JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
Did anyone know what happened to catallaxy files webpage? Are people posting some place else? Used to have a lot of good posts about absurd regulation.
70
Try https://catallaxy-files.com/
I am not a regular but I have seen opinion that the ownership and emphasis has changed.
The latest article, Dec 5,2023, is by Thomas Sowell who is 93 and is still very sharp.
70
Yes, I remember Sowells article on slavery
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/thomas-sowell-on-slavery-and-this-fact-there-are-more-slaves-today-than-were-seized-from-africa-in-four-centuries/
It seems curious to me that there is this anger about historic slavery but very little about modern slavery which encompasses many more people than were ever enslaved in the 18th and 19th centuries.
As was said ‘The past is a foreign country’ and to modern eyes there would barely be any aspect of it not heavily influenced by all the modern concerns, misogyny, racism, religious intolerance, homophobia, anti semitism, crimes against the environment,
However that was just the way of the world at the time and not one person in a thousand from the modern era would have behaved any differently to our ancestors if they had been in their place
170
The use of slavery as a weapon by “progressives” is just another part of the anti-western and anti-white narrative. Like “climate” it is simply a catalyst for the real agenda.
51
Try New Catallaxy
00
The new Catallaxy blog is at the following:
https://newcatallaxy.blog
21
Open…
20
And closing it…or I say them the Electric Vehicle policies are in parcel by reality.
Seems that the Electric Vehicle policies that our government and politicians want so desperately has hit the brick wall of reality…it takes a lot of different companies to make it so.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/tesla-wannabe-ev-names-have-run-out-cash-spac-crazed-bubble-bursts
40
Speaking of EVs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFJoEPPkxiA
10
“El Niño Behind High Temperatures in 2023 – Similar to 2016”
“cherry-picking conveniently ignores the dramatic effect of natural variation that could have been caused by a strengthening El Niño global heat transfer, along with possible changes arising from the Hunga Tonga volcanic explosion.”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/12/20/el-nino-behind-high-temperatures-in-2023-similar-to-2016/
One also wonders what the near future impact on global weather systems will be due to the impact of the current volcanic eruptions in Iceland ?
“Pollution from a volcano that erupted on Monday could hit Iceland’s capital, the country’s meteorological office has said.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67756413
80
“Pollution”? From a volcano? Only ‘man’ makes pollution, according to the CCCult of Pirates (COP) and their underlings. Oh wait, it’s BBC-speak. Ignore.
70
The upward trend in Northern Hemisphere surface temperature is inevitable for at least hundreds of years. The solar minimum in the NH occurred 500 years ago. The peak sunlight has been increasing since. The opposite is occurring in the SH but at a slower pace due to the higher thermal inertia of water and more of it in the SH than the NH.
The peak solar intensity in late June that drives the peak ocean surface temperature in September in the NH is on an upward trend for the next 9,000 years. The only thing that will slow the warming is ice accumulation. So far only Greenland is gaining ice extent and altitude but calving is still outpacing snowfall.
So I would not bet on anything shifting the upward trend.
Australia has hardly warmed through the satellite era. Most warming is occurring on Greenland in January. Antarctica has a solid cooling trend. All to be expected given the changing solar intensity across the globe.
The climate change deniers are the climate prognosticators playing with their inept models who think Earth had an energy balance in 1850. Earth’s climate was never in thermodynamic balance and can never be so. It is always changing because Earth’s orientation to its heat source is always changing.
80
Isn’t there some time warp/matter transportation/quantum mechanical means to swap you with Chris Bowen?
10
I am partly to blame for the National Grid so maybe not the best of ideas given that it has morphed into a vehicle to push “renewables”:.
I authored a submission to the productivity commission enquiry into the electricity supply in Australia and subsequently gave evidence as representative for one of the largest electricity consumers in Australia. The company was then buying some power from the SECV and using it in NSW over the transmission line my company paid for in NSW. The wheeling charge that Elcom applied (30%) of the cost ended up being the same price the electricity would cost if purchased from ELCom. The arrangement was likely unconstitutional but that aspect was never pushed. The Productivity Commission saw lots of merit in removing the State Government cronies from a vital industry. I was the large users representative on the first national grid “systems” working group. We did not contemplate a billing system that looked anything like what AEMO now administers.
The NEM worked well in reducing prices throughout the 1990s but went to carp once Howard introduced the RET, which was then supercharged by Rudd.
60
OK, I recant – anyway you probably have a chin so it’d be impossible to arrange the swap.
10
‘So I would not bet on anything shifting the upward trend.’
I’ll take that bet, you have forgotten the impact of volcanic eruptions and the knock on effect.
