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By Jo Nova
News is just a non-stop Psy-Op now
Sydney is getting five warm days in a row and the Sydney Morning Horror is warning that it could be deadly. Even newspapers in Belgium think their readers need to know there’s a warm spring in Australia — 10 – 15 degrees above average. It’s not even a record. Not even “the hottest in history” — just by golly, a bit warmer than a similar September heatwave, you know, nine years ago.
It was 35.6 degrees in September 2000 — so after 23 years of global warming, it’s not even hotter.
Sydney is due to hit 30 degrees on Sunday and Monday, but will reach new highs of 32 on Tuesday and Wednesday. The city hasn’t experienced consecutive days of 30-degree-plus weather in September since 2014. This week will be 10 degrees hotter than Sydney’s August average.
Driving a car could be deadly today too, but we don’t put it in a headline. The psychological effect is to generate fear of warm weather.
What is exciting is that Sydney didn’t even reach 32C last summer, at all, so after one of the least warm not-hottest 12 months on […]
By Jo Nova
Apple aims at customers with too much money and a desperate need to feel smug
You too can save the world, by spending two-grand on the latest tech-wear — not because it’s lighter, better, faster, bigger, or more useful, but because you want to look like you care about stopping bad weather and bush fires. Signal your virtue to the world! Wear your smug-watch and smile. It’s carbon neutral, and you are the leading carbon-show-off in the class. (Pretend you care about the kids mining cobalt in the Congo, or the Uighur camps in Xinjiang. Oh nevermind.)
There is a spiritual void out there in 2023 and Apple wants to fill it. But this religion is a world of shallow consumerism and point-scoring, pretending it is deeply philosophical and generous. Apple are this close to turning their brand into a teachy-preachy pagan apostle of Gaia.
And did Mother Nature say she controls the weather? Oops. What are all the windfarms for?
Mother Nature is a bossy black woman, wouldn’t you know, and the word for the advert is “cringeworthy“.
This adverts sums up everything about the motivations of the average climate acolyte. Like a Gucci handbag, […]
By Jo Nova
For most of our lives, scientists have been among the most trusted community leaders. But not any more.
For nearly fifty years, more than four out of ten Americans said they had a “great deal of confidence” in the people running our institutions of science. This was the strongest possible answer people could give. But all that has changed in the last few years with public opinion on science now splitting along political lines. Faith in the institutions of science has collapsed among conservative voters.
The goodwill, the trust and esteem built by things like The Manhattan Project and the Moonshot carried on for decades, but when Covid arrived, and science was the number one public topic of debate, many scientists sat silent on the sidelines. The lab leak theory came and went and then turned out to have been true all along. When ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine could have saved lives, scientists said nothing. When vaccines were sold as “safe and effective”, researchers who knew there were risks, sat on their hands. When borders could have been shut to stop bioweapons, Trump was left on his own. When universities failed the nation, scientists mostly sided with the […]
….https://phys.org/news/2023-09-planetary-boundaries-exceeded.html
By Jo Nova
Earth’s Blood Pressure is too high now
Modern Science looks more like a Medieval Guild every day
Back in May humans did the first ever study quantifying Earth System Boundaries, which was incredible luck. After two hundred thousand years of homo sapiens stretching the bounds of the planet, we barely discovered “Earth System Boundaries” in time to find out we hit the limit 12 weeks later. What are the odds?
It’s almost as if a whole twig of science was invented in order to write scary press releases? It’s another unauditable, unaccountable collective of Experts who can never be wrong, only “useful” to the bureaucratic machine. They call themselves scientists but their predictions will never be tested, only marked against the Department wish-list.
We can all appreciate the talismanic symbolism (and marketing value) below, where segments of the sacred arcs are tainted blood red, as Earth progressively descends into the anthropogenic abyss year upon year.
https://phys.org/news/2023-09-planetary-boundaries-exceeded.html
Red Agate pendants cut-to-match will no doubt be ready for Christmas.
