The pond has complained before about the way its herpetology studies gets in the way of having fun.
The pond only caught up with John Oliver's demolition job last night, celebrated at the Graudian in John Oliver on Tories: their 'unremitting cruelty has stained the last decade and a half of British life'. (spoiler alert, there's buckets of rain).
Scan the top of the reptile digital edition this day and you wouldn't have the first clue that plucky little England is only a few days away from its own independence day ...
You might have noted over in the far right of the rag the new comments format has gone from a weekend feast to a Monday famine, and never mind the quality, it's in such small portions too ...
The pond has no idea what happened to the lizard Oz editorials and has no intention of finding out ... plunging into the bowels of the digital edition is always risky.
You might, for example, be tempted to take a look at the "Media Diary", only to discover that mention of Tuckyo Carlson is an excuse to slag off the Nine rags for getting it wrong about Senator Gerard Rennick allegedly attending the talk fest. That way the reptiles could gloss over Barners, and the Canavan caravan, joining the likes of Malcolm Roberts at the fest ...
Speaking of climate science denialism, there was the usual serve this day from the usual suspects, which meant that the pond could avoid the bouffant one slagging off Albo, and Lord Downer returning in full high heeled pique to give Assange a hard time ...
There was an immortal Rowe addressing the Payman matter ...
... and then it was on with the standard serve of climate science denialism, led as usual on a Monday by the Caterist (you can't expect the Ughmann to do it with Jesus quotes every day of the week).
Inevitably it began with a terrifying image designed to send the aged demographic into terminal fear mode ...
Oh dear, whenever the Caterist starts whining about a lack of revenue, the pond is reminded just how stingy is the regular grant that the Caterist mob gets, cash in paw to help them prepare reports ...
Such suffering, such a pitifully small "Grant in Aid" and "Closed Non-Competitive" to boot ...
Meanwhile, there were other terrifying images ... the keen Kean in a video, Bob Brown, Tanya and that bloody judge Natalie, a genuine Caterist heroine ...
Of course the Caterist was going to be traumatised by a load of irony...
The pond long ago got over arguing the point about nuking the planet. These days it just relishes the agony of the likes of the Caterist, suddenly turned rampant environmentalist and concerned climate science believer (so long as you can nuke the country to save the planet) ...
Then it's on with the suffering of Gina, and the difficulty of drill, baby, drill, and climate warrior Caterist taking on the climate warriors ...
Usually the pond veers off to other tales of suffering, and thanks to a correspondent, this Kudelka caught the eye...
Ah the suffering of Woodside, and there was more suffering thanks to the MRC getting cash in the paw to report Ming the Merciless's views on the environment ...
Indeed, indeed, there are good reasons for nuking the environment and the planet, and even more for giving it a good gassing, and so to the concluding gobbet, with a strong sense of déjà vu, as the pond has been here many times on a Monday ...
Why, there's winning all over the planet ...
And so to that cheeky bird, Major Mitchell, an astonishing expert in matters scientific (it would take the pond a week, or at least a nanosecond, to reel off the degrees, the peer-reviewed papers and the field reports) and an expert regurgitator of reptile opinions ...
This time the Major's piece led off with a snap of Captain Spud, designed to reassure the aged readership that nuking the country was in safe hands ...
The pond hopes it isn't the only one to get a deep guffawing laugh out of that headline, "Science pushed aside" ...
The pond can't begin to count the times it has come across reptiles talking about "religious fervour" with a religious fervour that's always startling. Perhaps that's why the Major decided to modify it and talk about "quasi-religious fervour".
As for the rest, been there and done it a hundred times in reptile company, though remarkably the Major was only interrupted by one snap, of a smirking, clearly self-satisfied fiend ...
That sight sent the Major off into a vortex of spiralling religious fervour ... with the Major indignant at the treatment dished out to the Ughmann, when all he was doing was quoting a renowned climate scientist from ancient times ...
You know Numbers 35:33-34
So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.
Defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit, wherein I dwell: for I the Lord dwell among the children of Israel.
Sorry, sorry, just a touch of the religious fervours ... on with the Ughmann and famous denialist Judith Curry giving them curry ...
...The wettest autumn, winter and spring on record have threatened the spinach and potato crops, leading to parliamentary questions and warnings from farming union LTO. Evelien Drenth, LTO agriculture specialist, said 61% of Dutch farmers report lost yields due to extreme weather, diseases are up and sowing is late or sometimes missed. “Consumers and supermarkets need to get used to empty shelves sometimes for short-season crops like spinach … and also irregular-sized Brussels sprouts and broccoli,” she added.
If the plants are stressed, so are the farmers, according to Jaap Fris, of the community-owned farm Erve Kiekebos, in Empe, Gelderland. “It is true that things are getting more difficult because of the climate,” he said. “But sometimes I have to challenge my own perception that things have to be perfect, when I know that even if it looks less good, it is just as tasty.”There’s an ongoing battle with slugs, for instance, while late-harvested kohlrabi might have grown a second skin or another heart. “Like people, they all look different,” he said. “It’s not that beautiful… but you can still just eat it.”
It's not beautiful, in fact it's downright ugly, and the pond has a daily battle with slugs at the lizard Oz... but the pond still managed to make it through the entire Major Mitchell effort, and reached this last, almost indigestible chunk ... it's not that beautiful and it takes a n exceptional effort to swallow it ...
There's that new comedy line much loved by the reptiles ... the one calling for "genuine scrutiny", as if that hasn't already been done, at least outside the quasi-religious fervour of the reptile hive mind ...
Perhaps the Major hasn't noticed that Captain Spud and his team of Teds have yet to put out any actual costings so that they might then be given "genuine scrutiny" ...
Meanwhile, in Taliban country ...
Beryl, the first hurricane of the 2024 Atlantic season, intensified to an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph Sunday morning, as it made its way toward the Windward Islands.
ReplyDeleteBeryl is now the earliest Category 4 hurricane on record in the Atlantic Ocean and the only Category 4 storm ever recorded in the month of June.
Tropical storm-force winds are expected to reach the Windward Islands late Sunday or early Monday.
The early timing of the season’s first hurricane is unusual, given the average date for the first hurricane is August 11.
As of 5 p.m. ET, Beryl was about 250 miles east southeast of Barbados, heading west.
“A life-threatening storm surge will raise water levels by as much as 6 to 9 feet above normal tide levels in areas of onshore flow near where the eye makes landfall in the hurricane warning area,” the National Hurricane Center said, adding that the surge could bring large and destructive waves near the coast.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/hurricane-beryl-expected-intensify-dangerous-042228865.html
See them while you can: Climate change is reshaping iconic US destinations
DeleteAs millions of Americans flock to the nation's coasts, islands and national monuments this summer, experts have a sobering message: Climate change is rapidly reshaping some of the United States' most iconic destinations.
Devastated tropical islands. Ruined coastal homes. A flooded capitol. The changes are unfolding in plain sight and at a rapid and terrifying pace, experts told USA TODAY – with no sign of stopping.
Some of the most obvious and dramatic changes can be seen at the bustling coast, where rising seas mean summer vacation spots face a supercharged risk. There, the natural rhythm of water meeting land increasingly results in flooding and erosion that eats away at roads, homes and businesses.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/see-them-while-climate-change-090425352.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw555ny3q9xo
DeleteWhat record air conditioner sales reveal about India heatwave
Govind Ram, a junk dealer living on the outskirts of the Indian capital, Delhi, bought an air conditioner in May after his children pleaded with him.
A fiery heatwave was scorching the city and its neighbourhood, and his school-going children complained of “choking” heat. Using his savings, Mr Ram bought the air conditioner for his children’s bedroom. This relief, he says, has come at a cost – his electricity bill last month soared to seven times the usual amount.
