Planes Falling from the Skies By Brian Simpson

     Here is a problem for the high IQ people to get to work and solve before we all die; planes falling from the sky:
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-11/sensors-linked-to-737-crashes-vulnerable-to-failure-data-show

“The crashes of two Boeing Co. 737 Max jets in five months have focused attention on a little-known device that malfunctioned, starting a chain reaction that sent the planes into deadly dives. Pilots have for decades relied on the weather-vane-like “angle of attack” sensors to warn them when they near a dangerous aerodynamic stall. But investigators are probing Boeing’s decision to enable the sensors on the Max model to go beyond warning pilots and automatically force the plane’s nose down. A review of public databases by Bloomberg News reveals the potential hazards of relying on the devices, which are mounted on the fuselage near the plane’s nose and are vulnerable to damage. There are at least 140 instances since the early 1990s of sensors on U.S. planes being damaged by jetways and other equipment on the ground, or striking birds in flight. In at least 25 cases in the U.S., Canada and Europe, the damage triggered cockpit alerts or emergencies. On April 1, 2012, a United Airlines 767-300 was taking off from San Francisco when it struck a flock of western sandpipers, according to a Federal Aviation Administration database. The birds damaged the left sensor, scrambling the speed readings and auto throttle. The plane returned to the airport.

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Gasp! Iranian Theat! Quick Nuke “Em! By Peter Ewer

     The Deep state is pressing Trump for war in Iran, since he has served his purpose, and will be defeated by an extreme communist candidate in 2020, and put in a cage, along with all his family, except Jared. The man is too stupid to see what is coming. The best thing that could happen for America now is that he gets impeached, to stir the melted pot, even more.
  https://apnews.com/a770998e42de4ed98257c91210b2fbbf

“The Pentagon on Thursday will present plans to the White House to send up to 10,000 more troops to the Middle East, in a move to beef up defenses against potential Iranian threats, U.S. officials said Wednesday. The officials said no final decision has been made yet, and it’s not clear if the White House would approve sending all or just some of the requested forces. Officials said the move is not in response to any new threat from Iran, but is aimed at reinforcing security in the region. They said the troops would be defensive forces, and the discussions include additional Patriot missile batteries, more ships and increased efforts to monitor Iran. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans have not been formally announced. Thursday morning’s meeting comes as tensions with Iran continue to simmer, and it wasn’t clear if a decision would be made during the session. Any move to deploy more forces to the Middle East would signal a shift for President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly emphasized the need to reduce America’s troop presence in the region. U.S. officials have provided few details about possible Iranian threats, but indicated they initially involved missiles loaded onto small Iranian boats. This week officials said the missiles have been taken off the boats near Iran’s shore, but other maritime threats continue.

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Poop Patrol By Chris Knight

     The benefits of a first world country sliding down into fifth world status, as often ignored. Across California, for example, and especially San Fanny, homeless people freely empty their bowels, everywhere, clearly out pacing dogs in filling the streets with poop. So much of these flows everywhere that major medical conferences get cancelled because elite doctors do not want to step in the brown messages of love from their fellow humans. Talk about discrimination and lack of appreciation of diversity!
  https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-poop-patrol-employees-make-184000-a-year-2018-8?r=US&IR=T

“In San Francisco, you can earn more than $184,000 a year in salary and benefits for cleaning up feces. As members of the city's "Poop Patrol," workers are entitled to $71,760 a year, plus an additional $112,918 in benefits, such as healthcare and retirement savings, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. In August, the city announced that five staffers from the San Francisco Department of Public Works would soon roam the Tenderloin neighborhood — where nearly half of the city's homeless population is — in search of waste. The staffers will begin their efforts each afternoon equipped with a steam cleaner for sanitizing the streets. The full budget for the initiative, $830,977, signifies a concerted effort to address the city's mounting feces problem, which has resulted in more than 14,500 calls to 311, the city's non-emergency-services line, since the beginning of the year, the Chronicle previously reported.

