JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Carried forward from yesterday: “We should not expect from them deep understanding of how we got here, still less any meaningful programme capable of getting beyond populist posturing. Their worldview remains deeply entrenched, particularly in the institutions tasked with doing society’s thinking. Nonetheless, if their panic attacks will no longer suck up all the political oxygen, it may at least create a little more breathing space for others to do the hard work of democratic renewal.”
https://thenorthernstar.online/2024/11/18/is-trump-2-the-end-of-neoliberal-order-breakdown-syndrome/
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I work in a fire service.
The 2019-2020 bushfires that occurred in the Australian eastern States… were hijacked by the usual suspects promoting global warming.
More frequent, devastating, catastrophic bushfires they said. All due to Man made climate change!!!!!
So what has happened since…
2021 nothing
2022 nothing
2023 nothing
2024 nothing yet. It is November 26. and I predict no catastrophic bushfires happening in the next 35 days.
Don’t you love the alarmism of our so called experts and media.
And the predictions our experts from the “Climate council” released, dated five years ago.
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/not-normal-climate-change-bushfire-web/
They play you for fools.
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The new normal they said, this is just how it is now, they said. And will say again as soon as fires start, which they will, at some stage.
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Don’t They Teach Any Chemistry In Medical Schools?
By Dr John Happs
It was both surprising and alarming to learn that a group called “Doctors for the Environment, Australia” were actually calling for members of the public to contact their local Member of Parliament and deliver the message:
“To protect the health of the Australian people I call on you as my elected representative to ban all new coal, oil and gas projects.”
This silly appeal is also promoted by some members of the American Medical Association who foolishly claim:
“Extreme heat, powerful storms and floods, year-round wildfires, droughts, and other climate-related events are caused by “fossil fuel combustion, which is said to be the “primary driver of climate-change.”
The AMA argues that we should be:
“transitioning away from hydrocarbon fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas, and toward renewable energy and energy efficiency.”
Now one might think that medicine would be driven by objective scientific reasoning and that our medical schools would accept only the best and brightest of student applicants, yet the message these groups of medical practitioners want us to spread, exposes their absolute ignorance of the chemistry of hydrocarbon resources and our total dependence on them.
“Doctors for the Environment, Australia” appear to have no idea about how coal, gas and oil have lifted millions out of poverty and enabled us to achieve the high standard of living we have today, along with all the tools and medications that the medical industry relies upon. In fact, there is precious little in the medical world that isn’t dependent on the coal, oil and gas deposits that “Doctors for the Environment, Australia” want to ban.
Continue reading: https://papundits.wordpress.com/2024/10/18/dont-they-teach-any-chemistry-in-medical-schools/
https://saltbushclub.com/2024/11/24/dont-they-teach-any-chemistry-in-medical-schools/
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No, of course not! And in Australia even anatomy was stopped twenty years ago. You don’t need it for a medical degree.
So they are left with memories of school level chemistry and that quickly fades. Technology and laboratories and consultants are reducing GPs to referral centres.
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The other problem I have found with many is that they believe everything they are told.
But I slowly realised that in their lives, from school to GP, that has been their entire education. Skepticism has no place.
And they cannot imagine why anyone would lie to them. It doesn’t happen in their daily lives. Which makes them mugs in business too. You have a class of people who are trained to believe and not question the voice of authority. NASA. NOAA. UN/IPCC. And pharmaceutical companies.
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I do not recal learning much about “coal chemistry” in any school classes. The coal formation period (Carboniferous) was/is discussed in various introductory Earth science classes. Actual chemistry not so much.
I do wonder about these medical types jumping into the mess of net-zero. It suggests there are many topics about which they are clueless other than organic chemistry.
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Coal chemistry is organic chemistry, specifically the chemistry of Carbon compounds. There is also physical chemistry and inorganic chemistry and the more life specific biochemistry, which is more the real of the medical people along with microbiology/molecular biology, Jo’s field. The fundamental idea that fossil fuel CO2 is very special and stays in the air/biosphere for thousands of years is completely wrong and physical chemistry.
