No Fuel = No Fire By Viv Forbes

     A NSW Bushfire Enquiry concluded: “Hazard-reduction burns should be greatly increased”. What a breath of good sense. If there is no fuel, there can be no fire. They also urge a return to indigenous fire management. Aboriginals burnt anything and everything, at any time, for any reason. They had no water-bombers and seldom tried to put fires out, but they did understand back-burning. Their vegetation management created the vast and productive open forests and grasslands that supported large populations of marsupials and birds. But tree huggers would never support this. They prefer scrub, weeds, pests and occasional fierce wildfires.

Does Anyone Remember Global Warming? By James Reed

     Tasmania has now recorded its coldest day of -14 C, and snow is falling in all sorts of place it has never done before. Does anyone remember global warming? You know, temperature risers and all that? That was the scam crisis before the present two. I will be thinking of this while I freeze and possibly die in an ice block in my flat here in Melbourne, being too poor for heating. At least our resident survivalist, John Steele, out in the Victorian scrub, will be burning half a forest that he has no doubt cut down, hopefully no Australian animals in it, such as polar bears, wolves, walruses, seals … as we will soon see on Melbournian streets, since people have gone.
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8602325/Cold-weekend-Tasmania-records-coldest-day-mercury-plunged-14C.html?ito=push-notification&ci=26911&si=12817605

“Tasmania has recorded its coldest ever day since records began of -14.2C as the rest of the eastern states are warned to prepare for heavy rain and cold temperatures this weekend. The Bureau of Meterology labelled this week's weather as 'a very significant event', and beat the state's previous record of -14C in 1983. So cold, in fact, that it was actually warmer at the Australian Antartic reasearch station in Casey on Thursday, meteorologist Simon Louis told the ABC. 'I don't think that would happen very often at all,' he said. Video footage, taken on Wednesday, showed Aussie Rules players bracing the icy conditions to train in Launceston in the north of the state. A wombat was also filmed wandering along a boardwalk looking for his underground burrow in the snow earlier in the week.”

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Letter-to-the-Editor - Pure and Sterile By Viv Forbes

7 August 2020

Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef is once again the excuse for extending Green control of all land and waters. Their current scare concerns the quality of water draining into the Coral Sea.

Their hidden agenda is to eliminate coastal agriculture, mining and commercial fishing. They would surrender the land to kangaroos, cassowaries, lantana, cane toads, wild cats and feral pigs and the seas to marauding sharks, cruising whales and aboriginal fishermen.

Reef Warriors will never be satisfied until pure water drains from farms, mines, ports and rivers along the Queensland coast. This is an impossible and misguided dream. Pure water is sterile and nothing flourishes in it.

Vibrant offshore life needs winds, rivers and creeks to deliver minerals and nutrients into coastal waters.

Corals, shellfish and marine plants need calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, nitrogen, sulphur, carbon dioxide and trace elements to build their skeletons, shells and plant tissues.

Australian soils are leached and deficient in many minerals. Farmers know that farm crops and domestic animals need mineral fertilisers for healthy growth – so do potted plants, orchards and gardens; and so does all ocean life.

Many of these minerals are supplied naturally by erosion of rocks such as limestone, magnesite, rock phosphate, dolomite, basalt or granite. This is a slow process but mining, crushing or calcining of these rocks can speed things up, providing natural mineral fertilizer for farms, and any dust and river runoff provides free fertilizer for offshore marine life.

Seaweed and other marine plants need fertile muds delivered by flooding rivers and all marine animals welcome bits of dead animal life.

All natural fertilisers used for land plants will also benefit sea plants. Dust and smoke from bushfires, volcanoes, smelters and power stations can deliver natural nutrients such as oxides of nitrogen, sulphur and carbon (all essential for vigorous healthy vegetation) to soils and plants in surrounding areas. There is no danger as long as exhaust stacks or volcanic cones are high enough or remote enough to dilute these gases before they reach the ground.

The atmosphere and surface waters are efficient distributers of dilute aerial fertilisers to land and sea plants. This is far safer and cheaper than manufacturing artificial fertilisers and animal supplements and then selling these products to farmers who sometimes over-apply.