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Pythons within Pythons within … By Brian Simpson

     This is interesting; a python vomited up an even bigger python. It raises the question that inside the even bigger python is a larger one, and inside that a larger one yet, so that eventually, in the limit, there is a python so large as to fill the entire universe. So, how did that fit inside the original?
  https://www.livescience.com/65544-python-vomits-python.html?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190523-ls

“A gigantic python was recently captured in photos vomiting up another, bigger python. This snake regurgitation happened in East Kimberley, Western Australia, according to local news site The New Daily. Kurt Jongedyk, the manager at Parry Creek Farm Tourist Resort and Caravan Park in the area, reportedly came across a 11.5- to 13-foot (3.5 to 4 meters) python and "relocated" it away from his house. At that point, the python began to "bring up its meal" — "an even fatter python of about the same length." Amanda Jongedyk took the photos, which were posted to the park’s Facebook page. [Photos: Python Chows Down on 3 Deer] Accounts of pythons eating other pythons turn out not to be that rare. Here's a National Geographic video of exactly this sort of snake cannibalism in action. And pythons are more than capable of swallowing larger animals, and even, in some awful cases, humans. Contrary to popular belief, snakes don't unhinge their jaws to swallow bigger critters. "One of the enduring myths about snake feeding mechanisms is the idea that the jaws detach," Patrick T. Gregory, a biology professor at the University of Victoria in Canada, previously told Live Science. "In fact, they stay connected all the time." But the two jaws move independently of one another, without the bony restrictions that you have with human jaw hinges. "The two mandibles are not joined at the front by a rigid [joint], as ours are, but by an elastic ligament that allows them to spread apart," Gregory said. In order to swallow snakes larger than themselves, Live Science previously reported, smaller snakes force their prey's spinal columns to bend in waves. That shrinks the swallowed snake's overall length, "packaging" it to fit in the predator snake's stomach."

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The Day the Earth Moved By Viv Forbes

     The proposed Adani mine has been wading through a green swamp of political obstacles for nine long years. Other coal optimists have struggled to develop coal in the Galilee Basin for over 40 years. Federal Labor, State Labor and the Greens have taken turns to man the anti-coal barricades. In these bad new days, before anyone can open a mine they need multiple approvals, each one providing opportunities for do-nothing activists to raise new hurdles at every hearing. The whole process of judicial judgements and reviews, enquiries, objections and hearings has been a gold mine for lawyers and barristers and a bottomless pit into which mine optimists throw money. Nine years ago, Labor Premier Anna Bligh declared Adani “a significant project for Queensland”. The Queensland Co-ordinator General gave Adani approval to proceed in 2014.

     The Federal Government also gave its approval to proceed in 2014 but that approval was set aside because of complaints by the Mackay Conservation Council, the Australian Conservation Foundation and others that the yakka skink, the ornamental snake, koalas, the waxy cabbage palm and the black throated finch would be disturbed. And of course the Great Barrier Reef, the coastal seagrass and inland ground water would be threatened. The ACF and the Greens have also cowed most Australian banks into denying finance to the Carmichael Project. Native title rights have been asserted by two groups, and Greenpeace and the Climate Council have run scare campaigns on Greenhouse gas emissions should Adani go ahead. Naturally the ABC gives all Adani opponents good air time. Just 5 months ago the anti-Adani Deputy Premier of Queensland, Jacki Trad, said she did not believe the Adani project would ever get off the ground. But immediately after the recent Federal election landslide which left the ALP holding no federal seats north of Brisbane, and winning only one of the six senate vacancies, Queensland Premier Palaszczuk flew north to Mackay and demanded that her departments produce firm timeline for Adani decisions “by Friday” (today).  What a difference a day makes.

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The Day the Earth Moved by Viv Forbes

     The proposed Adani mine has been wading through a green swamp of political obstacles for nine long years. Other coal optimists have struggled to develop coal in the Galilee Basin for over 40 years. Federal Labor, State Labor and the Greens have taken turns to man the anti-coal barricades. In these bad new days, before anyone can open a mine they need multiple approvals, each one providing opportunities for do-nothing activists to raise new hurdles at every hearing. The whole process of judicial judgements and reviews, enquiries, objections, hearings and re-hearings has been a gold mine for lawyers and barristers and a bottomless pit into which mine optimists throw money. Nine years ago, Labor Premier Anna Bligh declared Adani “a significant project for Queensland”. The Queensland Co-ordinator General gave Adani approval to proceed in 2014.

     The Federal Government also gave its approval to proceed in 2014 but that approval was set aside because of complaints by the Mackay Conservation Council, the Australian Conservation Foundation and others that the yakka skink, the ornamental snake, koalas, the waxy cabbage palm and the black throated finch would be disturbed. And of course the Great Barrier Reef, the coastal seagrass and inland ground water would be threatened. The ACF and the Greens have also cowed most Australian banks into denying finance to the Carmichael Project. Native title rights have been asserted by two groups, and Greenpeace and the Climate Council have run scare campaigns on Greenhouse gas emissions should Adani go ahead. Naturally the ABC gives all Adani opponents good air time.