Like the physical chemistry concept that dissolved gases have a constant equilibrium vapour pressure as in Henry’s Law. Physicists explain why this is so based on evaporation and absorption.
Climate Change scientists deny Henry’s Law even exists. And make up stuff like a tiny ‘surface ocean’ and a ‘hot spot’ because they need to do so to explain why fossil fuel CO2 can hang around and secondly why it produces warming far beyond its ability to do so. Both are proven wrong, but it’s a living. Living the dream. Which is all rapid man made CO2 driven Global Warming is. And a nightmare for everyone else.
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They do not understand what they wrote.
COP 29 diplomacy delivers perfectly vague promises a decade away
By David Wojick
https://www.cfact.org/2024/11/25/cop-29-diplomacy-delivers-perfectly-vague-promises-a-decade-away/
Key excerpts:
“In Cop 29’s “Finance agreement” diplomacy is truly the art of agreeing to nothing. There is no agreement of substance here because there is no substance to this agreement. Each side gets its number someday and that is all there is to it.
Let’s look at the actual text to see the nothing. But first recall what was supposed to happen. The Paris Agreement committed the developed country members to providing $100 billion a year to the developing countries through 2025. COP 29 was simply supposed to revise that annual payment up beginning in 2026. That did not happen, not even close.
The fiasco started when the developing countries demanded impossibly huge sums centered on $1.3 trillion. That set in motion a series of side steps leading to the present agreement which is very different from the intended goal. To begin with the $1.3 trillion annual payment is there but it is “by 2035” so ten years from now not in 2026. I can see delaying it until a few years after Trump leaves office but these folks are wedded to their five year plans.
Moreover this money need not come from the developed countries and certainly not from their governments. First it is to come “from all public and private sources.” Second the eligible sources have been expanded to include all the developing countries as well as the developed ones.
These two provisions have fundamentally changed the concept of climate finance. It used to just include mostly government money going from developed to developing countries. Now it sounds like any climate related investment or contribution that winds up in a developing country counts.”
“Then there is the other big number, the $300 billion a year. This is widely assumed to replace the $100 billion a year mandated by the Paris Agreement through 2025. For example CBS has a headline that yells “deal reached at UN’s COP29 climate talks for $300 billion a year (up from $100 billion).”
This is incorrect as here too the new agreement says the goal is “by 2035.” Nor is all (or any) of this distant sum necessarily coming from developed countries as the yearly $100 billion had to. The new agreement just says “with developed country Parties taking the lead.” (Parties means to the Paris Agreement.)
“Taking the lead” is an extremely vague concept. It might mean paying over half say $151 billion. Or just being the biggest donor at say $20 billion. Or even just running a bunch of promotions to get private investors to invest, which might only millions.
The overall fiasco becomes clear when we ask what the finance requirement or goal is for 2026? There is none, nor for any other year ahead until 2035. Nor is anyone responsible for meeting those far distant goals.”
Lots more in the article. Please share it.
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I never worry about COP29. The people who sign these things are politicians, not scientists. And they will sign anything because they will be retired by then. The scientists in NOAA, NASA, IPCC are real. The bosses are world skimming politicians. And the politicians want power and money, especially as the pay is lousy but the hotels and travel and food are first class and they pay nothing. Free Black Caviar in Baku. Who would miss that? Who cares if the Sturgeon are in real trouble. Just sign some stuff and the oil/gas guys pay for everything. Or the poor mugs with their UN carbon credit billions.
To be fair, only rich Western Democracies pay. China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Saudi, Iraq, Indonesia pay nothing.
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“rich Western Democracies pay.”
You have a problem with “equity” TM ?
Of course the West must pay.
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As far as diplomacy is concerned, when a diplomat says ‘yes’ he means ‘perhaps’, when he says ‘perhaps’ he means ‘no’, and if he says ‘no’ he isn’t a diplomat.
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Households suffer as ALP gets its priorities wrong
Living standards will continue to fall if poor productivity is not fixed.
The Australian Editorial
The slide towards poorer living standards is on. And Australians accustomed to working hard and putting together a nest egg will hate it.
