Funday

8.6 out of 10 based on 18 ratings

The President of Guyana gives BBC host a lecture on climate change

By Jo Nova

There are so many holes in the Holy Carbonista Bible it’s easy to find one to surprise a BBC interviewer with.

Now that Guyana has discovered the joys of major oil deposits, the President came prepared. But because the BBC is so robotically predictable, Irfaan Ali knew exactly what they would ask, but host Stephen Sackur, seemingly had no idea what was coming. If only the BBC had interviewed a few skeptics in the last thirty years…

 


“Let me stop you right there,” he said. “Did you know that Guyana has a forest that is the size of England and Scotland combined, a forest that stores 19.5 gigatons of carbon, a forest that we have kept alive?”

“I’m going to lecture you on climate change. Because we have kept this forest alive that you enjoy that the world enjoys, that you don’t pay us for, that you don’t value.

“Guess what? We have the lowest deforestation rate in the world. And guess what? Even with the greatest exploration of oil and gas we will still be net zero.”

— The Telegraph

 

9.9 out of 10 based on 120 ratings

Easter Sunday

Celebrate Easter with Joy

 

9.1 out of 10 based on 31 ratings

Saturday

9 out of 10 based on 16 ratings

Shh! Nobody mention why China launched that trade war on Australia…

China, Lion statue

By Jo Nova

That which must not be spoken

Every news outlet today is saying how good it is that “relations” with China have thawed, like it was just a bad patch of weather, and now the clouds have cleared they’ve allowed us to sell them wine again. But there is a kind of collective amnesia about why relations froze in the first place.

Just to recap, through incompetence or “otherwise” naughty-citizen China leaked a likely lab experiment, lied about it, and destroyed the evidence. They stopped it spreading at home but sent it on planes to infect the rest of the world. Then when Scott Morrison, Australian Prime Minister, dared ask for an investigation in April 2020, within a week China threatened boycotts, and followed up with severe anti-dumping duties on Australian barley. After which the CCP discovered “inconsistencies in labelling” on Australian beef imports, and added bans or tariffs on Australian wine, wheat, wool, sugar, copper, lobsters, timber and grapes. Then they told their importers not to bring in Australian coal, cotton or LNG either. The only industry they didn’t attack was iron ore, probably because they couldn’t get it anywhere else. In toto, the punishment destroyed about $20 billion dollars in trade, and everyone, even CNN, knew this was political retribution and a message to the world.

As Jeffrey Wilson, Foreign Policy, described it in November 2021

“… its massive onslaught against Australia was like nothing before. Whereas China usually sanctions minor products as a warning shot—Norwegian salmonTaiwanese pineapples—Australia was the first country to be subjected to an economywide assault.”

But perhaps the communist party had nothing to hide?

Not to put a fine point on it, but on January 14th, 2020, China told the world they had “found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission “. A Chinese CDC expert said “If no new patients appear in the next week, it might be over.” They didn’t mention that things were already so bad in Wuhan in December 2019, that even doctors one thousand kilometers away in Taiwan suspected it was spreading human to human. Taiwan demanded answers from the WHO on December 31. The next day, the CCP destroyed all the virus samples, information about them, and related papers.  But perhaps it was just an innocent bat-pangolin thing, yeah?

So after four years of pain in order to stand bravely against the bully, what concessions, exactly, did our current leadership win? There’s no investigation, no answers, no apology, no nothing and no reason to think it won’t happen again.

In fact to smooth the wheels, Australia dropped the WTO cases against China for their bad behaviour with barley and wine. But the negotiation geniuses didn’t insist that China drop its WTO case against us (which was instigated two days after the Australian cases). And so it comes to pass that this week China won the WTO steel case against us.

  *   *   *

Lest we forget:

Ten years ago China said it was worried about race based genetic bioweapons — Who, exactly, had a biotech war on their minds? In 2015 Chinese military scientists ominously predicted the Third World War would be fought with biological weapons.  Meanwhile the Chinese military were helping out with the Wuhan viral research projects, and if one virus wasn’t enough, they still have another 1,640 other viruses to play with. The multicultural melting pot of stupid ideas is glowing like lava on all sides of the Pacific. The US Defence Department also sent money to the Wuhan lab to counter “Weapons of Mass Destruction” which apparently helped to create one. And the CSIRO, and Australian universities had worked with the Wuhan Virology Lab too (which they forgot to mention for 18 months?)