The main run-off dangers to coastal waters are herbicide and pesticide residue and soluble artificial chemical fertilisers used in excessive quantities – this is real pollution and it must be controlled. Farmers have an incentive to control it – every bit that runs off is money wasted in purchase and application. Governments should stop employing green activists – we must restore a real department of agriculture employing experienced agronomists dedicated to helping farmers, not looking for ways to put them out of business.

One of the safest and most complete sources of trace nutrients for land and sea plants is coal – decomposed coal, coal dust, or emissions from coal combustion. Why so good? Because almost every element in coal came from plants and is needed by plants. In the coalfields, the outcrops of weathered coal seams can often be seen on aerial photos as bands of better soil and thicker healthier scrub.

Barrier Reef Water Warriors need a dose of reality and perspective. Since construction of the Burdekin Falls Dam, the mighty Burdekin River delivers far less sediment and nutrients into the Coral Sea.  We can assist nature to restore some of this loss with aerial or aqueous mineral nutrients from mining and agricultural sources.

Coal mining and combustion provides many nutrients that benefit all plant and animal life. None are toxic unless artificially concentrated.

Pure and Sterile By Viv Forbes

8 August 2020

Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef is once again the excuse for extending Green control of all land and waters. Their current scare concerns the quality of water draining into the Coral Sea. Their hidden agenda is to eliminate coastal agriculture, mining and commercial fishing. They would surrender the land to kangaroos, cassowaries, lantana, cane toads, wild cats and feral pigs and the seas to marauding sharks, cruising whales and aboriginal fishermen.

Reef Warriors will never be satisfied until pure water drains from farms, mines, ports and rivers along the Queensland coast. This is an impossible and misguided dream. Pure water is sterile and nothing flourishes in it.

Vibrant offshore life needs winds, rivers and creeks to deliver minerals and nutrients into coastal waters.

Corals, shellfish and marine plants need calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, nitrogen, sulphur, carbon dioxide and trace elements to build their skeletons, shells and plant tissues.

Australian soils are leached and deficient in many minerals. Farmers know that farm crops and domestic animals need mineral fertilisers for healthy growth – so do potted plants, orchards and gardens; and so does all ocean life.

Many of these minerals are supplied naturally by erosion of rocks such as limestone, magnesite, rock phosphate, dolomite, basalt or granite. This is a slow process but mining, crushing or calcining of these rocks can speed things up, providing natural mineral fertilizer for farms, and any dust and river runoff provides free fertilizer for offshore marine life.

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Plato was Right; The World is a Cube! By Brian Simpson

     The flat Earth folk are too much two dimensional. If they followed the philosopher Plato and held that the Earth is a cube, then they would be getting somewhere:
  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200720112214.htm

“In a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team from the University of Pennsylvania, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and University of Debrecen uses math, geology, and physics to demonstrate that the average shape of rocks on Earth is a cube. "Plato is widely recognized as the first person to develop the concept of an atom, the idea that matter is composed of some indivisible component at the smallest scale," says Douglas Jerolmack, a geophysicist in Penn's School of Arts & Sciences' Department of Earth and Environmental Science and the School of Engineering and Applied Science's Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. "But that understanding was only conceptual; nothing about our modern understanding of atoms derives from what Plato told us. "The interesting thing here is that what we find with rock, or earth, is that there is more than a conceptual lineage back to Plato. It turns out that Plato's conception about the element earth being made up of cubes is, literally, the statistical average model for real earth. And that is just mind-blowing." The group's finding began with geometric models developed by mathematician Gábor Domokos of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, whose work predicted that natural rocks would fragment into cubic shapes.

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Will there be a UFO Invasion Soon? Will George Soros Work with Alien Over-Lords for Cosmic Diversity? By Brian Simpson

     Just to add icing to the cake, what we need next is an alien invasion. Sure, we have mass immigration, but that is humans. How about alien spaces craft from other worlds? Or, perhaps, the latest fear, space germs, sent here specially to wipe us out. Far fetched?  Well, the truth is out there, somewhere.
  https://archive.fo/t9Efu