After countless warnings from responsible economists and industry groups in these pages and elsewhere, the Albanese government is presiding over the longest-running household recession on record, as political editor Simon Benson reveals. GDP per capita has gone backwards for the past six quarters in a row, in a trend that is longer than at any period in the past 50 years.
Economists warn it inevitably will continue unless Labor reverses its direction, which is centred on enlarging the government’s economic footprint at the expense of private enterprise and pandering to the international climate change lobby to secure the COP31 talks for Adelaide in 2026.
Doing so would come at a heavy price.
The Albanese government, regrettably, is unlikely to be swayed from its current course, which bears a closer resemblance to the Whitlam government at its most reckless than reformist Hawke-Keating economic management.
And the government’s adherence to the COP agenda, which promises to create a new world economic order at the cost of ordinary Australians, must be nipped in the bud. As Graham Lloyd wrote in Inquirer, political expediency led Energy Minister Chris Bowen to a catastrophic mistake in withdrawing from our closest allies, the US and Britain, researching fourth-generation nuclear power.
In his address at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan last week, Mr Bowen said Australia would become the sixth-largest contributor to the fund for responding to loss and damage. But Australians are entitled to question whether that is a feasible fit in current economic circumstances.
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Summed up by Today’s The Australian Front Page – Home, Drawn and Quartered
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Home, drawn and quartered: longest run of negatives
The Albanese government is presiding over the longest household recession with GDP per capita going backwards for the past six quarters, in a trend that exceeds any period in the past 50 years.
SIMON BENSON
While GDP per capita dipped lower during the past four technical recessions, the length of the current so-called household recession has not been experienced during any other downturn of the past half century.
Jim Chalmers on Monday defended the government’s record on economic management, but acknowledged that the household experience was not necessarily reflected in the economic and inflation numbers.
Economists have warned that it will be more extended, with the possibility that Labor may record two years of continuous negative GDP per capita growth.
The analysis of ABS national accounts data for GDP per capita, measured as economic output divided by population, comes after The Weekend Australian revealed on Saturday there had been a fall in living standards due to the inflation crisis. Real household disposable income has fallen by 9 per cent since March 2022.
According to the new analysis there has been a 1.6 per cent fall in GDP per capita since December 2022 across six consecutive negative quarters.
Of the eight quarters since Dr Chalmers became Treasurer, GDP per capita has fallen in seven.
The 1982-83 recession was the closest period of prolonged downturn on the same measure. Although GDP per capita fell by almost 7 per cent over that entire period, the longest consecutive run of negative GDP per capita quarters lasted only four quarters in a row. Two other periods of consecutive negative growth were also experienced during this recession.
During the 1990s recession there were two sets of consecutive negative quarters: March and June 1990 with a 1.2 per cent fall and March and June 1991 with a 2.1 per cent fall.
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Well since the actions are a decade out and the world will end before then we need have no more COP’s
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That’s the proper spirit.
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An indication of where taxpayers’ money goes in the UK, at least: –
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy1znkxrggo
“Bradford City Hall gets £2m decarbonisation grant”
Now, it may be that the City Hall boiler is at the end of its useful life – I don’t know. The link only says : –
“The authority said the planned new heating system for the grade I listed City Hall, which was built in 1873, would mean it could remove its 1.5MW gas-fired boilers – a heating system the government was trying to phase out due to its high carbon emissions.”
Replacement –
“When completed in summer 2027, the Bradford District Heat Network was expected to generate heat using one of the largest air source heat pump systems for heat networks in the UK, according to the authority.”
Bradford is about 53.7 North.
It gets cool in winter; typically three or four months with Tmax below 10C. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/stationdata/bradforddata.txt
The air source heat pump [ASHP] would provide ‘warm water’ to run through pipes to City Centre buildings.
It is unclear whether there will need to be back up electric heating in cold weather – or if some other system to provide hot water – for hand basins, washing up, etc. – will be necessary; the BBC doesn’t cover that.
The ASHP, incidentally, will be on a site earmarked for housing – “and an application to build hundreds of flats on the site was approved earlier this year” – that is in 2023.
Spending money ‘because they can’ for an imagined threat, and, possibly, an imperfect solution. Changing the heating in a 150 year old civic building, to one that – usually – needs bigger pipes and bigger radiators.
