Weekend Unthreaded

8.5 out of 10 based on 22 ratings

248 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

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    Annie

    Hi Jo! Good Morning to you all in WA, including family members having a holiday in your beautiful state.

    Very many thanks for all your work and recent posts Jo.

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      Rod Stuart

      It is indeed difficult to imagine how one could maintain sanity if it weren’t for this blog.

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        Yonniestone

        I concur, however maintaining it and having it in the first place is a self rational construct.

        Did you know the average human head weighs 3.6kg (8lbs)?

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          Dennis

          Considering that humans do not use the capacity of their brain, and that the brain consumes so much energy from the food our body demands, and that human birth is so much more difficult because of the size of the head of babies, and that following brain damage humans have been known to regain full or close to full capacity of their brain, why is the brain so large?

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            Large (w)essle is required to contain the extraordinary BS of Earthlings. Still there is no space allocated for learning, consideration, or knowledge! OH whoa are we!

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            Yonniestone

            There’s quite a few theories on that,

            – The brain was designed to enable future expansion either through technology or enlightenment.
            – It’s an unused leftover through devolvement from our alien ancestry.
            – It was designed by a man ergo bigger is better.
            – It’s an evolutionary impact protection system, possibly from mating rituals.
            – A result of the ancient ‘Grey Cells Matter’ movement.
            – A food production initiative from a long lost Zombie dynasty.

            All plausible ideas but maybe we’ll never know.

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              Gee Aye

              How about it is a myth that a large part of it is unused. Sort of demolishes all those silly theories and many a bad self help book

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                Griffo

                I think I agree with you GI ,or is it the wine I have consumed after a long pleasant Sunday lunch?

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                Yonniestone

                I agree, the main methods of measuring activity, Electroencephalography (EEG), Electroencephalography (EEG) and Magnetoencephalography (MEG) are physical characteristics we have discovered, I’d suggest there’s a lot more energy we don’t know about yet to be realised.

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                KinkyKeith

                Griffin
                It’s not the size of the brain so much as the connections.

                Neanderthals had much larger brains than us but while they were a group that could survive the cold really well they couldn’t cope with the heat nor with smarter neighbours.

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                KinkyKeith

                Autocorrect

                Griffo

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              • #
                Raven

                I’m not convinced we only use a proportion of our brain.
                However, it’s inescapable that we have a finite number of brain cells. The obvious concern is how we utilise them.
                For instance, if I watch too much of their ABC, I might not have enough left to remember where the car keys are.

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              • #

                Raven,

                For instance, if I watch too much of their ABC, I might not have enough left to remember where the car keys are.

                Given that the ABC targets lower brain functions; you might simply forget to breathe. 😉

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                OriginalSteve

                Raven, I am convinced the human capcity for stupidity is infinite however. The capability of our brains also needs to be safeguarded against dumb ideas which can take root if not quickly dealt with.

                Humans have an amazing capacity, God was very clever in His design.

                I find that the typical propganda techniques work through using the brain against itself – there are certain mechanisms that propaganda uses. I actually think to safeguard ourselves we need to disconnect more and ban smart phone useage by kids until they are at least 16.

                IMHO people are only as smnart as thier internet connection is, and people dont really develop their capacity to hink, work out problems or really nut their way through things when they are deluged in one-sided “information” 24×7 – all it does is train them to be stupid echo chambers for what ever is popular in social media, and they are never forced to seek out wisdom. Part of the seeking out process is learning in its own right. I also think kids need to be trained to ascertain the correctness of information sa a first priority – stuff that is “go to” ( like MSM and wikipedia ) needs to be put inder the spotlight – as parents this is as important as getting an education itself, as information is uselss if its corrupted…..

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              • #
                Raven

                Kids and smart phones, eh . . maybe.

                I recall when my youngest daughter (now 23) wanted a smart phone because it was becoming all the rage in high school at the time. This was also the beginnings of news items about cyber bullying, so I became aware of that.

                She’d probably be regarded as a reserved girl but to my knowledge has never encountered cyber bullying. I’d contend that any kid who does experience this would have also have been bullied in the playground and that a smart phone is just another avenue. I’d like to think (as any one eyed parent would ;)) that she learned how to handle bullying as part of growing up.

                I recall relating the following some time back; she now has a science degree and I asked her about AGW. She just looked at me with one of those deadly stares you get when you’ve told a ‘Dad joke’ so I think we’re safe.

                Seldom discussed is the up-side of smart phones. She and her 27 year old brother have been travelling quite extensively O/S during the last couple of years. These kids are well connected and rarely need hotel accommodation. They’re routinely staying with acquaintances and friends of friends built up over the likes of Facebook.

                Both these kids use Uber ride service and my daughter in particular, has never been in a traditional taxi. But my kids aren’t unique, either. As far as I can see, the whole younger generation is utilising modern technology that simply wasn’t available in my day,
                They also seem able to sort the wheat from the chaff (propaganda) without breaking stride, so I think, given time, they’ll be able to take over running the world just fine.

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                tom0mason

                As Einstein’s brain appears to be of about average size but structurally different.
                A significant portion that is missing is the cortical regions of the cerebral hemispheres controlling the loafing on the sofa watching daytime TV. Also much reduced is the concurrence/consensus maximus structure that is usual on scientists’ prefrontal cortex.

                See http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/09/24/brain.awt252

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                Hasbeen

                Remember when they reckoned more than half the code in DNA was junk DNA?

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                tom0mason

                Hasbeen,
                Yes if only the researchers in DNA had wider interests in say communications, and such things as FEC (forward error correction) and entropy encoding.
                These are methods that ensure message decoding integrity so long as the signaling medium is above a minimum signal to noise level.
                Something used every time you use a telephone, switch on a digital TV, or satellite feed, or connect to the internet.

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              Raven

              To add to all that, I reckon adults are perhaps more susceptible to propaganda, so let’s see how this stacks up.

              Not long ago we got most of our news from papers and TV. We well knew those sources had their own particular bias . . it was mostly subtle, but well known. The big outrage in bygone days were the likes of “The Truth” newspaper which contained scarcely any news and mostly relied on scantily clad ladies on the cover . . and even more scantily on page three. That’s the paper the older generation of factory workers read on the train going home.
              All was right with the world. We knew the media had a tilt but we also knew the angle of tilt.

              Fast forward to today.
              On blogs like this there have been many grumblings that the MSM is the actual problem . . but not until the US election was it revealed so starkly and irrefutably.
              The well accepted and understood media bias of old has been shattered. They broke the trust . . a trust that was maintained even though there was a bias.

              No longer. Unfortunately, old news outlets that were merely biased will now be considered in the same light as CNN who employed a DNC official and were happy to pass questions to Hillary prior to those debates.

              So, my contention would be that many people are currently transitioning to on-line sources as newspaper circulation numbers fall away. They’ve paid their monthly subscription and likely blissfully unaware of the credibility crisis faced my the MSM. Certainly the MSM aren’t going to report it.

              That’s left quite a sudden vacuum of credible news sources and it’ll be interesting to see how it gets filled. Credibility takes a long time to establish.

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                OriginalSteve

                Agreed. I think the more the MSM can be exposed for what they are, the better.

                Teaching kids how to evauate the accuracy of a “news” source is more critical than the news itself.

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            Dennis

            As it is free for all weekend unthreaded, maybe the answer would be discovered if the missing link was found? Research at two universities (UK and US) have revealed that the “Eve” who is the mother genetically of all modern females was born some 80,000 years before the “Adam” who gave us the Y chromosome. The question is who were their parents?

            The Sumerians and Babylonian written history suggests an external creator using local material (people) and in vitro fertilisation. Babylonian records of their kings span back about 200,000 years and in Africa there are remains of gold mines dated to that time in history.

            I am thinking about the larger than need be human brain. Is our genetic design a hybrid? There are references in the Christian Bible to external beings, Nefilm for example.

            I appreciate that this comment will probably be attacked but there is a record it is based on.

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            • #
              Mike

              A bit of Darwin,lamarck and maybe even some Teilhard

              Pierre Teilhard de Chardin/Quotes:

              “The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.
              “It doesn’t matter if the water is cold or warm if you’re going to have to wade through it anyway.
              “The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

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                gnome

                I think he was some sort of religious maniac wasn’t he? If you have to wade through it it matters a hel of a lot if it’s warm or cold!

                If you don’t have to, who cares?

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                Mike

                I like the quote about “observer” and the ‘observed’.

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              Craig Thomas

              Good grief – UFOs put humans into Africa 200,000 years ago….

              Only problem with that is your “African Goldmines” show evidence of metal use, something that was introduced to the area less than 800 years ago, to a population that built stone-walled pens for their cattle (and not a “metropolis” as the UFO fantasists have dreamed up).

              The reason a particular gene can be dated to a particular time is that new mutations continually arise. All 7 billion humans are descended from a hundreds-of-millions-years-long (discontinuous) line consisting of numerous single predecessor organisms, including, presumably, a number of predecessor primates.

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              Dennis, don’t worry, no one in their right mind would want to bother attacking such an unhinged comment. I hope Santa brings you nice things this year

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          • #

            It’s to enable dreams. And dreams aren’t what you think they are.

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          • #
            Mike

            Random snippet…….”following brain damage humans have been known to regain full or close to full capacity of their brain, why is the brain so large?”

            It is not that the collective collective brain is so large, it is that a particular region of the brain is perhaps developing, like a brain/strain at the expense of a harmonious growth of all regions of the brain…… A region of the brain Has to grow extra large to cope with dealing with cognitive dissonance for example, or poor conditions of existence in general.

            The idea that one region of the brain is growing more than another specialised region can be seen in the animal kingdom. In this area of the cosmos, namely, on earth, there are all kinds of fauna that demonstrate one specialised mode of existence so that a particular fauna demonstrates a region of the brain that is more developed than other regions. For example, a worms brain might might not have a very sizable emotional region of the brain, and thanks for all the fish 🙂

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              Mike

              *one region of the brain is growing more than another specialised region of the brain………
              one specialized region of the brain is growing more than another specialized region of the brain.…….

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              tom0mason

              I consider that our brains are not the simplistic functional parts that so many journals and some medics seem to wish it to be.
              Knowing something about communications allows me to surmise that our brains have some centers of specialisms knitted into a mesh of error correction structures. By this approach the large amounts of redundancy ensures recovery from injury without having to totally relearn from new.
              Also messages (thoughts) can be check against a database of knowns, probables, and imagined scenarios of logic, emotions, and feelings. Through this method relatively high quality recall, imagination, and processing can be performed but at the expense of complication (vast numbers of interconnections), and the need for periodic ‘downtime’ to resync and embed memories of new information to error correction structures, and rebuild a new cellular structure where required.

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          • #

            Say, I have a few thoughts on this brain capacity thing.

            Blink, you’re born.

            Everything from then on enters the brain, everything you see, do, read, everything. It’s all in there.

            It’s just waiting to be recalled, and 99% of it will never be needed again.

            Some pathways to memories never close, and those memories are easily recalled.

            However, (and here I can see nearly all of you thinking that this has happened to you) there’s some things that are not often recalled, but you have this vague idea that you remember it, but try as you might, you just can’t recall it. It’s so damned infuriating. After a while you just give up and do something else. Even though you move on, the brain is still working on finding that missing thing, subconsciously.

            Lo and behold, a little while later, blink, there’s that thing you couldn’t remember, and you wonder why it just popped up out of the blue, so to speak.

            The brain, once triggered, goes looking for that memory, down synapses for so long unused, that it has to find a pathway to that memory via other areas.

            Once found, it automatically triggers the ‘knowing’ part of the brain that it has finally found that thing it had been searching for. Sometimes, it might not happen at all, and even though it’s still ‘in there’, the path is lost.

            I used to occasionally sleep with a note pad and pencil beside the bed earlier on in my (younger RAAF) life because a few times, I remembered the thing during the night, and it woke me up once located, and now satisfied that I had remembered it, I went back to sleep, only to forget it again when I did wake up in the morning.

            I have lost count of the literally thousands of times this situation has happened to me across my life. Even now, I trust my brain to find these things, and I’m confident that they, more often than not, will be found.

            Tony.

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              KinkyKeith

              A very accurate comment Tony.

              As you say, it’s all there.

              If it all came out at once we would be overwhelmed so the brain has a gating system that only lets out material connected with the conscious train of thought.

              If we haven’t given the topic any recent exposure it might take a little longer to finger the right paths.

              Interesting.

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              • #
                KinkyKeith

                Find!!!!

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                Mike

                “The brain, once triggered, goes looking for that memory, down synapses for so long unused, that it has to find a pathway to that memory via other areas.”

                In Beelzebub’s tales to his Grandson, the author formulates that for those “triggers” that do not require a rumination and are simply automatic thus……

                “In my opinion, what will be troublesome for you in all this is chiefly that in childhood there was implanted in you—and has now become perfectly harmonized with your general psyche—an excellently working automatism for perceiving all kinds of new impressions, thanks to which “blessing” you have now, during your responsible life, no need to make any individual effort whatsoever.”
                ― G.I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson

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              PeterPetrum

              So true, Tony. I used to marvel at this ability of the brain, but I have now learned to use it.

              In describing it to my wife, I have likened it to a series of filing cabinets, with filing drawers and thousands of files. You tell the filing clerk (your memory) to go looking for a particular document that you think might be in a particular file (that vague memory) and then you go out to lunch, leaving him/her to go on looking. At lunch you get a phone call from the clerk telling you that she/he has found it. Bingo!

              It happened to me yesterday. I play in a ukelele band and had not turned up for a couple of months until yesterday. I was desperately trying to remember, for hours before, the band leader’s name, without success. Just as I walked into the venue it came to the forefront of my brain, so I was able to greet her enthousiastically by name! What a marvel our brains are.