“Despite Pentagon statements that it disbanded a once-covert program to investigate unidentified flying objects, the effort remains underway — renamed and tucked inside the Office of Naval Intelligence, where officials continue to study mystifying encounters between military pilots and unidentified aerial vehicles. Pentagon officials will not discuss the program, which is not classified but deals with classified matters. Yet it appeared last month in a Senate committee report outlining spending on the nation’s intelligence agencies for the coming year. The report said the program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, was “to standardize collection and reporting” on sightings of unexplained aerial vehicles, and was to report at least some of its findings to the public every six months. While retired officials involved with the effort — including Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader — hope the program will seek evidence of vehicles from other worlds, its main focus is on discovering whether another nation, especially any potential adversary, is using breakout aviation technology that could threaten the United States. Senator Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican who is the acting chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told a CBS affiliate in Miami this month that he was primarily concerned about reports of unidentified aircraft over American military bases — and that it was in the government’s interest to find out who was responsible.”

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Coming soon: 1,000, 000 G Tech to Cook the Planet, Maybe Solar System By Brian Simpson

     The technocrats would not stop at 5G technology, but immediately are going to 6G. Then it will be 7G, and finally infinity G, until the entire planet is cooked, everything melted down to the molten core of the Earth. Only when total universal destruction of the planet comes, can the elites stop, because they would have melted too:
  https://www.iol.co.za/technology/software-and-internet/6g-and-samsung-everything-we-know-so-far--7c91f960-3273-44ec-a4d5-bcba9816a0e1

“6G is coming! Well, not anytime soon but it is expected to be keep the world connected by the year 2028. Samsung has released its 6G white paper, providing details on what can be expected. We are still waiting for 5G that is expected in mid-2020, but "it’s not too early to start preparing for 6G.” “While 5G commercialization is still in its initial stage, it’s never too early to start preparing for 6G because it typically takes around 10 years from the start of research to commercialization of a new generation of communications technology,” said Sunghyun Choi, Head of the Advanced Communications Research Center. “We’ve already launched the research and development of 6G technologies by building upon the experience and ability we have accumulated from working on multiple generations of communications technology, including 5G. Going forward, we are committed to leading the standardization of 6G in collaboration with various stakeholders across industry, academia and government fields.” “Samsung defines three categories of requirements that have to be met to realize 6G services – performance, architectural and trustworthiness requirements.” Samsung is set to begin 6G research in "full-scale" this year, said Choi. It also aims to have started extensive work on defining and developing technical standards in 2021. In the white paper, Samsung expects that the completion of the 6G standard and its earliest commercialization date could be as early as 2028. Mass commercialisation may occur around 2030, with humans and machines (yes, machines) being the main users of 6G.

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Settling of the Americas Prehistory By Brian Simpson

     The idea that the ancestors of the American Indians, the Clovis people of around 11,00 years ago, were the only people to settle the Americas in prehistory has been facing challenge, even in our pc times. Of course, evidence of white settlement is always discounted.
  https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53486868

“Humans settled in the Americas much earlier than previously thought, according to new finds from Mexico. They suggest people were living there 33,000 years ago, twice the widely accepted age for the earliest settlement of the Americas. The results are based on work at Chiquihuite Cave, a high-altitude rock shelter in central Mexico. Archaeologists found nearly 2,000 stone tools, suggesting the cave was used by people for at least 20,000 years.

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Clean, Limitless Power for the Age of Consumer Affluence By James Reed

     This is great news for materialists wanting to live in an age of affluence, enjoying untold hedonism. That is the meaning of life, is it not, according to the economics folk? Anyway, free energy, anyone?
  https://news.uark.edu/articles/54830/physicists-build-circuit-that-generates-clean-limitless-power-from-graphene

“A team of University of Arkansas physicists has successfully developed a circuit capable of capturing graphene's thermal motion and converting it into an electrical current. “An energy-harvesting circuit based on graphene could be incorporated into a chip to provide clean, limitless, low-voltage power for small devices or sensors,” said Paul Thibado, professor of physics and lead researcher in the discovery. The findings, titled "Fluctuation-induced current from freestanding graphene," and published in the journal Physical Review E, are proof of a theory the physicists developed at the U of A three years ago that freestanding graphene — a single layer of carbon atoms — ripples and buckles in a way that holds promise for energy harvesting. The idea of harvesting energy from graphene is controversial because it refutes physicist Richard Feynman’s well-known assertion that the thermal motion of atoms, known as Brownian motion, cannot do work. Thibado’s team found that at room temperature the thermal motion of graphene does in fact induce an alternating current (AC) in a circuit, an achievement thought to be impossible. In the 1950s, physicist Léon Brillouin published a landmark paper refuting the idea that adding a single diode, a one-way electrical gate, to a circuit is the solution to harvesting energy from Brownian motion. Knowing this, Thibado’s group built their circuit with two diodes for converting AC into a direct current (DC). With the diodes in opposition allowing the current to flow both ways, they provide separate paths through the circuit, producing a pulsing DC current that performs work on a load resistor.