So taxes ‘inch’ upwards. Ever upwards.
Auto
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I was under the impression that ‘Up Norf’, they were going to use flooded coal mines to heat homes, etc.
“A quarter of the UK’s homes sit above abandoned coal mines, long since flooded with water. Now, the mines are being put to a new, zero-carbon use.
Coal mines were the beating heart of Britain’s industrial revolution. Their sooty, energy-dense output gave life to new-fangled factories and shipyards, fuelling the nation’s march towards modernity. They helped shape a carbon-intensive economy, one that took little notice of the natural world around it. The mines paved the way for a global dependence on fossil fuels, and in doing so, fired the starting pistol on the climate crisis that today confronts us all.
But what if, in a serendipitous circle of history, our extractive past could be repurposed for a greener, cleaner future? What if the vast maze of coal mines beneath our feet, now filled with naturally warm water, could help decarbonise the UK’s – and the world’s – herculean heating needs?”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210706-how-flooded-coal-mines-could-heat-homes
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The propagation of the Climate narrative and the Pandemic narrative are linked.
Maybe one in the same.
Has the Pandemic fiasco mortally wounded the Climate narrative?
One can hope.
The cost is tragic.
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“mortally wounded”
It seems that this is so, but that the death will be very slow and painful.
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FWIW
“Crandall v. State Of Nevada – can not tax cars per mile”
“Interesting Case Law Forbids Taxing Mode of Transportation”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2024/11/25/crandall-v-state-of-nevada-can-not-tax-cars-per-mile/
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I don’t follow. The cited precedent is about crossing state lines. Not taxing people or goods for crossing state lines was a fundamental idea of the creation of a Federation. Taxes only exist when crossing National lines. The Federation/Union looks after excist, customs, currency, international relations and defence. What this has to do with transportation inside a state or even the method of transportation is unclear.
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FWIW -finely defined!
“YouTube will but Pornhub won’t fall under Albanese’s Social Media Age Bill.”
https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2024/11/youtube-will-but-pornhub-wont-fall-under-albaneses-social-media-age-bill.html
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Those (developed) countries most enthusiastic to combat Man-Made Global Warming are headed down to underdeveloped status; e.g. Germany and the UK. The spending spree over the last 70 years in the NeoKeynesian/ Modern Monetary has to end with hyperinflation, so any sums agreed to by politicians (who expect not to be there anyway) will be worthless.
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Video by Styxhexenhammer about how TRUMP’s pick for Attorney General may release the Epstein client list (if it still exists and the Democrats havent destroyed it).
https://youtu.be/Dcijdb3wcl0
Note that despite endlessly repeated lies from the Left, Trump wasn’t on the list and when TRUMP found out what Epstein was up to he disassociated himself from him and banned him from his clubs.
Even the Trotskyist TRUMP-hating Washington Post admits that TRUMP was not on the Epstein client list.
SEE https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/11/trump-epstein-documents-ted-lieu/
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GET WOKE GO BROKE
I thought this was a joke at first but it isn’t.
Wokeness has taken over Jaguar (cars) who want to go all-electric and have released a bizarre advert only woke Leftists could possibly love.
John Cadogan comments:
https://youtu.be/X6bMVTcpFFw
(Posted from Chandanbari, Nepal 28.11049°N, 85.34007°E, elevation 3270m.)
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Old news now, except in Nepal.
/smirk
We’ve moved on to Porsche, Aston Martin and Volvo now.
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I’d like to ask David + Wojick about Chris Wright , Dr Pielke jr and Willis Eschenbach’s calculations.
They mostly seem to be in agreement about toxic, unreliable W & S and the costs involved or am I wrong?
I’d like to know what other scientists think before we waste trillions of $ on systems that have erratic, low CFs of just 30% and 15%.
And the costly rebuild every 15 to 20 years and destroying thousands of klms of the environment.
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Pete Buttigieg will leave his post as Transportation Secretary having spent $7.5 BILLION to build 8 EV charging stations.
His legacy will be squandering billions on something nobody wants, while millions struggle to afford the things they need.
Sounds familiar.
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