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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Electric cars. In my local paper is a photo of an electric car that managed to smash through a low brick wall and into a garden, coming to rest in the shed. The passengers got out and the fire service notified. They commented;
“Crews utilised our mobile data terminal to find the isolation locations and kill switches for the high voltage systems in order to make the vehicle safe.Due to the damage sustained the crew had to use spreading and cutting equipment to remove the bonnet so they could access these systems and make the vehicle and scene safe.”
There isn’t enough data yet to demonstrate if EV’s are more likely to burst into flames than ICE vehicles but the consequences are far more serious with EV fires which are very difficult to put out.
However my main observation is that a lot of equipment was needed to deal with this, which presumably isn’t available to every fire crew and specialist training required to operate it. If this accident had happened on a busy road, or in a built up area, at night, or the occupants had been trapped, the consequences could have been horrific.
Presumably domestic solar panels, Inverters and associated batteries must present similar concerns to firefights. The recommendation is that any battery system should be in a garage or outhouse away from the house.
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I’m not so sure that being in a garage is that safe either. I was talking to a fire fighter whilst waiting at the vets. He actually told me that there were more EV fires than get reported. They are told to keep quite about them and not talk to media. I live in a rural area and there was a house a few kilometers down the road from me. One morning, driving past it, I noticed that the garage had burned down. The garage was separate and it looked like the house was relatively untouched. The next time I drove past a few weeks later, the whole house had been demolished. Turns out, according to the fire fighter, the house was badly contaminated by the toxic fumes caused by the battery fire. The contamination was so bad that they couldn’t guarantee that the house would be clean enough to to give the owners the peace of mind that they wanted, especially with young children. It was a better outcome to demolish the house, clean up the site and rebuild. There was no mention in the local media of the fire at all, let alone the cause. I suppose, being remote rural, it was easy enough to ignore. However, a pretty massive blaze at a recycling plant in Auckland, caused by lithium batteries, wasn’t that easy to sweep under the carpet. So far this year, there have been 13 waste truck fires in Auckland caused by lithium batteries. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/recycling-plant-fire-prompts-auckland-call-for-proper-battery-disposal/V7HF3SMOUJBBHC5HKND42PBVVY/
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Gives added meaning to Talking Heads’ song: Burning Down The House.
To save the children we had to demolish their home – $cience!
Utter Madness… which reminds me of another ‘70s song: Our House, In The Middle Of The HEAT 🔥
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And what if the Chicomms have built “back doors” into their EVs that are exported to the West like they have with solar panels?
In the even of hostilities they could issue a command to cause all the cars to self-immolate and potentially destroy an entire city.
It would be practically impossible to check code and hardware for such back doors.
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There’s an article or two on taking code from processors in Silicon Chip, I bet you’ve got a copy. It’s not an easy feat to achieve once the program has been loaded. And not all processors provide access to their internal code.
https://www.siliconchip.com.au/Issue/SC/2025/January/Extracting+Data+from+Micros
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Robin is a sometime author here and this very well referenced report on the impossibility of net zero is worth reading
.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/net-zero-unachievable-dangerous-and-pointless/
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Standing only seats to be introduced on budget airlines?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-14734831/Low-cost-airlines-standing-seats-2026.html
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I would only use it if the price was VERY good, and for no longer than about a one hour flight, that is, one hour from the time of entering the cabin to the time of leaving, so probably about a half hour of actual flight time.
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Ahhh if only travel was so predictable. I once spent 8 hours taking a 1 hr flight and that was only the airport/in aircraft time. We sat idling so long waiting to take off , we had to return to the yerminal and refuel. Then sat idling as long again before we eventually got away. Should have got the train.
These seats will be just the thing for the drunken boyz headed to Ibiza to enrich the Spanish culture.
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“Fasten your seat belt” is going to be interesting then
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The real world is starting to show the long term results of the “clot shot” – not that they would admit to that as the causative agent. . .
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/21/heart-attacks-work-fatal-medical-risk-cardiac-emergency-training.html
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In the linked video(1) Jeff Taylor talks about the UK political prisoner Lucy Connolly who is in jail for 31 months for an angry Tweet she deleted after a few hours.
The Tweet was in relation to her anger about the murder of three young girls and injuries to others by Axel Rudakubana. No motive was ever established.
A shocking miscarriage of justice, especially as numerous people in the UK aren’t even being sent to jail for serious actual crimes.