00
El Nino should begin to decay in a month or two, but if world temperatures remain on this moderately higher plateau, then they’ll have to admit that natural variables rule. Or they could press home the point that the burning of fossil fuels is to blame.
The Iceland eruption is relatively modest, however if it continued at this rate for an extended period we might assume it’ll have an impact on NH weather.
01
What, if anything, are you doing in preparation for likely summer blackouts on the east coast of Australia?
Also note, since the elimination of the old analogue POTS telephone service, which had essentially a perfect operational record and could be 100% relied upon for emergency calls, its replacement over NBN and the cellular network has extremely limited battery or generator backup (a few hours) and cannot be replied upon.
That’s why technological systems shouldn’t be allowed to be conceived or designed by politicians as NBN was.
When the SHTF, you may not be able to call emergency services.
“Who ya gonna call?” Ghostbusters may not be available, even if you could call them.
On the other hand, blackouts might be avoided by extensive industrial load shedding of what little industry we have left and political demands not to be selfish by using too much electricity such as when the NSW Premier recently asked people not to set cooling below 24C/75F, not to use clothes dryers or dishwashers, water companies not to pump too much water, etc.. That rationing may even become law. And with “smart” meters, Big Brother can monitor your consumption in real time to force compliance or remotely turn off yiur electricity as punishment.
The Chicomms will be very happy with their woke, compliant, idiot friends “down under”.
220
We are putting far too much reliance on digital systems and the Internet. I see apple pay is down today affecting 500 million people.
Our society will likely not end in nuclear war but by concerted hackers targeting our banking, power supplies, communications and banking.
161
A couple of years back an extraordinary windstorm knocked out most of our town power. Apparently including the radio and phone services on Mt Misery. Not long after the mobile services went down too. The story I heard later was that the backup generator had no water in the radiator.
We had a generator, but no fuel. I later wrote to the council recommending that they work with the servos to ensure that at least one servo can stay open in an emergency.
70
Is that Mt Misery in Van Diemen’s Land?
00
Is that Mt Misery in New Zimbabwe?
That bloke, Mr Misery, must’ve walked (or rode horseback) everywhere as Mr Ford’s Model T hadn’t been invented way back then… and yet so much misery.
10
Is that Mt.Misery near Irvingbank N.Q.?
00
Have they acted on your recommendation?
00
Not yet that I am aware of.
Misery named a few mountains. This one is only half way up.
10
Any who follow the price of Au, Ag may be wondering why Kitco website is down: It has been attacked and has been down for about a week.
10
This is an issue. My wife and I both have two means of electronic payment with different banks. We have enough cash on hand to buy food if it got that bad and food suppliers were still open. We could last a couple of weeks by what we keep on hand and grow. The wine would last quite a while but most of what is cellared are heavy reds, which are not my wife’s favourite. I would have to be content to drink reds so the whites would last her for a while.
40
Wine first, food second.
That’s the way! 😆
My oldest bottle of red is 1984. Probably battery acid by now.
30
It depends on the cork. Pefolds Wines still have excellent cork. Even their low cost wines cellar for decades without deterioration of the cork. Their lower cost wines now have screw caps but their top shelf still has cork.
And the cellaring issue has not been solved by screw tops. I have had a number off screw tops well past their best within ten years.
I had a glass of 1984 Pinfolds Grange in 2019. It had never been recorked and was still in good shape.
20
Mr. Will: Do you have any experience with old liquor? I have a Pinch scotch about 70-80yrs old, and a Brandy about 100 yrs old, never opened afaik. Haven’t had occasion to open ’em for thirty yrs or so. Still drinkable?
20
Sell it or drink it 😀
00
PRC has already congratulated us on our brave decision re a ship for the Persian Gulf. Penny Wong and DFAT must be so proud.
31
The deplorable state of defence force readiness eh; Australia today is unable to despatch an adequately crewed and armed warship to the Red Sea –and we’ve eighteen more months of this feckless government (unless some small alien force subjugates us in the interim).
31
is that a “Brave decision” al la Yes Minister??
00
See 4.1.3.1
Pinot Gris beats a generator! 😆
Or get a dual fuel lpg/petrol jenny. Best bet.
10
a) got out of the city
b) self sufficient for water
C) have generator in place and house wired for easy changeover (tested and used multiple times)
d) have about a months food supply (originally started as a weeks bushfire backup)
e) have access to shtf cash
Could probably do more but thats as far as we have gone.
50
About the decline of natural sciences in the land of poets and thinkers
80
Thanks for that very interesting exercise in translation.
If you planted an opportunity frog in Strine, it would grow. They are always visible.
