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Climate change deniers – Australian conservative media.

And they are at it again. This time it’s Allan Jones, a darling of the uneducated commonsense brigade. In a piece published in the “Daily Telegraph’ he calls on politicians debating (still) whether Australia should join in with other developed nations and aim for net zero by 2050 – to do a little homework because he claims, “Politicians who are driving Australia to reach net zero emissions by 2050 need to wake up and start listening to the scientists telling the truth about CO2 and its effects.”

He goes on to list names of scientists and what they apparently had to say about CO2 and climate change – and so I did a bit of homework and went through Jones’ list…

John Christy – Trump recruit. Need we say more?

Dr Charles Wax – claimed in 2012 that warming of the planet is caused by sun spots and that climate change is a ‘good thing’. Old theory and totally debunked.

Stanley Goldenberg – does not have a PhD and is a research meteorologist not a ‘scientist’. Claimed the increase in hurricane activity is due to a natural cycle.

William Kininmonth Australia Meteorologist – also not a ‘scientist’ – is a member of the Lavoisier Group which was formed by politicians and others committed to actively deny climate change.

Dr David Evans is an engineer and mathematician. Was indeed a consultant to the Australian Green House Office but between 1999 and 2005. Admitted at the time “carbon dioxide has an effect” but denied it is driving climate change as established as fact by the IPCC. Since then what has been observed is actually beyond the IPCC’s worst predictions.

Dr Richard Lindzen. – of whom Christopher S. Bretherton, an atmospheric researcher at the University of Washington, said Lindzen is “feeding upon an audience that wants to hear a certain message, and wants to hear it put forth by people with enough scientific reputation that it can be sustained for a while, even if it’s wrong science. I don’t think it’s intellectually honest at all.” Others have also called Lindzen dishonest.

Dr Robert Laughlin Did get a shared bit of the Nobel Prize for physics but not for anything climate related. View on climate change is that it may be important but the future is impossible to change. Probably doesn’t have kids.

Dr Kary Mullis – now dead. Aside from denying climate change he also denied HIV causes AIDS, and the accepted science of ozone depletion.

Dr Madhav Khandekar retired Canadian scientist. Independent journalists claim they have documented proof Khandekar is receiving monthly donations from a climate change denying organisation.

Dr Roy Spencer Is a signatory to “An Evangelical Statement on Global Warming” which states,

“We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence—are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.”

Total garbage – on that natural cycle the planet should be cooling whereas it is undeniably warming.

Jones and the Daily Telegraph certainly did their homework and must be congratulated for coming up with so many deniers! Ten of them! Including the dead one.

Now maybe they could put some balance into their journalism and list all the scientists who say we are in deep shit if we don’t act now. They would have to make that a special edition as it would probably be hundreds of pages of names and institutions.

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Demos and you are not the badge on a car’s bonnet.

Posted on the home page a discussion on privacy and in which Snowden warns of mass surveillance and how collected information might be used in the future. Worth keeping in mind.

Spent most of yesterday attending demos in Sydney – not the anti-vaxxer one – starting with handing out Extinction Rebellion flyers in Kings Cross which was interesting. LOL, I hadn’t been in the Cross for a long while and was amazed by how much the place has been sanitised into a yuppie neighbourhood, and by the number of obvious gays. They appear to have a dress code that consists of a black sleeveless t-shirt and knee-length shorts, a trimmed beard and a variant of poodle on a leash. Few if any would take a climate-action flyer.

After that I wandered over to Martin Place where at 13.00 there was to be an anti-fracking demo and on the way I passed the anti-vaxxer demo where many of the participants had small children in tow. Not sure belief in some far-fetched conspiracy theory is reason to put kids’ health at risk. Obviously they know nothing about how the polio pandemic, etc was beaten. Mass vaccination and in places where that is not happening, Afghanistan for example, polio is making a comeback.

