It’s War: 19 US States fight back against the Woke Banker Cartel

 

By Jo Nova

Oklahoma blacklists BlackRock and 12 other banks that boycott fossil fuels

We may yet be saved by states in the US that are pulling the pin on the Big Banker Cartel. In this case Oklahoma wrote laws to investigate and ban state investments with banks that boycott the energy sector. They’ve now decided that 13 banks fail the bar, and should be banned from all public business. In response BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase are now dancing to a whole new tune, suddenly protesting that they invest billions in the energy sector. The twisted truth is, that it is no defense at all, it was part of their strategy. Often they used their major voting interest to oust directors and pressure boards to pick up more “woke” ESG policies. These are big targets. JP Morgan Chase is the largest bank in the US and BlackRock is the largest asset manager in the world.

This is excellent news, and we need more. Spread the news. But how did it get to the point where a bank that outspokenly campaigned to end fossil fuels was managing 60% of the state employees retirement funds in a state that is […]

Regulatory crime of the century: Australian government TGA finally lifts Ivermectin ban

By Jo Nova

After a 628 day ban for no medical reason, the Australian TGA has decided that our doctors will be allowed to prescribe ivermectin “off label” again, like they did for decades without a problem. Apparently, they don’t have to worry now that crazy people will use it to avoid getting injected with a barely studied, radical new form of drug which had no published data.

TGA: Removal of prescribing restrictions on ivermectin

From 1 June 2023, prescribing of oral ivermectin for ‘off-label’ uses will no longer be limited…

…there is sufficient evidence that the safety risks to individuals and public health is low when prescribed by a general practitioner in the current health climate.

This considers the evidence and awareness of medical practitioners about the risks and benefits of ivermectin, and the low potential for any shortages of ivermectin for its approved uses. Also, given the high rates of vaccination and hybrid immunity against COVID-19 in Australia, use of ivermectin by some individuals is unlikely to now compromise public health.

Ten years before this decision they knew it was no threat to public health. Ivermectin was known to be so safe […]

Wednesday

9.6 out of 10 based on 11 ratings

Jo Nova talks to Mark Steyn about Volcanoes and free speech

Watch on SteynOnline or ADH TV

By Jo Nova

My appearance with the wonderful Mark Steyn Tuesday is playing at SteynOnline, or on the Australian ADH TV.

Mark was tickled with the idea from my article last week: The science is settled but we just found 19,000 new volcanoes. He also wanted to talk about The crime of talking to Tucker Carlson and the Red-pilling of Naomi Wolf. We discussed other major science surprises like the mass phytoplankton blooms that seed clouds. That was another rule breaking surprise just two months ago — that moment when researchers realized that all the toluene and benzene pollution over the Southern Ocean was actually not caused by humans at all, but by phytoplankton.

We discussed the odd coincidence of how all the places that are warming in Antarctica seem to lie over the top of a 91 volcanoes we only discovered a few years ago. As I said, we know the surface of the moon better than we know the depths of the ocean. Only three men have visited the Mariana Trench and it’s only 11 kilometers from the surface of Earth, but 12 men have walked on the moon.

— […]

Why is temperature data a national secret? BOM still hiding data

By Jo Nova

Think of the BOM as an advertising agency for big-government programs, and it all makes sense…

Apparently, after the stinging criticism about them, the Bureau of Meteorology is telling journalists and academics that “they publish all the data”. Jennifer Marohasy has been fielding calls and correcting journalists on air who are fooled by this claim. Clearly this isn’t true, or she wouldn’t have needed to spend three years on FOI applications just to get a tiny part of it, (and in the least helpful form possible , like 1,000 sheets of paper). The Bureau not only don’t publish this data, they actively work to hide it and fight FOI’s.

The BOM are not only hiding national temperature data, now they are trying to hide that they are hiding it too. There is some dynamite secret here. Why is it so important — perhaps because it shows that the BOM installed new thermometers that register artificially higher temperatures than the old glass thermometers do? Thousands of “hottest ever records” have been set by new electronic thermometers that might not have been set if we still used traditional thermometers.

If the Bureau can’t be bothered giving […]

The crime of talking to Tucker Carlson and the Red-pilling of Naomi Wolf

By Jo Nova

More than anything the Parasite Rulers fear the coming together of the sensible Left and Right — which is exactly what happened when Naomi Wolf spoke to Tucker Carlson.

In Naomi Wolf’s left-leaning circles, Tucker Carlson was an evil, bad man racist misogynist. But when she tried to talk about vaccine injuries, all her usual media friends ignored her. The last men standing in the US media who would interview her were Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon. Worse, after the interviews the tribal hate started to flow from her soon-to-be-former-friends — somehow the topic didn’t matter: maternal deaths, miscarriages, and erratic periods were all irrelevant — the only thing that mattered was that she had talked to Carlson or Bannon. “How could you” proclaimed the indignant?! All her years of scoring goals for the Left were suddenly worthless.