I’ll watch for an opportunity.
10
Not my work, but googles as the German site offers the translation via mouse-klick 😀
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“Let stalk Strine”, by Professor Afferbeck Lauder, was a clever little parody on the lack of care that many Australians show with their diction.
10
But that’s how language develops through lack of care. It is so easy to start a sentence with “but” for example.
20
And that’s not all. 😁
English is a difficult language for foreigners to learn due to a myriad of inconsistencies.
Contractions are a good example.
Cannot contracts to can’t, must not becomes mustn’t but shall not doesn’t become shalln’t.
There’s no plural in Chinese which is why their English wording is so off.
The days of Latin and syntactic and grammatical perfection are gone, and a more relaxed era is here.
Mistakes with there, their and they’re as still not acceptable, but.
30
I have congratulated people from countries with Latin based languages on having a go at English –
Where, as an extreme example
“I know f- nothing” means the same as “I know f- all”
10
There is a new movie about a future US civil war.
But not what you might think. It portrays the patriots as the bad guys and the US Government and “journalists” as the good guys.
It’s pure anti-Trump propaganda and predictive programming because the Left are terrified Trump is going to win The next election.
Paul Joseph Watson discusses.
https://youtu.be/K5kQWj1OFIY
81
See my post #5.1.1.1.1 🙂
10
The film is out around Easter 2024, but don’t hold out high hopes for it being more accurate than Leave the world behind.
00
Based on Australian data:
COVID-19 vaccination is highly effective in preventing COVID-19 death and also reduces all-cause mortality. The effectiveness of boosters against mortality wanes with time but a booster still provides substantial residual protection six months after receipt. Increasing population hybrid immunity is likely to reduce observed vaccine effectiveness as the pandemic progresses but COVID-19 boosters continue to provide significant benefits in mortality reduction, particularly in high-risk populations such as those aged 65+ years and those resident in aged care facilities.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanwpc/article/PIIS2666-6065(23)00246-8/fulltext
131
Curiously there is no mention of the anomalous peak in deaths in Jan Feb 2022. Very curious since this is one of the two narrow periods they are focusing on. Below is a wider analysis of all-cause mortality with Australian data included (posted here before, but worth repeating) …
“In many jurisdictions (including each state in Australia), there is no detectable excess ACM until the vaccines are rolled out, when new regimes of high excess ACM are initiated.”
https://denisrancourt.ca/entries.php?id=133&name=2023_09_17_covid_19_vaccine_associated_mortality_in_the_southern_hemisphere
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They wish!
30
What you call effectiveness, a high even, is not more than wishful thinking and anecdotic.
Out of your linked articel:
Why that when it’s so effective…. 😀
80
Simon, the latest nooze is that the JN.1 variant spreads eight times faster than Covid 19 and vaccines have been useless.
40
“useless”
which is why pharma-suit-to-kills are pushing – advertising – hell for leather pre-Christmas family gathering top-ups: sumpfink about love and caring for sustainable profits.
20
Propaganda Roundup: Hillary Claims Climate Change™ Targets Pregnant Women
40
More on that Melbourne EV truck fire with notes on the dangers of cobalt poisoning
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2023/12/20/nsfw-f-bombs-galore-j-anus-rolling-etruck-bombs/
John Cardogan
https://youtu.be/yFJoEPPkxiA
Salty
50
Thankyou Ian for bringing this issue to the fore. Cobalt poisoning via Li-ion battery fires.
2 Victorian Firefighters are currently off duty suffering the complications of Cobalt poisoning.
The issue of toxins re Li-ion fires needs to be made public.
I’ll post something later here, when I have time… The other toxins related to Li-ion.
We firefighters have known this for quite a few years, and are fully aware that we are not being listened to by Gov/high Management.
10
Colorado Saves Democracy By Not Allowing People To Vote For Their Preferred Candidate
Democrat appointed judges politicise the court by obstructing democracy to suit the Democrats.
Won’t make any difference because Colorado always votes Democrat anyway.
It serves to distract public attention away from the more interesting news.
1. Assange has been granted a final appeal set for February.
2. A judge has ordered the Epstein client list be published January in full with no redactions.
90
Sounds like one of those “Decisions you make when you’re not making a decision”
“The Colorado Supreme Court 4-3 Decision Is Pure Nonsense and Can Be Laughed At, They Even Admit It on Page 9
December 19, 2023 | Sundance | 638 Comments”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/12/19/the-colorado-supreme-court-4-3-decision-is-pure-nonsense-and-can-be-laughed-at-they-even-admit-it-on-page-9/
20
Exactly! Distract the public with pure nonsense, (misinformation/disinformation/malinformation/pseudinformation/junkinformation), to distract them from what’s actually going down.
