I’m back. Apologies that the Weekend Unthreaded didn’t make it…
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Guest post by David E. Since the 1990s, political correctness has grown stronger. The penalty for contradicting the political left and their fantasies used to be just social opprobrium in certain circles and not being seen as the trendiest at certain dinner parties. But now it can get you fired. You are free to speak, but the leftists are free to be rude, yell at you, deny you service on their platforms, and bar you from the many institutions they control. Daniel Greenfield is a rising independent US journalist with a fearless eye and a clever turn of phrase (emphasis added):
Woke dystopia rising:
Living by lies:
Did the Soviets somehow win the Cold War?
Your masters are whomever you are not allowed to criticize:
The danger of course is that if the US Democrats — who are currently more politically extreme than ever before — regain power in the US, they will change the system so they will be entrenched in power for the foreseeable future. This happened in California in the 1990s. As the saying goes, what happens in California spreads to the rest of the US, then to the rest of the West. Climate skepticism is already banned from polite discourse among the ruling class. On current trends, it will soon become socially unacceptable everywhere, then illegal. Is this the last time we are going to hear anything like this from a US President? (Be sure to stay right to the end.)
Guest post by David E. Tucker Carlson is now the most popular talk show host in America. His nightly show on Fox News, which has been running since 2016, now draws around four million viewers per night, more than anything else on Fox, CNN, or MSNBC. So why are people tuning in? Jason Hill has written an insightful article, from which we’ll quote extensively (emphasis added).
Doesn’t this sound like Trump?
The polarization is near total now, led by the media. A new Gallup poll reveals the media’s increasing partisanship through the responses of its consumers:
In this political climate of fantasy versus reality, are the political establishments really going to interrupt their carbon dioxide fantasies with truths about the climate models? Win for Trump’s enemies would cast pall over democracy If Trump’s enemies succeed, especially when their critiques are often so deceptive and dishonest, and after they have trashed processes and natural justice through episodes such as the Russia collusion hoax or the assassination of Brett Kavanaugh’s character, it will leave a dark pall over the world’s pre-eminent democracy. And it will leave a mass of disaffected mainstream voters feeling that even a democratically elected President promising to “drain the swamp” can fall victim to the revenge of the political, bureaucratic, academic and media establishment — the deep state. We know he is unorthodox, polarising and crass, yet so many players and commentators never tire of pretending these observations are still worth fussing over. If Trump’s enemies succeed, especially when their critiques are often so deceptive and dishonest, and after they have trashed processes and natural justice through episodes such as the Russia collusion hoax or the assassination of Brett Kavanaugh’s character, it will leave a dark pall over the world’s pre-eminent democracy. And it will leave a mass of disaffected mainstream voters feeling that even a democratically elected President promising to “drain the swamp” can fall victim to the revenge of the political, bureaucratic, academic and media establishment — the deep state. We know he is unorthodox, polarising and crass, yet so many players and commentators never tire of pretending these observations are still worth fussing over. Ultimately, The Democrats have become The Swamp. They oppose Trump so viscerally because he threatens their money stream and pops the fantasy bubbles that make their voter appeal. The Swamp makes their living off Big Government. The Business Swamp profit from the complexity of regulations to benefit from their own personal loopholes and deals. The Monopolist Swamp use their close relationship with politicians to keep their monopoly. The Welfare Swamp just want more welfare, and The Washington Swamp depend on Big Government for their creamy rich salaries and two week long junkets to foreign holiday destinations like the COP Climate conferences. The Medical Swamps are battling now for expensive drugs against the cheap out-of-patent unprofitable treatments. Then there’s the Republican Swamp — they don’t want small government either. And now, success is partly in the hands of a virus. * * * I’ll be away from the desk for a few days. Apologies in advance for late replies to emails. David Evans will be posting while I’m away.