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Cry for Coal By James Reed

     Great article by Greg Sheridan about how Australia is retreating from coal, where sensible nations like China are making heaps of coal-fired power stations, and to hell with nonsense about global warming. We need coal mining, digging up every spot of ground where coal is, and burning all of it. The more, the better, in my opinion. As I believe in global cooling I see increasing the carbon footprint a good thing, but that is just my opinion. We need coal for jobs of many people in the outback.
  https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/australias-great-and-costly-retreat-from-coal/news-story/5e4f7457d48d07c89425cd77c812f80c

“The biggest story of the moment, the biggest structural change in our politics, is that the Morrison government has admitted comprehensive and probably permanent defeat on coal. It seems like a different era in history when Scott Morrison as treasurer proudly brandished a lump of coal in parliament to demonstrate his party’s commitment to our black gold. Still the largest source of our power, still our second biggest export, coal has been placed in the Coalition’s fantasy technology basket, to be revisited one day in the mythical future when renewables don’t need subsidies, pumped hydro creates more energy than it consumes, China’s carbon market comes into operation, and Australia wins soccer’s World Cup 6-0 against Brazil. The new lowest common denominator on coal is we continue to export it but there are no circumstances in which we build a coal-fired power station. This is how conservative governments embrace long-term strategic defeat. They win a thousand tactical victories as they march backwards. The Coalition has lost the coal argument. It came into office in 2013 never dreaming it would abandon coal, but that is what it has done. Labor and the Greens have won the argument even as they have lost the elections. The conservatives — meaning the Liberals and the Nationals — have accepted defeat. The Coalition has a good chance of retaining government by arguing that it will implement the left’s policies more carefully, cautiously, modestly, competently and with less economic damage than Labor would.

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The Coming Ice Age By James Reed

     Survivalist John Steele put me onto this guy, who seems like me to believe in a coming ice age, since I argue that if bushfires prove global warming according the mainstream media, then cold spells just as easily prove global cooling, in my mind for sure.
  https://www.jameslafond.com/article.php?id=12521

“Astrophysicists and climate watchers are making immense amounts of observations around the world, with record September freezes across Europe and North America and Australia, even as the idiot Muricans drool before the Oracle of The Lying God and wring their hands about manmade global warming. Yo, Human, the Sun is taking a nap. Yes, no sun spot activity as predicted by the hated Russian scientists, for 32 days. According to the Russians some years in the Eddy Minimum might have no sunspot activity. This effects volcanism among other climate drivers on earth, which is a subordinate body to the Sun. While the elite tell us we are warming the earth the sun is letting it cool. You know, once, when a supermarket manager, I had this retarded parcel pickup employee, who a trouble maker on the crew had talked into believing that he made the decisions, and not this evil mother****** in the ill-knotted tie. When I finally informed the cart guy that he had not been hired as the store manger, and punctuated this by suspending the liar who was making sport of him, the 300-pound man cried on my shoulder and hugged me. Manmade global warming cultism is essentially the same thing. But the man in the tie who solves all problems will not be there to sort it out for the people duped into believing the climate is shifting south when it’s cutting a hard north. Our initial experiences in this, which I think is the Eddy Minimum and is the 27th on record, suggest that this Grand Solar Minimum is likely to be more severe and longer than the Dalton Minimum, which saw the “Year Without a Summer” in 1816, and is more likely to be as long and severe as the Maunder Minimum, which gave humanity a century of war, plague, genocide, deluge, storm, summer fires [London, 1666] witch burnings [which are a big deal in times of plague and bad harvests] and religious fanaticism as well as the birth of a brand new form of government, hitherto an oddity, called The Nation State in 1648. This icy hand of Fate seems to be ushering in the Surveillance State. For a good information clearing house on climate and food production check out Adapt 2030, a YouTube channel.”

