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Another Tech Oligarch with a billion dollars to give to a Uni for the “climate cause”

Remember when Uni students were “repulsed” at the idea that Bjorn Lomborg, an economic but not even a science skeptic, might get $4m from a legally elected government to set up a centre that was passively or actively rejected by every university in Australia?

How dangerous was that $4 million?

John Doerr gives $1.1 billion to Stanford for new climate school; largest gift in Stanford history

In the largest gift ever to Stanford University, Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr and his wife, Ann, have agreed to donate $1.1 billion to set up a new school on the campus devoted to the study of climate change and its solutions.

These are not funds seeking to understand the climate. The people who work for him know exactly what he wants them to find. He’s a  longtime “clean tech” investor. His website is “SpeedandScale” and it’s 100%-non-stop-Decarbonium.  What happens, if theoretically, one of his researchers (or even someone else at Stanford) discovers the Sun drives climate change?

How can science flow unimpeded when it comes pre-packaged with funding for all the solutions to the “answers” the science is supposed to discover, and from a man who makes money on those solutions?

The gift, announced Wednesday, ranks as the second largest donation to any university in American history, behind $1.8 billion that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, in 2018.

The school is expected to propel Stanford, which already has considerable facilities researching energy and the environment, to the forefront of climate research among the world’s universities. It will be called the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Billionaires everywhere:

In addition to the Doerr’s gift, Stanford also received a staggering $590 million for the new climate school from other donors, many of them tech titans. Among them are billionaire Jerry Yang, the former CEO of Yahoo! and his wife, Akiko Yamazaki; David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo! and his wife, Angela Filo; the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; and Susan Orr, daughter of Hewlett Packard co-founder David Packard, and her husband, Lynn Orr, a professor of engineering emeritus at Stanford.

John Doerr is another tech bubble guy:

He left in 1980 to join Kleiner Perkins, a venture capital firm on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. Since then, he rose to become chairman, helping lead early investments into companies such as Google, Amazon, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, Netscape, DoorDash and Slack.

And where does this kind of vast money come from? Not necessarily from people who provided widgets that other people needed:

US St Louis Federal Reserve, Money Base graph 1918-2008

US St Louis Federal Reserve, Money Base graph 1918-2008

Inflation starts with money supply and creates a wave of misallocated resources.

The graph comes from the post I wrote on January 2nd: 2022: The Year of Inflation.

And they say skeptics are funded by fossil fuels. If the science is so strong why are they so incredibly afraid of any tiny funding to check it?

h/t Marc Morano

9.9 out of 10 based on 65 ratings

Thursday Open Thread

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2000 Mules: The election was “organized crime”

2000 mules is in 300 US theatres from Saturday May 7th.  It premiered last weekend to reviewers.

Instructions far below on how to watch it since it might be a while before Warner or Disney pick it up. Dinesh D’Souza has to reinvent a whole new way of distributing it.

 Tierney: They have proof

I saw Dinesh’s movie “2000 Mules” last night. It provides massive evidence and concrete verifiable proof (digital & video) that the election was rigged. An informant from Arizona also detailed how she participated in the scheme and explained how it worked.

At the conclusion of the movie, two well-respected Salem radio hosts — Larry Elder & Dennis Prager — who have both vehemently DENIED voter fraud up to this point — were totally convinced that America was robbed — and ANGERED that they had been played. The theater applauded!

They have proof that the scheme took place in large counties in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. These are all states that President Trump won in 2016 but mysteriously flipped to Biden in the middle of the night in 2020.

The mules averaged 38 visits during the 2020 election, with an average of five ballots per visit. They were paid an average of $10 per ballot – and True The Vote could track them making multiple drops across county lines. The scary thing is that honest voters actually watched the thieves stuff ballot boxes and did nothing!

The documentary has an insider informant.  2000mules.com

Trump Reveals Trailer of Explosive ‘2000 Mules’ Ballot Harvesting

Matthew Boyle, Breitbart

Keep reading  →

9.7 out of 10 based on 107 ratings

Scorching electricity price spikes in NSW and Queensland

Brisbane on May 3rd was a glorious 15 to 25C  (or 60F – 77F) and yet the price of electricity was shocking.

The scale of the graph is so distorted that all the normal price gyrations fall to nothing, and there is only the spike — a full hour of $14,000 burning for every megawatt, and the state needing 7,000 megawatts. The demand level, or load is not unusual, but it’s about $100 million in electricity.

