When 2,000 electric cars towing caravans descend on the Birdsville races, where do they charge their batteries overnight? Take a ticket and join the queue?
Viv Forbes, Washpool, Qld
Authorised by K. W. Grundy
13 Carsten Court, Happy Valley, SA.
It is 8pm on a big footy night. It is frosty with no wind. All the heaters, air-cons and TV’s are drawing power. Suddenly it is half time. All the jugs are then switched on to make coffee. Not one amp of electricity is coming from wind/solar plants.
What will keep the lights on?
Viv Forbes, Washpool, Qld
Authorised by K. W. Grundy
13 Carsten Court, Happy Valley, SA.
They told us to stop eating meat
Or the skies would soon overheat.
But the weather started snowing
And the blizzards started blowing
And soon there was no meat to eat.
Viv Forbes, Washpool, Qld
In the brave new zero-emissions world, oil-powered aircraft carriers and diesel-powered subs are taboo. Will the Australian navy go nuclear or back to sails?
Viv Forbes, Washpool, Qld
Authorised by K. W. Grundy
13 Carsten Court, Happy Valley, SA.
Greens worship trees. Our food is produced from grasslands and cultivation. What do we eat in the brave new world of trees? Pine chips?
Viv Forbes, Washpool, Qld
Authorised by K. W. Grundy
13 Carsten Court, Happy Valley, SA.
One is supposed to be conspiratorial, if not “racist’ for blaming disorders like autism on pesticides. How dare anyone criticise our beautiful Big Agri! But, then there is this newly released paper in the British Medical Journal:
https://www.bmj.com/content/364/bmj.l962
“Objective To examine associations between early developmental exposure to ambient pesticides and autism spectrum disorder. Design Population based case-control study. Setting California’s main agricultural region, Central Valley, using 1998-2010 birth data from the Office of Vital Statistics. Population 2961 individuals with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition, revised (up to 31 December 2013), including 445 with intellectual disability comorbidity, were identified through records maintained at the California Department of Developmental Services and linked to their birth records. Controls derived from birth records were matched to cases 10:1 by sex and birth year. Exposure Data from California state mandated Pesticide Use Reporting were integrated into a geographic information system tool to estimate prenatal and infant exposures to pesticides (measured as pounds of pesticides applied per acre/month within 2000 m from the maternal residence). 11 high use pesticides were selected for examination a priori according to previous evidence of neurodevelopmental toxicity in vivo or in vitro (exposure defined as ever v never for each pesticide during specific developmental periods).
I hate bloody electric cars; isn’t the case that some of them just burst into flames? Anyway, I will not go there because I have dug up something more damaging, namely a study showing that electric cars are more polluting in terms of the dreaded carbon dioxide than even diesel ones!
http://www.brusselstimes.com/business/technology/15050/electric-vehicles-emit-more-co2-than-diesel-ones,-german-study-shows?
“Electric vehicles in Germany account for more CO2 emissions than diesel ones, according to a study by German scientists. When CO2 emissions linked to the production of batteries and the German energy mix - in which coal still plays an important role - are taken into consideration, electric vehicles emit 11% to 28% more than their diesel counterparts, according to the study, presented on Wednesday at the Ifo Institute in Munich. Mining and processing the lithium, cobalt and manganese used for batteries consume a great deal of energy. A Tesla Model 3 battery, for example, represents between 11 and 15 tonnes of CO2. Given a lifetime of 10 years and an annual travel distance of 15,000 kilometres, this translates into 73 to 98 grams of CO2 per kilometre, scientists Christoph Buchal, Hans-Dieter Karl and Hans-Werner Sinn noted in their study. The CO2 given off to produce the electricity that powers such vehicles also needs to be factored in, they say. When all these factors are considered, each Tesla emits 156 to 180 grams of CO2 per kilometre, which is more than a comparable diesel vehicle produced by the German company Mercedes, for example. The German researchers, therefore, take issue with the fact that European officials view electric vehicles as zero-emission ones. They note further that the EU target of 59 grams of CO2 per km by 2030 corresponds to a “technically unrealistic” consumption of 2.2 litres of diesel or 2.6 litres of gas per 100 kms.”
Here is a great legal victory for free speech and intellectual dissent:
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/james-cook-professors-sacking-ruled-unlawful/news-story/bd3c0e40c9e8d7f8b7bcf06461bccfa6
“A Federal Court judge has ruled that James Cook University acted unlawfully when it sacked professor Peter Ridd after he publicly criticised the institution and one of its star scientists over claims about the impact global warming had on the Great Barrier Reef. Professor Ridd, who worked at the university for 40 years, challenged the dismissal in the Federal Circuit Court, saying the university breached its own enterprise agreement which allowed all staff to express controversial or unpopular views. The physics professor argued that the Townsville-based university, which is renowned for its marine science expertise, dismissed him for breaching the university’s code of conduct. Handing down his decision today, judge Salvatore Vasta said that the 17 findings used by the university to justify the sacking were unlawful. “The Court rules that the 17 findings made by the University, the two speech directions, the five confidentiality directions, the no satire direction, the censure and the final censure given by the University and the termination of employment of Professor Ridd by the University were all unlawful,” Judge Vasta said.