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              stan stendera

              As always brilliant, Tony.

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              Hasbeen

              Tony is that why the memories of a number of lovely young ladies of my youth keep popping into my mind, unexpectedly 60 years since they were last thought of? Am I wishing these memories into my consciousness?

              I wish there was some way to let these ladies know how much pleasure these memories of them give me.

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            Andrew McRae

            Once I learned about Hopfield networks in an Artificial Neural Networks course and just how many synapses are needed to store and recall even a relatively simple binary image, there was no longer any great wonder for me about why our brains are so big.
            Amassing a lifetime of knowledge and skills is an evolutionary advantage and a lot of synapses and neurones are needed to store them.
            Unlike computers which depart from their factory before they begin operating, our brains’ neural and glial cells are accompanied by their own construction and maintenance functions too, so the information density of this system cannot be as high as computer chips even if we were to solve all the other deficiencies of computer chips relative to the brain.
            All this has eventually lead to big brains. Well, that all sounds plausible to me anyhow.

            On the other hand there’s Dualism…
            Haha, no, it’s quackery, forget I mentioned it.

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            Clyde Spencer

            You might want to carefully examine your first assumption that humans don’t use the capacity of their brain. A good place to start would be to define what you mean by “use.” It may well be that your definition is only a subset of how humans use their brains.

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            Roy Hogue

            … why is the brain so large?

            I would think the obvious answer is to fill up all the space in that large head. Otherwise part of it would be empty and we’d all be airheads. 😉

            And who would want to be an airhead?

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          Rod Stuart

          You didn’t strike me as the typ that goes around cutting them off to find out, Yonniestone.

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        Manfred

        The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority,
        but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

        Marcus Aurelius Augustus

        This site and its associated virtual community, together with the occasional troll and the reflexive red thumb that unfailingly oblige by generously reinforcing the reasons why we congregate here, altogether make the object of life an entirely achievable objective.
        Thank you.

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          Graeme No.3

          You didn’t get a red thumb from the lurking troll despite your lure, but Griffo did when all he mentioned was a pleasant lunch with wine. So obviously the duty troll is a teetotaller and is denying you a red thumb because he/she/it is a sadist.

          A lurking teetotal sadist….there the worst kind of troll.

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          OriginalSteve

          I like the quote…sums me up. Thinking differently is always a threat to the unthinking herd.

          Recnelty and with much sadness I am having to retire my old 2G phone as they want the spectrum to expand social media navel gazing….SCORE!!
          /sarc

          Its been interesting to watch people and the fact I have an older candy bar phone – I demonstrated how tough they are by kicking my old 33xx series nokia along the floor in the office, spinning it up in th air and letting it land on the floor then pick it up and throw it onto the desk…hands up if youre wincing about now?

          Anyway, the interesting thing is many in the office who I like and are intelligent people have been the ones who I can tell are uncomfortable with me not being part of the smartphone Borg Collective….not having a smart phone marks me as a rebel, not part of the herd, somethng I never expected from smart people…( now roll that forward into science land…). So right now I am maxxing out my rebel-ness by waiting until nov 30 to do the swap over. Ironically I dont do much more than text and call, and as an IT guy that makes people get all weirded out, but I dont play games on line, cant see any value in thing slike netflix ( unless you like the latest smulchy american melo-drama ), I dont do social media, linkedin etc, so its even more extreme, but I love old steam technology and appreciate technology and its appropriate use in our lives, part of th eengineering mindset i guess…..

          Old joke –

          to an optimist the glass is half full
          to a pessimist its half empty
          to an Engineer its twice the size it needs to be…he he

          Have a great week!

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          stan stendera

          +1,000,000,000,000

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      • #
        brill

        I hope everyone is going to give Jo some chocolate for Xmas

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          PeterPetrum

          Thanks for reminding me! It’s Thanksgiving in the US on Thursday – I think Jo deserves a Thanksgiving chocolate or two for her coverage of the Trump miracle.

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          Andrew McRae

          Not while she continues to coyly imply that maybe the law of conservation of mass does not apply to carbon.

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    • #
      Glen Michel

      This site is always a must visit every day.Thanks Jo and all that support you.Intelligent and considerate.Wonderful!

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  • #
    Fang

    #872 Joe Rogan Podcast/Video cast of
    Graham Handcock and Randell Carson on a 12800 year event that brought earth out of ice age!
    https://youtu.be/0H5LCLljJho

    Very compelling augments for a very large asteroid banging into North America and causing mass flooding and days of globle torrential rain!
    Graham Handcock is trying to help promote the crowd fund comet research project to study the way we can mitergate a comet impact and figure out how to deal with just a little one, if one hits earth!
    I’d listen to podcast of this, but recommend you watch the utube vid of Joe Rogan Entertainment #872, as theres a few vidules from Randell Carson.
    (My job of spot spraying noxious weeds from a side by side atv vehicle all day, gives me a chance to listen to alot of Podcasts of the left heads exploding! 🙂 )

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  • #
    Lance

    A bit of good fun for all who think indepenently. 🙂

    “Conversations with a Liberal: Global Warming Panic Explained”

    http://www.battlefield315.com/2011/02/global-warming-panic-explained.html

    Quite a good set of humorous snark.

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      OriginalSteve

      the site http://www.thedailybayonet.com was razor sharp in its slicing a dicing of the climate scam…it went “quiet” about 2013, probably been threatened into silence …probably too good at its job.

      If anyone can get them to restart its an amusing and high brow ruthless takedown of the the CAGW Big Lie….

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    Lance

    A bit of good fun for all who think logically. 🙂

    “Conversations with a Liberal: Global Warming Panic Explained”

    http://www.battlefield315.com/2011/02/global-warming-panic-explained.html

    Quite a good set of humorous snark.

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    el gordo

    ‘We are in the midst of a dramatic shift in our weather pattern. Temperatures are already plummeting, and wind speeds have quickly picked up as a potent cold front barrels through the DMV. Strong (at times hazardous) winds will be the main story for the next 36 hours, with the near 40-degree change in temperature being a close second.’

    Capital Weather Gang / Washington Post

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    Retired Now

    I had to smile when I thought that the “precautionary principle” would require that the whole of New Zealand should be evacuated until the country could be proven to be safe for all.
    I got the idea from here http://www.thecivilian.co.nz/civil-defence-evacuates-whole-of-new-zealand-after-engineers-discover-structural-issues-with-the-country/

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      Manfred

      All must be well in New Zealand & Australia for weed is in and tobacco out.
      Here: NZ still the World’s top consumer of cannabis
      and here: Kiwis, Aussies world’s biggest cannabis smokers

      Between 9.1 and 14.6 per cent of the population of Oceania used the drug, compared to the estimated annual worldwide usage of 2.6 to 5.0 per cent.

      And the anti-smoking hypocrites prance around endlessly waving their hands over tobacco. They fail to understand that they’re simply displacing a fundamental behaviour engaged in since the dawn of time. Mankind has sought to ferment something or smoke something since the coupling of an overblown cortex with special senses occurred early in evolution. Transcending present moment difficulties or predicting the future (and more recently, the delusion of controlling it) quickly became a necessary pre-eminent focus. The pressure to do these remains as strong today as it was in the past.

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        Fang

        Only issue I have with mass use of cannabis, is the car/truck/bike that “might” crash into me or my family!:(

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        Glen Michel

        I’ve got to say that fat spliff and a few beers has a good effect at day’s end. Ahh ,I love being.

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        The decline in tobacco is partly because of lies told by governments; over and above the nasty health effects in parts of the population. It’s a bit of Russian Roulette but smoking seems to “preserve” some individuals, not kill them.

        The UN has been playing its usual games of secretive conferences. I created a playlist of videos by TheRebel on the UN WHO FCTC COP7.

        Media were excluded from the main sessions.

        Globalist, quasi-invisible elites making rules on what the unwashed masses should be doing; with very little if any understanding of the subject matter and no reference to published experts in the scientific field. It’s evident from one of the bureaucrats participating, that some misunderstand nicotine to be the core health issue with smoking.

        Unfortunately the reporter didn’t follow up with a question on when tomatoes and other nicotine-containing foods would be banned. Indeed, the presence of nicotine in some groups of plants may be responsible for an over-estimation of the extent of “passive smoking” resulting in a mis-attribution as to possible causes for health effects or the “background level” of ailments.

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          Manfred

          The ‘tobacco phenomenon’ is an extraordinary abuse of institutional power, and clearly demonstrates the playbook of the global activist. The UN tobacco agenda appears to have been used as a key ‘how to do it’ model and remains in the process of validation as current UN anti-tobacco activities suggest.

          Exactly the same strategies have been employed in an endeavour to implement the UN post-2015 sustainable development Agenda, and will be used to promote the latest UN emanation from Quito Urban Agenda Habitat 3. We have experienced the tactics born of the strategy here and know them all too well, as we watch them applied to cars, vehicle speed, Conservatives, Health and Safety, and the list goes on.

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        Clyde Spencer

        It seems to me that the “since the dawn of time” argument is an admission that humans haven’t progressed much except superficially. Actually, the recent fascination with body mutilation in the name of fashion would appear to be a regression to more primitive ancestors.

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        theRealUniverse

        You know cannabis was made illegal in the USA a century ago because blacks smoked it. (Im sure I read that a while ago).

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    Lance

    Gordo: Dropping 25 F / 14 C overnight on US East Coast. Cold front, yes.

    Methinks Nature has a mind of her own. My Wife doesn’t care about CO2 either. 🙂

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      Dennis

      It could not possibly have influence from a new Maunder Minimum underway.

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        Craig Thomas

        No such thing is underway.

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          el gordo

          ‘No such thing is underway.’

          Fair comment which I tend to agree with, its only a small blip about a couple of decades long and then (sun willing) we’ll have global warming again.

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            Craig Thomas

            Sunspot numbers this year have been a regular 50-odd per month.

            This fact means it is currently not even remotely comparable to a “low sunspot numbers” period, let alone a “Maunder Minimum”.

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      el gordo

      Lance the feeling is that this Northern Hemisphere winter is the one the Denialati have been waiting for, so the trick now is to work out what nature has in store.

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        Craig Thomas

        hmmm….well it’s going to have to start cooling down a lot more than it’s currently dfoing, judging by the record-breaking lack of sea ice at the momjnent:
        http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/18/world/sea-ice-arctic-antarctic-lows/

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          el gordo

          The Arctic is warmer than normal and sea ice is well down, which means the cold has moved south and is stretching across the mid latitudes.

          I predict a frozen Hudson River at some point this NH winter.

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          el gordo

          Just in case you think I’m making stuff up.

          ‘With the AO now predicted to trend negative over the next two weeks, the AO forecast suggests an overall cooling trend for the Northern Hemisphere (NH) mid-latitudes over the next two weeks.

          ‘With the large pool of cold air over Siberia remaining intact into the foreseeable, East Asia remains at the highest risk for multiple Arctic outbreaks.

          ‘Europe is a tougher forecast. The wind flow over Europe is typically predominantly westerly when the NAO is positive and the recent pattern of cold temperatures widespread across Northern and Western Europe will relax this week with the positive NAO.

          ‘However as the NAO trends negative the wind flow should acquire a more northerly component, leading to a colder temperature pattern once again across Europe.’

          Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER)

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          tom0mason

          Craig Thomas,
          There may be little ice at the arctic but unfortunately there is little to prove the amount of ice at the North Pole is a good indicator of climate trends.

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            tom0mason

            Where are the records for the amount of Arctic ice over the centuries?
            Ice records that could prove Hansen’s assumption that Arctic sea ice is a good proxy for indicating global temperature trends.

            Since when did local temperature effects, both atmospheric and oceanic, on ice volumes become an indicator of global temperatures?

            Where are the studies and research attempting to prove Arctic ice amounts vary directly with global temperatures?

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            Craig Thomas

            You are absolutely right – when ice melts, it is absolutely not a sign that there is any warming going on.

            It’s something else.

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              AndyG55

              Shift the Siberian freezing cold cell with warm air trapped by it in the Arctic.. the ice will freeze pretty darn quickly.

              ITS A WEATHER EVENT.. bozo !!

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        • #
          AndyG55

          Massive severely cold cell over northern Russia.

          You can ignore that is you think it helps your story.

          Its a WEATHER event.

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    Dave in the States

    Well of course green energy tax credits require other budget items to sacrifice. Why it must be school kids instead of the usual trough feeders is anyone’s guess:

    http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865667347/Lawmaker-Rooftop-solar-tax-credits-taking-20-million-from-education-budget.html?pg=all

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  • #

    Elizabeth Clare Prophet on a fear that Australians told her they have been beset with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ab2ndMBpLw

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    Dennis

    I have been thinking about President elect Trump turning our PM down when the PM requested a meeting with him, but agreeing to meet the Japanese PM. Both PMs were travelling to the same meeting at the time.

    And I wonder if our PM’s former position as a chairman at Goldman & Sachs influenced Trump? I have also read that Trump advised the PMs office that they should talk to golfer, Australian Greg Norman, who he trusts as a friend and business associate. This put down is not untypical of busy high flyer business people communicating to other more junior business people who want an audience with them.

    Of course Australia is an important strategic ally for the US, but as a nation our population and economy is much smaller than the US State of California. In other words, about as important to Trump as Norfolk Island would be to an Australian PM. Maybe even less?

    Then again, an Australian politician who dares to accept a salary or remuneration package that exceeds what is offered to a POTUS could be viewed as pretentious, even if his political enemies arranged for the annual increases from 07-10 that achieved this very generous position.

    The political climate has changed, now for the main show.