And this is the nice time of year for electricity managers, or it used to be. With weather that’s ideal for human habitation most air-conditioners and heaters are off. But the sun is setting earlier, and solar power is shrinking just as everyone gets home from work to turn on the oven.

Some may blame the “lack of coal power”, but notice what’s happening to wind and solar power at critical time from 5:20pm to about 6:30pm.

Queensland energy sources, renewable, May 3, 2022

All the wind and solar power in Queensland on May 3, 2022 |

Though there are other factors at work too and some are a bit mysterious according to Paul McArdle. Queensland at one point had only a 7% instantaneous reserve plant margin, meaning there was almost no spare available generators.  The interconnectors between states are not sharing capacity. Something’s also gone wrong with a high voltage line: Ravine-Yass No. 2 330 kV Line has an unplanned outage. The AEMO issued a LOR1 – an actual Lack of Reserve notice.

In NSW it’s much the same thing

Something odd happens at 5:25pm and continues until 6:45pm. It’s another hundred million dollars worth of action.

What could it be?

 

NSW energy sources, renewable, May 3, 2022

All the wind and solar available in NSW.       Anero.id

 

For May 3rd the average 24 hours prices were a wild $780 per megawatt in NSW and $760 in Queensland. Ghastly. The situation wasn’t so good the day before either. On May 2nd in both Queensland and NSW the average daily prices were around $220/MW each.

Some will argue that the interconnectors were not up to the task, because the flow is very constrained between Victoria and NSW. But when we had enough coal power in each state, we didn’t need big interconnectors. And once upon a time, before we had the national grid, the states were separate and self-sufficient.

Extra interconnectors and infrastructure  are another hidden cost of renewable energy. Extra burning price spikes are too.

And if terrorists are paying attention it might occur to them to take out a transmission tower or two. The more renewables we have, the more effective a few hostile players can be.

Keep reading  →

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Tuesday Open Thread

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Is Australia a sovereign nation or just a state of Pfizerland?

Don’t mention the Australian vaccine: The TGA bans Aussie Professor from talking about his work

Australia has a mini Ministry of Truth already. It’s called the TGA.

Australians can probably still get a Pfizer vaccine in chemists and carparks across Australia, but they still need to fly to Iran to get an Australian-made vaccine. The good news is that at least this week it’s legal for Australians to finally fly to Tehran without taking Pfizer or Moderna shot first — as long as they don’t fly on an Australian airline. (Not mentioning any names, Qantas!)

The people mostly responsible for this situation are the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Association). They’re supposed to be looking after Australians health but somehow all their decisions happen to be exactly what a Pfizer CEO would want. Spooky eh?  The TGA rushed the approval for the Pfizer vaccines, but still, millions of doses later, won’t release the procurement contracts, even under FOI. Signed on our behalf, and for our own good, yes? Did they even read the documents that Pfizer AND the FDA tried to hide for 75 years?

Now meet Professor Nikolai Petrovsky from Flinders University, Australia, who had already developed protein based vaccines against the original SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012, so he was the obvious choice to develop an old fashioned protein based vaccine in Australia. (Hey, but it’s not like we want to develop our own vaccine industry, eh?).

So he went on to make a protein vaccine against SARS-2 and has got approval to use it in Iran. Last I heard (months ago) they had sold 6 million doses to Iran, apparently with great results.

With all the makings of a Great Banana Republic Australia promptly sacked Petrovsky for taking his own vaccine instead of one of the foreign ones approved by The Sacred T.G.A committee. We can’t have vaccine experts at uni picking their own vaccines can we?

Somehow the Australian government spent something like $6 billion on foreign vaccines but asked the small Australian company to pay $300,000 to get approved here. So Petrovsky ran a GoFundMe, and it was so popular it raised a million dollars.  Finally he has permission and funding to run Australian trials, but now he doesn’t have permission to talk about it. Who knew he needed that? Apparently the TGA says it will fine him $13,000 or maybe one million (convenient, eh?) if he does. (Updated: I hear it’s an $11m threat now).

If only Australians were smart enough to hear the words of Professors without “protection” by unaccountable committees?