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The Problem of Cow Farts! By James Reed

     Just in case one feels that there is not enough climate change mania, then we have an ecologically sensitive burger company trying to do something about cow farts, by a change of their diet, such farting, as you know, Princess Greta says, is the greatest threat to humanity. Do I believe her? Is that a trick question?
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/burger-king-addresses-elephant-in-the-room-and-its-a-cow/2020/07/14/ebaf801c-c5d9-11ea-a825-8722004e4150_story.html

“Burger King is staging an intervention with its cows. The chain has rebalanced the diet of some of the cows by adding lemon grass in a bid to limit bovine contributions to climate change. By tweaking their diet, Burger King said Tuesday that it believes it can reduce a cow’s daily methane emissions by about 33%. Cows emit methane as a by-product of their digestion, and that has become a potential public relations hurdle for major burger chains. Greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture sector made up 9.9% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2018, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Of that amount, methane emissions from livestock (called enteric fermentation) comprised more than a quarter of the emissions from the agriculture sector. With an over-the-top social media campaign that teeters between vulgarity and science (sprinkled with more vulgarity), Burger King is banking on the heightened awareness of climate change and its responsibility to limit its own role.”

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Princess Greta is Back! By James Reed

     It is like something out of a new politically correct fairy tale, as despite the corona plague, Princess Greta a modern-day climate change Joan of Arc, presses on to deconstruct the world economies of the West, but not China of course which is immune to criticism.  Only whites pollute you see.
  https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-greta/greta-thunberg-world-must-tear-up-old-systems-contracts-to-tackle-climate-idUKKCN24H1KQ?utm_source=reddit.com

“Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said on Thursday the world needed an economic overhaul to have a chance of beating climate change and that countries should be prepared to tear up old deals and contracts to meet green targets. The 17-year-old spoke to Reuters TV after she and other activists sent an open letter to European leaders urging them to take emergency action and saying people in power had practically “given up” on searching for a real solution. “We need to see it as, above all, an existential crisis. And as long as it’s not being treated as a crisis, we can have as many of these climate change negotiations and talks, conferences as possible. It won’t change a thing,” Thunberg said, speaking via video from her home in Stockholm. Thunberg, who lambasted world leaders at a U.N. climate summit last year for believing in “fairytales” of eternal economic growth, said that only fundamental change to the existing system would bring climate change under control. She cited a U.N. study published in November that suggested planned investments to boost fossil fuel production are likely to push temperature goals enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement out of reach. “So that means that if we are to stay below these targets, we have to make it possible to tear up and abandon valid contracts and deals. And that is not possible within today’s system,” Thunberg said. Demands in the letter, released before Friday’s European Council summit, included an immediate halt to all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, in parallel with a rapid ending of fossil fuel subsidies. The letter also called for binding annual “carbon budgets” to limit how much greenhouse gas countries can emit to maximise the chances of capping the rise in average global temperatures at 1.5C, a goal enshrined in the 2015 Paris climate accord.”

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Murder Hornets Deadly Immigrants Increasing Diversity and Vibrancy in Bee Hives By Brian Simpson

     These little monsters have now entered the US, not yet Australia. Basically, these insects attack honey bee hives, systematically killing every bee, then making food out of them. The Asian honey bee fights back by masses of them forming a bee-ball over the hornet, metabolically cooking them, but the European bee has not evolved to do this, so hives get wiped out.
  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/us/asian-giant-hornet-washington.html
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gAVlh-7WZM

      It is like a deadlier version of the corona plague, one to really worry about, since bee colonies are already under threat with colony collapse disorder, which while not in the news much, is still out there, and a threat:
  https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2020/06/24/pollinators-crossroads
  https://www.heraldsun.com.au/technology/science/we-need-bees-to-survive-but-they-are-under-threat-everywhere/news-story/11fa2ec059138b9cca79682e2a8d6255

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So, Climate Change is Not an Existential Threat! By James Reed