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      PeterPetrum

      “I have also read that Trump advised the PMs office that they should talk to golfer, Australian Greg Norman, who he trusts as a friend and business associate”

      That is not my understanding of what happened, and I think it very unlikely. I understand that Joe Hockey, our Ambassador in the US, knows Greg Norman well and asked him for Trump’s personal number which he passed on to an agitated PM Turnbull so he could be the first to ring and congratulate the new President-elect. Abe beat him to it, but it seemed a damn rude thing to do, rather than going through the normal channels. And apart from that, it just shows that the Australian Government had no concept that Trump would win and had not bothered to establish formal contact channels.

      And these fools are responsible for our economic and security well being!

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        ianl8888

        … the Australian Government had no concept that Trump would win …

        Yes. This fact underpins all the clumsy waffle we’ve seen emanating from Canberra over the last week. This includes the juvenile address by our current Treasury Head.

        It wasn’t only that Canberra had no idea that Trump could win (and I admit outright that I thought the combination of MSM and Hollywood wankers would be sufficient for Hillary to win) but the Canberran zeitgeist was that soft-left was invincible.

        And they still think that. The outrage at losing is true Monty Python material. Or the episode from Fawlty Towers with the psychiatrist: “Enough material for a full week long convention”.

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        ianl8888

        … the Australian Government had no concept that Trump would win …

        Yes. This fact underpins all the clumsy waffle we’ve seen emanating from Canberra over the last week. This includes the juvenile address by our current Treasury Head.

        It wasn’t only that Canberra had no idea that Trump could win (and I admit outright that I thought the combination of MSM and Hollywood w@nkers would be sufficient for Hillary to win) but the Canberran zeitgeist was that soft-left was invincible.

        And they still think that. The outrage at losing is true Monty Python material. Or the episode from Fawlty Towers with the psychiatrist: “Enough material for a full week long convention”.

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        “Australian Government had no concept that Trump would win”

        Neither did the Obama administration, the political left or the right. This just demonstrates how out of touch with reality politics and government has become.

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          OriginalSteve

          Agreed… although all you need to do is talk to anyone around 40-50 years old in the USA who is on average income to get the truth….and it wasnt pretty.

          Trump won because, like in Oz, the 2 major parties have become blood-gorged ticks on the rump of humanity, and people had finally had enough and decided to remove them.

          As I said to one ex-hippy SoCal resident local recently ( and he hasnt spoken to me since…..I wonder why … ), middle america was in the “anyone but hillary” camp as she represented 4 more years of the Marxist Left gouging people, and people had had enough. Jobs gone, being told what to think, no hope, no opportunities for thier kids, churches being trashed by the State, Big Brother getting bigger – everything that is anathema to your average church-on-sunday quiet hard working american…

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      Lewis P Buckingham

      Despite the fact that ‘no one’ including myself, thought Trump would win, there was a lot of speculation immediately after his win, on interest rates.
      The ‘consensus’from MSM is that they will rise.
      I can’t understand this as if Trump cuts Company tax by say 5% over the next four years, in line with his policy to eventually slash it, the price of money must fall.
      The NZ reserve bank, mindful of the Trump policy and victory, cut interest rates again.
      They would have known that all the ducks had lined up in the US,viz Senate, Congress, Supreme Court and Presidency.
      http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/monetary-policy/monetary-policy-statement/mps-november-2016

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  • #
    Oliver K. Manuel

    This is a copy of the message sent yesterday (Nov 19, 2016) to the American Chemical Society, the world largest professional scientific organization, identifying errors in their Public Policy Statement on Climate Change:

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/ALMOST_TREASON.pdf
    or http://tinyurl.com/z7kw9ra

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    • #
      Oliver K. Manuel

      The use of public funds to deceive the public about natural dangers from living only 1 (one) AU (astronomical unit) from the powerful solar pulsar is a grave threat to the very survival of humanity.

      That is the message I tried to convey to officers of the American Chemical Society yesterday:

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    philthegeek

    This put down is not untypical of busy high flyer business people communicating to other more junior business people who want an audience with them.

    The way Turnbull and some other Libs have been carrying on, i would say that Trump has rightly picked up on the obvious that they are unctuous little prats who will bend over on command and take the “please sir may i have another” line.

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      AndyG55

      “that they are unctuous little prats who will bend over on command and take the “please sir may i have another” line.”

      yo phil… for once I agree with you 🙂

      I was sickened by Abbott’s performance on the Bolt report the other night.

      Same sicko-fantic “roll-over and agree” crap… yuck

      Where is the conservative politician with some backbone.!!!!!

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        philthegeek

        Where is the conservative politician with some backbone.!!!!!

        Sitting on the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow preventing the leprechauns spending it.

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        el gordo

        ‘Where is the conservative politician with some backbone.!!!!!’

        Cory is in the wrong house, so its Barnaby for PM.

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    PeterPetrum

    Yesterday I received an email from a smiling Josh Frydenberg (our Minister for the Environment for those of us who live beyond our shores). In it he was extolling the wonders that would eventuate from our Government’s signing of the Paris Agreement.

    I slept on it (well not a lot actually) and this morning I replied, as follows.

    Dear Minister,

    I, like many other ex-Liberal voters, am deeply disappointed that you and Turnbull saw fit to sign the so-called UN Paris Agreement in Morocco last week.

    It is abundantly clear now, and becoming clearer at each expensive, CO2 laden, COP extravaganza that this is nothing to to with global warming, or “climate change” as it now called, due to the cessation of global warming 20 years ago. Rather it is to do with third world countries holding out their hands and the UN insisting on first world countries paying up.

    That this government should be so short-sighted to jump on this reverse gravy train when it is clear that President Trump will bring it to a screaming halt is beyond stupidity. To agree to “reduce emissions” of life’s basic ingredient, carbon dioxide, and drive our economy to the brink shows that this government has no concept of the background science that is now slowly overtaking the hoax that the “climate change” scam is.

    Have you learnt nothing from the SA disaster? Do you not realise that we cannot smelt steel or bauxite with wind power?

    Over the last 20 years the earth has greened. An area equivalent to twice the size of North America is now greener than it was. Forests are growing faster. Crops are producing up to 30% higher yields than they did 20 years ago. And all because of slightly increased CO2 and a slight, natural increase in temperature.

    Why does this government not get advice from scientist who are not beholden to tax payer grants, as are the CSIRO and the BOM? They can confirm all I have said.

    I have been a Liberal supporter for the last 50 years. I voted for Tony Abbott because he promised to get rid of the Carbon Tax. The introduction of an ETS last year ensured that I did not vote Liberal at the last election and as long as your policies remain as they are and as long as Turnbull remains PM, I will never vote Liberal again.

    The last election should have told you that I am not alone in my feelings.

    At the next election you will be Trumped!

    Peter

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      Dennis

      I will not stand for socialism masquerading as environmentalism – PM Abbott 2015

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      aussiepete

      I’m sure I speak for myself and many others in saying thank you on our behalf. Brilliantly expressed.
      In searching for an understanding of why these politicians so meekly comply with the hoaxers’ proposition I can only conclude that their inherent need to be liked by The UN’s chardonnay sippers has corrupted their common sense.

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        OriginalSteve

        All you have to do is raise the reality of Communists hiding within the green movement and it makes people sit up and take notice.

        We need to expose the hard left and its aims within the green movement, mainly becasue I think th egreenies dont deserve to be tarnished, but also to flush out the communist parasites….

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      Manfred

      Nice one PP. Given the depth and breadth of the subject and the infinite capacity for spiritual darkness in elected politicians, your succinct prose punches home accurately.

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      ianl8888

      Well enough said, Peter, but why was Frydenberg emailing you to begin with, please ?

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        Analitik

        I’d be interested too. Despite the 3 letters I have written him on South Australia plus some general comments about the CAGW mythscam and lack of conservative behavior by the conservative party, he did not deign to send a copy of this email to me.

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        PeterPetrum

        Ahh! I am on his mailing list because I “subscribed” as I wanted to know what the ineffectual pr*ck was thinking or doing, so his email was unsolicited and contained a whole lot of other cr*p that I didn’t read as I saw red when I got to the Paris rubbish!

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      llew jones

      Excellent advice given to Josh Frydenburg.

      I had voted all my voting life for the Libs until the last election. Like you never again while led by Turnbull or one beholden to the UN agenda. I had thought,to the best of my knowledge,that Frydenburg was the first lawyer who had seen through the UN CC scam. Is there but one who doesn’t lose his thinking ability once he joins the legal fraternity. Of course Obama is another lawyer etc etc. Perhaps never vote for a lawyer again should be the motto of all those of us who want to see Australia break free from the shackles of the UN scamming operatives.

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    • #

      I have a dream …
      that the Australian Liberal Party takes up
      its classic role, as Trump says he will do
      in the US, of promoting small government
      and industry and commerce by CUTTING TAXES.
      … Of course it’s only a dream.

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        Oliver K. Manuel

        Yes, the same abuse of power is worldwide:
        Governments established to serve the public
        Became governments controlling the public with false propaganda disguised as “97% consensus science!”

        That is why Nations and National Academies of Sciences were united on 24 OCT 1945.

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      stan stendera

      As an American who loves Australia: +infinity

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      Craig Thomas

      I’m sure his assistant will get as far as your, ” the cessation of global warming 20 years ago” and say,
      uh-oh, another kook who can’t accept reality,
      before filing your pile of rubbish in the nearest circular filing cabinet.

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        AndyG55

        There has been no “Global” warming since 2001.

        The only warming has been regional from the El Nino transient, and it is pretty much back to where it started.

        There is currently one region with a somewhat less cold patch, and one region with a VERY COLD anomalous patch.

        Apart from that, the rest of the globe is pretty much back to the level in 2001.

        Calling the current transient “global” is like putting your big toe in hot water and saying you have a fever.

        There has, in fact, been NO warming in Australia in the last 20 years
        and no warming in the Antarctic for the whole satellite record.

        The ONLY warming has come from NON-CO2 El Nino events, and NON-CO2 ocean oscillations.

        There is absolutely no CO2 warming signal in the current world temperatures, or in sea level rise.

        CO2 warming is a total furphy !!

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    TdeF

    And in the Telegraph Francoise Holland says Trump cannot back out of the climate agreement. Ha! What agreement? Take it up with Obama.

    After the French ambassador wrote that the election of Trump was the world vanishing before his eyes, Hollande is trying to bully Trump. Both are going the way of Obama. The ‘agreement’ has to be ratified by Congress and with a Republican President, Republican Senate and Republican Congress, Francois might have to pay his share of the UN. A new French President will be elected on 27 April 2017. With Sarkozy and Le Pen as opponents, both now anti Climate Change and with Britain pulling out of the EU, the climate has changed.

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      gnome

      But I also read that Sarko said that the US should be punished by tariffs if it pulls out of the climate slush fund.

      Marine le Pen is looking good, but the French can be perfidious.

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      Graeme No.3

      The climate may have changed but they haven’t realised. They need a shock, I would suggest a humiliating loss of office and all the perks.

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        TdeF

        Thanks. That was just reported. It makes you think Sarkozy is just having a bit each way, anti climate change and very anti US, anti Hollande and stealing votes from Le Pen. He proposes a 1-3% carbon tax on imports of American goods. That’s a trade war and import duty disguised as an environmental tax. Being anti US is always very popular. France used to be a world superpower.

        So France has a lot of political capital and pride invested in the EU and the UN and as the promoter of the COP21 Paris agreement. The French have not forgotten Napoleon. Sarkozy is trying to appeal to the right but anti American since the refusal by the US to pay for the massive French assistance by Louis XVI in the war of Independence against their mutual enemy England and the treaty of Paris in 1783 which led directly to the social and economic collapse of France and the French revolution. The US replaced England as the new frenemy, a marriage of convenience which has been in the divorce court since 1783. Being rescued from German occupation in WWII was welcome but humiliating and the gratitude short lived. They have even forgotten that it was the second time.

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          Lewis P Buckingham

          Sarkozy just lost in the primaries for President of the Republic of France.
          I don’t know what the policy is of the other centre right contenders.

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            TdeF

            Francois Fillon is the surprising landslide winner at 44%. A Thatcherite anglophile with a Welsh wife, he wants to end the confrontation with Putin, the emphasis on LGBTIQ.. and a lot more traditional conservative views of the Catholic right. He wants to slash the public service. His views on Climate Change and the EU are not mentioned, but you would guess at skeptical. Even the French want a moderate conservative and it is obvious they do not believe Sarkozy’s sudden conversion.

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    tom0mason

    For all of you that enjoy reading about man’s progress and fallbacks in science, science history, geography, astronomy, and so much more…
    Have a look at Malaga Bay blog.

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    Can anyone name one Green scheme that has actually worked?

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    pat

    in case Raven comes to this thread –

    thanks for the link to the earlier Nitin Sethi Marrakech COP22 article, which you posted on jo’s previous thread.

    no wonder the Fake News MSM is not reporting what went on over there. Deveoping countries were well and truly thrown under the bus. from Raven’s link:

    12 Nov: TheWireIndia: Nitin Sethi/BusinessStandardIndia: The ‘Marrakech Call’, Not Trump, Hobbles Climate Change Talks in Morocco
    At the end of five days of climate change negotiations in Morocco, rather than the news of Donald Trump being elected as the next US president, a four-page document hobbled the crucial talks over implementing the Paris Agreement.
    The document, a draft of “Marrakech Call For Climate Action And Sustainable Development”, dated November 9, was selectively shared by the Moroccan presidency of the negotiations on Friday…

    By Friday evening, the document left many developing countries angry at both the content and the manner in which it was being pushed through at the talks…
    At least one key developing country voiced concerns that if the hosts tried to force countries to adopt the ‘Marrakech Call’ in its current shape it could lead to a Copenhagen-like situation – where the climate talks crashed in 2009 when Denmark tried the take-it-or-leave it tack with developing countries as well…
    At present, there is no reference in the draft ‘Marrakech Call’ to the principles of common but differentiated responsibilities … It does not even make a reference to the umbrella UN Framework Convention on Climate Change once – a de-linking that the developed countries have pushed for over the past five days in the formal talks at Marrakech as well…

    “The document states that developed countries are well on way to providing the committed $100 billion, when we know this is an OECD report green-wash which all developing countries have questioned,” said another senior negotiator who had analysed the document for his country delegation.