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EVs and Emissions By Kim Eason

     Dear Sir, The US Dept. of Energy (DOE) says electric vehicles (EVs) convert about 60% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Electricity generation on average harnesses about 45% of available energy in fossil fuels (at best) and electrical distribution losses are about 23%.  Therefore, EVs power at the wheels is about 21% of available power in fossil fuels used in electricity generation.  In comparison, modern diesel engines can now convert about 48% of available energy in diesel to motive power and therefore cause much less CO2 emissions than EVs.

     The contrary argument is to rapidly pursue 100% EVs  charged by 100% renewable energy.  There are three insurmountable problems :

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More Amazing than the Amazing Spider-Man! By Brian Simpson

     This is pretty amazing, far better to think about than all that superhero nonsense pushed in the media, as the real superheroes, or just plain “supers” are spiders that can use their webs better than Spider-Man:
  https://www.livescience.com/65491-spider-web-slingshot.html?utm_source=ls-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20190518-ls
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-05-18-spider-species-discovered-to-use-catapult-technology-to-fling-sticky-webs-at-prey.html

“Does the idea of a spider using its web to catapult itself at high speeds give you the willies? Then be forewarned: the triangle weaver spider (Hyptiotes cavatus) does just that. Which makes it the only known creature, besides humans, to employ a strategy known as "external power amplification, a new study finds. The concept of external power amplification is simple. Basically, an animal uses an external device (in this case, the spider's web) to store energy, like a person storing energy in a bow with a pulled-back arrow. Once the energy is released, the spider is flung forward like a slingshot, greatly exceeding the speeds at which the arachnid could otherwise travel. This crafty trick helps the spider survive. The triangle weaver spider doesn't have venom, so it uses this slingshot method to help it swiftly catch prey that land on its web, the researchers said. To study the critter, the scientists collected wild triangle weaver spiders, which are native to the United States and Canada, and brought them to the lab, where the spiders were housed in terrariums and filmed with high-speed videos as they hunted prey. The videos revealed that after the spider builds a triangular web, it retreats to the web's corner, where the long lines of its web join together. Then it takes the web's anchor line, the main strand that connects the web to something stable, like a branch, and cuts the line in two. Then, the spider does its trick: it uses its body to bridge the now-loose, cut strand of web. It holds the far end (the end closest to the branch) with its hind legs and the front end with its front legs. Next, the spider walks backward "in a 'leg-over-leg' motion, pulling the web taut," the researchers wrote in the study.

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The Amazing Journey of a Plastic Bag By James Reed

     Hollywood makes movies about fish, so why not plastic bags? I can see no reason, especially since plastic has now made it to the deepest parts of the ocean, no mean achievement for the human races’ ingenuity.
  https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48230157

“An American explorer has found plastic waste on the seafloor while breaking the record for the deepest ever dive. Victor Vescovo descended nearly 11km (seven miles) to the deepest place in the ocean - the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench. He spent four hours exploring the bottom of the trench in his submersible, built to withstand the immense pressure of the deep. He found sea creatures, but also found a plastic bag and sweet wrappers. It is the third time humans have reached the ocean's extreme depths.”

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We Need a Power-Water Czar By Viv Forbes

     The new Australian federal ministry resembles a giant bureaucracy with 52 ministerial positions selected mainly to look politically correct on sexual ratios, state representations and party factions but with no one charged with solving Eastern Australia’s critical water and electricity needs. PM Morrison needs to create a powerful new position with Ministerial power called “The Power and Water Czar”. This Czar’s job would be to identify, define and remove all obstacles to quickly building one or more new dams to provide hydro power and water into the Darling River basin and to urgently facilitate more reliable coal-fired power in Eastern Australia. Increased coal power could come from renewing Liddell power station and/or building a new modern low-emission coal-fired power station. The initial money needed should be raised by redirection of funds from the unwanted Snowy 2 Pumped Hydro Scheme. Australians seem unaware of the crucial importance of the magnificent Snowy Scheme in our looming power and water crisis. In the midst of a big drought, Snowy Hydro water is being wasted to plug the daily gaps in wind/solar power production and also wasted on “environmental flows”. Water held in the Lake Eucumbene (the heart of the Snowy) is down to 24% and Hume Dam is just 14%.