Meanwhile in related news in the last three years, the Biden family gained $31m in deals with high level CCP operatives. There’s a shadow war in space “every day”. And Net Zero remains a security threat, yet the West claps along.

Lions Photo by Serg Balak on Unsplash

 

 

9.8 out of 10 based on 124 ratings

Good Friday

Best wishes to everyone…

9.9 out of 10 based on 16 ratings

The Minister wants to limit your choices so you can get the car you want!

By Jo Nova

Our news is filled with fatuous lies every single day.

Mr Bowen, Minister for Changing the Weather, wants to force efficiency standards on Australian cars so we “have more choices”, he says. Mysteriously, it seems there are companies overseas making cheap, clean, wonderful cars who selfishly refuse to sell them to us. Crazy eh?

Would that be because:

  1. Car salesmen want to save the world?
  2. There’s no market for efficient cars here. Australians prefer cars that burn up and waste fuel!
  3. It costs more to sell to nations with no efficiency standards since they have to install the Fuel Worse-ifier?

Or could it be they know Australians won’t buy their damn cars unless the government bans the cheaper ones first?

 

We can't sell you the car you want until the fuel efficiency standard has wiped out the cheap ones.

 

Mr Bowen, now says they never had a target. Of course! And people are mobbing him in the street wanting to buy expensive European EV’s:

Chris Bowen ditches doomed EV sales target

By Jess Malcolm, The Australian

Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen has walked away from Labor’s target to have 89 per cent of new car sales electric by 2030, casting doubt on the government’s green agenda.

“We don’t have a particular EV target,” Mr Bowen said on Wednesday morning.”

“We have a determination to give Australians more choices. So many Australians come up to me in the street and say, I’d like my next car to be an EV but I’m not really seeing the range of choices that are affordable.

“And they’re right because there are many more affordable EVs that are available in other countries that aren’t available here because we don’t have efficiency standards.”

It’s like he believes political rules create miles-per-gallon efficiency, not engineering.

Or perhaps he’s not serving the Australian people at all, but some entity somewhere has promised him a great job one day if he can help create a market for cars in Australia that hardly anyone would willingly buy if they weren’t forced to?

10 out of 10 based on 123 ratings

Thursday

9.6 out of 10 based on 11 ratings

2,500 football fields of new solar panels destroyed by hail in Texas this week

By Jo Nova

Imagine the outcry if a coal plant was obliterated by hail?

A few days ago, a 3,300 acre solar power plant in Texas suffered major hail damage. This was a plant so new it was still under construction. The Fighting Jays solar project started generating in 2022, but was not expected to be fully complete until the end of 2024. In theory it was supposed to last for 35 years.

It is so large they boasted that it covers 2,499 football fields (like that is a good thing). Despite the vast footprint, it was rated at only 350 MW. At noon at peak production it could generate about half of what one forty year old coal fired turbine makes all day every day, and every night too.

Collecting low density energy is more expensive than the wish-fairies might think.

At an average construction price of $1 million per megawatt the project likely cost about $350 million dollars. In order to rebuild it, they will need to remove and dispose of the broken panels, so it may cost even more.

The Fighting Jays solar farm was insured against hail damage. Presumably insurance premiums will be rising.

Locals are worried about the possibility of contamination with heavy metals, plastics and other chemicals in the local water supply. Hopefully they won’t leave it all there to rot.

On the plus side, the hailstorm reduced some pollution of the Texas energy market.

h/t Colin

 

10 out of 10 based on 119 ratings

Wednesday

10 out of 10 based on 8 ratings

“Misinformation Experts” are almost all left wing and they want to censor you

Misinformation Expert Game

By Jo Nova

The “Misinformation Industry” has been caught with its pants down — accidentally finding, then burying, the information that  nearly everyone in their own industry “leans left”.

This is a field that generated headlines about how conservatives are more susceptible to believing misinformation, and conservatives consume more Facebook disinformation. It would be awkward then if the whole field turned out to be leftist academics, and they tried to hide that, which is exactly what just happened.