    “It does not talk of climate action that developed countries specifically need to ramp up before 2020.
    ***Yet it wants us to create enabling environments for investments that rich countries want to make in our economies’ green transition.***
    The role of private sector and non-state actors is given much greater emphasise than the differentiated and higher responsibility of developed countries in a manner that is not compatible with the Paris Agreement or the Convention. The Doha amendment to the Kyoto Protocol is not even acknowledged,” he added…

    Developed countries, including the US, have tried hard to get work moving only on mitigation – reduction of emissions – at the cost of other issues such as adaptation and means of implementation for poor countries. They have also blocked any progress on operationalising the principle of differentiation and equity through the rule book for the Paris Agreement, which is to be built over next year or two…
    http://thewire.in/79782/marrakech-call-not-trump-hobbles-climate-change-talks-morocco/

    more to come.

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    pat

    from Raven’s link, I was able to find Nitin Sethi’s followup article:

    15 Nov: TheWireIndia: Nitin Sethi/BusinessStandardIndia: Developed Countries Fight Continuation of Climate Adaptation Fund at Marrakech
    A week of climate change negotiations at Marrakech threatened the future of the Adaptation Fund as developed countries blocked talks on housing it in the post-2020 regime under the Paris Agreement. The fund, set up in 2001 under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, is meant to provide developing and poor countries funds to adjust to inevitable climate changes.
    A bitter fight through the week ended without resolution on Monday, as 134 developing countries of the G77+China demanded that the Adaptation Fund continue to function under the new pact. However, rich countries collectively argued that they would prefer bilateral funding and other routes rather than the only existing multilateral fund under the UN climate change convention to continue…

    But developed countries refused to even entertain the idea of letting the fund live in the new climate regime that is to begin starting 2020 under the Paris Agreement…
    Australia, speaking in closed-door meetings on the issue, said that it didn’t see the Adaptation Fund “as the only way of adaptation finance”. This is mostly being done through bilateral funding, it added. Australia is part of the umbrella group of countries that includes the US. The EU chimed in immediately, suggesting everything but a formal discussion on the G77 proposal to let Adaptation Fund live on. Canada, Switzerland and Japan also supported Australia.
    Seeing that developed countries were not willing to even discuss the proposal, the G77 then suggested that a draft decision for this be moved to a larger formal setting of negotiations to be undertaken Tuesday onwards. This too was opposed by developed countries. They pushed that the G77 proposal be taken into the second week of negotiations as a mere proposal that developing countries could try and raise from scratch in the discussions…

    Facing a complete blockage by the developed countries, it was decided in the informal meeting that the continuation of the Adaptation Fund would be discussed in the second week as a mere one-sided proposal of developing countries to be presented in the formal talks.
    The fracas over the Adaptation Fund was an extension of the big fight that has run through the first week at Marrakech…

    By the end of the week, a host of issues that developing countries hold important had been called as either ‘homeless’ or ‘orphans’…
    At Marrakech too, in the first week, they kept insisting that talks focus merely on the post-2020 phase, much to the resentment of developing countries including India and China.
    http://thewire.in/80171/climate-adaptation-fund/

    more to come.

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    DonS

    Hi all,

    I have been surprised by the lack of media coverage of the latest climate scare fest. Even with the world meteorological organization announcing, just in time for the conference, that 2016 will be the hottest since forever and ever and so on. Has the media finally lost interest in these events I wonder?

    I have noticed that the global warmists have started moving the goal posts, yet again. The phrase “since pre-industrial times” seems to be getting a good work out by all interviewed by the ABC, it makes them sound so authoritative in a really science-like sort of way. Apparently the Earth has warmed by 1.5 degrees “since pre-industrial times”.

    I might be wrong but wasn’t the big scare based on an increase in global temperatures of 1-3 degrees by the end of the 21st century starting from the 1950’s? I guess that’s not working out so now they push the goal posts back to what 1700? right in the middle of the little ice-age.

    I for one am pretty happy that the Earth is 1.5 degrees warmer than it was in the little ice-age. Still I can not understand how they found this out given that these same meteorological organizations have been telling us for ages that temperature measurements before 1950 are unreliable in terms of global temperatures.

    The contradictions and hypocrisies of the global warming religion are getting more laughable by the day. It is starting to look like the wheels are coming off the gravy train even before Trump becomes President.

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      Graeme No.3

      DonS:
      “I can not understand how they found this out given that these same meteorological organizations have been telling us for ages that temperature measurements before 1950 are unreliable in terms of global temperatures”
      Simple they just ADJUSTED any readings to suit the end result. Any missing readings were extrapolated from the adjusted readings, so they agreed with the desired trend.
      Next year they will adjust the readings again so the trend continues. Post Normal Science: you decide what you want and adjust the data to suit your scheme, then claim your scheme is true because the (adjusted) data agrees with it. Keep doing so until the money runs out.

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      stan stendera

      +1000

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  • #
    Robert Rosicka

    I learned this week from one msm outlet that reindeer are in danger because of climate change and then later the same day another msm ran a story about reindeer numbers were going to be culled because of overpopulation problems .
    Forget trump our presstitutes are still trying to out alarm each other .

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    Have been wondering about people who did not bother to vote in the US elections. As an Australian am not sure if this is a typical reaction to the result.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhjCLz-Vjw8&t

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    pat

    like me, Raven was not able to access the Business Standard India website for Nitin Sethi’s end of Summit article. Raven got “DNS address could not be found.”.

    I have not even been able to open the Business Standard website itself for months, yet I have visited the website for many years without any problem.

    Nitin’s end of summit piece, which should be dated 18 or 19 November is:

    Marrakech: Developed countries use rules to break the climate law
    Business Standard‎ – 21 hours ago
    What is gained in scripting a law can be lost by making a rule. That was the lesson. developing countries, including India, took back from the climate change negotiations at Marrakech, which ended in the early hours of Saturday. There was a second lesson…

    all results I have found online only give the opening para & then link to Business Standard, so it was great Raven found the Wire link, but they don’t have this later article.

    am hoping someone, somehow, can access the full article & make an archive link for it and post it here. I am tech-challenged, as they say.

    I am thrilled COP22 was a disaster. the developing world was happy to go along with the CAGW scam, provided $$$ were being offered.

    now, it’s clear – unless something changed at the end of the summit when an extra day was added – that the plan is simply to force developing countries to buy expensive & useless renewables by the hundreds of billions/trillions!? of dollars – with Big Renewables the only winners (along with their political ennablers & the CAGW MSM/NGO mobs).

    again, it’s no wonder there’s been almost no Fake News MSM coverage of COP22.

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      aussiepete

      All these Marrakesh machinations are giving me a severe dose of tinnitus, at least I think that’s why I keep banging the side of my head with the heal of my hand. Didn’t I read earlier this week that according to the UEA, co2 emissions have leveled out over the last 2 or 3 years. Temperature trend pretty flat for 18 years or so. What happens to the mobile cocktail party now then?

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      Raven

      Hi Pat,

      Found that article this time merely by putting the title into Google . . first link . . got straight in . . go figure.
      I’ve no idea what’s going on there but here’s a copy/paste of the whole thing.

      Marrakech: Developed countries use rules to break the climate law

      What is gained in scripting a law can be lost by making a rule. That was the lesson developing countries, including India, took back from the climate change negotiations at Marrakech, which ended in the early hours of Saturday.

      There was a second lesson. The US President-elect is not the same as a President. All concerns about Donald Trump announcing that the US would junk the climate change talks came to nought. Still, under instructions from Barack Obama, the US delegation continued to negotiate hard and tackle rough to further break down the wall of differentiated responsibilities between developing and rich countries. Other developed countries and allies worked hard alongside to do the same, as if the US were there for the long haul in the agreement. And so did some of the US’ newfound friends on the developing country side of the game.

      If the UN framework convention (UNFCCC) is the World’s Constitution for fighting climate change that they all agreed to in 1992, the Paris Agreement is the equivalent of a law that these 196 countries came up with in 2015. In that case, the talks in Morocco this year were to kick-start the scripting of the rules to the Paris Agreement – a work that needs to be finished by the end of 2018. Then, the Paris Agreement, along with this rulebook, can be implemented starting 2020.

      It’s a settled concept that rules are meant to facilitate the implementation of provisions of a law. But at Marrakech the developed countries, led by the US from the front, tried to use the rule-making process to subvert the law – the Paris Agreement. They notched some substantial successes. Their belligerence came as a surprise to many ill-prepared developing economies, including India. And, it exposed the brittle nature of the bonhomie world leaders had claimed between developing and developed countries after signing the Paris Agreement last year.

      Rules that broke the law

      One of the biggest victories the rich nations were able to score at Marrakech was in getting their report on climate finance acknowledged into the formal negotiations, despite developing countries claiming that it had used dubious accounting methods . Though the acknowledgement was not as black and white as the developed countries began by asking, the fact that it got inserted at all was shocking enough for most developing countries. This OECD report could now become one of the bases for defining climate finance. The OECD countries had tried this last year at Paris as well and failed. But, they got away with it at Marrakech.

      They also got ensured to a considerable extent that there would be little new action to reduce emissions or enhance climate funding till 2020.

      The developing countries had demanded that the existing Adaptation Fund which provides funds to developing countries from the rich nations continue to live under the Paris Agreement unconditionally. They were able to keep the fund alive but with attached conditions that could constrict it or even eventually choke it by the time Paris Agreement gets implemented.

      Then there were a list of issues – some high on rich countries’ priorities and others on the developing country priority list – that needed to be sorted out. If not kept alive at Marrakech (or given a home as delegates called it) and maintained at parity with other elements of the Paris Agreement, these were likely to fall off the table in coming years and fade out of existence by 2020.

      For example, for developing countries one of these priority issues was to have a process for setting a new collective quantified goal on climate finance. For developed countries it was to have a common time frames in which countries revise their targets periodically under Paris Agreement. The US and other developing countries were able to get this priority listed at a higher level than rest though India and China fought hard that their priorities do not disappear entirely at Marrakech itself. “We lived to fight another day on these,” explained one negotiator speaking metaphorically.

      India at Marrakech

      The NDA government’s own pet phrases for India at the climate talks had little takers though. ‘Climate Justice’ did not find a mention. Nor did India’s demand that developed countries adjust their lifestyles to reduce their emissions considerably.
      The rulebook writing process had little space to begin with for injecting the rhetoric the Indian political leadership desired openly and naively at Marrakech. Even the reference to the long standing principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities could find a very nominal space in the political statement called the Marrakech Action Proclamation. This too the rather depleted and underequipped team of negotiators had to fight very hard and very long to retain.

      As journalists and others at the climate talks commented in public and in corridors, India spent considerable effort and energy in promoting its pavilion at the convention hall and then feeling proud that it was one of the best. Its International Solar Alliance launch too worked as a distraction. But its actual negotiating team at the Moroccan capital remained strained for human-power and greater political leadership. A sign of that came when India was often found missing from crucial closed door and parallel talks on climate finance – something it had fought hard for last year along with China and Saudi Arabia to keep in favour of developing countries.

      But at Marrakech India had to also deal with the fact that the BASIC group had become less coherent than ever before. It comprises of South Africa, Brazil, China and India and stumped the EU in 2009 by becoming the group of big developing economies that collectively bargained with the US at Copenhagen to shape the new climate regime. But, South Africa drifted somewhat away from others in its national interest even before Paris Agreement. At Morocco, Brazil did so more dramatically, demonstrating that its national interest and political alignments at climate talks had turned closer to those of the US rather than those of other emerging economies in the BASIC group.

      The next two years are set to be more acrimonious than 2016 as the details of the rulebook get discussed threadbare. As is always the case, the issues that were the most difficult to resolve at Paris have been all put on the plate for 2017 and 2018 to resolve. The next two years would be politically as low-key as Marrakech which may make political leaderships of developing countries take it easy. India’s flip flop on ratification and then the weak political preparation this year showed what the consequence can be. A repeat over next two years could land India in a regime where the provisions of the Paris Agreement may say the right things but its implementation would mean lead to just the reverse. The rules could un-write the law.

      Key results of Marrakech Climate talks:

      1. Rich countries could now dictate the definition of climate finance for flows under Paris Agreement starting 2020.

      2. The road map for rich countries to provide US $ 100 billion annually starting 2020 looks more dubious than before.

      3. No space for deeper emission reductions or increased climate finance by rich countries before 2020.

      4. Adaptation Fund for poor countries to continue under Paris Agreement but choked by conditions that will be imposed in coming years.

      5. Principles of equity and differentiated responsibilities remain on table but no progress on operationalizing them in the Paris Agreement rulebook.

      6. The entire rule book for Paris Agreement to be finalised by 2018 for the pact to be operationalized by 2020.

      7. India’s call for ‘Climate Justice’ finds no placeholder.

      8. India unable to find even a rhetorical entry for ‘lifestyle issues’ at Marrakech.

      9. Donald Trump as US President-elect did not impact Morocco talks.

      10. Trump as the US President could potentially still harm the Paris Agreement badly by either walking out or remaining part of the climate pact.