In news just in, Donald Trump and his wife Melania have both tested positive for Covid-19. So in the last four weeks of campaigning for the US election he needs to quarantine for two weeks, will most likely survive but faces significant odds of impairment and fatigue. How convenient for Biden-Harris? The Trumps went into quarantine and got tested today after one of the President’s closest advisers, Hope Hicks, contracted the infection. Ms Hicks, a former White House communications director who returned to the administration as a counsellor to Mr Trump earlier this year, travelled to and from this week’s presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio with him. She was also aboard the President’s helicopter, Marine One, for a trip to Joint Base Andrews yesterday. And she was aboard Air Force One for Mr Trump’s visit to Minnesota, where he held a political rally. –news.com.au With luck, he gets the asymptomatic kind of infection, (as his wife does too). We hope his doctors are fully up with things like the Florida ICAM treatment regime. She said ICAM works by reinforcing the immune system and protecting the lungs from inflammation. “We had no need for mechanical ventilation and the patients all survived the discharge regardless of age and regardless of past medical history,” Norwood-Williams said. Since April, they have seen a 96.4 percent survival rate for COVID-19 patients admitted at AdventHealth Ocala. ICAM is an acronym for the types of medications used: Immunosupport such as Vitamin C and Zinc; Corticosteroids to control inflammation; Anticoagulants to prevent blood clots; and Macrolides to help fight infection. The fatality rate for ICAM is still 3.6% — Looks like the next two debates are off. — What should happen (if only) — are written debates. It’s the best way to get to the truth and cut out the theater of “live” performances. The notion of cutting off a President while he discusses national election issues was a fantasy gift for the Trump-haters. This will also slow down people within his core team: According to US media, the list of people potentially exposed includes: Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr and his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, Eric Trump and his wife Lara, Tiffany Trump, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, adviser Stephen Miller, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Congressman Jim Jordan, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien and criminal justice reform advocate Alice Marie Johnson. According to the American Council on Science and Health, the odds of death of those infected who are over 65 is 5.6%. Trump is 73 and overweight. October 2nd, 2020 | Tags: Coronavirus, Trump (Donald), US Politics | Category: Politics |  Print This Post | | Global carbon dioxide levels hit record highs in 2020. But through incredible luck, or perhaps a Pacific La Niña event, Australia is now less likely to get massive bushfires this summer. Looks like carbon dioxide will now cause more floods and cyclones, not fires and droughts. It’s just physics, you know. La Niña set to bring cooler weather, more rain and cyclones to AustraliaLisa Cox, The Guardian The last La Niña occurred from 2010-2012 and brought widespread flooding and record rainfall. The Bom said its modelling currently suggested the latest event would be strong but would not reach the same intensity. [Andrew] Watkins said La Niña would likely bring increased rainfall in both northern and eastern Australia and increased risk of flooding. It also raises the chance of increased cyclone activity during the tropical cyclone season, with a typical season being nine to 11 cyclones. He said an active La Niña would also reduce the bushfire risk this season slightly, but would not eliminate it. Dr Joelle Griggs, a climate scientist at Australian National University, reminds us that even in La Niña years sometimes early rain produces bulk grass which, if things dry out, can still feed a good inferno (like Black Saturday in 2009 and Black Friday in 1939). But despite then hinting that “hottest ever La Niña’s” might still cause bushfires, she understands what matters: The horror bushfires of last summer have already burnt a lot of fuel which should shield them. “It’s the areas spared during our Black Summer that we need to worry about,” said Dr Griggs. With uncanny accuracy that no global GCM’s can manage, even a climate scientist knows which exact regions are at risk of turning into incendiary events. But only because it has nothing to do with CO2. Spin the wheelWhat effect will CO2 have in Australia. In blue years of the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) CO2 causes floods. In red years, droughts and fires. Adjust your press releases accordingly.  Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) Climate4U Keep reading → Jen Marohasy went hunting for bleached coral: What is the true state of the Great Barrier Reef? … In January 2020, Emmy Award winning cameraman Clint Hempsall, and IPA Senior Fellow Jennifer Marohasy decided to find out. They spent a week exploring the Ribbon Reefs 250kms to the north east of Cairns in search of coral bleaching – the process of corals turning white as a result of warmer water temperature, which climate scientists say is being caused by climate change. Some argue 60% of the coral at the Ribbon Reefs was irretrievably bleached in 2016. Somewhere among 350,000 square kilometers of coral reef, Jen Marohasy had no trouble finding some happy corals, giant cod, and cute nemo fish. The IPA and the B. Macfie Family Foundation supports and publishes the video: Colorful corals of the Great Barrier Reef Don’t believe your lying eyes. Incandescent light globes are killing the corals one by one, air conditioners cause fish to act reckless, and only more solar panels and windmills can save them. You know it makes sense.  Living coral. .. Many of the corals grow on vertical formations which are not visible on aerial mapping, which supposedly tells us how much of the reef is bleached.
 More living coral. ..  Still more living coral. ..  A Potato Cod, not acting much like a potato. … This was filmed at Ribbon’s Edge north east of Cooktown. Shot in January while the Unprecedented Apocalyptic Australian Fires were raging. Someday Jen is going to have to take me diving. October 1st, 2020 | Tags: Corals, Great Barrier Reef, Marohasy (Jennifer) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Things the ABC might not tell you: Project Veritas has an insider, they have footage of a man bragging that he has a car full of empty ballots. They have an insider explaining how the system works for mass ballot harvesting. VictoryGirlsBlog: This is just as terrible as you think it will be. Project Veritas has thrown quite a hand grenade straight into the Minneapolis area, bringing the receipts to prove ballot harvesting. It seems that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, along with other connected politicians in the Somali community, have quite an expansive ballot harvesting operation going on – so much so, that one of their operatives actually bragged about it on Snapchat. And not only are they going around collecting ballots, especially from the elderly, but they are paying for the ballots in cash. Between video evidence and insider interviews, the picture being revealed is a system of ballot harvesting and payoffs so corrupt and entrenched that it might not be salvageable.