The leading “journal” on misinformation surveyed 150 of its own academic experts, then forgot to mention that one of the most striking and significant results from their own survey was that being a “Misinformation Expert” was a left wing phenomena.

Misinformation ReviewBjorn Lomborg noticed the statistics on their self-admitted political leanings buried in an appendix, and graphed it himself. He writes: “Misinformation experts are perhaps not quite unbiased”.

There was barely a conservative among them:

Speaking of misinformation, it’s a little misleading, don’t you think, to pretend this doesn’t matter in a field “devoted” to researching political misinformation?

It seems The Misinformation Review has been misinforming its readers.

The Misinformation Industry looks, acts and smells like a leftist invention to censor the right

Looking at their own statistics, the “misinformation” experts are a self-confessed group of leftist soft-scientists with little understanding of maths, physics, mining, chemistry and real life.

Experts leaned strongly toward the left of the political spectrum: very right-wing (0), fairly right-wing (0), slightly right-of-center (7), center (15), slightly left-of-center (43), fairly left-wing (62), very left-wing (21).

And they specialize in media-science and political-science and think that’s a “broad range”:

The misinformation experts represent a broad range of scientific fields. Experts specialized in psychology (39), communication and media science (32), political science (22), computational social sciences (17), computer science (9), sociology (8), journalism (8), philosophy (5), other (4), medicine/other (2), linguistics (2), history (1), physics (1).

Experts of what exactly?

As a theoretical field of science, the experts of misinformation could not even agree on a definition of misinformation itself. Only one in ten thought misinformation was “false information” alone. The rest felt that “misleading people” intentionally, or even unintentionally could qualify, which means the misinformation label can apply to anyone discussing a fact which they thought was true, and is actually true, but (as defined by the left-voting-experts) was “misleading” in the wrong context.

They just want to shut you up

When asked what we should do about misinformation, the correct answer, of course, is “explain why it’s wrong”. But the experts didn’t even think of that — instead they suggest nine ways to hide information and the vast majority of the pool of “experts” were happy with nearly all of them — deplatform, silence, moderate and censor away!

Misinformation. Censorship

When asked “why do people believe misinformation?” the politically biased experts didn’t even blink — it was the human failures of confirmation bias, social identity and partisanship they declared — while buried six feet deep in confirmation bias, social identity and partisanship.

REFERENCE

Altay, S., Berriche, M., Heuer, H., Farkas, J., & Rathje, S. (2023). A survey of expert views on misinformation: Definitions, determinants, solutions, and future of the field. Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Misinformation Review. https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-119
Website: misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu

h/t Ryan Maue, David Maddison

 

9.9 out of 10 based on 101 ratings

Tuesday

10 out of 10 based on 7 ratings

60% of the US say “the media are the Enemy”

Media is the Enemy

By Jo Nova

Ponder how far we have come when more than half of the US sees the media, not just as self-serving, biased hacks, but as The Enemy itself. 

“Fake News” is annoying, but active lies and suppression are a campaign to steal something from you — or everything: your money, your health, your vote and your children. There is no “town square” anymore, no common forum where ideas are batted back and forth until both sides agree. There is only entrenched polarization. A house divided, and no shared meals. Fomenting civil war.

Rasmussen Reports asked 1,114 likely US voters whether the media are “truly the enemy of the people”, and an amazing 60% agreed.

By Nicole Wells, NewsMax

According to the survey, of the 60% majority who agree with Trump’s 2019 assessment that the media are “the enemy of the people,” 30% strongly agree with the presumptive GOP presidential nominee; 36% disagree with the statement, including 21% who strongly disagree.

It’s much more widespread across the political spectrum than you might think:

On whether the media are “truly the enemy of the people,” 79% of Republicans, 60% of independents, and 41% of Democrats at least somewhat agree.

Even half of Democrat voters agree the media runs on Democrat talking points:

Broken down by political party, 78% of Republicans, 61% of independents, and half of Democrats say it is at least somewhat likely that the news media’s political coverage is driven by Biden campaign talking points.

Donald Trump not only talked about the Fake News Media, but called the media “the enemy of the people” from as far back as 2017.