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        Roy Hogue

        I wonder what would happen to the world if the whole climate charade, all its talks and all it’s agreements, Paris too, were scrapped, put in a big pile and burned to roast marshmallows some summer evening. The people living high off the labor of others would have to get real jobs and the rest of us could keep a little, actually maybe a lot more of our hard earned money. And the planet would go on ignoring the whole thing as it has been doing for a long, long, long time, pretty much thumbing its nose at humans and their schemes.

        Trump would still be president and would have one less sticky problem to deal with.

        I don’t know what the UN would do but given the amount of their effort spent on climate change in one way or another they would probably have to disband and sell their big shiny headquarters complex in New York at auction. How can we lose?

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  • #
    Peter Yates

    Hello. I’m confused.
    If warmist people succeed in their efforts to reduce all of mankind’s CO2 emissions to pre-industrial levels how will they know if it has worked?

    1/ Will a reduction in the global average temperature of say 1 deg C. be proof of success?
    2/ How will they know if what they did caused it or if it was caused by a natural slight fluctuation in the global climate.
    3/ How many years will the global average temperature need to stay at 1 deg C. less than today so that you can see that it isn’t just a temporary spike in the data? Eg. Does it need to be more than just a hiatus or plateau? .. like the current pause in warming (as measured by satellites).
    4/ If the emissions are reduced to pre-industrial levels, and maintained at those levels, will it mean that the countries themselves will become pre-industrial? How will the world’s population of 7.5 billion (and rising) survive in a pre-industrial world? (This type of thinking might have the potential to keep me awake at night!)

    Thanks to anybody who tries to answer any of those questions!

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    • #
      aussiepete

      Peter, I think we have the same strain of tinnitus.

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    • #
      ianl8888

      In one of the Climategate emails, Trenberth – an arch-arch AGW activist with a string of published papers – admitted that we would be completely unable to tell if reducing atmospheric CO2 levels had any effect. “How can we tell ?” was his exact email phrase.

      To my knowledge, the question is unanswerable so it is completely ignored.

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      • #
        Raven

        Yep.
        Kevin Trenberth is a great asset.
        One of the iconic statements to come out of the Climategate affair.

        The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.

        That single statement encapsulates and betrays the whole AGW farce as an ideology.

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      David Maddison

      Another point is that we are very likely heading for major global cooling according to natural climate cycles.

      How will this natural cooling event be recognised as opposed to be seen as the “success” of deindustrialisation?

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    • #

      Peter, it’s a little late in the evening to try and answer your excellent questions. But in short what I would say is that the warmists are trying to have ‘a quid each way’ on predicted v actual temp rise! So that whatever the outcome they cannot lose. We have to be prepared for this kind of underhand tactic and respond with the true facts.
      GeoffW

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      tom0mason

      Just have a look through A Chronology of Notable Weather Events by Douglas V. Hoyt to see when man affected the climate.

      /sarcoff 😕

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    • #
      Peter Yates

      The questions have been answered! This man gets top marks for effort.
      However, do his answers help to cure your tinnitus?
      (PS. I renumbered the questions.)

      There are people who would like somebody, somewhere to answer these questions. It appears that those people will be less sceptical if their questions could be answered.
      1/ If climate scientists succeed in their efforts to reduce all of mankind’s CO2 emissions to pre-industrial levels how will they know if it has worked?
      2/ Will a reduction in the global average temperature of say 1 deg C. be proof of success?
      3/ How will they know if what they did caused it or if it was caused by a natural slight fluctuation in the global climate?
      4/ How many years will the global average temperature need to stay at 1 deg C. less than today so that you can see that it isn’t just a temporary spike in the data? Eg. Does it need to be more than just a hiatus or plateau?
      5/ If the emissions are reduced to pre-industrial levels, and maintained at those levels, will it mean that the countries themselves will become pre-industrial?

      ANSWERS:
      “Thats not my field but just at a guess…
      1) Because the current alarming rate of increase in CO2 levels will reduce (this doesn’t mean levels will immediately drop away, simply that the current sharp accumulation rate will slow down).
      2) Just how we could go about reducing the temperature I cannot imagine – the going concern is halting the present well documented sharp rate of increase that is linked remarkably closely with the equally scary rise in CO2 levels.
      3) Reducing the global temperature by 1 degree is a massive amount of thermal energy dissipated, if actually sustained it’s not “slight” by any stretch of the imagination, I would imagine that as with the man-made CO2 emissions that align remarkably well with the current temperature rise there would be a fairly clear causal factor for such a colossal sustained temperature drop – it would be equally unambiguous.
      4) Ref. question 2 – I really don’t know how we could engineer a temperature drop, all the talk is about halting the present sharp rise. I’d guess even if we stopped all CO2 emissions right now it would take nature hundreds, perhaps thousands of years to re-absorb all that CO2 through a biological process and return to a natural level.
      5) The smart ones will use technology that doesn’t require excessive CO2 emissions. But many people around the world still live quite happily without high CO2 emission rates.”

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    pat

    manages plenty of name-calling, but an acknowledgement of sorts from old media nonetheless:

    19 Nov: NYT: Reddit and the God Emperor of the Internet
    By CHRISTINE LAGORIO-CHAFKIN
    On the morning of Nov. 9, a moderator who goes by the handle OhSnapYouGotServed posted on a Reddit topic page called The_Donald: “How does it feel, centipedes? The God Emperor said that we would get tired of winning. Are you tired of winning yet? Feel vindicated, centipedes. It’s over and there is nothing they can do about it. We are the future.”
    Within minutes, the post had accrued more than 2,000 comments. Within days, they numbered more than 12,000. Reddit, a hodgepodge of message boards about everything, from kiteboarding to financial advice to Photoshopping human arms onto images of birds, is the eighth-most popular online destination in the United States. The_Donald, devoted, of course, to Donald J. Trump, has become one of the most influential communities within one of the most significant websites on the internet. Yet that post by OhSnapYouGotServed is probably largely incomprehensible to most people…
    But now that Mr. Trump is the president-elect, what will happen to The_Donald? What will the centipedes do when the Trump administration becomes the establishment, engaging with lobbyists and compromising on ideals, and all of the typically “Washington” behaviors they despise?…
    “There are no brakes on this train,” wrote OhSnapYouGotServed. No brakes, perhaps, but it will almost certainly run out of steam.
    (Christine Lagorio-Chafkin, a senior writer for Inc., is the author of the forthcoming “We Are the Nerds,” about Reddit.)
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/reddit-and-the-god-emperor-of-the-internet.html?_r=1

    don’t hold your breath waiting for new media to run out of steam, NYT:

    19 Nov: Breitbart: Breitbart News Hits 300 Million Pageviews, 45 Million Uniques Over Last 31 Days
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/11/19/breitbart-news-hits-300-million-pageviews-45-million-uniques-last-31-days/

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    David Maddison

    Some of the smarter leftards realise that a grid based solely on solar and wind is infeasible without energy storage.

    There is likely not enough raw materials in the world to make enough lithium, lead or nickel based batteries for large scale storage so some are advocating large scale pumped hydrostorage.

    Pumped hydro storage is fine for traditional uses such as load balancing but what about backing up say, the entire US grid with pumped hydro.

    The following article looks at the impracticality of doing this.

    http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/

    I have a great idea! Why not make electricity with coal and nuclear?

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      Dave Maddison:

      http://notrickszone.com/2016/11/16/battery-storage-fallacy-exposed-entire-annual-global-production-would-power-germany-for-only-30-minutes/
      With the fluctuations in renewables traditional methods of balancing supply, e.g. pumped storage, have proved to be commercially non-viable and have been shut down (one that used salt water has been turned into a ‘beach’ resort.) Pumped storage is the ONLY large scale method that exists today, but it is unlikely that enough capacity can be made available. NOTE that it is only (approx.) 75% efficient so 4 units of renewables at 3 times the cost of conventional production going in, becomes 3 units out at 4 times the cost.

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        tom0mason

        Graeme No.3

        A link to notrickzone where a silly sod believes that unreliable power is OK as long as it delivers on average enough power to satisfy consumer demand. 🙂

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        • #
          Clyde Spencer

          I wonder if the “silly sod” would risk major surgery in a hospital, or executing an online stock market order on his life savings during a period of time when the country was experiencing African power reliability?

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          “silly” more like demented.

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          Analitik

          sod is a basketcase. I think he actually believes all the rubbish that he spouts making him a ret@rd
          David Appell is the other CAGW scaremonger who tries to pollute Pierre’s site

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    pat

    how very theirABC:

    19 Nov: Breitbart: NPR: After Pollak, No More Live Interviews for Conservatives
    National Public Radio ombudsman/public editor Elizabeth Jensen has recommended that the taxpayer-funded radio news service bar future live interviews of conservatives who may have controversial views, following an interview Nov. 16 with Breitbart News’ Joel B. Pollak.
    Pollak, who serves as Breitbart’s Senior Editor-at-Large and In-house Counsel, defended its Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon from false and defamatory claims of antisemitism and “white nationalism.” He also turned the tables, pointing out that NPR has “racist programming,” including a story that called the 2016 election results “nostalgia for a whiter America.”
    NPR listeners were apparently outraged that anyone from Breitbart News had been given an opportunity to defend the website and its chairman.
    In her response, “Listeners: Two Recent Interviews Are ‘Normalizing Hate Speech’,” Jensen concluded that the live format had allowed Pollak to get the better of host Steve Inskeep.
    She suggested that future interviews be taped: “In addition, in my opinion, these interviews should not be done live. Inskeep is an excellent live interviewer, but live interviews are difficult, especially when there is limited time. A little contextualizing never hurts.”…
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/11/19/npr-pollak-interview-no-live-interviews-right/

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    doubtingdave

    I have an interest in the “science” of Astrotheology , which is basically understanding the roots of ancient pagan mythology as the movement of the Sun , planets and stars observed from earth , so I recently purchased , on ebay, a PLANISPHERE , and with this simple astrological tool I can look at the nights sky at the correct time and date and observe the mythology of the ancients unfold with my own eyes , as an example I can stand outside on the night of the 24th of December ( xmas eve ) and notice that you can draw an imaginary line through the 3 main stars of Orion’s belt , that then lines up with the brightest star in the sky , Sirius ( the dog star ), and points to the position on the Horizon that the new years Sun will rise on the morning of the 25th of December , the Nativity myth , i find it fascinating that by purchasing a cheap Planisphere ( just £2 from ebay ) i can observe real evidence for the origin of mythology and yet unknown billions have been spent on the man made global warming theory with no observational evidence to show for it . ps i also wonder what the use of a Planisphere would reveal about the myths in ancient religions of the Southern Hemisphere ,such as Chinese , Japanese or aboriginal .

    30

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    pat

    18 Nov: The Hill: Kristin Tate: The media needs to get off their ‘fake news’ false narrative
    Democrats lost the presidential election because they nominated an unlikable, entrenched bureaucrat who was knee-deep in damning scandals.
    But rather than take responsibility for this massive and embarrassing failure, liberals and the so-called “mainstream media” have found something on which to try and place the blame: “fake” news sites, which they claim flooded Facebook with misinformation during the election cycle.
    Over the last few days, prominent news outlets have published countless headlines like “Fake Facebook News Is a Disaster for Political Discourse,” “Here’s How Facebook Actually Won Trump the Presidency,” and “Facebook’s Fake News Threatens Democracy.”
    Even President Obama is pushing the narrative…
    The left-leaning mainstream media is losing readership and credibility by the day (Americans’ trust in the mass media dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history this September) — and now they’re panicking. These outlets are provoking outrage to pressure Facebook into silencing conservative blogs and news sites, which have been conveniently labeled “fake,” because they see it as an opportunity to stomp out competition.
    But mainstream outlets only have themselves to blame for their dwindling traffic, influence, and ability to control the political narrative. During the 2016, the mainstream media was flagrant in its bias. Donald Trump was attacked ad nauseum, while Clinton’s scandals were largely downplayed or given a free pass.
    Instead of helping Clinton, however, the blatant bias had the opposite effect: many voters tuned out from established outlets altogether and turned to conservative alternatives sites instead…
    Liberals lost the White House because of a corrupt, untrustworthy, and unlikable candidate, and a media that would go to any length to cover for her.
    http://archive.is/Ud08F

    19 Nov: CNBC: Javier E. David: Clinton Foundation seen at a crossroads after Hillary Clinton’s dashed White House dreams
    The foundation, which operates a range of philanthropic projects around the world and pulled in more than $200 million in revenue in 2014, has raised around $2 billion since its founding—but that money has come with a cost…
    Because Hillary Clinton is no longer seen as a president in waiting, contributors may look elsewhere and the foundation may have to rethink its scope and priorities, these experts say.
    The foundation did not respond to numerous requests for comment from CNBC.
    “I would expect there will be much greater difficulties in fundraising for the organization,” Leslie Lenkowsky, a professor with Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, told CNBC in an interview.
    Hillary Clinton “technically has no political prospects ahead of her. They’re both important people, but dealing with a past president and future president were attractive to a number of donors,” Lenkowsky said. Some of the largest checks came from a range of influential donors like the governments of Norway, ***Australia and Kuwait…
    “Some of that goodwill will disappear, [and] they will have to raise money the old fashioned way, which is proving they deserve it,” he added…
    Meanwhile, projects like earthquake-stricken Haiti—which earned the foundation the scorn of grassroots Haitian activists that accused the foundation of mismanaging millions that did little to alleviate the poverty-stricken country’s recovery—blemished the organization’s reputation…
    “It’s just a fact of life that people in the public eye attract money for all sorts of reasons,” Lenkowsky said. “Once they are not in the public eye, the money starts to dry up.”…
    http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/19/clinton-foundation-seen-at-a-crossroads-after-hillary-clintons-dashed-white-house-dreams.html

    translation:
    19 Nov: Aftenposten Norway: Norway has given hundreds of millions to the Clinton Foundation. After that Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election, plunging support.
    Norway has since 2007 entered into agreements that provide 640 million to projects such as the Clinton Foundation operates…
    According to the financial newspaper has the Norwegian contributions remained at around 40 million a year up to 2013.
    In 2014 the whole increased to 129 million, and last year gave Norway record $174 million. This year cut the support with over four-fifths. Next year it is only allocated 23 million dollars, a decline of 87 percent since the scant top year…

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    • #
      Raven

      Even President Obama is pushing the narrative…

      Yes, and here’s what Obama said the other day:

      If we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.

