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Welcome to the DroneAge, where people act like robots and share dumb ideas at light speed! Episode #601: Climate change makes you lonely and fat.
Feeling friendless, floppy and like a loser? It’s not your fault. Blame a coal plant. Blame Exxon. Blame anyone but yourself. It’s your bad luck to be born into the most bountiful, benevolent era in human history. Damn!
Lonely, unfit and hooked on air-conditioning – is this the summer of the future?
Nicole Hasham, Sydney Morning Herald, uses new unorthodox indicators of “climate change”. Wait for it… test cricket attendance? It’s a smorgasbord of nonsense:
In Perth, cricket fans avoided an historic Test fixture amid predictions of 38-degree days. Sun melted a coastal highway filled with holidaymakers in northern NSW. Victoria’s coal generators shut down. Tasmania burned. And rotting fish corpses lining the Darling River at Menindee forced anglers to seriously rethink their plans.
Are we kidding? Thirty-eight degrees is just a summer’s day in Perth. It’s something that happens 19 years out of 20. As for coal generators shutting down: we’ve spent 20 years trying to drive them out of business to stop climate change, and now, if they don’t work, that […]
John Cook tries to attack skeptics for their savage jokes about cold spells. Go for it John, we’ll believe you when you when you stop publishing stories about single hot days and tell PhD’s they shouldn’t harp on about random noise like heat waves:
Forecast: flurries of shivering climate-change deniers
When a cold spell struck the east coast recently, US President Donald Trump tweeted “Wouldn’t be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!”
The argument he is sarcastically implying and often makes—that global warming isn’t happening because it’s cold outside—possesses an obvious logical flaw. [No kidding]. It’s like arguing that the sun no longer exists when it gets dark at night. Of course, Trump didn’t invent this argument—it’s commonly brought up on denier blogs and social media threads whenever the weather turns cold.
This type of fallacious reasoning is not just common on believer blogs, it’s their bread and butter.
Trump was being sarcastic. Skeptics are making jokes — but what excuse can anyone make for paid PhD’s who are serious?
Let’s swap the hot’s and cold’s of Cooks own words (mine bolded):
The argument PhD’s seriously […]
The terror. Sit down I tell you. The ABC tells us that you should “Grab a latte while you still can”.
Coffee beans |Image wiki Hesham Raouf
In full, the true catastrophe is that if the models that are always wrong get something right, some wild coffee relatives, but not actual coffee crop plants, might go extinct. We don’t use them for coffee but you never know, we might one day use them as breeding stock. It’s that serious.
And we can’t save the seeds because apparently liquid nitrogen is too expensive. Wail. Gnash. Fawn.
Since bulk liquid nitrogen is cheaper than spring water, I rank this one as a Prime SkyWhale Class Scare, it’s all hot-air and scary for the wrong reason. You are meant to be afraid of the end of coffee, but what’s really frightening is that science journalism is dead instead.
By Belinda Smith and Nick Kilvert, ABC Australia
Most coffee species at risk of extinction due to climate change, scientists warn
The set up:
You might also want to sit down before reading this. And maybe grab another latte while you still can.
Of the 124 wild coffee species worldwide, […]
Paid by the people to give them the facts, Clive Lewis is proud that he deceived them and delivered a message that served his own interests rather than theirs. From a Jan 2018 story by Amanda Cashmore For Mailonline:
“Clive Lewis admits broadcasting biased news“:
In 2017 Lewis admitted to biased reporting whilst working for the BBC. At a Momentum rally he stated: “I was able to use bias in my reports by giving less time to one than the other. I reported on both but the angle and words and the language I used — I know the pictures I used — I was able to project my own particular political positions on things in a very subtle way.“
This is clearly in breach of the spirit, ethics and whole point of the BBC. Did he think the people of the UK needed his wise but hidden counseling because he’s been born so much smarter than everyone else.