Meanwhile the same climate models that can’t predict any of the last two thousand years, or next months floods, droughts and rains — can somehow […]
By Jo Nova
William Happer
I was lucky enough to spend some time with the wonderful Professor William Happer the last few days thanks to the IPA. The man is a living legend of science having worked on the StarWars program in the Cold War and with the White House in the 1990s and in the Trump era. His talk had something for everyone, speaking about the need for bravery in dangerous times, and the psychology of crowds and yet with enough detail on emission spectrum calculations to appeal to the true science nerds as well. His work on adaptive optics with lasers in the atmosphere was considered so important to national security it was classified as a military secret. Despite that he was one of the first casualties of the political war on science – losing his position as Director of Energy Research in the US Dept of Energy in 1993 for speaking his mind on ozone.
Happer conveys an enthusiasm for physics, astronomy, the Earth that is infectious.
Book Now — and don’t forget the IPA offers a program for 15-25 year olds called Generation Liberty — with membership for just $10 a year and free […]
By Jo Nova
Nothing at all about the modern era stands out as unusual
Thanks to David Whitehouse at NetZeroWatch who has found a remarkable paper: Pyrenean caves reveal a warmer past
The new study on stalagmites in caves of the Pyrenees shows that modern climate change is nothing compared to normal fluctuations in the last 2,500 years, when it was at times much hotter, colder, and more volatile. Rapid shifts between temperatures were common.
The researchers looked at 8 stalagmites in 4 caves and local lake levels, but they also compared their results with other European temperature proxies and reconstructions and the pattern is consistent across the region. The Roman Warm Period was much hotter than today, and for hundreds of years as well, even though coal plants were rare. Apparently, there was a reason Romans were dressed in togas.
The Dark Ages were very cold, especially around 520 – 550AD — which may be related to what the researchers call a “cataclysmic” volcanic eruption that took place in Iceland in 536AD. It was followed by two other massive volcanic eruptions in 540 and 547AD. This effect is apparently visible in European tree rings which showed “an unprecedented, long-lasting […]
By Jo Nova
Vivek Ramaswamy has a plan. It’s quite something to listen to. He has an extraordinary combination of skills.
This is a man who is only 38, and has studied molecular biology*, made millions in biotech, understands Big Pharma, but he’s also done a law degree at Yale. He is that rarest of combinations — the CEO who understand biology and science, and the lawyer who reads the constitution, and the investor who has played and won on Wall Street. He is all of these things.
I’ve never heard a Presidential candidate speak like this — with an eight year plan grounded in the legal foundations of the nation. He knows employment laws make individuals unsackable, but whole departments can be razed. Nothing can stop the President from dismantling the FBI if he wants to. Ramaswamy is already assembling a team, picking the players. He can list what he will get done by 2033 when he leaves office and his youngest starts high school.
Last week I played a small extract of this interview with Shawn Ryan — where Ramaswamy described how the FDA is captured by Big Pharmaceutical firms. ( “Big Pharma is the worlds biggest lobbying […]
By Jo Nova
It’s not now and has never been, about your health
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London is forcing workers to shell out thousands of pounds to buy new cars or fill his tax coffers with the £12.50 daily fee for driving slightly older models. Some will have to give up their cars altogether — and for many it means a profound change of lifestyle. Yet what’s it all for?
The Mayor’s own team shows it will achieve almost nothing, yet he’s doing it anyway. It’s not now, and has never been about “the science”. The results of research are entirely optional apparently:
SADIQ Khan’s hated ULEZ expansion will add just 13 minutes to the average life expectancy, it emerged today.
Noa Hoffman, The Sun
Research by the Mayor’s own team in collaboration with Transport for London has found the scheme’s impact will be “minor” and “negligible”.
It’s predicted to only cause a 1.3% reduction in the average Londoner’s exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2).