00
There is never just one cockroach. If the Colorado ruling stands every blue state will do the same, and every red state will bar Joe for not upholding the constitution WRT the border. OK, not “every”.
Strange way to defend democracy.
11
New Zealand (Cooks Beach) Fire: Media claims “EV not to blame”
40
Climate change alarm is exaggerated, we should not demonise oil and gas: Elon Musk
31
Should I understand from this that Elon has squeezed the last dollar out of AGW and is now heading the race to the bottom?
40
Sounds like he is having 2 bob each way as we used to say.
00
Blueprint for creating a ‘SARS-CoV’ virus with an altered spike protein in Wuhan was published in 2018, bombshell new records show.
A newly-uncovered trove of documents detailing plans to create a Covid-like virus in China months before the pandemic make the ‘lab leak almost certain’, experts say.
The records – obtained now by FOIA requests – lay out a plan to ‘engineer spike proteins’ to infect human cells that would then be ‘inserted into SARS-Covid backbones’ at the infamous Wuhan virology lab from December 2018.
Just a year later, in late 2019, the Covid-19 virus emerged with a uniquely adept ability to infect humans, going on to cause a global pandemic.
The proposal was made by the now-notorious EcoHealth Alliance, a New York nonprofit that channels US government grants abroad to fund these types of experiments.
Ultimately, the application was denied by the US Department of Defense, but critics say the plans laid out in the proposal serve as a ‘blueprint’ for how to create Covid.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12881707/us-chinese-covid-documents-wuhan-spike-proteins.html
It all started back in WW2. It’s only recently that the science has allowed the development of such bioweapons.
The players behind the scenes have been around much longer, but the agenda hasn’t changed.
40
FWIW on that –
And a few more things in here to help your worry beads spin faster –
https://open.substack.com/pub/coffeeandcovid/p/multi-dimensional-wednesday-december?r=1vxw0k&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
One could begin to think that the bloody whole Peking Pox saga is tainted – including the money
00
Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story.
We’ll be able to grow meat in giant, stainless-steel bioreactors—and enough of it to feed the world. These advancements in technology, the pitch went, would fundamentally change the way human societies interact with the planet, making the care, slaughter, and processing of billions of farm animals the relic of a barbaric past.
The Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit that represents the alternative protein industry, published a techno-economic analysis (TEA) that projected the future costs of producing a kilogram of cell-cultured meat. Prepared independently for GFI by the research consulting firm CE Delft, and using proprietary data provided under NDA by 15 private companies, the document showed how addressing a series of technical and economic barriers could lower the production price from over $10,000 per pound today to about $2.50 per pound over the next nine years—an astonishing 4,000-fold reduction.
Open Philanthropy—a multi-faceted research and investment entity with a nonprofit grant-making arm, which is also one of GFI’s biggest funders—completed a much more robust TEA of its own, one that concluded cell-cultured meat will likely never be a cost-competitive food. David Humbird, the UC Berkeley-trained chemical engineer who spent over two years researching the report, found that the cell-culture process will be plagued by extreme, intractable technical challenges at food scale. In an extensive series of interviews with The Counter, he said it was “hard to find an angle that wasn’t a ludicrous dead end.”
Humbird likened the process of researching the report to encountering an impenetrable “Wall of No”—his term for the barriers in thermodynamics, cell metabolism, bioreactor design, ingredient costs, facility construction, and other factors that will need to be overcome before cultivated protein can be produced cheaply enough to displace traditional meat.
“And it’s a fractal no,” he told me. “You see the big no, but every big no is made up of a hundred little nos.”
https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/
The Dirty Secrets About Lab-Grown Meat
Fake meats are not about your health or the environment; they’re a tool to phase out farmers and ranchers and replace them with ultra-processed food products that can be controlled by patents.
Creating lab-grown meat is “insanely expensive” and plagued by bacterial and viral contamination.
Wired reported:
“One former employee says that between the factory opening in November 2021 and the summer of 2022, they saw dozens of attempts to use the bioreactors to produce sheets of tissue, but they rarely resulted in usable meat. At times, production runs were ruined by contamination that meant the meat was unsuitable for turning into a product, the former employee says.
“Former Upside employees describe how batches of meat growing in the custom-made bioreactors would frequently be ruined by contamination and have to be incinerated. ‘Once they had any indication it was contaminating, they would try to just stop the run, get the cells, and get any results out of it that they could,’ says a former employee with knowledge of the process.”