Naturally, we know where people struggling with reality end up in the climate debate. This is Clive Lewis, Jan 1 2019:
Politicians must persuade consumers to make dramatic lifestyle changes if devastating climate change and […]
One big government agency quietly admits renewables make electricity more expensive, and another big gov media agency hides it.
The new AMEC report tells us renewables will make electricity prices go down a tiny 2% in the short run but make electricity more expensive in the long run due to forcing out cheap baseload players. What matters most to Australians — that we can expect our electricity costs to be 2% less than “obscene” for the next couple of years, or that the artificial transition we are forcing on the grid will indirectly make electricity more expensive?
Which message does the ABC headline? Say hello to Trivia!
Renewables set to drive down power prices, new AEMC analysis shows The ABC is essentially a taxpayer funded advertising machine for the renewables industry.
A flood of new renewable energy projects is likely to drive down household electricity bills, according to new analysis by government policy adviser the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC).
On a national basis, household bills are set to fall by 2.1 per cent — but price falls in the eastern states and South Australia are offset by increases in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and […]
It’s Santa’s happy hour in electricity land
Finally, No really, renewables are so cheap we can switch to them and change the global climate for free.
This is a new study by the kind of “independent” group that is totally dependent on Big Gov handouts. It compares Australian prices to other obscenely expensive countries and finds that “renewables push down prices”. Compared to what? Not compared to nations with cheap electricity. And not compared to most of the last thirty years in Australia before we added all the unreliable gear.
The tricky graphs clearly baffled Peter Hannam. If only he were a journalist, he could have asked some hard hitting questions and shown this study to be the concocted vaporous PR exercise that it was.
‘No trilemma’: Study finds increased renewables push down power prices
Peter Hannam, Sydney Morning Herald
Renewable energy drives down wholesale power prices well in excess of subsidy costs and a further expansion of wind and solar would likely push them lower still, a study of Australian and European markets shows.
If renewables actually reduced average prices, this would be a first. Around the world, the more intermittent generators you have, the […]
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Horror Story #241: Rat Plagues coming
How biblical can it get?
If you aren’t scared of a 2 degree rise (really, who is?) then be afraid, plagues of rats shall explode upon your house!
Climate Change Is Scary; ‘Rat Explosion’ Is Scarier
Faye Flam, Bloomberg Opinion
What’s so scary about climate change?
The term is not scary — at last not in a visceral, skin-crawling sense. Scientists have shown that the likely 2 degrees of global warming to come this century will be extremely dangerous, but, you know, “2 degrees” is hardly a phrase from nightmares and horror films.
How about “rat explosion”?
As the climate warms, rats in New York, Philadelphia and Boston are breeding faster — and experts warn of a population explosion.
Climate change only makes bad things live and grow stronger:
The physics of climate change doesn’t have the same fear factor as the biology. … so populations will crash or explode as anthropogenic climate change continues to make wet areas more sodden and dry areas, more parched.
What genius research is this:
… rats have a gestation period of […]
Fake News Lesson: How to turn the views of a minority into National Headlines
Yesterday’s ABC headline tells the world that Australian company directors have started to “care” about climate change. What the ABC don’t mention is that only 17% of them actually ticked the box saying they think the Government should make “climate change” the top long term priority. While more directors were concerned about climate change than any other single issue, most directors thought other things were more important.
For every director who said the government should put climate change at number one, there were more than three who didn’t want that.
The Australian Institute of Directors surveys its 43,000 members every six months on lots of questions. In this round 1,252 members took part and answered something like 40 questions. Only 39% put “climate change” in the top five “long term” issues. So 61% of respondents didn’t think climate change even ranked in the top five issues facing the nation in the long run. Are they all skeptics?
The ABC also forgot to mention that in the short term, company directors wanted the government to fix Energy Policy.