     Little Princess Greta told us that we adults are killing her world with climate change, and that we needed to do something, she was not sure what, but dismantling the economy would be a first step. Then letting China rule the world might be second, but like everything, she was thin on detail. But now some other intellectual climate gurus are breaking rank. How long before the entire house of cards, collapses? A corpse can only be paraded as living for so long. Before it falls apart.
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/noted-environmentalist-apologizes-for-the-climate-scare

“One of the heroes of the environmental movement has recanted his earlier views that “climate change” is an existential threat to human civilization. He says he is now embarrassed by his previous views, which he expounded for years as an expert in the field. In a column published at Forbes.com, and subsequently removed by the editors, Michael Shellenberger now says, “humans are not causing a sixth mass extinction, the Amazon is not the lungs of the world, climate change is not making natural disasters worse,” and denies many other shibboleths of the environmental left. Within hours of its publication, Shellenberger’s piece was removed from the Forbes website. Shellenberger is a long-time revered member of the environmental movement, the founder of many campaigns, and an author of several books related to environmental issues. He says he has remained silent about his controversial views for a long time because he was afraid of losing friends and funding. He points to what happened to climate scientist Roger Pielka, who was chased out of the climate movement for the heretical view that increased coastal damage is not caused by more hurricanes but by overbuilding in coastal areas. Though a climate skeptic for some time, Shellenberger decided only recently to speak up because of the increasingly hysterical statements of climate alarmists. Last year, U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the world would end in 12 years due to climate change. Green journalist Bill McKibben said climate change is the greatest challenge humans have ever faced said that it will wipe out civilization. And perhaps most concerning to Shellenberger was recent polling that shows half the people surveyed around the world think human extinction is coming. What’s more, one in five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change.

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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter By John Steele

     The politically correct are upset because a big game hunter has been appointed to be a state conservationist. Killing, or culling animals, is apparently inconsistent with the Green ideology:
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8485259/Western-Australian-conservationist-Esperance-fire-South-Africa-game-hunt-photos.html

“A big game shooter who proudly posed with the dead carcasses of giraffes, elephants and rhinos has been hired to be a state government conservationist. Jewell Crossberg was recently appointed acting district manager of the Western Australian Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions in Esperance, on the state's south coast. A Facebook album titled 'business and pleasure' has surfaced showing Mr Crossberg standing over dead giraffes, rhinos and zebras he's shot at South African game reserve in 2010. In one photo, Mr Crossberg kneels down next to the corpse of a giraffe with a rifle in one hand. The head of the dead animal rests over his knee while Mr Crossberg smiles for the camera. Mr Crossberg is also seen posing with a dead zebra in one photo, and grinning behind a felled elephant in another one. The album has since sparked outrage and calls have been made for Mr Crossberg to be removed from his role in the conservation department. Mr Crossberg will be acting as the Parks and Wildlife manager in Esperance where he will be responsible for looking after the wildlife and natural assets in the district. Though an online petition has called for him to be removed from the position. 'A man for sees [sic] no issue with hunting endangered and threatened species should not be in a role protecting Australia's native flora and fauna, as he clearly lacks the judgement to do so, despite the photos being taken at a South African Hunting lodge, where such hunts are legal,' the petition reads. The petition quotes a letter from concerned citizens of Esperance, calling for immediate action against Mr Crossberg. 'We the citizens of Esperance are very concerned about the recent appointment of Jewell Crossberg,' the letter reads. 'We think the director Jason Foster has made a very bad judgement call. 'We are so disappointed to see Mr Crossberg is not a true conservationist and shouldn't be in a position of this standing.' The department said in a statement Mr Crossberg had gone through a competitive recruitment process and that it was committed to wildlife conservation. 'The Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions is committed to wildlife conservation and ensuring world’s best animal welfare practices. 'Jewell Crossberg went through a competitive recruitment process and demonstrated he had the appropriate skills for the acting district manager role.' Mr Crossberg has since deleted his Facebook page.”

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Cold Comfort By Viv Forbes

     Before sunrise yesterday, the grass temperature in Washpool, "Sunny Queensland" was minus 1.7 deg. There was no wind or sunshine. Wind turbines were becalmed and not even moonbeams energised our solar panels. In that still, frosty darkness, green energy failed again. Not a watt came from becalmed wind "farms" or from subsidized solar panels cluttering many roofs (including ours). But we didn't need our diesel in the shed - we were
saved by trusty Old King Coal, with maybe a dash of gas or hydro. Reliable 24/7 generators provided pre-dawn power-by-wire for lights, heaters and coffee before we checked the frosty flats for new-born lambs.