Meanwhile, despite the pharmaceutical-style manufacturing, lab-grown meat isn’t considered a pharmaceutical product, which means no human testing is required. “If this is brought to market, it’s a human experiment,” van Hamelen says.
https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/the-dirty-secrets-about-lab-grown-meat/
Be a hero. Eat REAL meat. Lots of meat.
40
Thursday WTF: Midrand water tower in South Africa
https://64.media.tumblr.com/8158a15b5f73704a30b28026b6356fa3/tumblr_myzwnqz9Xn1snchhfo1_1280.jpg
I have questions…
10
Isn’t that where the aliens landed in “District 9″…
00
Phrase for these times:
“Civilizational Jenga”.
https://instapundit.com/623189/#disqus_thread
00
Thought for the day.
Everyone wants to save the world, but no-one wants to help wash the dishes.
20
I don’t want to do either.
00
Crackpot climate craziness continues
MP Claims Royal Navy Warships Immobilised By ‘Climate Change’
Former Conservative Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood MP has made the astonishing claim that changes in sea temperature due to ‘climate change’ have severely limited Britain’s effectiveness as a naval power
Last week he told Talk TV that “our Type-45 destroyers can now not operate in parts of the world because the water is now too warm now because the engines can’t stay cool”.
Did Ellwood let slip a major defence secret in that British warships shut down when local temperatures rise a degree or two, or did he just don a sandwich board and mangle a story to promote a dystopian Net Zero collectivist project?
In other words, is he a knave, or just a bit of a berk?
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/12/18/tobias-ellwood-mp-claims-british-warships-are-immobilised-by-climate-change/
Berk++
Pity climate change doesn’t affect that “harmless” DU ammo you’re sending to Ukraine.
00
That must be why we can’t send one to the Red Sea. See, I spoke proper.
00
Singapore Reports 56,000 COVID Cases, Makes Face Mask Mandatory; Will Full Lockdown Be Imposed?
In a significant development, Singapore has reported over 56,000 COVID Cases within one week. Notably, the country is reeling under massive COVID-19 infections as the cases jumped tremendously – a 75 per cent increase over the 32,035 infections in the previous week.
The Ministry of Health stated that at least 56,043 cases were recorded in the week of December 3 to 9. The country has issued health advisories to its citizens and has made face mask mandatory in public places.
Malaysia Reports 20,000 Covid Cases
A similar situation has been witnessed in Malaysia which recorded 20,696 Covid-19 cases between December 10 and 16. Giving details, Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad on Monday refuted the speculations of lockdown which is often dubbed as Movement Control Order (MCO).
https://www.india.com/news/world/singapore-coronavirus-latest-news-singapore-reports-56000-covid-cases-makes-face-mask-mandatory-will-full-lockdown-be-imposed-malaysia-corona-6596151/
The bird flu resurgence is tapering off and hopefully won’t go anywhere.
Generally quiet everywhere.
No sign of Disease-X. Maybe there’s a bat shortage. 😆
30
Queensland is reporting something similar:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-21/influenza-sick-christmas-john-gerrard/103254282
Cheers
Dave B
10
“”Young children may never have been exposed to mycoplasma before. That’s why significant numbers of children are getting sick at the moment because they’re not likely to have any form of natural immunity to the organism.””
Uh-huh… Your children who never got sick from mycoplasma before being vaccinated are now getting sick because maybe perhaps they were never exposed to it before…? Is he trying to say this is a new disease out of another laboratory?
40
AW & JN: World leader’s pants on fire: Climate Change alarmism is getting silly. 😎️
10
He sounds like a real investigative reporter. A rare breed.
10
Former Leftist Nails Why The Left Is So Angry
00
Ian Plimer on CO2 (2m video):
https://x.com/adhtvaus/status/1737732804732207567?s=20
10
Thunderstorms in Australia.
https://i.ibb.co/s5rFD9X/archive-7-image.png
20
This is not the end of the thunderstorms. The forest will green up, and the eucalyptus trees will get rid of the competition with the help of fire (to which the trunks of eucalyptus trees are resistant). All this is a testament to the remarkable stability of Australia’s climate, because eucalyptus trees have adapted so well to it.
https://www.blitzortung.org/en/historical_maps.php
30
More good news for the green meanies.
“AMTE Power, a high-performance battery developer, has called in administrators in a fresh blow to Britain’s Net Zero industry as orders dried up”
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/12/21/scottish-battery-factory-goes-bust-in-fresh-blow-to-u-k-s-net-zero-industry/
10
FWIW
“”I Am Going To Red-Pill You About Vegetable Oils” ”
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/i-am-going-red-pill-you-about-vegetable-oils
00
Demand for EVs collapses – car manufacturers rattled
00