This is what non-stop agitprop looks like
First: […]
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Ponder the irony — MediaWatch is meant to be a media auditor, but it starts from the assumption that every government run collective is 100% accurate (at least on climate change). And unaudited UN committees are infallible too. Indeed newspapers have a duty to repeat what these committees say without questioning them. Host Paul Barry actually uses the word duty.
Once upon a time, the duty of investigative reporters was to to investigate, now their job is to be glorified marketing hacks advertising the latest government scheme to change the weather. What could possibly go wrong?
How about if governments set up all their institutes to find problems with CO2 and asked none of them to audit the others? What if whole government departments were tasked to slay the carbon dragon, and while exactly no groups anywhere were funded to find out if the sun controlled the climate instead? Using the MediaWatch Wand of Truth, only government scientists can criticize government scientists (and only then for five minutes until their uni trawls through their emails and sacks them). Thus and verily IPCC scientists should be obeyed.
MediaWatch marvels that the Australian Newscorp media can’t be bothered repeating the […]
One of the fieriest and most apt speeches in Washington was surely from Senator Graham. Since ABC viewers have missed this, I thought I would help out.
If the Democrats get away with this (so they can do it again) only a kevlar-coated-narcissist would want to run for public office.
Question for the #Metoo movement. When the mob rules and evidence is irrelevant, which gender will be less likely to want to play the game?
Weapons grade bullying is a good way to keep good men out of politics but it’s even better at keeping good women out. Good one gals.
Americans may wonder why other nations don’t understand them:
Exhibit A: ABC National News, IView 14:08 (sorry if people overseas can’t see this)
Today tens of thousands of Australians will feel certain that they saw the key moments of the hearing and they will know that Kavanaugh is an abuser because the ABC told them so, right in the first line. Ford was there to warn Senators, Kavanaugh was an abuser. (The ABC actually said that). Her claims were portrayed in graphic detail, and she was painted as a victim from the second line. In contrast, Kavanaugh’s words […]
It’s Projection — the ABC fantasize about Murdoch and Stokes because the ABC wants that power themselves
Turnbull was the ABC’s pick for least-worst Conservative PM. They didn’t predict nor craft his demise, 45 elected representatives did. The People foiled the ABC, but instead of admitting that conservative voters matter, the ABC staff project their own desire to pick PM’s onto Murdoch and Stokes — which feeds the self serving fantasy that Australians need to pay for a national broadcaster to oppose big nasty corporates and their fake power.
While the ABC has no conservative commentators, as in zero, some other media outlets allow both sides of politics to speak — which clearly threatens the ABC bubble. Therefore it serves the ABC entirely to delegitimize the competition and to paint them as mindless corporate sock puppets.
The whole fake news conspiracy theory is bizarre beyond analysis. Rupert Murdoch supposedly picked PM’s by demanding his national masthead paper run no editorials calling for Turnbull’s demise, and silence no commentator that defended him. Meanwhile the ABC runs editorials disguised as news every night at 7pm. One time ABC management effectively called Tony Abbott “the most destructive politician of his generation.” ACMA eventually […]
First — The Weather Channel gets caught faking the strength of Hurricane Florence (in case you haven’t seen it).
The Weather Channel went on to defend their reporter:
“It’s important to note that the two individuals in the background are walking on concrete, and Mike Seidel is trying to maintain his footing on wet grass, after reporting on-air until 1:00 a.m. ET this morning and is undoubtedly exhausted,” a spokesperson wrote.
Then see the parodies:
The Weather Channel be like. #HurricaneFlorence pic.twitter.com/Ctl2dc67yb
— JonestownCoffee (@jonestowncoffee) September 16, 2018
Beware of shopping trolleys:
This one is better pic.twitter.com/vowNm1fNmt
— Paul Zanaras (@Pz624) September 15, 2018
Anderson Cooper, star of CNN, finds the deepest ditchhe can report from (h/t WattsUp)…
UPDATE: Ryan Maue asks and his readers tell him it is a photo from Hurricane Ike ten years ago.