The anti-fracking was a bit of a non-event, not many participants and the majority appeared to be hard left uni students. Exchanged a few words with a young woman handing out communist pamphlets, tried to point out a few flaws in Marxist theory without offending her, they tend to be passionate and convinced they are right. The problem of knowing enough to believe you are right but not enough to know you are (possibly) wrong.
Having said that, I wouldn’t want to be one of them; collapse of the planet’s life-support system, ecological destruction, overpopulation, inequalities such as never experienced before, nuclear, biological, chemical and conventional weapons stacked to the rafters, who could blame them for reaching for an off-the-shelf solution? “Lets tear down the system and rebuild it!” Fine if you had the time, and every government on the planet agreed to be to torn down and replaced. And with the system torn down – then what? There are roughly 7.7 billion souls on this planet, all in need of shelter, food, fresh water, security, education, health, culture – good luck.

I think what needs to be torn down and replaced is not a system of exchange between nations but rather what drives it to the point of destroying life on this planet, and that is that humans believe happiness comes with having what others cannot afford. Earlier in the week and handing out pamphlets outside state parliament, a co-protester commented on the number of Mercedes and Porsche’s going past. “Yeah, funny that people derive their identity and self-worth from the badge stuck on their car’s bonnet.” I said, and to which he replied, “Sad, when you think about it”.

True – it is sad we are burning our children’s future for possession of illusions.

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Sword and bird.

Changed the header picture, and not trying to be clever nor fancy. Simply the sword is an immutable spirit, and one that allowed me when I was a teenager to survive ‘the Dilly.’ The yellow breasted bird reminds me of the one that came everyday when this time last year I spent a month alone in the woods only drinking water and sitting in zazen (see note below) most of the day. He would perch on a branch in front of me and in the morning if he arrived and I was not awake, he would flutter his wings noisily outside the entrance to the tent as though to say, “Get up, time to sit.”

Is there anything I could share from that experience? Nothing beyond having been given a glimpse of the void. You, and it means you as well, as part of the universe, you are beautiful, perfect as you are, eternal, don’t worry about small impermanent things even if you believe them to be important. “Who are you?” has no answer in the conventional way the question is understood.

Do worry about, and act on climate change though! LOL

Note: I describe it as sitting in ‘zazen’ but doing so was not something I decided nor planned to do. It just happened, and after a few days the bird arrived. Also – I don’t believe you have to twist your body into painful positions; you can meditate walking, sitting, lying down, or mowing the grass. Whatever works. My usual method of meditation is Iaido practice, and I’m no master at that either, wobbly and stiff.

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It is Climate Change Mister Biden.

Apparently Biden has said the Texas freeze ”could be climate change.” Let’s look at what the jet stream is doing, and for that no better place than the most excellent Earth NullSchool website.

Starting with ground level temperature,

In the image above, blue to purple areas are below zero Celsius. As you can see most of the United States and Canada are below zero including Texas.

Going from ground level up to stratosphere where there be the jet stream and switching to ‘wind’ we find a great big trough over North America.

The purple with white strips is high speed wind (the reason it’s called the jet stream) and as you can see over the United States it’s blowing from the west, dipping over Texas and then heading northeast towards the North Atlantic. What this is doing is like leaving the fridge door open, creating a trough into which cold air from the Arctic can spill down over the United States.

It’s climate change because the jet stream normally travels around the planet further near the poles and is wavy but for a natural system, is fairly consistent and does not dip south or north to near crossing the equator. What’s happening is that the temperature differential between the equator and poles is decreasing with the Arctic warming two to three times faster than the rest of the planet. This decrease in differential is causing the jet stream to slow and break up and in doing so, drag either hot or cold air to where it should not normally be. As are experiencing the Texans who would never have believed it would one day snow on the Alamo. Below is a link to Earth Nullschool and there are ‘how to use’ videos on YouTube.

https://earth.nullschool.net/

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Children of War – lesson from the past.

“If there be trouble, let it be in my time that my children may have peace.” Thomas Paine.

1946 War Department film with a few messages for today’s adults at a time when scientists all agree climate change will cause a collapse of civilisation which, as the planet continues to heat up, will be followed by mass extinction.
Are we, today’s adults, going to step forward and do what needs to be done, or are we going to continue with business as usual fully knowing we are, in fact, stealing our children’s lives?