And it would add just 13 minutes to the life expectancy of a Londoner in 2023, according to the Channel Four News Fact Check service.
By Jo Nova
43% fewer cyclones is a good thing, right?
Using the same ClimateChangeTM reasoning the UN Secretary General uses, it’s clear fossil fuel use dramatically reduces the number of dangerous cyclones in the Northern Indian Ocean. A new study revealed an astonishing 43% decline in the number of equatorial cyclones in recent decades (1981–2010) compared to earlier (1951–1980) when fossil fuel use was vastly reduced. The researchers also point out that this is especially interesting because “the Indian Ocean basin has warmed consistently and more than any other ocean basin.” Could it be that warmer oceans are not necessarily terrible?
The study looked at the Low-Latitude Cyclones (LLC) that originate near the equator in the North Western Indian ocean. These LLC’s are smaller but intensify more rapidly than other cyclones, giving people less time to prepare. In 2017 LLC Ockhi caught forecasters off guard, travelled 2,000 kilometers and caused the deaths of 884 people in Sri Lanka and India.
This is obviously a benefit for the billion poor people who live around the Bay of Bengal. The researchers however, for some reason do not call for an increase in fossil fuel emissions. Instead they looked for and found […]
Image by Tracy Lundgren from Pixabay
By Jo Nova
The UK government is absolutely not asking you to ration electricity, to give up control of your own appliances, to pay more for less, and go to jail if you get it wrong.
This just looks a lot like that:
Turn on your heat pump when wind is blowing, Government pleads
Nick Gutteridge, The Telegraph
Ministers are pressing ahead with new legislation that could see families made to adopt “smart” appliances to ease pressure on the grid. Tory MPs are opposing the proposals, contained in the contentious Energy Bill which will come back before the Commons on Tuesday.
Are they your appliances or the state’s? If you don’t control the power switch you know the answer.
When they call something “smart” we know it’s stupid — and the mind-boggling complexity of central agencies switching on and off ovens and heaters across the country to “fit” with the weather is a dystopia we don’t need to have. Do you need 90 minutes to roast a chook, or 120? It depends on the wind strength in Scotland. If the kids can’t get to bed early, or […]
Andrew Forrest speaks of the deaths of millions coming soon…
By Jo Nova
The cult doomer prophesy upgrades to Billionaire Class. Put this man out of his misery.
Andrew Forrest, Executive Chairman of a $60 billion company made a bizarre speech a few days ago. This is a business presentation with the words like “vomit”, “stampede” and “seizures”, and pictures of skeletons in the desert. The big secret threat, he said, that scientists are not saying “is lethal humidity”. He really believes it. Here’s a man in command of the tenth largest company in Australia with a $33 billion dollar bank account, but not the judgment to get an advisor who can explain the difference between specific and relative humidity. He doesn’t realize that trends are rising in one, but falling in the other, and the modelers were wrong (again). He just had to pick up the phone and call the Met Office, or the CSIRO. They would have loved to talk to him. Even the IPCC experts could have saved him from this embarrassment.
“Lethal Humidity will be the next global pandemic” he prophecies.
“It is business that will kill your children,” he says blaming […]
By Jo Nova
We’re on the precipice of a radical experiment with a national electricity grid
The AEMO (manager of the Australian grid) has finally released the major report on problems coming in the next ten years on our national grid, and it’s worse than they thought even six months ago. They euphemistically refer to the coming “reliability gaps”. They could have said “blackouts” instead, but a gap in reliability sounds so much nicer.
Bizarrely, the lead graph of the 175 page AEMO report goes right off the scale, mysteriously peaking in the unknown and invisible real estate off the top of the chart. And they’re not projecting troubles fifty years from now. Those cropped peaks of invisible pain hit from 2027.