“The only way you can win is with money”. “They have perfected this system” As soon as voting opens, that’s when ballot harvesting occurs. Great Civilizations don’t run elections like thisWelcome to Minnesota? The immigrants mostly are first generation. They are still emotionally connected to where they came from. They don’t know how elections work, … they came from a military government,… Sometimes they think it’s legal. Ihan Omar is exploiting members of her own Somali Community. It’ s an alliance between the clan and the progressive left. Ihar Oman appears to have hundreds of people involved. But remember there is absolutely no evidence of mail-in voter fraud. Rinse, and repeat after me. 😉 September 30th, 2020 | Tags: US Politics | Category: Big-Government, FakeNews, Media-matters | Print This Post | | … Coronavirus is both the rock and the hard placeThere are costs to stopping it, and costs to letting it go. There are businesses that won’t recover, and also people that won’t. There is much more to pandemic decisions than just “deaths per capita”. One more aspect of the wicked dilemma are “long haulers” or the condition called “long Covid” (which is defined as being ill for 3 months or longer). Thirty-nine UK doctors who caught Covid are still struggling 6 months later, and have written a joint letter for the British Medical Journal. These were mostly fit youngish people, and they didn’t get hospitalized. They had mild moderate cases of Covid. But many of them say that the after effects are worse than the initial infection. These include things like headaches, dizziness, the inability to walk 200 metres or more, breathlessness, strange numb patches, new allergies, difficulty regulating body temperature, ongoing diarrhea. Many are unable to work. The cause could be nerve damage, or an autoimmune disorder (or something else entirely). If the virus triggers an immune reaction against their own cells it may be difficult to undo or “grow out of”. Some nerve damage will repair. Some won’t. The CCP’s reaction to their own bioweapon says something, and we know it’s not love or concern for Chinese people. The CCP strategy stays the same — Elimination at any cost. A week ago they locked down a border city near Myanmar after finding two new cases, and ordered tests for all 200,000 people. In the last 24 hours they have told businesses to stop ordering frozen foods from high risk countries. A Goldilocks bioweapon?David Evans points out “The military have long known that it is more effective to wound an enemy combatant than to kill them, because a wounded person requires more resources to be spent on them, rescuing them and hospitalizing them, often tying up another two or three people for months. Same principle with disease. The bioweapon that most weakens another society would be a highly contagious disease that merely subtly impairs.” A contagion that had a moderate death rate, significant hospitalization rate, and sometimes a long recovery might be the “Goldilocks” ideal to cause division, dissent, confusion and damage in an adversary. The release of SARS-Cov-2 was probably an accident, but there was some kind of plan in mind when it was created. It might be handy to know what that was.  Some doctors still haven’t recovered six months later. Read it all, DailyMail, UK
The doctors still crippled by Covid-19 six months after they caught it: None of these medics were hospitalised after catching coronavirus yet they’ve all been struck by ‘long Covid’ – raising alarming questions about its lasting effects by Lucy Elkins for Daily Mail UK The UK health toll (so far) is 440,000 known cases, 42,000 deaths and 60,000 “Long Covid”. The number affected [by “Long Covd”] so far in this country has already exceeded 60,000, according to initial results from the UK Covid symptom study (being run by King’s College London, where people enter their symptoms via an app). ‘If [long Covid] affects 10 per cent of the population [as one study suggests] and we never get better — and go from being economically active to long-term inactive and unable to work — then even if you remove the human suffering element, it is something policy-makers need to take into account,’ Dr Jake Suett, 32, an anaesthetist who initiated the letter, told Good Health. GP Tanya Northridge, 40, said having Covid changed her life and said she could not walk more than 200 metres without feeling tired and dizzy. “I cannot do any upright exercise. Before this, I would be constantly on the go, and running three times a week — sometimes as far as eight miles …” Sarah Burns, 41, is a GP in Southampton. “For two months earlier this year I experienced such intense fatigue that I was lying down on the sofa all day. The only way I could manage simple tasks, such as putting on a wash, was by resting in the middle. To put this into perspective, not only was I previously managing a busy job as a GP, but I used to regularly run 10km … Grace Dolman, 40, a hepatologist (liver specialist) caught it in March…. “My concentration and memory are still poor: I put milk in the cupboard. I’ve also developed pins and needles in my feet and fingers. This has destroyed my confidence. My words don’t come as easily, so even talking to friends is hard. I’m off sick until the end of October….” Dr Jenny Judge, 48, is an NHS forensic psychiatrist who now has to carry an epipen for severe allergies. “As the weeks wore on, I developed inflamed and painful wrists, shoulders and knees, and severe swelling in my feet and hands. I could barely hold a cup of tea.” Ian Frayling, 61, is a recently retired NHS genetic scientist. ” A few weeks ago, I went shopping for new shoes when I suddenly started to shake uncontrollably. I felt completely drained of any energy. It took all my effort just to get back to the car only half a mile away.” ...”I also get nausea, irritable bowel syndrome and hypoglycemia — where I can suddenly feel my blood sugar levels plummet, leaving me weak and trembling.