Recently, he talked of a “bloodbath” in the auto industry, which was twisted into false claims he was calling for a political bloodbath if he loses. The Rasmussen poll showed that media bias still has power  — 40% of US voters still believe the lie that he was talking about widespread political violence by his supporters. 49% knew the truth, and 11% were unsure. Voters younger than 40 were less likely to have figured out the truth.

But only 3% of Twitter users still believe the “Bloodbath hoax”.

Rather surprisingly, Rasmussen ran a similar poll in 2021 with similar results. The 60% are entrenched.

The Democrats, the Financial House media owners, and Deep State would have to be sweating. Control of the media has been a powerful weapon but that ship is breaking up on the rocks of reality. Another round of “Factcheckers” can’t save it now. All they have left is the USS Censor Ship.

Thought for the day: How do we reach more of the believer 40%?


UPDATE: At least one commenter still believes the media care about subscriptions

The profits from subscribers and advertising are trivial compared to the power that comes from controlling the narrative. Shareholder owners invest a small part of their portfolio in their media-empire so they can then hide their subsidies, pointless industries and crony deals from public outrage and scrutiny.

The uber billionaires can lose money on the media so the rest of their investment portfolio reaps in the dough from their power to control the narrative, influence elections, and suppress public dissent.

See: What if the media was just the lobbying agency for bigger profit making ventures?

 

 

9.9 out of 10 based on 97 ratings

Monday

8.4 out of 10 based on 10 ratings

Sunday

9 out of 10 based on 9 ratings

Unpermitted documentaries (you can send to friends)

By Jo Nova

Martin Durkin’s work will be studied one day like Thucydides as a record of a bizarre moment in human history. It is so quintessentially British. I thought I’d seen it all in the climate debate, but this is so well done, perfect for a curious, matter-of-fact mind. It pulls you along, with timeless nostalgic footage in a classic English delivery, calmly unravelling mythology. It will resonate with people who remember cities, cars and great documentaries of long ago.

Because it’s not angry or activist it’s a gift you can send to friends who are science nerds, or history buffs, or who remember the sixties. Send it to people with teenagers who have no idea the curriculum hides a half a billion years of history. Send it to green friends, who have no idea a third of the food made in Africa rots before it can be eaten without fossil fuels and plastic to preserve and transport it.

Imagine the effect if this was shown at schools.

It’s the story of how an activist movement became a big industry, they say. But I can’t help thinking it was a big industry that grew an activist movement…

The link on Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/video/ONMGnSiOLhjG/

and Vimeo   https://vimeo.com/924719370

UPDATE: Surprisingly it is still on Youtube today (Sunday) and with subtitles in other languages. Vote it up there while you still can…

Honest scientists are no longer free,
To discover; what science should be,
Fearing censure and sacking,
And from colleagues no backing,
With consensus are forced to agree.

–Ruairi

 

9.7 out of 10 based on 128 ratings

Saturday

10 out of 10 based on 13 ratings

EV’s make some people carsick…

Motion sicknessBy Jo Nova

Nobody mentioned the nausea

The planet-saving cars that are being forced upon us have another catch — they might make you vomit. Apparently, motion sickness is “a thing” for EV’s, not that our public broadcaster would mention it in the regular adverts they run to tell us how wonderful EV’s are “with ridiculous savings!”.  Apparently the silent sudden acceleration of an EV is leaving some stomachs in a lurch — and some adults, kids and even dogs are throwing up.

‘I need a solution fast’: Electric car owners complain of motion sickness

Zane Dobie, Drive

Another user said: “I drive in an electric vehicle a lot, and I’ve found that regenerative braking absolutely makes me motion sick. I’m not always driving, so I don’t always have control of how it’s being driven, so other people’s driving really makes me sick… I really need to find a solution fast”.

Some drivers also reported their electric cars making their pets sick too. “Since [buying] the Tesla, [my dog] throws up in it almost every time…”

The theory is that EV’s are too quiet, too fast, and have too few cues to warn our insides to prepare for motion. But who knows, perhaps sitting inside a giant electromagnetic field triggers a queasy feeling too?Sad dog in car.