Unfortunately, Australians can’t take the Australian vaccine in Australia, and if they fly to Iran to get it, they still can’t return to their jobs in Victoria or WA. Who voted for the TGA? This committee controls what every doctor and medical professor can say in Australia. But doctors don’t even vote for them.

For those who are interested —  Petrovsky’s “Spikogen” vax has no RNA or DNA — just protein, and there’s no Furin cleavage site, or TMP (Trans Membrane Protein) either. Those are two parts of the spike that might make it less likely to get into our cells, or to stick in the cell-membrane of our cells  and poke out. (When our cells have those viral spikes displayed they will attract the attention of wayward immune cells and thus increase the risk of myocarditis and other autoimmune reactions). As to how well it works, we hear there are very few side effects. I’ve seen no data yet. If only the Australian Government was trying to help Australian researchers?

The Ministry of Medical-Truth are the same agency that also banned all doctors in Australia from prescribing ivermectin  for Covid, because it might reduce the sales of Pfizer, I mean — because “people might not get vaccinated”.  They actually said that. They also said they banned doctors from using it because some people who weren’t doctors on social media were getting the doses wrong. Like that makes sense. And apparently we were running out of one of the most common drugs on the planet, and still are, because no one in government thought to order any more from Indiamart?

Just in case you wonder who your rulers are Australians

The links:

The TGA Advisory Committee on Vaccines

“The Committee is established under Regulation 39F of the Therapeutic Goods Regulations 1990 and the members are appointed by the Minister for Health.” The ACV was established in January 2017…

Advisory Committee on Medicines Scheduling (ACMS)   The committee that banned ivermectin.

But make no mistake, the man responsible for the TGA (at least for a few more weeks) is Greg Hunt, Minister of Health. Once upon a time he was Director of Strategy at the World Economic Forum (2000–2001). Curious.

The TGA is a disgrace. It’s time to shut it down.

If it were completely captured by Big Pharma, which decisions would it have made differently?

Being slow to approve competing drugs might be exactly what it was set up to do?

Big-Pharma logo

 

9.9 out of 10 based on 115 ratings

Presentations from Ian Plimer and Jo Nova — “Net Zero and the The Great Regret”

I’m delighted to announce that Friends of Science in Calgary Canada have organized speeches and online panel sessions from Ian Plimer tomorrow today Monday evening in Canada/USA and Tuesday 3rd morning in Australia, and myself the following week Monday May 9th in Canada, and Tuesday May 10th in Australia.
Friends of Science, Event, May 2022, Ian Plimer, Jo Nova.
9.8 out of 10 based on 45 ratings

Would you let your children catch this bus?

An electric bus in Paris self immolated last Friday.

There were no injuries, apart from the bus itself, presumably because there were no passengers.

Note how little time all the passengers on a packed bus would have had to get out.

Just four weeks ago another Bolloré brand electric bus caught fire in Paris. A passer-by saw smoke and told the driver, and everyone on board got safely off before the situation got out of control.  In response to this second explosion all 149 similar Bolloré brand Bluebuses have been withdrawn from circulation. The RAPT points out that “it has been operating electric buses since 2016 without any major incident”. But I think everyone can see what might have happened.

Buses are killing other busses though:

In late September 2021 a large fire event in Stuttgarter Straßenbahnen (SBB)’s depot, in Gaisberg, destroyed 25 buses. A first assessment by the police, reported on many German media, said that the fire could have been caused by an electric bus during charging procedure.

From Notalotofpeopleknowthat

h/t b.nice

10 out of 10 based on 55 ratings

Great moment in Academic rigor: The Conversion bans skeptics, and “surprise” finds their readers want climate action

The Conversation accidentally provides a great case study in confirmation bias

It’s how the fake consensus in science was created in the first place. Just sack the skeptics, poll the survivors, and pretend you’ve “discovered” something scientific!

Academic Rigor at The Conversation.

The Conversion gets excited in 2022

A staggering 10,000 people took part in our #SetTheAgenda poll, and voters’ number one issue was climate change.

“Climate change was overwhelmingly the number-one issue on our readers’ agenda. In fact, more than 60% of you picked it…”

We wonder what they will do with the other 40%?

People were asked to pick three topics from a set list, so the 60% is inflated too.

