascist swamp. Free Health, National Parks, Legal Aid, Government Education, etc will exist as concepts at the executive level only.
30
Carbon Fibre’s dirty little secret: Amazing what you find out from the outside/ inside when you are up early in the morning: and as for cyclists: a local TRUNK road was closed from BEFORE 5.30am until after 8am + not allowed to overtake the stragglers so that meant a further 2 hrs at Less than 10mph behind them before they moved off the route on their Joyride. We had a long day job to attend to near these lovely places video courtesy of Landowners and Camera operator. Needless to say then that we called off that job total waste of fuel + 2 men’s time on a Sunday morning – to be getting colder, hence the rush to get the job done. And the entourage of vehicles were non-electric unlike SOME of the cyclists taking up the rear – so what was THAT all about? I digress again!
So Carbon fibre, eh – watching a prog or 2, about recycling the stuff – so you CAN cut / chop it up and mill it down. Uhuh. But MAKING it ? I gurgled it this morning in the process of self-healing and unwinding but that did NOT help me. “A Brief History on Carbon Fiber
Carbon fibre dates back to 1879 when Thomas Edison baked cotton threads or bamboo silvers at high temperatures, which carbonized them into an all-carbon fiber filament. By 1958, high-performance carbon fibres were invented just outside of Cleveland, OH. Although they were inefficient, these fibres contained around 20% carbon and had low strength and stiffness properties. And from “Carbon fibre is made from organic polymers” right ?
WRONG ! Gases, liquids, and other materials are used. So if it’s ORGANIC materials, you think , especially when you see WHITE THREADS being treated ( baked ?), that it is something like COTTON, right? WRONG !
So what is it made of? Guess… not “Dirt” As some call soil, our earth for growing food, not COAL ( but maybe ) , but O I L ……. And this is ALL that I am going to say
PS !! so why aren’t windmill blades recycled then?
20
Now what is that old saying, hmmmm. The devil is always in the detail.
10
OP-ED: Toronto’s unrealistic “Net Zero” plans
https://tnc.news/2023/04/22/smith-toronto-netzero/
10
No worse than the next article- Canada gives VW $13billion to build a factory there.. “The most expensive virtue signalling spend yet!”
I wonder how big Turdeau’s kickback is?
00
FWIW
“Anheuser-Busch Thinks
We’re Idiots
The brewer thinks pictures of horses and a reminder of 9/11 will make its alienated customers forget that the company holds them in contempt. Nope.”
https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/20/anheuser-busch-thinks-were-idiots/
20
None of the supposed controversy has done the share price any harm, it shot up and is still higher than a short while back.
00
Scary Epoch Times piece about the so-called mRNA “vaccines”: https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/rna-based-vaccine-technology-the-trojan-horse-did-not-contain-mrna_5195804.html?src_src=Aomorningbriefnoe&src_cmp=Aomb-2023-04-23&est=Q5cDKf0hn%2BZK%2BD4WnsNrLE%2BdNuG2nFTSflQ1OEN4M7LwIxqI4JdFRg6xehxY%2BIr7a%2FEyuTcz
01
FWIW
“Sunday morning music”
Leads to chemistry to music
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2023/04/sunday-morning-music_23.html
10
Sad news about the passing of Pointman.
https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2023/04/23/the-last-post/
50
That is a shame, he was a lovely writer-
“Russia is a rich, food and energy independent country that has about 6,000 nukes. If you could pick a worse nation, including China, to have an economic war with never mind a conventional or nuclear one, I’m all ears tovarich. The problem with fighting a proxy war using sanctions against such a nation is that having ran out of meaningful things to sanction to no visible effect, you’re forced to chip away at them using smaller and smaller provocations..
The much vaunted economic war of sanctions has fizzled down to a war of tit for tat, and the lesson the West block is learning is that mother Russia’s tits are much larger than our tats”
20
RIP Pointman, so sorry to here this. A great blog writer.
50
I gathered he hadn’t been well the last time I looked in at his blog. RIP Pointman.
10
I ask advice, I reached preservation age for my Super money( my Money ) they say I cannot have it unless I retire, is this right? why would they do this, they keep saying we need more workers! please advise, I know there are many very smart people here!!!
00
Here is what the ATO say about it:
Withdrawing and using your super
00