The UK is now arresting over 12,000 people per year for thoughts expressed on social media. (That figure was from 2023, it’s probably more now.) (2,3)
1) https://youtu.be/vKMqdQAuP4A
2) https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages/
3) https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news-corner/uk-crackdown-social-media-commenters-silencing-critical-voices/
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Netanyahu etc condemn criticism of their government
Source:
Jerusalem Post, May 20
https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/article-854678
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Leftists are the same everywhere, they would rather submit than do what is morally correct.
The Gazans started the war with an horrific terrorist attack against Israel on October 7th 2023 plus took hostages.
People seem to have forgotten that.
Israel takes extraordinary measures not to harm civilians but Hamas terrorists do everything they can to put their own civilians in harm’s way such as putting their terrorist headquarters in schools, hospitals, UN offices, apartment buildings etc..
And all Hamas have to do is give the remaining hostages back and Israel will stop attacking.
Plus Gazans aren’t starving, vast amounts of food have been delivered there.
And the Israelis aren’t genociding the Gazans either but any civilians killed are a direct result of Hamas policy of embedding themselves among civilians.
Why so many people are inclined to support terrorists is beyond me.
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FWIW
“Trump uses his remarkable abilities once again as he convinces the Democrats to wholeheartedly support white genocide.”
https://x.com/KurtSchlichter/status/1925234283117183260
Via Instapundit
And
“NOAH ROTHMAN: Yet Another Gaza Famine That Wasn’t.”
https://instapundit.com/721008/#disqus_thread
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Nut’n’Yahoo, who had been facing serious jail time if convicted of his numerous misdemeanours, conveniently had a ‘new’ war to rouse up solidarity through an age-old enemy: their half-brothers.
Operation Gideon’s Chariots, signed-off on May the 4th be with you, is the latest in their 4,000-year-long battle to claim someone else’s land as their imagined sacred and chosen birthright.
Maybe they could go back to where all this nonsense began – Ur of the Chaldees – except that land is now called Iraq: oh what a holy quagmire. Shalom?
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In the linked video the History Debunked YouTube channel discusses one of Britain’s immigration scams via the university system.
Much the same thing happens in Australia.
It’s very profitable for the universities in both cases and they are both graduating people who can’t or can barely speak English in some cases so there’s no way they could have done the actual coursework claimed.
https://youtu.be/UxGxEgNS5kQ
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Video, Congo’s “Boat of Hell” documenting the misery of the 2,000 passengers as they first wait fir the boat to leave and then the 1700km journey up the Congo River.
https://youtu.be/KPMZdUg2GjM
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Huh! Gives Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness a whole new meaning.
Tony.
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Refreshing to see US media covering hugely destructive weather without having to hear it blamed on CAGW or Climate Change
2 Videos less than 2 minutes each:
https://d1l66zlxaqpl1u.cloudfront.net/wp-gray/CNN_KHBS_WLKY_WFIE_KMOV_SEE_PREFONTS/20250520/682c8b75e5760e32ad8e8df6/t_0c92dc4f518f4a81a4763020d0336f16_name_BHDN_PY_03TU_SYSTEM_SPAWNING_SUPER_33fd8ef6_af98_4ae2_b07d_410d12c84d5d/file_1280x720-2000-v3_1.mp4
https://d1l66zlxaqpl1u.cloudfront.net/wp-gray/CNN_Newsource/20250520/682c1ece2df9ce090e728e7a/t_11e5208bcbec4b7c9110e7d9e4befceb_name_BHDN_NE_020MO_KY__VIDEO_SHOWS_FAMIL_75087eb5_8919_4866_8067_81fa49e6684f/file_1280x720-2000-v3_1.mp4
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Horrific.
Already about 4% of all deaths in Canada are attributable to “euthanasia”, often for trivial reasons.
As expected, the bar is being continually lowered, now it’s children without parental consent.
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This won’t end until it’s one of the prime minister’s kids being knocked off without his knowledge.
Remember, you’ll all be dead and they’ll be happy.
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“‘Shrinking Nemo’: Smaller clownfish sound alarm on ocean heat”
The BBC hyperventilates again.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c629z4y762xo
Some fish shrank by several millimetres, so we have to return to the Eighteen Century. FFS.
“The research recorded clownfish living on coral reefs slimmed down drastically when ocean temperatures rocketed in 2023. Scientists say the discovery was a big surprise and could help explain the rapidly declining size of other fish in the world’s oceans.”
More –
“Global warming is a big challenge for warm-blooded animals, which must maintain a constant body temperature to prevent their bodies from overheating. Animals are responding in various ways: moving to cooler areas or higher ground, changing the timing of key life events such as breeding and migration, or switching their body size.”