And even the pain we can see is apparently quite bad. Two states are already likely to breach “the interim reliability measure” in this coming summer. Ominously, just one day after releasing the report, the AEMO is calling for tenders for “reliability reserves” in South Australia and Victoria. Apparently, they want offers of industries ready to shut down who aren’t already on the list, and they want spare generation too — get this — even asking […]
By Jo Nova
Suddenly a lot of people in London are realizing what “Net Zero” really means
Nigel Farage at the Ulez protests in London
This week many Londoners are waking up to the impact of living in an Ultra Low Emission Zone as the £12.50 daily charge for unfashionable cars begins in the outer poorer suburbs.
Normally “climate change” costs are secretly buried in bills, hidden in rising costs and blamed on “old unreliable coal plants”, inflation or foreign wars. Your electricity bill does not have a category for “subsidies for your neighbors solar panels”. But the immense pain of NetZero can’t be disguised.
For a pensioner on £186 a week it could be as much as an £87 a week penalty for driving their car — or £4,500 a year. The Daily Mail is full of stories of livid and dismayed people who served in the Navy or worked fifty years, who can’t afford to look after older frail Aunts or shop in their usual stores now, or who will have to give up their cars. People are talking about the “end of Democracy”. The cameras are expected to bring in £2.5 million a day in […]
By Jo Nova
Vivek Ramaswamy worked in the pharmaceutical industry. Now that he’s free to speak, he distills the utter corruption of the FDA in under four minutes, it is beyond redemption, rotten to the core. “That’s’s why I favor a dramatic drastic gutting of the FDA…” — he says. Exactly…
He’s a great speaker:
Seriously… How do you argue this? He’s right. https://t.co/pQHjerGzLl
— Shawn Ryan (@ShawnRyan762) August 29, 2023
From his Twitter feed: “The corrupt FDA says you don’t have the right to even *try* medicines that haven’t been through 10+ years of testing, yet the government *mandated* Covid vaccines that sailed through FDA approval in less than 1 year. You can’t believe both things at once. Countless FDA regulations and actions are hypocritical, harmful & unconstitutional. I will rescind them accordingly, using the Supreme Court’s holding in West Virginia vs. EPA as my legal basis for doing so. For years I was coached by industry veterans not to speak out against FDA. It’s well known that if you anger FDA, they will punish you by blackballing review of your drug review applications. “FDA never forgets” is a quietly-whispered, well-known pharma industry adage. […]
Written by Jo Nova
Would you like PFAS with that?
Wouldn’t you know — to make paper straws resistant to water, it seems we have to add Teflon type chemicals that stick around for thousands of years.
Researchers analyzed 39 brands of straws in Belgium and found two thirds contained PFAS, and the paper straws were the worst. Fully 90% of all the paper straws contained some form of PFAS. 80% of Bamboo straws did too, as did 75% of plastic straws. Even 40% of glass straws contained PFAS. The only type of straws that were free of it were steel.
The UK, Canadian, Belgium, New Zealand, and Australian governments banned plastic straws, as did some US States because “they were bad for the environment”.
Paper drinking straws may be harmful and may not be better for the environment than plastic versions
Science Daily
In the first analysis of its kind in Europe, and only the second in the world, Belgian researchers tested 39 brands of straws for the group of synthetic chemicals known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).
PFAS were found in the majority of the straws tested and were most common […]
Written by Jo Nova
Are we paying attention yet?
The BRICS nations (in red, below) have just accepted six new members — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Argentina, Iran, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates (green). The block now includes 46% of the population of Earth. They make 43% of the worlds oil, and about a quarter of the traded goods. The BRICS are going to abandon the US dollar and another 20 nations have expressed a desire to join. The India Narrative, called it “a new world order”.
In other news, the BRICS groups said they’d quite like the West to keep giving them money and free climate technologies to save the world from climate change, (while the West battles the climate demons and hobbles its own economies). The BRICS promise they will absolutely, definitely, maybe get serious too in a few decades.
While they’re busy burning record amounts of coal, they oppose any trade barriers done by the developed world in the name of climate change. We wouldn’t want things like pollution, child labor or slavery to get in the way of a good trade would we?