It was the night before Christmas … no, it was not. Rather, it was the day before the federal election was called:
“The day before the Federal election was called, the Government quietly announced changes to Australia’s Gene Technology Regulations that will allow a raft of new genetically modified (GM) animals, plants and microbes to enter our environment and food chain with no safety assessment and potentially no labelling. These include super-muscled pigs, non-browning mushrooms, and wheat with powdery mildew-resistance. The deregulation comes as a new study adds to the growing body of evidencethat new GM techniques such as CRISPR are not as safe as claimed. The study found that in 50 per cent of the cells looked at, the use of CRISPR resulted in unexpected effects, including the production of new proteins. There is a risk that these proteins could be novel toxins or allergens. It is vital that GM animals, plants and microbes produced in this way are assessed for safety before being released into our environment and our food chain.”
The mainstream media have been jumping up and down about a 29-year old female physicist who has allegedly photographed a black hole, or that is the impression generated by some reports. Thus, she is promoted as the face of feminist STEM. Better reports say that she was part of the team of around 200 researchers, although some reports imply that she led the team. However, we could find no evidence of this from an examination of the main academic paper:
“The Size, Shape, and Scattering of Sagittarius A* at 86 GHz: First VLBI with ALMA”
I love science because there is always weird and wonderful stuff coming out. I do not know how much of it is true, but does that really matter now in our post-truth world? What counts is entertainment, and science supplies that in plenty. Take this one:
https://www.livescience.com/65125-mosquitoes-dont-care-for-skrillex.html
“In a blow to dubstep fans everywhere, a team of insect researchers has found that female mosquitoes listening to Skrillex had less sex and sucked less blood than mosquitoes who spent 10 minutes in silence. The authors of the new study, published March 25 in the journal Acta Tropica, wanted to test whether loud music could be used to manipulate mosquito behavior as an "environmentally friendly" alternative to insecticides. Because mating and blood-sucking are the main means by which mosquitoes transmit deadly diseases like Zika virus and dengue fever, interrupting those behaviors with obnoxious noise could also mitigate the spread of disease, the authors wrote.
Maybe if young people skipping school to protest about minor things like climate change really wanted to be scared, then they should start paying attention to geophysical threats, which have the potential to cook life, and in fact, have in the past. Things like the weakening of the earth’s magnetic field and likely reversal of the poles:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-12/weakening-earths-magnetic-field-has-greatly-accelerated
“Earth’s magnetic field is getting significantly weaker, the magnetic north pole is shifting at an accelerating pace, and scientists readily admit that a sudden pole shift could potentially cause “trillions of dollars” in damage. Today, most of us take the protection provided by Earth’s magnetic field completely for granted. It is essentially a colossal force field which surrounds our planet and makes life possible. And even with such protection, a giant solar storm could still potentially hit our planet and completely fry our power grid. But as our magnetic field continues to get weaker and weaker, even much smaller solar storms will have the potential to be cataclysmic. And once the magnetic field gets weak enough, we will be facing much bigger problems. As you will see below, if enough solar radiation starts reaching our planet none of us will survive. Previously, scientists had told us that the magnetic field was weakening by about 5 percent every 100 years.
Nothing must get in the way of this age of plenty, and our manifest destiny as endless consumers. I joke not; that is the entire point of human history, according to the James Reed anti-environmentalism philosophy. Thus, the fact that the oceans are drowning in plastic may seem a bit of a problem for my world view. Well, no, I bite the bullet, I mean plastic, and welcome the death of the oceans and all life forms, so long as I can use plastic as if there is no tomorrow, plastic to wrap my food, plastic to wear, plastic to even eat, sometimes when I am especially drunk. But, it need not get so desperate since we have bacteria coming to our rescue, to eat up the messes created by people like me.
https://www.naturalnews.com/2019-04-11-plastic-eating-microbe-to-solve-our-oceans-plastic-problem.html
“Even as humans keep on filling the planet with plastic pollutants, the bountiful oceans reveal a means by which the problem can be resolved. An Israeli research team announced that they successfully created a biodegradable plastic from a common seaweed. Their new bioplastic could be broken down by bacteria that feed on the seaweed in the wild. Switching from conventional plastics to this biodegradable equivalent could help reduce the amount of trash that ends up in the sea in the long run. And in addition to already having a naturally occurring microorganism that could break it down, the new biopolymer was not made from land-based plants. “Plastic from fossil sources is one of the most polluting factors in the oceans,” explained Dr. Alexander Goldberg of the Tel Aviv University (TAU) in a press release. “We have proved it is possible to produce bioplastic completely based on marine resources in a process that is friendly both to the environment and to its residents.” A professor at the university’s school of environmental and earth sciences, Goldberg and fellow TAU researcher Michael Gozin pooled their efforts to create the seaweed-based bioplastic. They published the details of their experiment in the scientific journal Bioresource Technology.”