Flashback to 2019:

“The Conversation” bans all skeptical scientists from commenting

What kind of conversation only has one side? Paid propaganda.

by Jo Nova

The Conversation is a site established** by your taxpayer dollars, in countries where 50 – 60% of the entire population don’t agree with the IPCC’s dominant mantra. Yet no matter how qualified you are, no matter how good your argument, your evidence and your data, you, we, half the population, is now banned. The editor Misha Ketchell has officially  blocked unbelievers, and thus effectively admitted that they can’t reply to skeptics, and that skeptics are posing too many questions they can’t answer. They’ve been deleting skeptical comments for years, so it’s good that they finally have the honesty to admit it.

The irony of a site called “The Conversation” which won’t allow a conversation is perfect Owellian Newspeak. Let’s just call it The Conversion from now on (thanks Travis) — the mission is to help converts keep the faith. Yesterday they published hatemail from Tim Flannery calling scientists who disagreed, deniers who are “predatory threats” to his own children. Today they’re banning half the population.

The comments at the Conversation are everything you’d expect:

Wit and wisdom at the Conversation.

h/t Ben Beatty

*Typos may be deliberate.

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Day One of the Ministry

Good: some in the US are doing something

Lauren Boebert leads effort to defund Biden Administration’s ‘disinformation’ board

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., has authored legislation to shut down a new Department of Homeland Security board designed to police misinformation. Boebert’s legislation would defund the “Disinformation Governance Board” and ensure the federal government doesn’t have role in defining what truth is for the American people.

“‘It is our duty to shut down this department immediately,’ Boebert tells Fox News Digital.



We'll let you know the next thing to be afraid of as soon as we can find the right Disney song.

 

In other news, which may or may not be disinformation, Brett Sutton — former Chief Health Body of Victoria just said something very odd. He was explaining why people need an influenza jab this winter in Australia:

In fact for people who are vaccinated against  Covid it [influenza] might be a much more significant illness… with the high fevers, the terrible headaches, …can’t get off the couch. People genuinely feel like they have been hit by a truck. 

The full 5 minute interview is here, for context. Did he mean to say that?

9.3 out of 10 based on 66 ratings

Australian wholesale electricity prices have doubled in the last year (and it’s because we don’t have enough coal power)

Luckily for Energy Oligarchs, Australian electricity prices have bounced right back to pre-pandemic insanity. Wholesale rates are romping around $170 dollars a megawatt hour in April across the whole national grid…

The media mouthpieces are blaming it on outages of coal turbines — even though wind power fails every week, and solar fails every day. If unreliable generators cause high prices, then Wind is King Fickle. They’re also blaming high coal prices, but coal itself, is a small part of the cost of a two billion dollar plant. Naturally, neither political team has a clue how to fix this. But it’s all so banal — the prices are set at auction, and some fuels are cheap. Add more of the cheap type, and we’d get cheaper electricity.

Right now, if there were more black coal plants setting the price more of the time, electricity would be half the cost. If enough brown coal plants like Hazelwood were still running, the prices would be a fifth. It’s all there in the data that ABC journalists never find. Consider the winning bids by fuel type in Australia for the last quarter of 2021. For Brown Coal, the average winning bid was $11 a megawatt. Eleven!  When the Australian grid had a bit more coal, and a lot less unreliable renewables, the average cost for decades was $30 per megawatt.

The reason a few broken coal turbines seem to wreck havoc on the Australian market is because we need them all to keep prices down, and don’t have any to spare anymore. Imagine how much fun it will be when we shut the rest of Liddell down?

The real cause of hideous prices are the geniuses in government who thought they would stop some storms if they subsidized the unreliable generators and drove the cheap ones off the grid.

The ABC as usual, works as advertisers for the Renewable-Industrial-Complex and the side of politics that pays the ABC the most.

ABC Blames Coal for high prices of electricity.

ABC Blames Coal for high prices of electricity.  ABC

 

Nobody mention brown coal:

Behold the graph below from the last quarterly report of the AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator). The cheapest prices were all set by brown coal, and that was at a time when coal prices were at record highs of $200 dollars a ton. But even the black coal prices then are half the price of gas, and half the price of the current market. It follows then that coal power is not winning enough bid stacks at the moment, and if we had more coal we’d have cheaper electricity.

They could have headlined this graph: “Brown Coal still impossible to beat”.

Brown coal setting lowest prices on Australian NEM Market. Electricity Grids.