Naomi Wolf: So I had to face the alarming evidence that the Left now saw anyone “talking to” the opposition, as being magically, publicly, permanently contaminated and contaminating, in some weird anthropological way, and as now being utterly invalidated, and that they believed all of this in some pre-rational, Stone Age sort of belief matrix.

April 30th, 2023 | Tags: , , , , | Category: AGW socio-political, Big-Government, Free Speech, Global Warming, Psychology, USA, Woke | Print This Post Print This Post | |

Vale Liddell coal: given away for nothing and destroyed by predatory capitalism and a screwed Green market

By Jo Nova

A “win” for predatory capitalism and government mis-interference

Liddell power station (foreground). Bayswater power station (rear).Photo NSW DPI

Yesterday, for the last time the final turbine was switched off at Liddell Coal plant after 52 years of operation. The NSW government gave it away for free in 2014 — bundled like a McHappy Meal in with the sale of Bayswater Coal, valued at $0. Governments saw old coal as worthless, at least until 2017 when everyone saw the bloodbath when the Hazelwood coal plant suddenly closed and electricity prices suddenly rose 85%. Then they started to panic a little — even Malcolm Turnbull (our Renewables lovin’ PM) started openly pressuring AGL to sell Liddell so it could keep running until his pet project the Snowy Hydro 2.0 could start. Chinese owned Alinta turned up with $250 million dollars and was willing to put in a billion to repair the station and extend its life up to 2030. Despite that bonanza, AGL refused to take the money. It was determined to run it into the ground and shut it down instead. Now it’s determined to blow it up as well. The Demolition crew is already appointed […]

Friday

8.4 out of 10 based on 14 ratings

Free Speech wins: One million people an hour are watching Tucker Carlson on Twitter…

By Jo Nova

Tucker Carlson released a small statement on Twitter seventeen hours ago, and so far 17.7 million people have watched it.

With 77,000 comments under one two minute video it is the World’s Public Town Square.

And it’s a great speech:

“One thing you realize when you step outside the noise for a few days is how genuinely nice most people are…”

“The other thing you notice is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates you see on television are… they are completely irrelevant… and yet at the same time the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future… get virtually no discussion at all: war, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, natural resources… when was the last time we heard a legitimate debate about any those topics?

Debates like that are not permitted. Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down conversation.

Suddenly the United States looks very much like a one party state.”

“That’s a depressing realization… but it won’t last. This moment is too inherently ridiculous to last, so […]

Absolute Zero plan means no new normal cars, most airports gone, and half the beef by 2030!

By Jo Nova

People are waking up to the dark side of the Absolute Zero plan

The totalitarian wet dreams of a UK government consortium of academics are lighting up the internet. As Benny Peiser and Andrew Montford from NetZeroWatch say — people are starting to pay attention in a big way:

The realities of Net Zero are also hitting home for the general public. The threat that the project represents to livelihoods and liberties is becoming more evident by the day. Recently, the mathematician Norman Fenton tweeted an excerpt from a Government-funded report that set out what Net Zero U.K. might look like: no airports, no shipping, no beef and lamb to eat, and most food imports eliminated. Sounds grim, doesn’t it? Lots of people thought so, and the tweet went viral, garnering over three million views.

The Prof Norman Fenton thread that got 3.4 million views on Twitter is, would you believe, about a 2019 UK Government funded research report. Who knew the masses could get that excited about a 31 page prehistoric report on energy policy, but holy-cajoley: it’s a wake up call of just how savage the Absolute Zero plan aims to be. […]

Great Barrier Reef in record coral cover but 97% of Australians don’t know it

By Jo Nova

Only 3% of Australians know the true state of the Reef!

Ten years ago, coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef hit record lows. The news has been full of dire reports of bleaching ever since, but quietly, a phenomenal recovery was blossoming across the full 2,000 kilometer span of the reef. Last year coral cover hit a record high — better than any year since records began in 1986. Corals are thriving but Australians are spending half a billion dollars to save them?

I’m a Director of the Australian Environment Foundation, and after this new record, I worked with fellow Director Peter Ridd to arrange surveys to find out whether Australians had heard the news. What we found was a nation mis-informed.

I am honored to issue the report below. Please forward it on, send letters to the Editors and tell the world. Consider joining the AEF to help us get more science into environmental debates.