Sensationalist ratings-driven media. #cnn #florence #fakenews pic.twitter.com/LkrHe3iWhh — JustinCredible.TV (@JCredTV) September 16, 2018
9.8 out of 10 based on 69 ratings […]
Someone leaked an in-house Google video to Breitbart. A couple of days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election the impartial and analytical monopoly team was doing group hugs, almost in tears, and doing psychoanalysis of how Trump and the fascist extremists won. In their expert opinion voters are irrational, and motivated by xenophobic fear or conversely boredom (which is a lot like fear, except for being the opposite. The Google team clearly have a good grip on the topic.).
It’s a message of hate and ignorance. In Google-land half the US population are like extremists, have things in common with terrorists, and definitely didn’t have any legitimate concerns. Amazing how these brains had more access to search keywords and websites of Trump supporters than almost anyone on the planet, yet have not apparently read any.
Google has come out saying this was just some employees and executives expressing personal opinion. So let’s just clarify that this was only the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, two Vice Presidents and the two men who founded Google. Not the whole of Corporate Management then, and there might be one secret Trump voter in the Maths and Algorithms Department. Though they […]
If the IPCC are wrong, the BBC will be the last place to say so
Lets all bow to the IPCC — a modern God that shalt not be questioned. The Holy Sacred Climate Cow!
The IPCC is an unaudited and unaccountable foreign committee. Not only are no scientists paid to check its findings, now the publicly mandated BBC is making sure none of their journalists will check its findings either.
Carbonbrief has a copy of the BBC new internal guidance on how to report climate change.
In April, the UK regulator, Ofcom, found the BBC was guilty of not sufficiently challenging Lord Lawson, a skeptic. So in response the BBC now promises they will never sufficiently challenge the IPCC. That’s “false balance” for you.
The BBC issues a guidance to journalists
What’s the BBC’s position?
Man-made climate change exists: If the science proves it we should report it. The BBC accepts that the best science on the issue is the IPCC’s position, set out above. If only BBC baby-scientist-rulers knew what “proves” means in science. The IPCC can never be “proven” right, though it has been proven wrong, and many times. Be aware of ‘false balance’: As […]
Who needs interviews when you know all the answers?
Greg Jericho, of The Guardian, can explain why the government is in “denial” and spends 15 odd paragraphs doing psychoanalysis of himself.
Has he met a skeptic? Not likely.
This government is not even pretending to act on climate change any more
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly I have a degree of sympathy for members of the public who are climate change deniers. I have this sympathy because I was once one of them. …doing my level best to deny it was happening. Because it scared the bejeezus out of me.
… so I understand why people choose to believe those who say climate change is not the issue, that the issue is power prices and thus we need to fire up the coal furnaces.
Denial is a very easy way out of guilt that your lifestyle is leaving your children and grandchildren an awful legacy. Denial is a good way to throw away concerns that you might have to actually wear a cost – either through lifestyle changes or monetary loss.
It is a scary thing to hear talk of the impacts […]
After 30 years with no debate and one predictable, repeated lecture the audience is switching off
Scott Whitlock at Newsbusters reports that one climate-worrier journalist revealed in a tweet that climate change kills the ratings. Another tweeter had prodded Liberal MSNBC journalist Chris Hayes to cover more on climate change. “Acting like there is nothing to be done is not excusable.”
In reply Chris Hayes lamented:
“almost without exception. every single time we’ve covered it’s been a palpable ratings killer. so the incentives are not great.”
@chrislhayes 24 July 2018
Those crashing ratings would change overnight if news networks threw open the doors and pitted skeptics against believers in a real televised form of debate. The spectators would suddenly be able to pick sides — may the best person win. There would be genuine controversy. Sacred cows would be slaughtered, and for a while at least, climate change would rate well.
What stops the media doing this? Most editors are too scared of being called climate deniers if they dare allow the other side to speak. Look at the pushback when the BBC allowed Professor Bob Carter to do one interview:
The […]
While everyone saw the flying baby Trump balloon, did your local Fake News Media show you footage of the “We Love Trump” rally?