Brown coal sets the lowest prices on the Australian NEM Market.  | AEMO Q4 Report 2021 

 

For  what it’s worth, global coal prices in the last quarter of 2021 were not as high as now ($330) but still a record at the time — and a meaty $150-$250 per ton — all of it very high compared to the long term average of $50 – $100 a ton.  During these highs our coal plants were still out-bidding and generating electricity cheaper than all the other sources. Though they likely have forward contracts so they’re not prey to these spikes. But if push came to shove,  Australia has 300 years of coal to dig up. It’s not like we couldn’t mine a bit more…

 

Cheap electricity isn’t a radical idea.  It’s what we did for 30 years.

h/t to Dave and George, Wazz, and Old Ozzie.

REFERENCE

AEMO Quarterly Energy Dynamics Q4, 2021 

9.8 out of 10 based on 64 ratings

Elon buys Twitter and suddenly there is a Ministry of Truth

It’s like we’re living in a satirical movie — Idiocracy comes to mind, but these people have real names. The new Chief of Thought Police in the US is Nina Jankowicz, who would fit right in singing on The Hunger Games. She thinks the Right deals in highly emotional rhetoric, but she’s the one who said women can’t use the Internet because it’s just too upsetting for them. She claims that anyone who uses the free-speech-versus-censorship line is speaking a false dichotomy.

Meanwhile Homeland Security Secretary, the man in charge of the government’s guns, Alejandro Mayorka, talked of identifying people who could be descending into violence… due to disinformation.

What’s disinformation? Whatever the Democrats say it is.

The good news is that if they weren’t losing every single public debate they wouldn’t need to set up a “Disinformation Governance Board”.

It’s one of those moments in history where everyone needs to tune in: 

Or read it (at the link)

Snippets from the Transcript

When Elon Musk first announced that he was buying Twitter, it was pretty obvious the Democratic Party would soon become unhinged, not just angry or annoyed in the way you’re very used to, but instead legitimately terrified and hysterical.

So today, to herald the coming of the new Soviet America, the administration announced its own Ministry of Truth. This will be called the Disinformation Governance Board. Laugh if you want, but just to show you, they’re not kidding around here. This board is not part of the State Department or any other agency focused on foreign threats from abroad. No, the Disinformation Governance Board is part of the Department of Homeland Security. DHS is a law enforcement agency designed to police the United States and that, by the way, has a famously large stockpile of ammunition. So, it’s not a joke at all. Here’s DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Oh, so one of America’s top law enforcement officers just announces to the Congress that actually we’re going to be policing what you say and everyone in the room kind of nods.

MAYORKAS: We have so many different efforts underway to equip local communities, to identify individuals who very well could be descending into violence by reason of ideologies, of hate, false narratives, or other disinformation and misinformation propagated on social media and other platforms.  

Read it all, watch it all, spread the world while we still can.

Tucker Carlson Tonight   |   Fox Transcripts

h/t to Don B, Hanrahan, Honk R Smith, another ian.

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Weekend Unthreaded

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Patrick Byrne: Major risks of Dominion Voting machines hidden before US Election

Dominion Voting Machine, electronic. US Election 2020.

Dominion Voting Machine

What would you do if you discovered three weeks before your national elections that the voting machines your nation was about to use were easily hackable by local or foreign state actors? The Dominion electronic machines were going to be used in 16 states, and it was a “matter of national security”.

Judge Amy Totenberg decided it was all far too hairy, and too late to do anything, so she sealed the entire 25,000 word report by Dr Alex Halderman. But strangely in September the following year the author was still unable to send these “national security” documents to DHS-CISA. They were still legally sealed, and he was unable to give that information to the government.

Dr Patrick Byrne, the Stanford graduate of  Philosophy, and also Asian studies, polymath, and self made Overstock billionaire wrote a story last October that in a normal world would have printed its own front page headlines, along the lines of “Scandalous report on Risks of Dominion Voting Machine Suppressed before 2020 election”. Naturally, no one has heard about it. Note that the report and study was done before the elections and contains no evidence that the 2020 elections were hacked, or stolen — it just shows how that might have happened, but even that makes it “fodder for conspiracies” and thus, not apparently something a mature democracy should allow people to read.