“ The other effect, unstated here, is that people within the medical profession will all know and discuss these sequelae. For those who haven’t caught it, this risk will add to their decisions about early retirement, working conditions, willingness to be exposed, and the risk to their loved ones. Above and beyond the mortality and morbidity is the toll on the health system. Other diseases, including influenza, leave long term sequelae and damage in a certain percent of the population. It’s the numbers that matter, and all the data is problematic. But decisions have to be made now. The genetics says “Bioweapon”
REFERENCEJackie Wise (2020) Long covid: doctors call for research and surveillance to capture disease, BMJ 2020; 370 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m3586 (Published 15 September 2020) BMJ 2020;370:m3586 Suddenly, it’s almost like British schools might be preparing students for real life. How did that happen? Imagine teaching students that tolerance means listening to people you don’t like, who are saying things you don’t want to hear? Cancel Culture delegitimizes and removes whole people from every aspect of life or public office for the merest trivial breach of some unwritten rules that are applied selectively. Like a neolithic “bone-pointing” type exile, all life experience and expertise is thus “cancelled”. Apologies are worthless, there is no learning, there are only “admissions of guilt”. There is something profoundly unChristian about it all — the complete lack of forgiveness. This new program then, is like a safe space from The Safe Spaces. For Activist-Uni’s this does the worst possible thing. It may train a generation to see through their propaganda. Next thing you know, Children might be taught that Climate Change Dogma is bullying too.Woke ‘cancel culture’ is a form of bullying and ‘no platforming’ an attack on free speech, pupils will be taughtJosh White, Daily Mail, UK
In Department for Education training manuals, teachers are instructed to tell pupils that the ‘cancel culture’ which has taken root at many universities – where individuals call for a boycott of a person or company whose views they don’t agree with, in the hope they lose their job or clients – is not part of a ‘tolerant and free society’. This may be due to the dismal failure of universities to raise …civil thinkers for civilizations. ‘In Department for Education training manuals, teachers are instructed to tell pupils that the ‘cancel culture’ which has taken root at many universities – where individuals call for a boycott of a person or company whose views they don’t agree with, in the hope they lose their job or clients – is not part of a ‘tolerant and free society’. Perhaps conservatives have finally realized that the education system is churning out snowflakes who know nothing about conservatives nor what they stand for? After 50 years of collectivist marching through the institutes, perhaps finally Conservatives realize they have to fight back. It also possible that this swing-to-sensible has a tiny bit to do with Labour’s recent shift back to the middle. Competition: It’s a great thing. Every nation needs two half-decent parties competing. Ken Stewart has been looking at the mysterious pattern of temperatures on Horn Island –– right at the top of Cape York Australia. It’s almost as far north as things get in Australia. There was no thermometer there before 1995, so the Bureau of Meteorology has rattled the nearest tea-leaves to find out how warm it was. The towns listed on the map are its nearest neighbours. “Near”, in the Australian sense, meaning loosely within 500 kilometers.  Horn Island and it’s nearest neighbours This, below, is the way 70 years of temperature dregs roll at all those sites.  … This is what the Bureau of Meteorology sees (note the scale has changed on the temp axis). That’s two degrees of warming in far north Queensland. … So the average minimum temperature now looks half a degree cooler in 1960 than what your lying eyeballs suggest. Ken goes into much more detail and deserves our thanks for bothering to try to unpack the mysterious merging of thermometer records in at the BoM department of Tasseomancy. Visit his site: Garbage In, Garbage Out- Horn Island
September 28th, 2020 | Tags: BOM, Queensland (QLD), Stewart (Ken), Survey | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Did the British Labor Party just agree to Brexit, talk of family, nation, and chuck out the anti-semites?