Shhh!

The problem (that no one mentioned in public) is apparently already so well known in the industry that car manufacturers are researching ways to reduce it. (Where are our journalists?)

Solutions include driving the car more like a combustion engine car and switching down the regenerative braking, both of which reduce the range of the EV (o’ the irony).

Manufacturers like Honda are looking to squash carsickness by revising their power mapping for a smoother ride at low speeds. Honda is on the case with its e:Ny1 (which is not available in Australia at this time) by changing their throttle map to emulate an acceleration similar to an ICE vehicle.

Adding that feeling of throttle lag that you get from internal combustion vehicles will help ease discomfort for those who aren’t used to the immediate torque of an EV, likely at the cost of some performance.

Hyundai is even adding fake engine noises to mimic normal cars.

Other brands, like Hyundai with the Ioniq 5 N, are adding fake engine sounds that are linked to the pedal on their EVs and even adding fake flappy paddles that mimic gear changes. While this is just a bit of fun for the owners, it could actually help combat some of the motion sickness felt in an EV.

This story is more about the media than about EVs. It’s hard to know how serious this problem is (where are those studies?). Perhaps it only affects a small percent of the population. But whatever it is, we know it’s worse than our normal cars. If there was any evidence that EV’s reduced motion-sickness by even 2%, the ABC and BBC would make it prime time news.

If 25-30% of all people are susceptible to motion sickness in traditional cars and if EVs exacerbate that sensation, the sick feeling could affect a lot of people.

On Geoff Buys Cars @JamesSmith-qs4hx says:

EVs make me sick – and I don’t even own one 🤮🤮🤮

h/t Troy.

Image by 2690457

 

9.8 out of 10 based on 90 ratings

Friday

9 out of 10 based on 11 ratings

Saudi Oil Giant CEO says world should abandon the fantasy of living without oil

By Jo Nova

The clean energy revolution is failing, and everyone knows it

In a radical move, the CEO of an oil giant actually defended oil. For a brief moment the space-time continuum opened a worm hole to reality, and leaders of some of the world’s largest corporations briefly said sensible things.

The energy transition is falling apart so fast, even the prime targets of hate, the Big Oil Men themselves, are now openly pointing out what a waste of time and money solar and wind power are. BP was trying to cut oil production 40% until very recently when it flipped to increasing it. But now we have a whole conference of Big Oil.

Saudi Aramco CEO says energy transition is failing, world should abandon ‘fantasy’ of phasing out oil

By Spencer Kimball, CNBC

HOUSTON — Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said Monday that the energy transition is failing and policymakers should abandon the “fantasy” of phasing out oil and gas, as demand for fossil fuels is expected to continue to grow in the coming years.

“In the real world, the current transition strategy is visibly failing on most fronts as it collides with five hard realities,” Nasser said during a panel interview at the CERAWeek by S&P Global energy conference in Houston, Texas.

We spent trillions of dollars and we have nothing to show for it:

Nasser said alternative energy sources have been unable to displace hydrocarbons at scale, despite the world investing more than $9.5 trillion over the past two decades. Wind and solar currently supply less than 4% of the world’s energy…

Meanwhile, the share of hydrocarbons in the global energy mix has barely fallen in the 21st century from 83% to 80%, Nasser said.

This is the graph he was surely thinking of — the one that shows how irrelevant, inconsequential and trivial the whole “renewable energy transition” has been so far. See that black line…?

Global Energy Use by source 1900-2023

OWID https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix

The free market cut six times as many emissions with energy efficiency measures as the socialists did with wind and solar and billions of your dollars:

The CEO said efficiency improvements alone over the past 15 years have reduced global energy demand by almost 90 million barrels per day oil equivalent. Wind and solar, meanwhile, have substituted only 15 million barrels over the same period, he said.

And they say they care about CO2…

For thirty years it’s been obvious that we could make bigger reductions in emissions by burning coal at hotter temperatures, and using shale gas when we could, but instead of “saving the world” the Eco-Worriers really wanted to prop up their crony industries instead.

Australia is about to bolt headlong into a renewables quagmire that the rest of the world is starting to back away from. Spread the message!

 

10 out of 10 based on 109 ratings