What’s worse than going to polls knowing the machines might be hacked? How about living under a government that might have been put there by foreign actors and is hiding that the machines made in China are easy to cheat on…

Yesterday Patrick Byrne posted Alex Haldermans Court Declaration.  However the full 25,000 word report remains sealed. Apparently 70% of American votes are recorded on paper and 33 states have a paper trail for every vote. But 5 states, including Georgia, use entirely paperless machines for live voting, with no way to check…

There's a lot of Dominion Voting Machines out there.

There’s a lot of Dominion Voting Machines out there.

Patrick Byrne: Curling v. Raffensperger and the Halderman MacGuffin

Dr. Alex Halderman is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Director of the Center for Computer Security and Society at the University of Michigan. He is, in short, a Professor of Dolphin-Speech, with focus on hacking. Halderman is no fan of Donald Trump, and from his public statements I would surmise that his politics are normal academic Lefty, but intellectually honest normal academic Lefty.

At a recent hearing, Totenberg sealed the report, citing a strong reluctance to draw any public scrutiny to the sensitive details in the case. Totenberg would not even allow an election integrity group to openly advocate for disclosure of the report, according to a transcript of a July 26 court hearing obtained by The Daily Beast. Instead, the judge asked that any such argument be filed in secret under seal. “There are so many other ways to educate the public besides trying to use this case,” Totenberg warned on the call. “I’m at the end of my rope about that.”

Totenberg decided to limit circulation of the report, opting to keep it to “attorneys’ eyes only”—and away from engineers at Dominion itself— out of a concern that exposing it to company employees would make it “subject to disclosure in other litigation.” “I’m concerned enough about the information contained in it… I have seen how this can blow up,” Totenberg said, according to the transcript.

Sam Jackson, an assistant professor who teaches about online extremism at the University at Albany, told The Daily Beast that the mere existence of this story could fuel conspiracy theories.

Halderman’s report shows that hacking these machines is easy, so “Georgia voters face an extreme risk that [ballot marking device]-based attacks could manipulate their individual votes and alter election outcomes.” And Georgia will not catch it if it happens. The same is true of 16 other states using these systems. That is highly concerning. Unless a Republican says the same thing, in which case it is a conspiracy theory. So when the judge suppresses the best information our country has about an issue of national self-determination, it is not actually suppression, it is “stopping a conspiracy theory”. Because a Republican said it. And the real problem with letting citizens know that votes can be manipulated and election outcomes altered… is that conservatives might use that knowledge to “undermine the validity of elections in the minds of conservatives” (though why an election in which votes are manipulated and outcomes altered has “validity” is considered something so obvious the Daily Beast need not address it).

Is this starting to seem strange to anyone else?

There’s a lot more at the link.

In January 2022, the legal battle continued. As the hyperpartisan “Votebeat” site describes it, the report that’s sealed is no big deal. Anyone with unfettered access to the machines could find flaws, and that doesn’t mean anyone else did, or they were used. It doesn’t even mean that other states who are using or thinking of buying Dominion machines should see the report either. And it doesn’t mean the Judge should ban the use of the machines, and encourage states to use paper instead.

All you “election deniers” just need to crawl back in your holes:

Why the debate over a computer scientist’s Dominion report is so heated

Votebeat

Unlike Trump’s allies, we should resist falling into the logical trap of assuming that potential vulnerabilities in the machines mean they have already been exploited. We should also be clear-eyed about the link between this lawsuit and the raging fire of the Big Lie. David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, which helped Georgia research new voting systems, says it is “simply a fact that then-President Trump used these failed claims to justify his failed coup” and his unsigned executive order.

“Whatever their intentions, it’s undeniable that those who have brought recent claims in courts attempting to decertify particular voting machines they didn’t like — all of which have failed — have found their claims and testimony used by election deniers who seek to undermine voter confidence and the legitimacy of the 2020 election and future elections,” Becker said.

Does anyone else wonder if politicians elected with hacked electronic machines may have a vested interest in keeping them hackable “for next time”? 

Since direct-recording electronic machines became popular as a response to the disputed 2000 presidential election, there have been folks advocating for paper instead. In 2003, Rep. Rush Holt (D-New Jersey) introduced a bill that would have required a paper trail in all federal elections. It went nowhere, and he introduced it again in 2007, when it, again, went nowhere. It received substantial opposition from others in Congress as well as state election officials…

State election officials hoping for golden handshakes or sweet future career offers probably don’t want security holes that they are responsible for, being discussed in public either.