The new leader, Keir Starmer, has apparently “set his sights on the Red Wall seats that Labour had lost.” Keir Starmer, a true conservativeMaurice Glasman, UnHerd Brexit was the fault-line that destroyed the Left and created a one-nation Conservatism that would push Labour back to its progressive comfort zone in the big cities, sealing it off from the small towns and working class heartlands forever. The Conservatives would be in power for a generation and when Keir Starmer was elected leader, it sealed the deal. A Remainian lawyer could never heal the wounds. They [the Tories] didn’t notice when he said that the issue of Brexit had been resolved and Labour supported leaving the EU by the end of the year. The biggest issue in British politics had dissolved into a previous era and the Covid response was centre stage. They didn’t notice when Rebecca Long-Bailey was sacked and all links with the Corbyn camp were severed. They didn’t notice the hundreds of letters of suspension that went out to people who had said strange things about Jews. They didn’t notice that he was writing articles on VE day in the Telegraph, on Memorial Sunday in the Mail and whenever he liked in the Sun — an act considered treachery by Labour leaders for more than a decade. They didn’t notice that he was tapping into a form of modest Labour patriotism that once had deep roots in the Party, and still does in the country. All this seemed impossible to imagine under Jeremy Corbyn not so long ago. But will this last? And if the US Democrats lose decisively is there any chance they will quietly drop the Green Marxist cult of overreach, and reinvent themselves at the centre? Could it be that the voters do matter? h/t David E. … As a public service for Australians watching our public broadcasters, here’s a point of view worth knowing about the riots in Louisville.
Besides, in the new world without police, Carlson tells us — Seattle has discovered that maintaining the peace is best left with pimps — and we wouldn’t want to hide that. Meanwhile SBS News tonight said repeated that Trump would not accept the election results, but that this was a “successful tool” with some voters — as if he just invented the scare of mail-in ballot corruption to win. They wheeled out an expert who said that there hadn’t ever been mail-in voter fraud, or words to that effect “in history”. As if this election is just like all the other ones, and there were not so many undetectable ways to cheat with mail in ballots, the real question is “How could it not happen”? And so it has: Charlie Spiering, Breitbart, reports that the WhiteHouse has a long list: …there were nine people charged in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas with “vote harvesting” and mail ballots, a political operative in New York stealing and submitting absentee ballots, and a resident in Pennsylvania receiving seven separate ballots in the mail. The Heritage Foundation has collated a list of over 1,000 proven cases of voting fraud. There are 170 examples of fraudulent use of absentee ballots, and many resulted in criminal convictions. One anonymous operative explains how to steal votesJon Levine at the New York Post: A top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows this because he’s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades. “An election that is swayed by 500 votes, 1,000 votes — it can make a difference,” the tipster said. “It could be enough to flip states.” The whisteblower — whose identity, rap sheet and long history working as a consultant to various campaigns were confirmed by The Post — says he not only changed ballots himself over the years, but led teams of fraudsters and mentored at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania — a critical 2020 swing state. He copies the ballots, but can’t fake the envelopes, so his teams go door to door to convince people they’ll put their vote in the mail for them. Instead they steam them open, swap in the fake vote, and then spread them… The tipster is a Democrat, but wanted Sanders, not Biden. September 26th, 2020 | Tags: US Politics | Category: FakeNews, Media-matters, Politics | Print This Post | | Spring snow has fallen in Ballarat and even parts of mid north South Australia, and regional NSW. Unlike warm spells which are caused by air conditioners and SUV’s, cold spells are due to “polar air masses” that evidently got lost on the way to school or something. Someone was reported Skiing in mid north South Australia. The normal ski season here was winding down, normally closing in early October, and that’s in the Alps. In the many posts under #Snow, Australians are reported to be confused, mistaking white stuff for blossoms and other things. One Australian cried at seeing her first snow. Others just wonder what it is: “Whyte Yarcowie resident Judy Lewis said she initially could not believe what she was seeing when she noticed a white blanket over her car and front yard. “I got up to make a coffee and I looked out and I thought, ‘What’s all that white on the car?'” she said.”  Snow in Australia in places that almost never get snow. Snow falls in South Australia, hail lashes Adelaide in unusually chilly September cold snapSpring snow has blanketed parts of regional South Australia — with falls in the state’s Mid North thick enough for some to start skiing — amid an unusually cold snap at the end of September. Snow fell at altitudes as low as 200m above sea level in Victoria. Snow blankets central Victoria as Ballarat records coldest September day in more than 50 yearsVictorians have been left shivering by an Antarctic blast that swept across the state, bringing significant snowfalls and the coldest September day in more than half a century to the regional city of Ballarat. Nicole Lewer had lived in Lismore for more than a decade and had also never seen so much snow. “I thought someone was losing their blossoms in the wind, and on closer inspection it was snow,” she said. The Bureau of Meteorology said Ballarat recorded its coldest September day since 1969.