     To placate green-leaning State Premiers the PM should also offer to underwrite a new wind farm in the Warringah (NSW) electorate, a giant battery for a green leafy suburb in Melbourne, and a program to restore sea water flushing of high salinity water for the Coorong/Lower Lakes at the mouth of the Murray River. A likely area for a new dam is along the Great Dividing Range in the Northern Rivers area with water caught on the Eastern side and water released on the western side of the Great Dividing Range; plus weirs along the Darling River. The new coal power station could quickly be built in the Surat/Bowen basin in Queensland, probably Kogan Creek. Or Liddell could be refurbished. The obvious first choice for the position of Power and Water Czar is ex PM Tony Abbott who understands the politics and realities of power generation and water supply and knows his way around the corridors in Canberra. For far too long Australia has placed added demand on water, power and food supplies by welcoming migrants, refugees and tourists while putting obstacles in front of all reliable power and water proposals. This foolishness must cease. To focus on the urgency of these two pieces of essential infrastructure the Power and Water Czar should be given power to negotiate options to acquire land and to over-ride the death-by-delay tactics of extremist environmental and anti-development groups for these two items of critical infrastructure.

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How about Some Happy News for a Change? By “Brain” Simpson

     Happy news? Positive thoughts? What are they? Feeling good? Ok, try this for size:
  https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/geologist-a-yellowstone-eruption-would-destroy-most-of-the-u-s_05202019

“A geologist has said that if the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, it would destroy most of the United States, all but wiping the country off of the map. Dr. Jerzy Zaba is importantly not predicting that the volcano is going to erupt soon, but simply stating that it does have the power to destroy humanity and life as we know it. According to Tech WP, Dr. Zaba says that Yellowstone, if it erupted in a similar manner as it did 640,000 years ago, it would destroy much of the United States. Dr. Zaba, who is a geologist at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, said the mass explosion is completely unavoidable although it’s impossible to say when that explosion will occur. In addition to the annihilation of the United States, the geologist also says about 5 billion other people will starve to death in the volcanoes aftermath: a volcanic winter. It is forecasted that if there was an explosion similar to the one from 640,000. for years, it would destroy most of the United States. Discarded materials would cover everything with a meter layer within a radius of 500 km. And due to the emission of a huge amount of dust, gases or sulfur oxide to the atmosphere, there would be a temporary cooling of the climate. Sulfur oxide would create a thin veil of sulfuric acid around the planet reflecting sunlight.

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The Australian Climate Alarm Election By Viv Forbes & Dr Geoff Derrick

     The ALP-Greens-ABC-GetUp-Turnbull-CFMEU-Fairfax alliance ran hard in Australia’s recent climate alarm election - they lost. So let us see no more anti-coal motorcades, hear no more climate propaganda and replace Pied Piper Street Processions with hard science education. The new government must also stop blatant promotion of green energy with targets, subsidies and carbon taxes, and focus on infrastructure catch-up. Forecasts of doom are frequent, and they fail just as frequently. Climate is always changing. Global cooling always follows global warming. Government policies that assume continuous global warming expose our society and economy to huge risks for no measurable benefits when that forecast proves disastrously wrong. Despite the election win, there is no room to relax.

     As Dr Geoff Derrick points out:

“We must remember that the LNP Coalition still subsidises renewables,
has not built a decent dam for a long long time,
is only lukewarm about a new coal-fired power station,
has little interest in nuclear power,
still gives too much money to the ABC,
still wants to flood the country with immigrants
before infrastructure can adequately cope,
and we still have that French submarine agreement.
And none of them can read a ‘sciency’ graph.”