When President Xi brags that they are the “global majority” it’s just […]
£9,500 for a 1970 Hillman Imp Super? | Photo by Riley from Christchurch, New Zealand
By Jo Nova
Say hello to the new ideal car for your ultra low emission city, not an EV but a fifty year old Hillman
Many Londoners are suddenly discovering how much they love old vintage cars, especially ones from the pre 1983 era, which just happen to be exempt from the £12.50 a day new carbon tax. The old cars are selling at a premium, and London may soon become the Old-Car-Mecca of the world. Who knows? This may not have been what Sadiq Khan was aiming for when he tried to force everyone to buy an EV or catch a bus. But it’s what happens when you bully people.
The much hated Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) starts on August 29th and people driving petrol cars older than 2006 or diesel cars from before 2015 are likely to end up paying £12.50 every day just to drive in London. Vintage cars older than 40 years are exempt.
h/t MrGrimNasty
Londoners snap up classic cars to dodge ULEZ
Eirian Jane Prosser, The Daily Mail
Londoners are snapping […]
By Jo Nova
The current state of the Renewable Crash Test Dummy Transition
Everyone who can add up in Australia knows it can’t work, but the climate of fear stops them saying so. Last month a senior energy industry executive told the Australian Financial Review quietly that everyone believes [the 2030 target] will be missed, but nobody wants to say it. Apparently, even executives are being coerced into silence for fear of retribution. The insider referred to the “discretion” Ministers have on project approvals. It’s like a national mafia racket: “Nice business you have there — shame if you couldn’t get the permit”. So the Labor Party sets itself up to fail by silencing the people it could be listening to — as if the electricity will still be there when the turbines stop turning.
To put the size of the moonshot in perspective, even Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen himself said the nation must “install 22,000 500-watt solar panels every day for eight years along with 40 seven-megawatt wind turbines every month”. In toto, we are supposed to build 44GW of “renewables” by 2030.
Instead of this frenetic pace, renewable energy investment ground to […]
Fifty years of the French Nuclear Industry
By Jo Nova
The dismal, destitution of our national energy debate
You would think our former Chief Scientist would know how to do basic research before commenting in the national news?
Alan Finkel says Australia probably couldn’t build one nuclear plant in less than twenty years, because the UAE took fifteen years. But fifty years ago the French built 56 nuclear plants in just 15 years. Isn’t that relevant and shouldn’t we at least mention that? At the time, the population of France was 51 million — twice what Australia is today. So pro rata, Australia could be aiming for 26 reactors.
If we ask nicely, perhaps we could borrow the old 1973 plans? The Messmer plan was launched in response to the oil crisis and the French started construction on three plants in the same year. The slogan they used was “In France, we do not have oil, but we have ideas.”
In Australia, our slogan it seems, is we don’t have oil, but we buy solar panels from China.
In a similar vein, two weeks ago Sweden announced it would be building 10 new nuclear reactors by 2045. With […]
By Jo Nova
Now they tell us: …big spending on renewables needed, says report
Australia must find $1.5 trillion by the end of the decade to meet 2050 green targets in an effort experts say would need to mirror the reconstruction of Europe after World War II.
— By Nick Evans, The Australian
Until five minutes ago (or at least the last election), wind and solar power were the future — they were unstoppable because free energy paid for itself and was getting cheaper every year. (Cheaper than free!) Now, we’re out of the mists of the fairy garden, a few passengers on the top floor of the Carbon Bus can see the cliff coming. Suddenly we’ve gone from “it’ll save money” to needing $1,500 billion dollars or 1.5 million suitcases of a million dollars each, which is quite a lot in a land of 26 million people. It works out to be $57,000 each from every man, woman, pensioner and baby, and we need it in the next 7 years. So that’s a quarter of a million dollars from every family of four.
Nevermind about a house or a holiday, if we’re […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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