— Jo

_________________________________________

 

Great Barrier Reef in record coral cover but 97% of Australians don’t know it

Australian Environment Foundation (AEF)

23 April 2023

[…]

The science is settled but we just found 19,000 new volcanoes

…Hillier, J. K., and A. B. Watts (2007)

By Jo Nova

What would we know?

Underwater seamounts are one to four kilometer high mountains that mostly used to be a volcano. But under a kilometer of water they are hard to see, holy smoke, and we know more about the moon than the bottom of the Mariana, and it’s only 11km “away”.

Most of these undersea volcanoes remain uncharted by sonar, and with only one-quarter of the sea floor mapped, it is impossible to know how many exist. Sometimes we only find out when a nuclear submarine runs into one:

“It’s just mind boggling.” More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered

New seamount maps could aid in studies of ecology, plate tectonics, and ocean mixing

Paul Voosen, Science

In 2005, the nuclear-powered USS San Francisco collided with an underwater volcano, or seamount, at top speed, killing a crew member and injuring most aboard. It happened again in 2021 when the USS Connecticut struck a seamount in the South China Sea, damaging its sonar array.

Despite discovering nearly half the known underwater volcanoes just this week, we already knew 30 years ago that they […]

Peak ESG is behind us: They’ve stopped bragging about environmental wokeness.

By Jo Nova

Environmental wokeness has become a liability for investors

The backlash against ESG has hit bonds, stocks, corporates

In a recent survey, half of large investors in North America now admit to worrying that ESG exposes them to legal risk. When companies want to create a Green-Woke project they issue ESG bonds to get loans to build it, but sometime between last year and this year those Bonds have halved. Suddenly companies are not dressing up in the Big Green cloak. That’s $6 billion in ESG investments that didn’t happen.

The change in direction has been driven by Florida and Texas and the 19 or more states that have joined them. Even though the $2b in funds Ron De Santis pulled from BlackRock et al last year was a drop in the ocean for a $10 trillion dollar fund, it was the tip of a spear at the heart of the beast. The financial houses and asset managers were using other people’s money to force through political changes those same people didn’t want to vote for. If the crowd followed De Santis the whole game was up.

De Santis has just tightened the screws further today:

DeSantis […]

40 years of expert failure: New NOAA STAR satellite temperatures only show half the warming that climate models do

By Jo Nova h/t Cohenite

New NOAA STAR Satellite system gets a major correction and suddenly agrees with UAH satellites, not RSS

An all new reanalysis of the STAR satellite data finds markedly lower temperature trends for the last 40 years. The big deal about this is that this third dataset suddenly supports the original UAH satellite data, not the other RSS system, and not the “surface thermometers” sitting near hot tarmacs and absolutely not the climate models.

The warming trend in the troposphere was only half of what the expert models predicted. From the paper:

Santer et al. (2021) reported that the multi-model averages for the TTT trends from CMIP5 and CMIP6 were 0.28–0.29 K/decade during 1979–2019. The total TTT trend found in this study was only one-half of the climate model simulations during the same period.

The authors admit that this has strong implications for the models, and supports a paper by skeptics Ross McKitrick and John Christy: Ross McKitrick replied in the Financial Post:

An important new study on climate change came out recently…

Zou’s team notes that their findings “have strong implications for trends in climate model simulations and other […]

A Technocratic Superclass of Earth Saviors seek to manage every aspect of our lives

By Jo Nova

Now rice controls the weather too:

Meat, dairy and rice production will bust 1.5C climate target, shows study

Damien Carrington, The Guardian

Emissions from food system alone will drive the world past target, unless high-methane foods are tackled. The study showed that 75% of this food-related heating was driven by foods that are high sources of methane, ie those coming from ruminant livestock such as cattle, and rice paddy fields.

The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, treated each greenhouse gas separately for 94 key types of food, enabling their impact on climate over time to be better understood.

Rice is the primary staple of half the world’s population, and mostly the poorer half. They are not normally the target of the do-gooder set, but as Marc Morano argues below, it’s all about creating a technocratic superclass of elite managers — both bureaucratic and business types who decide the winners and losers, who control the purse strings and the profits with regulations. They cannot handle a decentralized world. They need to control the means of production, the distribution of food, and control of the movement of people.

[…]

Democrats, independents and young Americans losing faith that climate change is “man made”

By Jo Nova

Are young Americans growing out of the climate religion?

In a healthy sign, young adults aged 18 to 29 are much more skeptical now than they were five years ago. A 17% decline in the number who think climate change was mostly or entirely man-made is a major fall, especially in a large survey of 5,400 people.

Across all age groups American belief that climate change was mostly or entirely man-made fell from 60% in 2018 down to 49% in 2023. The fall was almost entirely in Democrat and Independent voters.