I’m not a senior lecturer – and I know most fish are cold blooded. Okay, some tuna, and IIRC a few others, can keep internal temperature several degrees above ambient – but they’re not classically ‘warm-blooded’.
I dunno about clown fish. And I doubt the BBC does, either.
Auto
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I bet they chose clownfish because 1) they are popular due to Nemo and 2) the people promoting this BS are themselves clowns so they are an appropriate icon.
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Every time this issue is raised I wonder why those fish and marine animals (sharks were mentioned in Aus media…) do not migrate to cooler waters.
An unbiased scientist must know that there are no natural or man-made obstacles to migration under water. Fish like all of us follow their food, disappearance of certain species in some area and its appearance in other can be proven scientifically rather speculatively.
I suspect the mob who published that article are recent graduates, which just proves what we know of the modern Universities.
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Imagine if the reason for the shrinking fish was because they are being predated by MORE fish. This would actually imply that the reef(s) are doing well and that all fish are getting more active.
Unfortunately for the prey species, it means that the young, which can easily hide in the coral, are starting to represent a larger portion of the population.
Maybe that proportion change is the real reason for the size difference measured between the study periods.
Fish are just doing what fish do.
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Honesty and openness are cleansing and refreshing
Trump confronts Cyril Ramaphosa
Naturally the BBC defended Cyril and castigated Trump
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cpqe7rp388vt
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TRUMP doesn’t mess around. He is a true leader and takes no BS.
No other world “leader” would dare show the truth like that.
It’s unbelievable (or not) that the commies at the BBC called this an “ambush”. Obviously they support race-based violence.
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Can it really be true?
Apparently “renewable” energy generation is expensive, according to facts.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2025/05/20/kathryn-porter-the-true-affordability-of-net-zero/
But… but… but wind and sunshine are free.
Aren’t they?
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Even though wind and solar are “the cheapest of all electricity generation methods” as we are constantly told, the reality is that the more we get, the more expensive electricity becomes.
The Government and Left could only achieve the acceptance of these two contradictory positions by the introduction of Orwellian Doublethink. In this case it is that “wind and solar electricity is the cheapest of all”. Just like the classic doublethink “war is peace”, “freedom is slavery”, “ignorance is strength”.
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If I ran a taxi service I’d offer free rides during the day out to the town limits and beyond.
But come the evening, when you want to come home. Well it ain’t free no more….
Sounds like solar to me.
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Now that everyone has mobile phones and is online 24/7 it’s difficult to imagine how people used to keep in contact, back in the day, or organise to meet people.
E.g. you’d say you would meet at a certain place at a certain time, no dynamic updates via the phone or text messages.
And you had to wait until you got home to get phone messages, either on an answering machine or someone had written it on a message pad. (Better answering machines had remote access.)
And you remembered commonly used phone numbers.
Office messages were conveyed by voice or memos and they were meaningful and limited in number, not 50 emails on the sane trivial topic.
Community organisations would send out monthly printed newsletters, not daily “updates”.
Meetings were held in person, not via zoom.
People took notes at meetings, and understood what the meeting was about. They didn’t ask the AI bot to explain what the meeting was about or make a summary for them.
Etc..
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We were smarter, better organised, more in touch with the real world and had more responsibility than current generations. The changes have not helped the prime reason for our existence, to reproduce.
Now we can do more in a shorter time period we just waste more time, or our national productivity would be going up instead of going down.
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Albanese (PM) to give Indonesia $100 million of Aussie taxpayer money.
You don’t think the money could have been better spent on Australians or better yet, not taken from taxpayers in the first place?
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Singapore has just mandated vaccines, which Aus is kindly paying for. Despicable.
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Why? Singapore is a rich country. Unbelievable.
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Indonesia’s health system could also be strengthened if they didnt spend billions on defence
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With the Labor mandate there’s ever more new Government departments being added and “jobs for the boys”.
Now we have:
Mr Tim Watts MP
Special Envoy for Indian Ocean Affairs
https://www.dfat.gov.au/about-us/our-people/ministers
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I’ve contacted Tim and asked if he could organise an affair for me in the Maldives…nothing too over the top…still waiting for an answer.
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Sorry, but they sank a decade back due to coal power..
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WHO plandemic treaty approved.
At least America will be exempt as TRUMP withdrew from the World Homicide Organisation.
Australia, being a fanatical followers of all things globalist, will eagerly comply.