And when will Twitter let Patrick Byrne get his account back?

h/t To Scott of the Pacific, David E

9.6 out of 10 based on 87 ratings

Thursday Open Thread

8.8 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

China boosts coal again: set for record in 2022: Official says energy security trumps carbon neutrality

A week ago our newspapers were full of dire warnings that the Australian coal mining industry was going to be left in the lurch by declining orders from China. “The End of Australia’s coal export boom is Imminent” said the AFR — parroting a report by a group that includes Alex Turnbull, someone known to profit from renewables.

What none of the headlines mentioned was that China is set to hit a new all time record of coal use this year.

China  now wants to boost coal production by 300m tons —six times* as much coal as Australia uses each year

China already burns 32  82 times as much coal each year as Australia does. Soon that will be 34 88 times as much. But who’s counting?

China promotes coal in setback for efforts to cut emissions

By Joe McMoncald, AP Business Writer, 25th April 2022

Official plans call for boosting coal production capacity by 300 million tons this year, according to news reports. That is equal to 7% of last year’s output of 4.1 billion tons, which was an increase of 5.7% over 2020.

Chinese officials are blunt about why they need more coal:

Coal is important for “energy security,” Cabinet officials said at an April 20 meeting that approved plans to expand production capacity, according to Caixin, a business news magazine.

“This mentality of ensuring energy security has become dominant, trumping carbon neutrality,” said Li Shuo, a senior global policy adviser for Greenpeace. “We are moving into a relatively unfavorable time period for climate action in China.”

Clearly these new levels of 4.4 billion* tons are going to set a record high for coal production, with or without Australian imports: 

Chinese coal production,

Source: CEICdata

The ABC worked to mislead Australians during an election campaign, right in the headline. It’s if the Australian coal industry has no future and “needs to transition” at a time when the largest user of coal in the world is set to use even more coal.

A new report warns Australian thermal coal exports to China could fall by 20 per cent by 2025 as China invests in domestic mines and a major coking coal mine in Mongolia.

The report also predicts coking coal exports to China could fall by more than 20 per cent.

The modelling by ANU energy economists Jorrit Gosens and Frank Jotzo suggests that if China commits to its current climate policy, coking and thermal coal imports will drop by a quarter within three years, from 210 megatonnes (Mt) in 2019 to 155Mt by 2025.

Like all election advertising ABC fake news stories should be legally required to name the Green or Labor party official that approved them.

The real stories and the trends that matter to Australians lie unnoticed:

IEA: Coal hit a new record high in 2021

December 2021: After falling in 2019 and 2020, global power generation from coal is expected to jump by 9% in 2021 to an all-time high of 10,350 terawatt-hours, according to the IEA’s Coal 2021 report, which was released today.

Coal production is set to rise even higher  in 2022 predicts the IEA

 However, global coal trends will be shaped largely by China and India, who account for two-thirds of global coal consumption, despite their efforts to increase renewables and other low-carbon energy sources.

Australia exports about 400m tons of coal a year and only consumes about 50m tons itself. We’re the first or second largest exporter of coal in the world, but we’re only digging up about a tenth as much coal as China does.

We have a 300 year supply of coal, even at this rate of production, so there’s no reason to transition out of it.

_________________
* ERRATA: “Million” was obviously meant to be billion. Apologies for the typo. Likewise 32 times larger was really 82, and “twice as much coal” is really six times as much as used in Australia. Originally based on Australian coal consumption published in  a different unit. Who knew coal was measured in anything other than megatons.?

10 out of 10 based on 58 ratings

Denmark suspends Covid vaccination campaign

Coronavirus-vaccine. Photo

What a contrast. Victoria Australia and the Northern Territory are sacking thousands of teachers for not getting their third injection. And in Western Australia, from tomorrow, the unvaccinated will be allowed to dance in packed nightclubs, but they still can’t go to work and earn money to support their families, for “health reasons” (the health of Pfizer?).

Meanwhile, Denmark is going to pause vaccinations entirely:

Denmark has said it is suspending its widespread Covid-19 vaccination campaign. All remaining Covid restrictions were lifted in the country in February. Noting that the epidemic was under control and that vaccination levels were high, the Danish Health Authority said the country was in a “good position”. “Therefore we are winding down the mass vaccination programme against Covid-19,” said Bolette Soborg, director of the authority’s department of infectious diseases.