I hope this twitter vid shows up.
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$18 billion for technologies we don’t need The Coalition plan is an investment in five low emission technologies that private investors have mostly already looked at and don’t like:
Since emissions don’t change the weather in a measurable way, no one in the world “needs” low emission steel or aluminum. It doesn’t solve any problem, apart from giving guilt-free passes to Ecoworriers to help them feel better about buying a new car. We-the-people are investing in a fashion empire dedicated to a niche market, so they can brag at dinner parties. Of the five technologies, the only useful outcome is richer soil. Batteries are handy, but if we burnt coal for power we get all the storage and stability we need and at half the price. The renewables industry needs batteries. The Australian people need cheap electricity. The roadmap allows Ministers to say they are reducing carbon faster than the opposition. It’s a bland defensive chess move for a group of people who feel constantly harangued to reduce the sacred carbon. Effectively this $18 billion dollars buys government ministers some comfortable answers to hold off the hostile activist-press. That’s expensive insurance. UPDATE: To expand on this: This $18b buys a cone of protection from media hate. The voters have never voted for climate action. Surely our PM knows that by now. What no PM wants is to be targeted by the green machine like Tony Abbott was. Winning 90 seats in a landslide isn’t attractive to any pollie if they think the Green Blob will force them out of power in two years. What do we call this money? Extortion? As a fuel, hydrogen has some big shortcomingsAs far as hydrogen goes, as David Archibald said Great civilizations are built on Coal Gas and Nukes, not Hydrogen: Hydrogen has low energy density, so a big, high-pressure tank of the stuff doesn’t take you far. It has an explosive range in air of 18% to 60%. It causes embrittlement of steel. There is a plot at the moment to add hydrogen to the natural gas distribution system — which then might start leaking like a sieve. It has a colourless flame, so leaks that have caught fire can’t be seen. In the days before infrared cameras, workers at a rocket fuel factory in Texas used to detect hydrogen leaks by walking with a straw broom in front of them. When the broom caught fire they had found the leak. Chasing the Carbon Capture and Storage rainbowDespite relentless failure and ominous laws of physics, the government is hoping to use Carbon Capture and Storage to stuff a valuable fertilizer in a hole in the ground. If they succeed it will be a net loss to the nation. As I’ve said: With CCS, the hard part is deciding which obstacle is the most stupidly unachievable. One ton of solid coal generates nearly three tons of CO2 in a puffy, fluffy, expanded gas form. It doesn’t take a genius to know it won’t fit back into the same hole. And even if you get it down there, it may not stay there. The gas has to be compressed, or refrigerated (or both). Underground holes are hot. Not surprisingly, this takes a lot of energy, so that to build a coal plant with the capability to “store CO2″ we must spend 60% more dollars, and then throw away 40% of the electricity as well. We already know how this experiment turns out. The EU has tried CCS and it blew £520 million on carbon capture project that stored no carbon. The UK government blew £168m on Carbon Capture Projects that were cancelled. The US likewise has tossed millions and achieved nothing. Wind and solar are so competitive “they don’t need subsidies anymore”.There are minor wins: The roadmap holds the renewables industry to their own propaganda. It’s “mature” now and doesn’t need subsidies. So Minister Angus Taylor has redirected the ARENA green machine. This is the renewables QANGO set up by Julia Gillard with about $3 billion to help, cheerlead and market for the Renewables Industry. Now it will still waste money but not on wind and solar. It could have been axed. Missed opportunities — throwing away great electoral advantagesThe Liberal party (the conservatives in Australia) are still playing the role of a mini-Labor-Green Party. There’s still the slavish acceptance of the fantasy that human carbon dioxide emissions control the weather in a meaningful way, or that even if they had some effect, it was worth spending ten cents to achieve an unmeasurable cooling effect in one hundred years, even though the models all fail, warming will save lives, CO2 feeds plants, and China and India are doing nothing. The Liberals can’t poke fun at the Labor party for grandiose fantasies to stop storms when they are positioning themselves as just being better at the same grandiose fantasies. The new roadmap echoes the Tony Abbott strategy of finding ways to reduce carbon emissions without feeding the crocodile. Abbott put in an auction system, and let the market find the cheapest solution (at $14/ton), which Morrison keeps, but Morrison also tries to pick some winners. The plan will, no doubt, be able to reduce carbon emissions at a lower cost than Labor’s $5,310 per ton carbon tax. It will also be “more effective” than the gold-plated windmills and solar panels plan, which are spectacularly useless at cutting carbon emissions. But none of the Greens care about that anyway. Morrison will still be called a climate denier by people who use namecalling to set public policy, even though the Coalition will achieve more useless carbon reduction than the Labor-Green party. It’s a roadmap for expensive electricityIf I’m not mistaken, the government is aiming for wholesale electricity that only costs 230% more than that sold by the 53 year old Hazelwood Coal Plant in it’s last month of operation in 2017. The new “stretch goal” (whatever that means) for batteries, is apparently “consistent with an average wholesale electricity price under $70/MWh”. The average price for most of the last 20 years was $30/MWh. Now, apparently, it’s going to cost a fortune more just to get prices