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Upheaval By Brian Simpson

     This is not a fellow whom I agree with much at all, but it is worth quoting out of curiosity about how the other side thinks. Jared Diamond, has a new book, Upheaval (2019), which I have not read, and do not intend to read. No need to, the plot is easy to work out. After writing about how nations collapse from environmental overshoot, but never from ethno-racial overshoot, now his focus is on how a selected number of nations have recovered, and this process is like how individuals recover from psychological illnesses, post-World War II Japan being one example discussed.
  https://www.amazon.com/Upheaval-Turning-Points-Nations-Crisis/dp/0316409138/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=upheaval&qid=1557655825&s=books&sr=1-1
  http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/jared-diamond-on-his-new-book-upheaval.html
  https://www.npr.org/2019/05/09/721472807/in-upheaval-jared-diamond-examines-crisis-resolution-through-a-personal-lens
  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/upheaval-jared-diamond-review-can-nations-turmoil-benefit-crisis/

“Today, the risk that we’re facing is not of societies collapsing one by one, but because of globalization, the risk we are facing is of the collapse of the whole world. How likely do you think that is? That the whole network of civilization would collapse? I would estimate the chances are about 49 percent that the world as we know it will collapse by about 2050. I’ll be dead by then but my kids will be, what? Sixty-three years old in 2050. So, this is a subject of much practical interest to me. At the rate we’re going now, resources that are essential for complex societies are being managed unsustainably. Fisheries around the world, most fisheries are being managed unsustainably, and they’re getting depleted. Farms around the world, most farms are being managed unsustainably. Soil, topsoil around the world. Fresh water around the world is being managed unsustainably. With all these things, at the rate we’re going now, we can carry on with our present unsustainable use for a few decades, and by around 2050 we won’t be able to continue it any longer. Which means that by 2050 either we’ve figured out a sustainable course, or it’ll be too late.”

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The Glory of Carbon Dioxide By James Reed

     The following article which I will quote in all of its glory got censored by Big Tech, which is why we should be interested, nay, excited:
  https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-04-26-nasa-declares-carbon-dioxide-is-greening-the-earth.html

“In direct contradiction to the scare stories about carbon dioxide being relentlessly pushed by the climate change alarmists, a scientific study published in Nature Climate Change and highlighted by NASA reveals that rising carbon dioxide levels are having a tremendously positive impact on the re-greening of planet Earth over the last three decades, with some regions experiencing over a 50% increase in plant life. The study, entitled, “Greening of the Earth and its drivers,” used satellite data to track and map the expansion of green plant growth across the globe from 1982 – 2015. Published in 2016, this study found that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide causes “fertilization” of plant life, resulting in a remarkable acceleration of increased “greening” across every Earth continent. As the study abstract explains: We show a persistent and widespread increase of growing season integrated LAI (greening) over 25% to 50% of the global vegetated area… Factorial simulations with multiple global ecosystem models suggest that CO2 fertilization effects explain 70% of the observed greening trend… In other words, the planet is getting greener, and we have rising CO2 levels to thank for it, since rising CO2 accounts for about 70% of the increase in planet-wide greening, according to scientists. The more CO2 we release into the atmosphere, the more nutrients are available for plants, and the more rapidly the Earth is re-greened. The following compilation map shows which land masses have experienced expanded greening since 1982. As the legend explains, the light green areas represent a 25% increase in green plants, and the dark green areas represent a 50% or greater increase …”

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Letter to The Editor - Carbon Burial Lunacy

     Over the eons, nature has extracted billions of tonnes of carbon compounds from the surface and buried them in extensive beds of limestone, dolomite, magnesite, dead corals, sea shells, animal skeletons, methane hydrate and hydro-carbons. This process has been so efficient that plants today are semi-starved of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Luckily, burning coal, oil, gas, peat and wood and making cement and fertiliser is restoring some of this valuable plant food to the surface and atmosphere where plants can again extract it and thrive. This is called the Carbon Cycle. Wasting heaps of money and scads of energy trying to separate, compress and rebury this benign valuable plant food in pressurized carbon sequestration cemeteries is green lunacy. If this compressed gas escapes in a rush, it will be deadly for nearby animal life. Naturally thermal coal producers love “carbon sequestration” – it will greatly increase the consumption of coal energy for separation, compression, pumping and burial.

  Viv Forbes


All Blog Posts Authorised by K. W. Grundy
13 Carsten Court, Happy Valley, SA.

The Climate Alarm Election By Viv Forbes

     The ALP-Greens-ABC alliance ran hard in Australia’s recent climate alarm election - they lost.

     So let us see no more anti-coal caravans, hear no more climate propaganda and replace Pied Piper Processions with hard science education. The new government must also stop blatant promotion of green energy with targets, subsidies and carbon taxes, and focus on infrastructure catch-up.

     Forecasts of doom are frequent, and they fail just as frequently.

     Climate is always changing. Global cooling always follows global warming. Government policies that assume continuous global warming expose our society and economy to huge risks for no measurable benefits when that forecast proves disastrously wrong.