Around 81% of Denmark’s 5.8 million inhabitants have received two doses of the vaccine and 61.6% have also received a booster. Denmark noted a drop in the number of new infections and stable hospitalisation rates.

They say they may bring it back some vaccinations in autumn.

Keep reading  →

9.7 out of 10 based on 38 ratings

Rafe Champion guest post. Carbon taxes and RE fails as usual in SA.

Alan Moran published an account of the carbon taxes that both the Coalition and the ALP support. In The Spectator he spelled out the cost of two forms of carbon taxation that we have at present and on top of that the ALP is determined to impose a great deal more.

Read the story here Stoking the fires of energy policy

The existing taxes arise from the RE mandates that increase the amount of wind and solar power in the mix and associated costs that arise from the additional transmission infrastructure required to service dispersed sources of power. Secondly there are taxes to support grants and soft loans dispensed by agencies like the Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

The ALP spelled out their vision for increased power costs in a document called Powering Australia which represents a triumph of aspiration over reality. To quote, it will close the yawning gap between our current Federal Government and our business community, agricultural sector and state governments when it comes to investing in the renewables that will power our future.

Our plan will create 604,000 jobs, with 5 out of 6 new jobs to be created in the regions.

It will spur $76 billion of investment.

It will cut power bills for families and businesses by $275 a year for homes by 2025, compared to today.

Moran pointed out that the $78 billion to “rewire Autralia” is nearly four times the asset value of the existing NEM system in SE Australia and the cost of that “investment” will be a charge on taxpayers.

As to the reality of plans to increase the RE capacity and replace the poor old clapped out coal burners, have a look at the situation in South Australia just before sunrise this morning.

While the wind across the NEM was running at 20% of capacity (2/3 of the average) and delivering 10% of demand, in the wind leading state there was a wind drought (3% of capacity), with 60% of demand provided from Victoria while 80% of local generation was gas and (unusually) they were burning oil as well!

This picture will change through the day. And the NemWatch widget. Encourage people to look at the widget before after sunset and before dawn to get a vivid sense of the lunacy of turning to wind and solar power.

Wind was low in Victoria as well, running at 15% of capacity (half the average) while the much maligned coal burners kept the lights on, running at 75% of capacity (they can manage 100% when necessary.)

This is the The Spectator piece. Stoking the fires of energy policy

9.7 out of 10 based on 43 ratings

Apoplexy!: MSNBC host warns that Musk could use Twitter to silence candidates and influence elections.

The video will become legendary. An MSMBC host creates great satire accidentally.

So Ari Melber (the host) knew what the Twitter team were doing for years, but he’s only concerned now?

Half of twitter is alive today with people returning to it, while the other half are apoplectic because a billionaire just bought a media outlet.

Cabot Phillips mocks the Influencer meltdowns:

Elon Musk Is Evil! She says, in a video posted to an app controlled by the CCP, on a phone made by slave labor, repeating propaganda from a newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos.

But the EU and UK have both already warned Elon Musk that Twitter must comply with The Digital Services Act:

“Whether on online harassment, the sale of counterfeit products… child pornography, or calls for acts of terrorism… Twitter will have to adapt to our European regulations which do not exist in the United States,” EU commissioner Thierry Breton told AFP.

Interestingly one of the big fans of Elon Musk is Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter:
@jack

The idea and service is all that matters to me, and I will do whatever it takes to protect both. Twitter as a company has always been my sole issue and my biggest regret. It has been owned by Wall Street and the ad model. Taking it back from Wall Street is the correct first step.

In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.

Jack Dorsey will get paid a cool billion from the deal, but his mention of “Wall Street” suggests he himself was under the thumb of the Monster asset shareholders.

Hillel Neuer reminds us of the cultural task ahead for the new management:

He tweets:
I fear Elon Musk could undermine the ideological diversity, equity and inclusion at Twitter which currently maintains a careful balance of 98.7% for one side.

 Twitter, Paypal, corporate employee, voting, donations, Vox, graph..publican. Democrat.....

No wonder Twitter management has “locked down” the platform to stop employees making unapproved changes while the company is handed over.
It’s even more politically purist than Facebook, Google and Apple.
9.7 out of 10 based on 52 ratings

Tuesday Open Thread

9.2 out of 10 based on 11 ratings