down to twice what we used to pay. The new normal in electricity prices is far higher The usual wholesale electricity price was around $30MWh from 1999 – 2015 | Source: AER The small upsideMalcolm Turnbull doesn’t like it. This is the closest thing to a ringing endorsement of the Technology Roadmap that I’ve seen: Malcolm Turnbull says Government’s energy plans are ‘crazy’ and ‘a fantasy’Mr Turnbull said Mr Morrison’s reluctance to commit to the 2050 target was at odds with the Paris agreement, which aims for climate neutrality. “The idea that you crash the economy by cutting your emissions is just again, that’s ideology taking the place of what should be sound environmental and economic policy,” he said. “There is a reason just about every other developed country in the world apart from [Donald] Trump’s America is taking a very different approach.” The ABC let Turnbull take a free swipe at Donald Trump and imply that Australia is somehow backwards in carbon reduction. They didn’t mention that Australians are the renewables superstars who have installed more renewables per capita than anywhere in the world, and pay the highest prices too. The things they don’t mention matter so much more than the things they do. REFERENCETechnology Investment Roadmap: First Low Emissions Technology Statement 2020, Australian Government, Department of Industry. AEMO Quarterly Report, 2019, Q4.
As I predicted, Victoria is doing better than the models estimated. Many people focus on the “daily new cases” but the “unknown source cases” is a better, more forward looking tool. In Newspoll today we find — also as I predicted from the outset of the pandemic — that health is priority one for most voters. It’s an awkward fact of democracy. As drastic as the restrictions are in Victoria, more than half the voters are happy to give up some freedom temporarily in order to save lives, hardship and unknown health effects, and the burden on healthworkers. Right-leaning small business owners and entrepreneurs are often not at all happy about giving up freedom. They’re much more comfortable taking risks, but most of the population are not. It’s a personality type thing. It’s not going to change. (What’s obscene though, is that those comfortable taking risks are bearing more of the costs while public servants like Dan Andrews are getting fat pay rises. ) Despite the strict restrictions, fully 71% of Victorians view the restrictions as “about right” or “too lenient”. One quarter say they are “too strict”. The biggest fear at the moment, of 56% of Victorians, is relaxing restrictions too soon. Though 39% are worried things are moving too slowly. Given the poor modeling, it’s easy to understand the latter point of view. It’s virtually certain now that Victoria will emerge from the restrictions faster than the tough plan of a few weeks ago. The two groups are not as far apart as you might think. Fears of “relaxing too soon” are basically fears of a third lockdown, and nobody wants that. Unknown source cases: the most important graph for forecastingOn Sept 8th, I said that the Victorian cases would come down faster than expected purely because the cases with unknown sources were already under control by then. Incredibly, the model used to predict how long it would take to bring cases down did not even consider whether the cases were “unknown” source or known local transmission. It makes all the difference in the world whether the clusters are trackable or not. Here’s an update of that graph showing that for the last two weeks Victoria has been running a negative count on “unknown” source cases as finally got a grip on this epidemic and stitched together the mysterious clusters to figure out how the virus spread.
Victoria has done a lot better than NSW in the last two weeks (on unknown sources)Victoria has 101 fewer “unknown source cases” in the last two weeks. NSW has 85 more cases. As we’d expect — given the much stricter restrictions in Victoria — the spread of mystery infections is slowing in Victoria but continuing at a constant low rate in NSW. Based on this limited net daily data (from Covidlive) we can say that since Sept 8, Victoria has reported 8 unknown source cases but identified the source of 111 cases, whereas NSW has discovered 86 people with infections that it can’t explain. These are only “net daily figures”, but the latest press release from Vic Health shows that only 3 cases are unknown among the current 657 that are active. Though sewage tests hint that there may be an unknown outbreak in Apollo Bay. Following the mystery cases down, the total daily new cases in Victoria have fallen: 39, 32, 27, 42, 22, 8, 9 and 28. This has prompted the Chief Medical Officer to admit Victoria would likely reconsider the roadmap. Queensland, meanwhile, has had three unknown-source cases in the last eight weeks and found the cause of one. Two of those were three weeks ago, so if they haven’t spread, it’s happy days for Queenslanders. So far, I count ten days in a row with no mystery cases. We shouldn’t count chickens and all, but theoretically, in two and a half weeks Queensland might reach the 28 days with community transmission. Elimination. Arguably the largest public policy failure in Australian historyThe second wave was so much worse. Look at how fast that infection spread. All that second wave came from just two hotel breaches: the Rydges on Swanson and the Stamford Plaza. All of the billions of dollars lost, the restrictions, the pain, and 740+ deaths could have been avoided with a strong border. Without those breaches NSW and Qld would have no cases now too (if only they had not let the virus in). All states of Australia would have been flying freely right now. No internal borders needed. Despite the extraordinary grand failure in Victoria, remarkably, somehow, 62% of voters are satisfied with Dan Andrews performance, which seems hard to believe. It’s risen 5% since July. While many Victorians feel the lockdown has been draconian, the majority support it.  Victoria, covid infection, graph, new daily cases, Sept 2020.