     Needs Some Warming here too (Canada) To download this article with all images click:
  https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/cold-comfort.pdf

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Australian Evidence of a New Ice Age? By James Reed

     I am a great believer in global climate change; not warming, but cooling, always feeling in my water that a new ice age is coming, and scientists whom I read in the 1970s told me that, and that is about how up to date I am, which is impressive. Take the present cold snap, with Antarctica dumping its coldness upon us, no concern that I can’t even feel my fingers as I type this. I can’t afford heating and am locked down, like Victorian (i.e. 1800s) prisoners, in an icy dungeon, to keep safe from Coviddy.
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8771283/Heavy-snow-hail-thunderstorms-hit-South-Australia-Victoria-NSW.html?ito=push-notification&ci=35872&si=12817605

     Even snow in South Australia, up in the Flinders Ranges, wherever they are, somewhere up north, maybe near Adelaide, it does not matter much to me, because I am an arrogant Victorian, made more arrogant by being shut up in a chicken coop for, what a year now? Anyway, I argue that this is due to global cooling, since whenever there is a bushfire, well it’s global warming. So, by parity of reason, when there is a cooling event, it must be evidence of the opposite namely an ice age. You can’t have your ice cream cake and eat it too.

Wasps and Figs By Mrs Versa West

     I like figs, and like most of us all I enjoy sitting under my back-yard fig tree, embracing my individual freedom, or what freedom I used to have before we in Melbourne lost everything. And I imagine that the anti-freedom police will be here soon to cut down my metaphorical fig tree. Shades of Adam and Eve! Anyway, blow me over, no easy task given my whale-like weight, there are wasps who live in figs. Didn’t know that, but now I do.
  https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/09/19/dead-wasp-in-every-fig.aspx?cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art2ReadMore&cid=20200919Z1&mid=DM654200&rid=968084743

“If you’re a fig lover, this next sentence may be hard for you to swallow. The figs you’re eating could have a dead wasp stuck in them. I know that probably makes you squirm, but it sounds more dramatic than it is. You may think the idea of wasps inside a fig is gross, but it’s actually pretty amazing to see how nature knows exactly what it needs to do to allow both plant and insect species to survive. Figs and fig wasps have a mutually beneficial relationship — something that’s officially called mutualism — that developed over millions of years of evolution. They need each other to survive. Fig wasps help pollinate figs and, in turn, the figs provide a safe place for the wasps to lay their eggs. This relationship is crucial to a balanced ecosystem and is also crucial to you enjoying a fresh fig or that fig jam you love. So, don’t let this tidbit of information make you shy away from eating figs. The fruit, or technically flower, is full of resistant starch, potassium and other nutrients such as magnesium and choline, that help keep you healthy. Plus, you’re probably already eating a lot of bugs without even realizing it. Read on to see what I mean. Why Do Figs Need Wasps?

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Cannibalistic Crabs? By Brian Simpson

     A family, quietly minding their own business, munching away, are suddenly surrounded by huge cannibalistic crabs! My, that would make a great film or novel.
  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8758171/Christmas-Island-Family-trying-enjoy-spring-barbecue-surrounded-robber-crabs.html?ito=push-notification&ci=35187&si=12817605

“A family who were trying to enjoy a spring camping barbecue were shocked to find they had been surrounded by a group of robber crabs. The giant crustaceans, also known as coconut crabs, measure up to metre in length and have a strong sense of smell. When an unwitting family were enjoying an al fresco barbecue while camping on Christmas Island, in Western Australia's far north-west, the the crabs swarmed around them. Photographs of the barbecue show more than 52 of the clawsome creatures eagerly awaiting a chance to snack on some leftovers. Winter McKendrick, the daughter of one of the other families on the trip, looked unfazed as the enormous crabs surrounded her as she ate her dinner on her fold-up camping chair. One brave crab was pictured scaling the side of the table to get better access to the family's delicious meal.” 

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