      Your problem is Barry . . most people can discriminate.

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    Chris

    A feel good story.

    Some of you may remember my post here, a few weeks ago, after returning home here to Australia, after working for most of 2016 in the USA. I had travelled almost 7000 miles and almost every day I spent with ordinary American people. I had said in that post that I could not see how Donald Trump could loose the election.

    In my last days in the USA before I returned home, I found I had a bit over $200 US dollars in my pocket, I think there was about $235 plus a stack of coins, which are difficult to get rid of. I suggested to my Aunt that she take it, the money, in appreciation for all the help and things she had done for me, but she refused, and said that she would put it in the local bank for me for when I returned next year.

    Anyway, about a week before I was to catch my flight home, I was down town walking past the local tobacconist, a store that deals in almost everything, and they had a sign up giving odds on the Presidential election. I saw that Trump was 6 to 1, can’t remember what Hillary was, but odds on.

    So I went in and put the $200 on Trump. I got back home (USA) and told my Aunt and gave her the docket for safe keeping. Now we know the result of the election, and last week my Aunt went and collected and put the cash in my bank account.

    The thing is, now, since our dollar has dropped in relation to the US dollar, I don’t know whether to transfer the money over to Australia and make a bit more or to leave it there and spend it when I get back next year.

    Decisions, decisions. One thing I don’t have to decide, is to hit the Tip Jar at the top of the page.

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  • #
    Peter C

    Tesla power at Keith South Australia

    I am returning to Melbourne by road from a weekend trip to Adelaide, staying tonight at the Keith Motor Inn,. Keith is a small country town in South Australia about 50 km from the border with Victoria. During the afternoon we have had some good views of the Heywood interconnect power lines which sustain South Austrlalia with electricity powered by the brown coal power stations in the Yalloorn Valley.

    The thing that struck me as I looked about the motel parking area was two TESLA electric charging points. These must be fairly new and they are not being used tonight.

    Tomorrow I will try to find out who put them there and who paid for them? And do the owners of Tesla electric cars pay for the power that they use to recharge their electric cars?

    Tesla cars are owned by Elon Musk.
    Willis Eschenbach has just written a short blog article on Elon Musk over at WUWT. He is none to impressed by our Elon!
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/19/whats-that-musky-smell/

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    • #
      David Maddison

      There are a number of Tesla charging stations around the place. I believe the owners do not pay (directly) for the recharge service. There are some rechargeing stations at Chadstone shopping centre in the People’s Republic of Victoria.

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      • #

        They’re not yet paying.

        Enron Musk has a problem when the subsidies run out. His concepts for products for unsustainable consumption by the elites; financed by the masses through taxes, subsidies and tax breaks to buyers are indeed attractive to global elitists; decision-makers who accept no responsibility for the resources wasted nor the environmental problems created in the pursuit of toys for the few.

        Imagine the uproar if buyers of a Bugatti Veyron were equally well supported: The would pay of around $100,000 for the $2,000,000 car.

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        • #
          Willard

          Bernd it’s a shame that your knowledge on electric cars hasnt progressed past 2012 as evident by the link provided, shame you have to fill that vacuum by referring to the CEO of Tesla as Enron.

          06

          • #
            Rod Stuart

            Not old weird Willard again from the Willard electric storage company!
            I thought you would sill be on charge.
            Bernd is quite correct to call this bandit Enron. He is far more of an embezzler than the Clinton Foundation; the biggest money laundering organisation ever put forward as a 501C(3) charity.

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            Analitik

            Elron Musk is undenaibly a visionary for our time.

            No on else has seen and developed more ways to scam money from governments at national, state and local levels and from institutional and private investors. His vision is accomplished by his knack of being able to read into the hearts and minds of the gullible and “concerned” and pitch a totally unrealistic future of “sustainability” with style.

            His days are rapidly coming to a close, however, as the increasingly obvious lack of returns from his companies force him to come forth with more and more outlandish proclamations for his companies future. More than any other single person, Elron Musk embodies The Third Way where subsidies are supposed to produce “growth” in a circular economic path – ie pure feel-good fantasy

            10

      • #
        Raven

        A couple of recharging stations are a bit of a feel good thing but the whole electric car boondoggle will inevitably fail a test of critical mass.

        Go to any petrol station and count the cars that go through. I’ve never done it but how many cars get filled up in an hour? Let’s assume an average servo has six bowsers and half of them are in use at any one time. What’s average time spent at the bowser for each car . . six minutes?

        Don’t even bother doing the math.
        It’s not that it won’t work . . it’s that it can’t.

        10

      • #
        Willard

        With regards to Tesla non-superchargers, the local business that install them have the option to charge for electricity, installing a basic chargepoint is just another way of attracting customers like Wi-Fi or pay TV.

        01

        • #
          Dennis

          I have just crossed the Nullabor, not a charge point in sight, thankfully I was not driving a Tesla.

          30

          • #
            Dennis

            I did see a few medium size cars filling up with petrol, you could buy five of them for the price of one Tesla, and that’s the subsidised by the US Federal Government Tesla price.

            30

          • #
            Willard

            Correct Dennis not a dedicated recharge point in site all the way from Adelaide to Perth yet at least 3 Tesla’s and a Nissan Leaf have managed to cross it without any problems using the basic infrastructure in place.

            01

            • #
              Graeme No.3

              Shipped over on the back of a semi-trailer?

              20

              • #
                Dennis

                They played several rounds at each hole on the Nullabor golf course located at various roadhouses en route.

                The recharge timing then allowed the players happy hour and a good night’s rest before proceeding to the next hole.

                30

            • #
              Dennis

              And don’t forget Willard that the roadhouses are supplied by fossil fuel generators, some with solar panels to supplement supply during daytime when there is no cloud cover.

              And they cannot ask the SA Government to assist, they are having trouble convincing the Vic Government to assist them.

              10

              • #
                Willard

                And yet Dennis those Diesel generators at roadhouses still allow a 2100kg Tesla to travel further on a Litre of Diesel generated electricty than an ICE vehicle of the same size/weight.

                11

              • #
                Analitik

                Do you want to factor in the tyre wear for that truck heavy Tesla, Willard? Those heavy battery sleds chew through tyres at an alarming rate

                EVs have a decent future as inner city, short haul delivery vehicles (think milk float) and commuter toys for the rich (G-Wiz anyone?). The ROI and even the EROI are horrendous for any distances beyond suburban commutes.

                Elron Musk is selling a vision that is unsustainable as there is not enough of a subsidy stream to cover the amounts he siphons off for his personal aggrandisement.

                10

              • #
                Willard

                Correct Analitik, tyre wear on a 2100kg Tesla is going to be more than on a similar spec car that weighs 1900kg under the same driving conditions and tread wear rating but in reality no more than 10%, on the other hand the Tesla has a huge advantage in brake pad wear due to regen braking, it also does not require oil changes, filter changes and many other servicing requirements that ICE vehicles do, in fact under the conditions of its 8 year unlimited kilometre warranty a Tesla service is recommended but will not void the warranty if not done.

                00

            • #
              Raven

              If 3 Tesla’s and a Nissan Leaf have made it across then that’s actually pretty good.

              However . . and there’s always a ‘however’ . . . there seems to be no reports of the EV’s that didn’t make it. Where are those reports? . . . fake news? . . it’s a scandal, I tells ya.

              I’d submit that for every EV that made the journey, there’s likely two dozen that didn’t. Those will be found in years to come on little used bush tracks with skeletons slumped over the wheel because they were desperately looking for a farmhouse with a power point while down to their last 30K’s of juice.

              Oh, so where are the missing person reports, you might say?
              That’s easy . . they aren’t reported because people with electric cars simply don’t have any friends.
              You know it makes sense . . 😉

              20

    • #
      Dennis

      Crikey, imagine the chaos if South Australians traded in their fossil fuel powered cars and purchased electric models.

      20

      • #
        Peter C

        No evidence of that so far.

        Citizens of South Australia are not as silly as their Government represenatives

        00

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    pat

    lol.

    19 Nov: Russia Today: ‘Freedom of speech no excuse’: Students ban Daily Mail, Sun & Express from London university campus
    The students’ union at London’s City University has voted for a motion stating that “there is no place for the Sun, Daily Mail or Express” on its “campuses or properties.” It says the outlets in their current form fuel “fascism, racial tension and hatred.”
    The motion was adopted by a majority vote at Thursday’s annual student union meeting.
    “That freedom of speech should not be used as an excuse to attack the weakest and poorest members of society,” read the motion (LINK), titled “Opposing Fa[s]cism & Social Divisiveness in the UK Media.”…
    Among its other statements are “that the media has a duty not to stir up racial tensions and hatred just to sell papers” and that “far right leaders and mouthpieces such as Nigel Farage, Richard LittleJohn and Katie Hopkins should have no place in the mainstream media.”
    City University is the alma mater of Mahatma Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair – who all graduated from its law school – and home to one of the UK’s leading journalism schools.
    The Guardian reported that, out of a student body numbering nearly 20,000, only 182 were present for the vote to pass the motion…
    The decision was also condemned (by) the Index on Censorship, a pro-free speech group…
    https://www.rt.com/uk/367460-daily-mail-sun-ban-university/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

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    Vlad the Impaler

    In the USA:

    Fox News, Sunday morning, an interview with the former Democratic National Committee chair Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz (the DNC is the operational arm that works to elect Democrats to office, nationwide).

    She stated quite openly, ‘ … we did not rig the primaries. If we had wanted to rig them, we could have.’

    Oh, yes! I believe her! Democrats NEVER rig any election, anywhere, at any time!

    Draining the swamp may need to include keeping those deceased Demoncrats from voting (multiple times) … …

    Regards,

    Vlad

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      jorgekafkazar

      What does ol’ Debbo call the superdelegate kerfluffle? If it’s not rigging, what is it?

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        Vlad the Impaler

        Ah, yes; the ‘superdelegates’ of the Democratic Party.

        Well, ya see there, ol’ Jorge, it’s just that while all animals is equal, some animals is MORE equal than others.

        Doncha know?

        Ya see, ya just have to know that they have our best innnnerests at heart, ya know? They unnnerstan all them there little things that, ya know, you and I are just not KWAL – I – FYED to unnnnerstan, ’cause, ya know, we just be common folk, ya know, an’ we just be hicks, an’ doughn unnnnerstan PAWL – I – TICKS an’ all that kine-a stuff what them there good ol’ boys unnnnnnerstan, an’, ya know?

        Ya know? Jorge? ‘My gettin’ through to you, boy?

        Y’all come back an’ set a spell, ‘hear?

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    Another Ian

    Re the latest “brilliant idea” to tax food for emissions reduction

    Comment at

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2016/11/let-them-eat-le.html#comments

    “foobert | November 20, 2016 2:34 PM | Reply

    Don’t stop now.

    Put a tax on sex and be done with it.

    Even for talking about it or thinking about it.

    That reminds me.

    Doctor told me to cut out half my sex life.
    But I don’t know which half I should cut out – the half I spend thinking about or the half I spend talking about.”

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      Dennis

      Both would be longer.

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        ROM

        Sigh!
        A long time go when I still had a full crop of hair, in fact had hair, my friends and I talked about girls, thought about girls which didn’t leave much room for any other mental activity, planned our strategy around trying to convince the girls and strutted about in what we assumed was ways that were likely to impress the girls.

        Age has taken its toll!
        Now we just moan about our bowels and take a quick peek at the latest funeral notices in the local rag when it turns up to see if we are listed there.

        Of course any attraction the female of the species might once have had for us oldsters has long died away or so the younger generation have been told on innumerable occasions.

        Yeh! Right !! I’m not THAT old!

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    KinkyKeith

    Thanks to those who reminded about chocolate.

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    pat

    a must-read, with links:

    20 Nov: Reason: Brendan O’Neill: America Called Bullsh*t on the Cult of Clinton
    The one good thing about Trump’s win? It shows a willingness among Americans to blaspheme against saints and reject the religion of hollow progressiveness.
    If you want to see politics based on emotionalism over reason and a borderline-religious devotion to an iconic figure, forget the Trump Army; look instead to the Cult of Clinton…READ ALL
    https://reason.com/archives/2016/11/20/america-called-bullshit-on-saint-hillary

    another link Brendan could have included!