Arguably the biggest policy failure of all though could be the denial of benefits from so many other potential treatments, the lack of Vitamin D3 use, the political opposition to HCQ, Ivermectin, Bromhexine (cough syrup), and the many antiviral options. The lack of Vitamin D3 is an ongoing scandal, and a travesty causing an increase in mortality from many infectious diseases, as well as likely cancer and many other causes. It’s one of the few vitamins associated with a reduction in all cause mortality. Vaccines for the Flu have been pushed and promoted for years, but where was the campaign to make sure everyone had enough of the safe and cheap and essential nutrient? Vitamin D reduced the rate of ICU admission from 50% to 2%. Do black lives matter? 10%: The hospital burden is too much for any nationThe state of Victoria:
The hospitalization rate is around 10%, and that’s with one of the highest testing regimes in the world where test positivity was 1% a month ago, but is as low as 0.2% now. Even if we ignore mortality, the hospital burden of Covid-19 is significant, and some restrictions are inevitable and necessary just to keep hospitals functioning. The toll on healthworkers has been significant too and nurses have had to be flown in from WA, SA and Qld. Clearly if all the states of Australia were dealing with major outbreaks like this one, it breaks the hospital system. And we know in other nations, death rates climb rapidly once hospitals have to turn people away. REFERENCESJust in time for the US election. Climate Hustle 2 is almost a Who’s Who of the climate skeptic world. It’s a documentary of the power games, dirty tricks and brazen hypocrisy behind the push for a global governance through the excuse of carbon dioxide. It’s about the way children are used as pawns, trained in schools to “become a whole generation of obedient voters”. It’s Eisenhower’s warning, and Nineteen Eighty Four. It’s the Rise of the Climate Monarchy. Marc Morano and CFACT have circled the world, interviewing everyone from Richard Lindzen, to the late great Bob Carter, to Vauclav Klaus and Patrick Moore, the man Greenpeace erased. There’s Christopher Monckton, Will Happer, Roger Pielke, Tim Ball, Don Easterbrook, Senator Malcolm Roberts, Anthony Watts… too many to name, even briefly, Jo Nova. This is aimed at a wider audience than the skeptics who will be familiar with the battles of the last ten years. But even for the die-hards, there’s something good about putting faces to so many names. Worldwide, the online premiere is set to take place on September 24th at 8 p.m. (in every time zone around the world … including yours in Australia!). For those who can’t be there at 8pm, the replay of both Climate Hustle 1 & 2 broadcasts will remain viewable through September 27th. 1 hr 35 mins. Tim Ball: “Until you push back at Big Government you have no idea how nasty it can get.” There have only been a few professional documentaries that share the skeptical message. So support CFACT, Climate Depot, and the team that put it together. Skeptics need to reach a wider crowd. There must have been hundreds of hours of footage to condense.
It is an online stream but can, through google chrome cast or Apple TV or just linked up to your computer be watched on your regular television. One ticket will be enough for you and your family and friends to all watch together.
________________________ We all benefit from getting past the censors — so put on your “hats” and think about ways to use this opportunity. Suggest avenues in comments. And it would be ideal if you happen to have a few like minded friends over on Thursday night (great excuse just to see friends) and if you do, take a photo, add it on Twitter (I’ll add the right # here) and show the world that there are lot of skeptics out there, who won’t be silenced by the cowards and parasites of facebook, youtube, google, our education sector and the mainstream media.
—————————————— Buy a ticket to support the skeptics who put in all the work to make this.
 Click to get tickets. September 22nd, 2020 | Tags: CFACT, YouTube | Category: Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | |
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The good news: Lockdowns will end sooner than expected. Not soon enough for some desperate businesses, but sooner than Dan Andrew’s modelers thought.
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