The ABC includes three videos of the anti-Trump events, but only a couple of still shots of the pro-Trump counter protestors which were described as a “small group”.
The ABC description on July 14th
Huge police numbers were on hand to manage the crowds in London, with only small flare-ups occurring when the demonstrators clashed with pro-Trump counter-protesters outside a pub on Whitehall. Wearing Make America Great Again hats, the small group chanted “USA” and also voiced their support for English far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
There’s no mention that the original Welcome Trump rally was banned from gathering at the US embassy and marching on Whitehall even though the large anti-Trump rally was permitted.
But our ABC did feature an interview with a guy wearing a MAGA hat that was there because he “happened across the March”. Obviously the ABC needs more money so it can train staff to use Youtube and teach the Arts grads how to interview leaders of protests instead of anonymous random uninvolved bystanders.
Tommy Robinson seems also to […]
New essential poll today shows 35% of respondents support cutting spending on the ABC.
The ABC once had a hallowed status, but those days are over. One in three Australians are not enthused with non-stop naked Green-Labor advertising combined with derision and scorn for the deplorable half of the population.
We pay 14 cents a day for the ABC and it’s not worth it.
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ABC ratings plummet 13% in the last year
Showing that this survey is not an abberation, the whole nation is voting with the remote control:
Last week ABC News attracted about 660,000 viewers in the mainland capital cities. This compares with about 760,000 viewers a year ago.
That’s a trend line headed for zero by 2025.
Most Australians don’t watch the prime time 7pm news service they are forced to pay for. Apparently the ABC is a subsidy package for poor inner city elites who can afford to live in Darlinghurst but not to pay for their own news service.
The ABC rescue plan is a workshop on telling stories
The ABC solution yesterday is to get better at “storytelling”. It does not include employing a second conservative or libertarian commentator (one, […]
Hands up who knew that Greenland has been pretty much the same temperature for the last hundred and forty years?
We know that there has been massive melting ice, shrinking ice sheets, a dark zone that is a huge problem, that the melting is accelerating, faster than at any time in the last 400 years. We all know “this is scary”, and due to climate change and could raise sea levels by 20 feet. And that’s just the news stories in the last two weeks.
At NoTricksZone, Kenneth Richards has found an up to date graph of Greenland temperatures buried in the supplement of a new paper by Mikkelsen et al., 2018:
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So Greenland hasn’t been showing signs of warming since man made CO2 started rapidly rising after World War II. Indeed Greenland has been not responding to CO2 for 140 years or maybe a million.
Serious researchers have known this for years. It’s not like a flat trend suddenly popped up to surprise us.
Hat tip to Bob FJ for sending graphs and links of earlier studies last year. Even far back in 2004, it was obvious Greenland was not warming like it was supposed to. That […]
Tim Flannery, 2004, The West Australian.
Flannery will be on Q&A tonight (bet you can’t wait, copy your questions and tweets below please!). Let’s check the exact wording of his original 2004 prediction that Perth would become a ghost town. It tells us something, not just about Flannery and a messiah complex (he really does talk of himself as an old testament prophet), but about journalism. Back then journalists interviewed critics too. Flannery was even called “alarmist” in 2004.
The original story had the calm headline: “Perth Will Die, says Top Scientist”. That article has gone beyond the space time continuum, but thankfully, it was preserved by the Wayback Machine.
Perth will become a ghost city within decades as rising global temperatures turn the Wheatbelt into a desert and drive species to the brink of extinction, a leading Australian scientist warns.
–Carmelo Amalfi, The West Australian
Perth in 2018, is wet, cool and productive and 30% larger:
Dams are at their equal highest level at the end of summer since 2002, and Perth has 67 billion litres more than any year of the last seven. The desert seems to be shrinking, arid regions […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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