20
FWIW
“An anti-human future?
In an article titled “The Great Simmering in the West”, J. B. Shurk points out that the elites among us view the future in terms that can only be described as anti-human and anti-society (at least, as society exists today). Instead, they offer a dehumanized future where the individual counts for nothing.”
More at
https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2025/05/an-anti-human-future.html
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It’s all about ‘the climate’ innit? So how is ‘the climate’ doing today? A quick whiz around interweb met/govt sites shows:
-6 C Arctic N Pole
-14 Greenland Summit
-63 Amundsen S Pole
+47 Saudi Arabia & Pakistan
Same as it ever was, give-or-take, so what’s the problem? The lunatics are still running the asylum: THAT’S the problem.
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The North Pole seems quite pleasant today.
I would like to visit.
Do people run tours there? There are companies that do go to “the North Pole” but I’m not sure if it’s the actual geographic North Pole.
I guess I could always try to get a grant to study “climate change”. Such studies are typically done in exotic adventure holiday locations like tropical islands or the poles.
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You could ask Clarkson about driving
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Just noticed that Preview button, which I used since our ability to edit was removed, stopped working.
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“since our ability to edit was removed,”
Mine still works, 30seconds ago just above… Is it something to do with browsers or operating systems? Maybe you can only edit replies, not posts?
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FWIW
“Lee Zeldin calls Adam Schiff an “aspiring fiction writer.” ”
https://x.com/townhallcom/status/1925224351034417356
Via https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2025/05/21/schiff-loses-his-mind-n2189397
A suitable term for Bowen?
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TIME TO GET RID OF THE POWER PARASITES BECAUSE THEY ARE ENERGY THIEVES
Katherine Porter’s work on the cost of unreliable energy in Britain is a major contribution to the Schernikau and Smith program to reveal the Full Cost of the subsidised and mandated energy thieves. They show how the wind and solar industries survive as parasites feeding on the energy generated by more efficient conventional power sources.
Katherine Porter https://lnkd.in/e-AESx-E
Schernikau and Smith https://lnkd.in/e-AESx-E
Their important book is a fine piece of writing which is unusual these days. It is highly recommended and people who are short of time can get what they need to know from the beautifully illustrated 24-minute video produced to promote the revised edition.
And get moving on the exit from net zero. https://open.substack.com/pub/rafechampion/p/start-planning-to-exit-net-zero
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APOLOGIES THIS IS THE SCHERNIKAU AND SMITH LINK
https://rafechampion.substack.com/p/wind-and-solar-the-energy-thieves
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Thanks Rafe – have bookmarked and will watch Video
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FWIW
“Profits Before Patients: Kennedy’s Call-Out of WHO’s Shadow Partners”
https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2025/05/20/profits-before-patients-kennedys-call-out-of-whos-shadow-partners-n4940003
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The Australian Headline – Economic titans’ verdict on ALP unrealised gains tax: ‘bad policy’
Not only Australian Economic titans
View from Overseas
Australia’s Unrealized Gains Tax Will Be A Lesson In Economic Suicide
Australia seeks to turn theoretical wealth into actual poverty by taxing imaginary money. I hope the world is paying attention
Starting in July 2025, the Albanese government is set to debut its latest economic masterstroke: taxing imaginary money.
That’s right—if you’ve got more than $3 million sitting in your superannuation, not only will you get slapped with a 30% tax, but it doesn’t even matter if you actually made any money. Didn’t sell anything? Didn’t cash out? Never saw a cent? Tough luck—Big Brother took a peek at your account, saw some numbers went up, and decided you owe them a slice of your hypothetical success.
With these unrealized gains, today it’s “only the rich,” but tomorrow it’s anyone who happened to save diligently or saw their house value rise because some genius decided to inflate the housing market even more.
So, if you’re sitting there thinking, “Well, that won’t affect me,” just wait.
You might not be rich enough for the government’s shakedown yet, but thanks to inflation and asset bubbles, they’ll be at your door before you can say “unrealized gains.”
Then there’s the bureaucratic nightmare of it all. Valuing assets for tax purposes every single year is an administrative quagmire. How do you accurately value a private business annually?
Yet despite all these glaring problems, Australia is going through with it.
And while I genuinely feel for the Australians who are about to suffer the consequences of this insanity, there’s also a silver lining.
The rest of the world is watching.
This is about to become the textbook case study in how not to run an economy.
The Australian government is about to run a live experiment in economic self-sabotage, and the results will be undeniable.
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