    PIC INVITATION: 27 Oct: Heat St: Andrew Stiles: MEDIA WATCH: New York Times to Host Hillary Clinton Victory Party — $250 to Attend
    They’ll get to pal around with executive editor Dean Baquet, CEO Mark Thompson, and columnist Frank Bruni, among other. Two members of congress are also expected to attend…
    Guests will start arriving around 6:30 p.m., just in time for early returns and exit polls. The itinerary includes a number of panel discussion about the 2016 campaign, including what promises to be ***a very short discussion on the case for voting for Donald Trump.
    “The reason why people love politics is not just because of who won or lost but because of the discussion of what it all means,” Duhigg told NeimanLab (Harvard). “We want people to learn some things about this race that they didn’t know before from really interesting sources. That’s kind of an audacious goal to say during a race where everything has already been covered like crazy for the last year.”…
    At 9:00 p.m., the festive mingling shall commence, and party-goers and Times journalists can celebrate the election of Hillary Clinton.
    The Election Night party is the latest installment of nytLive, an events series comprised of “panel discussions, interactive debates and high-level networking,” the goal of which is to make wealthy Times readers feel important and get their money…
    ONE COMMENT ONLY:
    10 November: Olive Candy: How was it?
    http://heatst.com/politics/new-york-times-election-party/

    confirmed by The Poynter Institute for Media Studies (which owns/Tampa Bay Times &, by extension, the dreadful, Politifact). Poynter doesn’t explicitly call it a “Clinton Victory” party, but u get the picture:

    2 Nov: PoynterInstitute: James Warren: Election night at The New York Times: Yours for $250
    Top editors and reporters will tear themselves away from what is normally as hectic a night as you’ll find in a major newsroom to illuminate matters — and turn a buck for the company.
    They will include Executive Editor Dean Baquet, Senior Political Editor Carolyn Ryan, Editorial Page Director James Bennet, columnists Frank Bruni and Maureen Dowd, reporters Maggie Haberman, Michael Barbaro, Yamiche Alcindor, Nicholas Confessore and Jim Rutenberg.
    Discussion topics will include “The Angry and Disenfranchised” (who probably won’t be in attendance), “Election Day 2016: How Did We Get Here?” and “The First 100 Days.”…
    KKK for DJT
    “Not all Donald Trump supporters are white supremacists, but all white supremacists appear to be Donald Trump supporters. The Ku Klux Klan gave their blessing, officially endorsing Donald Trump on the front page of their latest newspaper edition.” (Daily Kos) Meanwhile, as for the top 100 circulation papers, Clinton has 56 endorsements, Gary Johnson has three and Trump has one…

    [In his usual fashion Pat documents what he posts. And since it has been discussed generally in the media to some extent I’m going to approve this comment. However, do not misconstrue this as permission to go on discussing the KKK. We will not go there.] AZ

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    pat

    Globalist Economist’s 2017 “Planet Trump” cover. just reading the list of contributors – George Clooney, for starters – makes me laugh:

    https://ukshop.economist.com/products/the-world-in-2017?_ga=1.163472444.1228670650.1479661058#

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    Another Ian

    From an email

    “FOX NEWS HAS REPORTED THAT DONALD TRUMP HAS ALREADY ACQUIRED MOST OF THE MATERIAL NEEDED TO BUILD THE WALL BETWEEN MEXICO AND THE USA THANKS TO ALL THE FOLKS THAT SHIT A BRICK WHEN THEY HEARD THAT HE HAD WON THE PRESIDENCY…….!!!!!!!!”

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    pat

    19 Nov: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: The facts about wind power are more awkward than Obama would admit
    I must apologise for having last week mistakenly reported that, despite the drive of the US in the Obama years to build ever more heavily subsidised wind and solar farms, the entire contribution of wind and solar to US electricity consumption is still only “less than 14 percent”.
    Foolishly, I cited that figure only after a quick internet trawl. where it is quoted on various websites, including Wikipedia. Only when I subsequently referred to a more reliable source did I find that the figure was in fact absurdly exaggerated. All the US was actually getting last year for all the billions of dollars it has spent on wind and solar farms was just 5.4 percent of its electricity…
    So how does this compare with the position here in England, where we are continually told that wind and solar are now providing ever more of our own power? The official headline figures do not separate England, where most of us live, from the rest of the UK. But thanks to some very clever detective work by Paul Homewood on his Not A Lot Of People Know That blog (LINK), we can see that the English figures are in fact strikingly similar to those for the US. The contribution of English onshore wind and solar farms to electricity used in England amounted last year to just 5.3 percent.
    That intermittently generated by all the thousands of wind turbines spread across the English countryside was just 2.4 percent: rather less than that fed into the grid by a single medium-size gas-fired power station like that recently opened at Carrington outside Manchester – which, thanks to the “carbon tax” and the Climate Change Act, could be the last we ever see built. There’s another very uncomfortable fact you will never see quoted on Wikipedia.
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/19/the-facts-about-wind-power-are-more-awkward-than-obama-would-adm/

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    pat

    AUDIO: 18 Nov: UK Express: Darren Hunt: Jeremy Corbyn’s brother says Trump’s views on climate change are ‘excellent’
    JEREMY CORBYN’S own brother has said climate change is little more than “half-baked physics” and backed Donald Trump’s opposition to global warming.
    When speaking on LBC, Piers said he thought Mr Trump’s views on climate change were “excellent”.
    “It was Obama’s stupidest achievement,” he said when asked about this historic Paris Agreement to combat climate change agreed last year…
    Mr Trump tweeted back in 2012 that climate change was “invented by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive,” before later backtracking and insisting he was joking.
    Piers said: “I think what he means by that is that the Chinese make a lot of money out of it because they build all those wind farms that were putting up which we’re paying for.
    “The Chinese are making money hand over fist.”
    IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWED BY PHOTO GALLERY: Climate change across the World
    Take a look through these stunning drone images, highlighting the effects of pollution on planet earth but also the opportunities to tackle this scary problem!
    (images mostly about pollution, while pics of solutions are wind turbines, solar panels & solar-powered wind turbine!)
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/733829/Donald-Trump-Climate-Change-Jeremy-Corbyn-Brother-Chinese-hoax

    18 Nov: IslingtonTribune: KOOS COUVÉE: Climate change sceptic Piers Corbyn hails Trump win
    JEREMY Corbyn’s brother Piers has congratulated climate change denier Donald Trump on his election victory in the US, saying the president-elect is right about “poppycock” climate change.
    According to the Labour leader’s brother ­– a weather forecaster and prominent climate change sceptic – conventional wisdom that the world is warming up is “nonsense” – it is actually cooling down. And he completely rejects the idea that humans contribute to climate change by emitting carbon dioxide (CO2).
    Speaking to the Tribune ahead of a debate with a renowned climate change scientist on Sunday, Mr Corbyn, 69, said: “There’s no evidence of [man-made] climate change whatsoever. The fact is that CO2 is an effect of climate change, not a cause of it. This is shown by a million years of data…
    Mr Corbyn will debate the issue with Professor Piers Foster – the head-to-head has been dubbed “Piers vs Piers” – a physicist by background with 25 years’ experience of researching climate change at Conway Hall in Holborn on Sunday.
    Mr Corbyn will argue that changes in the earth’s climate and its weather are dictated primarily by cyclical activity on the surface of the sun…READ ON
    http://www.islingtontribune.com/climate-corbyn-trump

    haven’t found anything online as yet from the Piers vs Piers debate.

    ***Hot-Hot Debate? why not Hot-Cold Debate, given Corbyn’s position?

    Conway Hall: Conway Hall Ethical Society presents: Man-made Climate Change – is it trumped up?
    SOLD OUT: ***Hot-hot debate: Piers Corbyn v Professor Piers Forster
    Professor Piers Forster is a physicist by background with 25 years of experience researching various aspects of climate change, including its causes, impacts, and adaptation and mitigation strategies. He is the director of the Priestley International Centre for Climate at the University of Leeds. He was lead author for the past two IPCC reports that provided the underpinning evidence for climate change, when the IPCC was a co-recipient (with Al Gore) of the 2007 Nobel Peace prize.
    Piers Corbyn – also a physicist and Fellow of Royal Astronomical Society and Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society is a pioneer of long-range weather and climate forecasting. He believes that changes in the Earth’s climate and its weather are dictated primarily by cyclical activity on the surface of the sun, and not by the effects of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He presented at the Paris Climate Challenge, the alternative to the UN event in Paris in Dec 2015, has appeared on BBC TV and has attracted much press coverage.
    Piers was named by American Thinker magazine as Climate Predictor of the year 2010 and is founder and Director of WeatherAction.
    The debate will be chaired by Prof Evan Parker. Professor of Nanotechnology at the University of Warwick.
    https://conwayhall.org.uk/event/piers-v-piers/

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    ROM

    Everywhere I look today in the MSM, some blogs and even here on Jo’s blog on a few occasions there are innumerable articles and commentary giving out free, gratuitous and often quite condescending advice to Donald Trump and other elected officials on how he / they should be constructing his government and the policies he should be following or that or he will be in deep poo with somebody nobody has heard of or with a bunch of elitist no hoper busy bodies who have never turned an honest spadeful of dirt in their privileged lives if he doesn’t follow the advice they are so generously and freely handing down from that same unelectable, non responsible, arrogant and condescending MSM elitist commentariat.

    Rare indeed are any of these commentaries and gratuitous pieces of advice coming from people such as ex politicians and even active politicians who have actually stood for public office and have been voted in by the public and who actually had to make and implement their government’s policies.
    And have had to directly wear the consequences of those decisions they made when they face both the public both as elected politicians to justify their decisions and then at the ballot box at regular intervals.

    To use “Cook’s Constant” again, about 97% of this MSM commentary and the condescending and gratuitous advice given to Trump on how he should be running the country or else, emanates from the arrogant, elitist and grossly self important MSM commentariat who have never run anything, who have NEVER been elected or held elected office, who have NEVER had to implement and follow the policies they are promoting today let alone the policies and advice they handed out so freely yesterday, who have NEVER had to maintain any consistency in what they are advocating as a responsible policy and can and do switch to something completely different without any consequences when their proposed solutions turn out to be plain garbage for which they have NEVER had to personally wear or take any responsibility for their gratuitous and condescending political advice when it turned out to be not just wrong but has or would have done great damage to both individuals and the collective society.

    I have come to look at this unwanted, condescending and gratuitous handing out of advice to politicians whatever they might represent which has become a very notable feature of much of the MSM over the last few years as another factor that has increased and is still increasing my contempt for the elitist self serving bigots who are now so much of a factor in the condescending, self centred, self serving, often hard left MSM commentariat of today.

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    Analitik

    GetUp! accept foreign donations while lobbying for political parties to be banned from receiving the same.

    a review of recent ­donations to GetUp! reveals donations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from international activist groups. Recent donations include $63,693 from the New York-based Oak Foundation, $42,960 from German activist group Campact, and two separate donations of $99,985 and $95,633 from the Avaaz Foundation

    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dCLWVExedN8J:www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/activist-group-getup-seeks-ban-on-foreign-gifts-for-others/news-story/34b66e158cd16dcc718240712b26614b+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

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    pat

    nothing but a disputed statement to show for COP22:

    20 Nov: The Hindu: Made efforts to ensure actions based on equity: India on COP22
    “India, led by Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave, participated constructively in association with developing countries to ensure that climate actions are based on the principles of equity and CBDR and climate justice,” an Environment Ministry statement said…
    India climate experts, however, said that the conference ended without making any breakthroughs under critical agenda items including agriculture, finance, adaptation and pre-2020 actions.
    They said that COP 22 was named as ‘COP of Action’ but ended up being ‘COP of Distraction’ primarily because of US elections results.
    As far as India was concerned, deputy director general CSE Chandra Bhushan said the country had no clear position regarding issues affecting its poor, including agriculture, adaptation and loss and damage.
    “India did not contribute much to the discussions on the issues that affect its poor and neither the Indian negotiators were willing to openly explain their position on these issues,” Bhushan said.
    “It publicised sustainable lifestyle and environmental justice. However, it was found wanting and there was no elaboration of what it actually meant by these two concepts,” he said.
    http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/made-efforts-to-ensure-actions-based-on-equity-india-on-cop22/article9367555.ece

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    clipe

    Any Kodi users around?

    10

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      tom0mason

      I have it in my Linux repository but have not used it. Looks like an interesting piece of technology for the digitally connected types.

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    pat

    hilarious:

    20 Nov: Townhall: Kevin McCullough: Why They Protest
    Dear Special Snowflakes,
    I wanted to take a minute to write you specifically, so that you would know that your feelings matter to me.
    I know the past week or so have been really super, incredibly, terribly, horribly hard for you…READ ALL
    http://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2016/11/20/why-they-protest-n2248193

    pretty funny as well:

    VIDEOS/PICS: 19 Nov: DailyCaller: Michael Volpe: Socialists Protest Trump, Capitalism In Chicago
    ANSWER was not the only radical group at the rally. The Revolutionary Communist Party USA (REVCOM) piggy backed off the rally, promoting their own anti-police brutality protest that will be held Sunday, November 20 on the south side of the city…
    The Workers World Party (WWP), another communist party, was passing out fliers for the inauguration day protest, which WWP is now helping to organize…
    The Party for Socialism and Liberation was passing out fliers for its “Day of Socialism classes” to be held on December 3 on the north side of Chicago…
    The International Youth and Studies for Social Equality, the Socialist Equality Party, and the World Socialist Web Site, were handing out fliers for their own public meeting on November 22 to be held in the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC)…
    ANSWER announced on Friday that the inauguration day “mass rally” will be held in Freedom Plaza in D.C.
    http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/19/socialists-protest-trump-capitalism-in-chicago/

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    Raven

    Don’t forget to secure your edition of Newsweek – Madam President printed, delivered and recalled in anticipation of Hillary willing the election.
    Original reports said only a few were pilfered but there’s plenty on eBay.