     We need more emphasis on reliable base-load coal power, increased water storage and weather-proofed roads and rail.

     We must also exit from the UN Paris and Kyoto “agreements”, and emphasise logic, maths and science in education.

 

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Mathematically Refuting the Climate Change Nonsense By James Reed

     Maybe, apart from Brian Simpson, none of here is good at advanced mathematics. I mean, we can add up and multiple and do business maths, and some of us know some computing stuff, but maybe not to the coding level, but enough to get us by. Probably even Brian could not solve an ordinary differential equation, let alone partial differential equation using the Taylor power series. (I Googled this, so don’t be impressed.)
 Thus, the report, An Audit of the Creation and Content of the HadCRUT4 Temperature Dataset, by  John McLean, PhD October 2018, is a bit lost on me. But, it shows real problems with the way that the climate change folk work things out. I was impressed by the real fallibility of the data sets:

“As far as can be ascertained, this is the first audit of the HadCRUT4 dataset, the main temperature dataset used in climate assessment reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Governments and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) rely heavily on the IPCC reports so ultimately the temperature data needs to be accurate and reliable. This audit shows that it is neither of those things. More than 70 issues are identified, covering the entire process from the measurement of temperatures to the dataset’s creation, to data derived from it (such as averages) and to its eventual publication. The findings (shown in consolidated form Appendix 6) even include simple issues of obviously erroneous data, glossed-over sparsity of data, significant but questionable assumptions and temperature data that has been incorrectly adjusted in a way that exaggerates warming. It finds, for example, an observation station reporting average monthly temperatures above 80°C, two instances of a station in the Caribbean reporting December average temperatures of 0°C and a Romanian station reporting a September average temperature of -45°C when the typical average in that month is 10°C. On top of that, some ships that measured sea temperatures reported their locations as more than 80km inland. It appears that the suppliers of the land and sea temperature data failed to check for basic errors and the people who create the HadCRUT dataset didn’t find them and raise questions either.

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From the Migration Pope to the Greenie Pope By Peter West

     This week the politically correct commo Pope took a break from his busy schedule of defending open borders and infinity migrants, to dealing with the climate apocalypse, or climate Armageddon as it is now being called even in scientific publications, such as this:
  https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(19)30850-5/fulltext?dgcid=raven_jbs_etoc_email

     Of course, popular scientific mags use this as a stable diet:
  https://www.wired.com/story/the-climate-apocalypse-is-now-and-its-happening-to-you/

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Capitalist Turns on Capitalism, After Getting Rich By Chris Knight

     It is odd that a capitalist would turn against the system after getting rich. If I was rich, then I would simply spend my time getting richer, making useful products that help society and also me. Why would one want to pursue social agenda when there could be the thrill of making money? Being dirt poor one can only dream:
  https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/05/12/patagonia-founder-claims-capitalist-system-made-him-wealthy-destroying-planet/

“The man who became a billionaire selling sporting equipment and athletic clothing claims that the system that made him rich is “destroying the planet” and that those who deny climate change — including President Donald Trump — are “evil.” Yvon Chouinard started his business after deciding to make his own equipment for mountain climbing and eventually Patagonia was born. The high-end company has made him rich, but Chouinard has also always been an environmental activist and now a climate change zealot. In an interview with the Guardian, Chouinard, who lives in California, expressed his contempt for capitalism and his disdain for climate change “deniers.” “In his bridge-club cords and grandpa shoes, 80-year-old Yvon Chouinard doesn’t look the rock-star entrepreneur,” the Guardian reported. “And, when he speaks, he doesn’t sound much like one either. The founder of U.S. outdoor apparel brand Patagonia believes stock market valuations are ‘absurd.’ investing in shares is ‘buying blue sky’ – and modern-day capitalism is destroying the planet.

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Letter to The Editor - Green Heaven

It was a night to celebrate
            the Green goals had been won.

The last coal mine was firmly shut
            and all adored the sun.

Their panels covered all the flats
            and turbines spiked the hills.

The young got stoned on ethanol
            and oldies got the bills.

The cows were freed from bails and yards
            and drilling was rejected.

The rich folk got electric cars
            the poor got disconnected.

But then the weather got quite cold
            the sun it hibernated.

The power failed, no coal was mined,
            most folk refrigerated.

  Viv Forbes, Washpool, Qld

 

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