Being internet illiterate, I cannot find the URL, is that is what it is called, for this article by Tim Blair from The Daily Telegraph, but it is a beauty. I wish I was as clever:
“Attention, students. Because so many of you missed Friday’s classes, what with your little climate party and all, today I’m assigning extra work.
Being internet illiterate, I cannot find the URL, is that is what it is called, for this article by Tim Blair from The Daily Telegraph, but it is a beauty. I wish I was as clever:
“Attention, students. Because so many of you missed Friday’s classes, what with your little climate party and all, today I’m assigning extra work.
The competition is hot this week for our politically correct absurdity of the week. How about doing something about farting cows to save the planet?
https://www.breitbart.com/news/cow-toilets-in-netherlands-aim-to-cut-e-moo-ssions/
“Teaching cows to use the toilet is not the easiest task, but a Dutch inventor is banking on a new bovine urinal to help cut emissions that cause environmental damage. Tests have started on a farm in the Netherlands on the device which collects some of the 15 to 20 litres of urine that the average cow produces a day. That produces huge amounts of ammonia in a country like the Netherlands, which is the world’s second biggest agricultural exporter after the United States.
The competition is hot this week for our politically correct absurdity of the week. How about doing something about farting cows to save the planet?
https://www.breitbart.com/news/cow-toilets-in-netherlands-aim-to-cut-e-moo-ssions/
“Teaching cows to use the toilet is not the easiest task, but a Dutch inventor is banking on a new bovine urinal to help cut emissions that cause environmental damage. Tests have started on a farm in the Netherlands on the device which collects some of the 15 to 20 litres of urine that the average cow produces a day. That produces huge amounts of ammonia in a country like the Netherlands, which is the world’s second biggest agricultural exporter after the United States.
I got this from an email; I know not the reference, but it is too good not to quote. If you remember a bit of elementary chemistry, that will help, but if not, just sing along with Mitch:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Miller
“University researchers have discovered the densest element yet known to science. The new element, Governmentium (symbol=Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called pillocks. Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete. Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2 to 6 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a reorganisation in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganisation will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as a critical morass. When catalysed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium (symbol=Ad), an element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium, since it has half as many pillocks but twice as many morons.”
Since the days of the gold rushes and the wool booms, Australia has always relied heavily on its great primary industries – mining, farming, forestry and fishing and their supporting transport, energy and processing industries. First was the export of hides and tallow, wool and timber. Then came the great discoveries of gold, coal, copper and silver-lead-zinc, followed by exports of wheat, butter, meat and cotton. Luckily the effects of droughts in the rural sector were often moderated by booms or new discoveries in minerals. Today government royalties and taxes on our massive exports of coal, gas, iron ore, nickel, copper, silver-lead-zinc, aluminium and uranium have become the main-stays of the tax-consuming and ever-growing state and federal bureaucracies. These back-bone industries, directly or indirectly, have always paid the wages of most of the workers of Australia.
Every one of these primary industries must have three things – secure access to resource-rich land; reliable low-cost energy for production, extraction, processing and transport; and reliable water supply. These are the three things most threatened by today’s Chicken Littles. Every day, vested interests, toxic environmentalists and green alarmists (often foreign-funded or tax-exempted) are using every worry they can discover or invent to break the backbone of Australia – global warming, species extinction, pollution, UN dictates, and land rights for everyone except those currently making productive use of the land. They favour pest-ridden scrubs of woody weeds over productive grasslands and encourage farm invasions by vegan militants and media stirrers. They prevent construction of new water conservation dams and weirs, insist in letting more stored “environmental” water flow back to the sea, and then spend billions on desalination plants to get that water back from the sea. They close-the-gate to explorers, use death-by-delay to stop projects they disapprove of, throttle foresters and fishermen with ever increasing no-go zones, while sacred serpents or the “just three mines” policy smothers every uranium deposit discovered. They re-define natural gases as “pollution” to be taxed, and now are driving whole industries offshore by forcing reckless conversion to high-cost, unpredictable intermittent green energy. While politicians babble about dream-time electric cars, our huge transport fleet relies on imports of petrol and diesel refined overseas – Australia now has under 30 days of petrol and diesel supplies here. As jobs disappear or migrate, welfare booms, and national bankruptcy beckons.
What a pity it is that colony collapse disorder is set to eliminate the world’s bee populations, producing a massive human food crisis. Bees, after all, are smart fellows, better at mathematics than some students.
https://metro.co.uk/2019/02/06/scientists-buzzing-as-they-prove-bees-can-do-simple-sums-8459072/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/01/flowers-can-hear-bees-and-make-their-nectar-sweeter/
https://www.irishnews.com/magazine/science/2018/03/27/news/honeybee-colonies-mirror-the-human-brain-say-scientists-1288972/
“Bees aren’t the stripey idiots we all thought – as scientists have shown that they can add and subtract, doing simple sums with 75% accuracy. The un-beelievable breakthrough came after scientists taught bees to recognise colours as plus or minus symbols – and then watched, buzzing, as they did sums. The find could have wider implications on our understanding of animal bee-hive-iour (sorry), the scientists believe.