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    Dennis

    That brain thing, what was it about, remind me please ……… [wink]

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    Raven

    An interesting/amusing take over at Judith Curry’s blog “The Trumpocene”

    At a time when most scientists think that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch – the anthropocene – characterised by the influence of a single species (ours) on the major biogeochemical cycles, perhaps we should consider a new terminology? So, welcome to the ‘trumpocene‘ where the future depends not on the decisions of a single species, but on a single member of that species: Donald Trump

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    Mark M

    NASA: Australians too stupid to vote;

    “I’m aware of who Malcolm Roberts is, and the only surprise is that he is in fact a senator.” – Gavin Schmidt, NASA GISS director.

    https://twitter.com/smh/status/800519150733062144

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      Raven

      Malcolm Roberts tweets.

      This afternoon – 21st November between 5 – 6 PM.
      (paraphrased) The Senate will debate the Australian Govt. policy position on global warming in light of the election of Donald Trump and his well known rejection of the theory.

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    pat

    shut down the ABC. don’t imagine for a minute that this is about why people voted for Trump. it is truly UGLY & should be pulled:

    20 Nov: ABC Foreign Correspondent: Analysis by Emma Alberici: US election: Why did 61 million Americans vote for Donald Trump?
    Think of him as a song you cannot get out of your head.
    You really like the tune, but when you finally listen closely to the lyrics, you realise the singer is a bit of a twat…
    As far as Mr Trump is concerned, The New York Times newspaper is the standard-bearer of the elite media — a group of publications and broadcasters who considered his candidacy illegitimate and took every opportunity to make jokes at his expense.
    For much of the campaign, the New York Times predicted a win for Mrs Clinton with a margin of up to 93 per cent in the week before the election.
    Musing on his paper’s coverage, New York Times journalist Jim Rutenberg said: “I think it was fair. I also think it was objective … objective in a way it took us to places we’re not used to going.”
    “There was always a fear it would seem imbalanced … but if one candidate is uttering more, far more falsehoods than the other candidate, you can’t balance that. It is what it is.”…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-20/us-election-why-did-61-million-americans-vote-for-trump/8040648

    btw presumably ABC will no longer be using Andrew Romano (Yahoo, formerly Daily Beast) as a US correspondent, having foisted him on ABC Nightlife listeners for at least 18 months, relentessly shilling for Hillary Clinton, until the end:

    first 7mins10secs:

    AUDIO: 28 Oct: ABC Nightlife: The latest news from the US with Andrew Romano
    US Correspondent and senior writer from Yahoo News Andrew Romano talks about the latest developments in the US presidential election

    (Andrew Romano, paraphrasing: all the info, all the data, if you drill down in it, is showing a Clinton win; she has a durable lead of 5% up to 10%. when u run that through a statistical model, u get from 85 to 95% chance of a Clinton victory. most people have acknowledged this, including downballot Republicans who I have been covering.
    some people don’t accept this reality & u mentioned some of them in your introduction – Trump voters who go to his rallies, etc… they think it will be like Brexit, the polls aren’t capturing his voters, i think they might be very surprised on election day.)

    http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/nightlife/andrew-romano/7980206

    WRONG, like all that fake CAGW data, ABC.

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    pat

    unbelievable:

    21 Nov: SMH: Richard Di Natale: ‘United States alliance now represents a security threat to Australia’
    by Fergus Hunter
    Party leader Richard Di Natale says that President-elect Trump’s high-profile views on domestic and international affairs represent “an ally’s worst nightmare” and highlight a need for Australia to redefine the relationship with the US and operate more independently…

    VIDEO The Greens leader has left nothing to the imagination in his opinion of Donald Trump and has some advice for the PM when it comes to the Australia-US alliance.

    The Greens leader said Mr Trump’s views on climate change, refugees, defence spending, nuclear proliferation, trade and authoritarian governments make his country a “dangerous ally”…
    In his speech on Monday, Senator Di Natale also addressed the far-reaching ramifications of climate change, asserting that “the national security, refugee and diplomatic challenges that Trump was elected to solve will amplify a hundred-fold if he blindly marches towards a four-degree temperature rise”.
    “Not only is global warming of profound concern in and of itself, but it acts as a threat multiplier, exacerbating drought, famine, displacement, food and water scarcity, refugees and disease,” he said.
    The President-elect has promised to wipe out government climate change initiatives, tear up the Paris agreement and once said global warming was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese “to make US manufacturing non-competitive”.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/richard-di-natale-united-states-alliance-now-represents-a-security-threat-to-australia-20161121-gsty5r.html

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    pat

    ***Nishimura is the former Japanese UN climate negotiator & has no position in the Japanese Govt as Stromberg deceptively suggests:

    20 Nov: WaPo: Stephen Stromberg: A climate negotiator explains why Trump might not be a total disaster for the planet
    But when I met with Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, a veteran Japanese climate negotiator and ***high government official, one of the first things he wanted to ask me about following Trump’s victory was obscure policy in the federal tax code…
    American officials, Nishimura said, assured international negotiators that, as long as two tax provisions remained in force, the United States could meet much of its Paris pledge to cut emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. These sections, known as the Production Tax Credit and the Investment Tax Credit, directly subsidize wind and solar energy projects in the United States. Elements of the production credit have been part of the country’s energy plan since 1992, and the subsidies have powerful backers in both parties…
    Like a lot of policy that attracts bipartisan backing, the subsidies are not particularly elegant. They crudely throw cash at renewables without prioritizing projects that would be the most useful. But at this point climate wonks may have to take what they can get…
    Nishimura added that if Trump uses some of the money he wants to spend on infrastructure to improve electricity transmission lines, he would remove a major barrier to new renewables coming online. Even if that does not happen, state and local climate policies will survive Trump, as will federal regulations the courts will not let him destroy.
    Nishimura also warned, however, that the Trump administration may undermine the global climate effort in ways many are not considering now.

    ***Trump, he said, might try to “destroy the science.”

    The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the keeper of the consensus on climate science, relies on the good intentions of various governments to produce its authoritative reports. “It’s easy for Donald Trump to order Ambassador John Bolton to go there and change all these things,” he said. “There are lots of skeptics, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world,” as well as Japan, he explained. “They would be animated, they would be emboldened.”
    Nishimura admitted that would lead to a massive international backlash against the United States..
    “Another reality President Trump will face when visiting Paris, visiting Frankfurt, he will have huge demonstrations,” Nishimura said…
    Moreover, “China will seek, in my view, the moral high ground and declare themselves the top world leader for the planetary environment,” he said. Countries that behave as Trump proposes will be blamed internationally “as a spoiler of pristine planetary civilization.”…
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/11/20/a-climate-negotiator-explains-why-trump-might-not-be-a-total-disaster-for-the-planet/

    Stromberg gave WaPo space to Nishimura just 3 days previously – again not making it clear he has no position in govt today:

    17 Nov: WaPo: Stephen Stromberg: Japanese officials cling to Trump’s history as a businessman
    Not everyone is optimistic on this side of the Pacific. Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, a decades-long veteran of the Japanese government and diplomat, warned of “autarky” — that is, closing the country’s economy from the rest of the world — “that will bring your great country down.”
    “I am 76 years old, an old guy who is reading your paper and the New York Times and watching American TV here . . . because I am so concerned,” he said. “Heartbroken.”
    Apparently he has not yet progressed — regressed? — to stalking Twitter for the president-elect’s official word on how the world will change.
    Credibility of the kind the United States has in Japan takes decades to earn. We may soon see how quickly it can be replaced by disillusionment.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/11/17/japanese-officials-cling-to-trumps-history-as-a-businessman/

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    GregS

    So both the Arctic and Antarctic at record lows, another likely record hot year – should we all give up now and become Believers?

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      AndyG55

      The ONLY reason it might be a so-called “record” warm year is because of the El Nino transient. It was NOT global in any way. It was very much regional only.

      It has only been warm in areas directly affected by that El Nino and the NA Blob. In Feb, March, that was a large anomaly in northern Russia in the middle of their winter.. It was NOT warm.. just not as cold as average.

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        GregS

        Phew. Thanks. ;^)

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        Craig Thomas

        So this El Nino was the same as all previous El Ninos?

        Answer: No. The trend is for each El Nino year to be hotter than the previous El Nino year.

        Conclusion: Andy’s ability to analyse is severely compromised.

        In fact, I think Andy owes us an apology for saying, “NOT global in any way”. It appears that he is trying to deceive!?!?!

        Globally, over the past year, 139 new Hot records have been set, and only 24 new Cold records have been set.
        (Similarly, daily Hot records are being set at 6 times the rate of Cold ones.
        https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datatools/records

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          AndyG55

          You want to comment on my ability to analyse you ought to at least pass junior high first. Then try to look at more than just what you get fed by your handlers.

          Those records rely totally on the El Nino transient and urban or airport effects, and you know it.

          And seriously ! using NOAA to show warming. that’s akin to asking an alcoholic if he wants a drink..

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          AndyG55

          In 1974 NCAR had a graph of global temperatures. It was at approximately 3-4 year points

          If you take that graph, and start the 3 year average of RSS at 0.2ºC above the end of the NCAR graph you get this

          https://s19.postimg.org/ud25e9xbn/graph_17_RSS_3yr.gif

          It is obvious that the UNTAMPERED temperatures of 1942 were HIGHER than current.

          The totally mal-adjusted JUNK that NOAA sends to GISS et al is an absolute and total CORRUPTION of the original data.

          Everybody knows that.

          Yet children like you still use it.

          BIZARRE and very anti-intelligent

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    pat

    not surprisingly, Nishimura is an anti-coal kind of guy:

    12 May: Financial Times: Leo Lewis: Japan warned of flaw in coal-fired power plants project
    Expansion presents risk of $60bn in ‘stranded’ assets and ignores renewables, says Oxford study
    Ben Caldecott, the report’s main author said current plans to build 49 new coal-fired power plants and 28 gigawatts of additional capacity cannot be economically justified, and would exceed the capacity required to replace the retiring fleet by 191 per cent.
    The resulting overcapacity, combined with stiffening competition from solar and other renewable resources, creates a risk that assets amounting to abut 25 per cent of power companies’ market capitalisationj could become “stranded”…
    The Oxford university report comes amid criticism from Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, Japan’s former climate changed ambassador to the UN, over the Abe government’s willingness to promote domestic companies leading the way in so-called “clean coal” technnology.
    “Lamentably, the Japanese government has not taken the lessons of other parts of the world and has let corporate Japan take over, Mr Nishimura said on Wednesday. “The value of the (Oxford) report is that someone is clearly proving to te authorities how dangerous are these plans to burn more fossil fuel.”…
    https://www.ft.com/content/a7f90364-1770-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e

    27 May: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: G7 leaders set 2025 deadline to scrap fossil fuel subsidies
    Japan’s former climate ambassador Mutsuyoshi Nishimura seemed unsure his government could meet the G7 pledge.
    Citing reports Tokyo officials wiped coal off this year’s G7 agenda, Nishimura said the country was “addicted” to the world’s most carbon intensive fuel.
    “It is an important export item. Japan sells coal technology by ***claiming that energy-poor developing countries want it,” he said.
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/05/27/g7-leaders-set-2025-deadline-to-phase-out-fossil-fuel-subsidies/

    ***got that bit right.

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      Graeme No.3

      Of course if Japan cut out all subsidies then renewables would go bankrupt and all that reliable and cheaper coal fired capacity would be just the thing for Japan.

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        Analitik

        They have a bunch of nukes coming back online too

        By the end of FY2017, 19 units could be restarted, generating some 119.8 TWh of electricity annually, compared with total nuclear output of 288.2 TWh in FY2010, the year prior to the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

        The IEEJ’s high-case scenario assumes a total of 25 units are restarted by the end of FY2017, generating 151.2 TWh annually, with total fossil fuel imports spending decreasing by JPY0.7 trillion relative to the low-case scenario where only 12 reactors are assumed to restart, producing 39.1 TWh. In the high-case scenario, the average electricity unit cost is lowered by about JPY600/MWh and energy-related emissions decrease by 52 million tonnes CO2.

        http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-Japanese-institute-sees-19-reactor-restarts-by-March-2018-2807164.html

        Compare those output figures (even the low end one) vs all the renewables (ex-hydro) – about 42 TWh in 2015.

        Bankruptcies in companies that generate solar power are on track to hit a record this year, totaling 31 in the first six months, up 24% from the first half of last year, according to Tokyo Shoko Research. And consumers are installing fewer panels on their homes. The generating capacity of solar panels sold in Japan in the year through March was down almost 25% from the previous year

        http://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-shift-to-renewable-energy-loses-power-1473818581

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    cedarhill

    How about all those attending these meetings not use any hydrocarbon fuels and no electricity?
    Even better, what if they paid their own way with their own money?
    We should be compassionate and provide them with a free pair of sandals.

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    Carbon500

    Here’s some entertaining material for Frank, Harry Twinotter and others to have a look at:

    http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=800&c=1

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      Craig Thomas

      What a silly article.
      If you put your sceptic hat on, you will notice that the research referred to by this scribbler, far from being “amazed”, in fact specifically refers to the research as, “further evidence of the roles of CO2 fertilization”…..
      Obviously, the carbon fertilisation effect is a well-known effect. It has been clearly visible for decades in global carbon budgets.
      The issue of the anthropogenic airborne fraction is a pretty minor one – after all, CO2 levels are over 400ppm now, and continue to increase. All the decreasing airborne fraction means is that anthropogenic CO2 is being recycled through the biosphere faster than CO2 is being permanently fixed. Hardly a ground-breaking revelation.

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    Laura

    Hi Jo,
    Thought this might interest you. Int’l. Study: IPCC Doesn’t Account for 1 Billion Tons of CO2 Absorbed Annually… by Cement
    http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/study-ipcc-doesnt-account-1-billion-tons-co2-absorbed-annually
    Cheers, Laura

    [Clean green cement eh? A billion tons here, a billion there… pretty soon they’ll know what they are talking about. Thanks Laura — Jo]

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