Republican voters were much more skeptical to start with and haven’t changed at all, which EPIC described as “stable” because that sounded a lot better than “skeptical”.

Source: EPIC (Energy Policy Institute of Chicago)

 

Democrats are persuaded by scientists, storms, and hot weekends, Republicans, not so much:

Source: EPIC

Suggestible people who are primed to see hurricanes, floods and heatwaves as evidence of man-made climate change will believe they were influenced by the weather. Obviously, it’s circular too: those primed to believe a normal downpour is a rain-bomb will also believe they have experienced “extreme events”.

 

Source: EPIC

[…]

What’s worse?  A global fleet of interconnected intelligent machines, or 8 billion artificial “best friends”

By Jo Nova

We’re on the cusp of the Quickening in Artificial Intelligence

Jordan Peterson wonders if we have thought through how fast things are evolving:

They’re not building autonomous cars ….they’re building fleets of mutually intercommunicating autonomous robots, and each of them will be able to teach the other, because their nervous system will be the same. And when there is 10 million of them, and one of them learns something, all ten million of them learns it at the same time. So they’re not going to have to be very bright before they’re very very very smart.

We’re not connected wirelessly with the same platform. But robots, they are.

Once they get a little bit smart, they’re not going to stop at being a little bit smart for very long. They’re going to be unbelievably smart, like overnight. …

Armed robots are frightening, but so is an artificial “best friend”

Homo Sapiens is a gregarious species. It’s hardwired. What happens when the scams, politics or fake romances are served up by a machine with infinite patience? When the machine knows our full history, our quirks and how we score […]

A map that might change the way you think about the world

By Jo Nova

Where do people live?

These marvelous spike maps mark out a 3D representation of the population density on each two-kilometer-square pixel of Earth’s surface. There are no outlines for countries, yet for the most part we can still see where the land meets the sea.

Credit goes to Alistair Rae, formerly a professor of urban studies and planning at the University of Sheffield. He used the EU’s population density data with the mapping tool Aerialod to create these glorious 3D maps.

And the map shouts “India”.

UPDATE: Do click to see the larger maps!

Alistair Rae, Stats, Maps n Pix Click to enlarge | CC 2.0

This is the global distribution of 8 billion people. The abundance of South East Asia is undeniable, as is the emptiness of the Sahara and the vacancy of Siberia. Antarctica is an invisible continent.

Australia and New Zealand are barely there. We can see how isolated Perth Australia is (where I live).

Annotated by Jo to show friends in the USA where Perth is.

Hawaii and Auckland likewise, stand apart.

Most maps originally came from Alastair Rae on Twitter in 2020 and later from the Visual Capitalist […]

Is Climate Change really caused by electronic thermometers? (The BOM don’t want Australians to see the data)

By Jo Nova Electronic thermometers may read up to 0.7 degrees higher than glass ones.

Sometime in the mid-1990s the Australian Bureau of Meteorology replaced many of their glass thermometers with electronic sensors. They claimed they were carefully verified to match the slow way the old glass thermometers worked — after all, we wouldn’t want to use gizmos that recorded new all-time *Hottest Ever Records* that were actually just one-second gusts of hot air, would we? Our newspapers would be full of meaningless headlines about how Climate Change made us hotter than ever in history, when really it was just a mistaken effect of a new type of thermometer. Imagine that disaster of public policy…

Of course this question is so easily solved. The BoM just needed to keep the two thermometers side by side in the same boxes and record all that data. Then they could release it, showing how well the electronic gadgets mimicked the glass thermometers, and Australians everywhere would feel confident that BoM was the sterling agency they thought it was. Instead Skeptics have been asking for comparison data for nine years and the BoM has refused, hedged, asked exorbitant fees, destroyed data and […]

Exercise therapy is “better than drugs” for common type of heart failure

Image by DanaTentis from Pixabay

By Jo Nova

A new review of studies came out a few weeks ago pointing out that trials of 700 people with the most common kind of heart failure show they did better after an exercise program than they did with drugs.

I’d like to say “Big Pharma won’t be happy” but Big Pharma probably couldn’t care less. The money, the industry, the regulatory agencies, Hollywood, and a lifetime’s habit means most people will keep returning to largely well-meaning but busy doctors who will prescribe the latest something, whatever it is.

But ultimately the people who get out there and do supervised exercise of any kind a few times a week get more benefits than those taking the latest patented drug. They’ll also have a higher quality of life. In this study they’re looking at people with the most kind of common heart failure called HFpEF. The exercise is supervised because there is some risk in people who may be quite unfit or unhealthy.

How much of our lives is spend working to pay for a bloated health-care system that finds expensive ways to employ many people to do what we could have […]