“I’ve endured the worst summers under just a fan. But this year, my children suffered so much that I had to buy our family’s first air conditioner,” Mr Ram said.
Over the past five decades, India has faced over 700 heatwaves but this summer’s severe and unrelenting heat has to count among the worst, experts believe. Some 97% of Indian households are electrified, with 93% relying on fans for comfort, according to think tank Council on Energy Environment and Water (CEEW). But this year, India’s air conditioning market has surged like never before.
“In my 45 years in the air-con industry, I've never seen anything like this. The spike in demand is a complete surprise, with sales likely to more than double this summer compared to last year,” says B Thiagarajan, managing director of Blue Star, a leading cooling and refrigeration company.
Experts say Indian cities have become “heat traps” due to unbalanced development. Nearly a billion people across 23 states are exposed to heat stress, according to CEEW. Green spaces are scarce. Rapid growth is swallowing up water bodies which help cool the environment. Increasing greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, factories and construction activities are raising temperatures further. India’s high-rise boom has led to mostly poorly ventilated apartments and glass and chrome office buildings, which absorb and reflect heat. All this is making cities hotter and more uncomfortable to live in.
Nobody doubts that air conditioning is a necessity. But widespread air conditioner use also raises outdoor temperatures by expelling indoor heat. Their chemical refrigerants pose environmental risks.
Extreme weather events like heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense with climate change. India needs to do a lot more to protect its people from heat. More than 140 people have died in extreme heat in India this summer, according to officials. The real number is possibly much higher.
As India battles an unforgiving heatwave, the surge in AC sales underscores a stark reality: the urgent need for equitable access to cooling solutions remains unmet.
I dunno, Anony, the old technique was a gentle fan over a large block of ice - if there was a large block of ice maker/seller in your vicinity (which there hardly ever is nowadays).
DeleteWonder if that would still work. Think I'll stick to 'air conditioning' personally.
DP, just in case you need a bit of history "Newswire: A Large-Scale Structured Database of a Century of Historical News"
ReplyDelete...
"We reconstruct such an archive by applying a customized deep learning pipeline to hundreds of terabytes of raw image scans from thousands of local newspapers. The resulting dataset contains 2.7 million unique public domain U.S. newswire articles, written between 1878 and 1977. Locations in these articles are georeferenced, topics are tagged using customized neural topic classification, named entities are recognized, and individuals are disambiguated to Wikipedia using a novel entity disambiguation model.
[Submitted on 13 Jun 2024]
https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.09490
ReplyDeleteSound familiar?
And only getting harder. And older.
"Bipartisan consensus in favor of renewable power is ending The change is most pronounced in those over 50 years old." ... "Acceptance of the evidence for climate change tends to be lowest among Republicans, yet many of the states where renewable power has boomed—wind in Wyoming and Iowa, solar in Texas—are governed by Republicans.
"That's partly because, up until about 2020, there was a strong bipartisan consensus in favor of expanding wind and solar power, with support above 75 percent among both parties. Since then, however, support among Republicans has dropped dramatically, approaching 50 percent, according to polling data released this week."
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/06/support-for-renewable-power-is-plunging-among-republicans/
Goodness me - actual research (I use the term extremely loosely) from the Menzies Research Centre? Will wonders never cease - and here I was thinking the organisation existed solely to provide the Caterist and a few others with play-jobs. Not that it sounds as though they’ve produced anything more than the usual denialist bumps that could just as easily have originated from the IPA or any other reactionary propaganda unit.
ReplyDelete"the one calling for "genuine scrutiny" has to remain... Anonymous.
ReplyDelete21 JUNE 2024
"Red Lines"
Anonymous
...
"But only now, with an assault on an Israeli doctor in Tel Aviv, has a red line been crossed?
"Palestinian doctors and nurses in Israeli institutions have to work among warmongering colleagues who have signed petitions calling on the government to bomb hospitals in Gaza. As Palestinians, we have to be vigilant about everything we say during our coffee breaks, about every WhatsApp message we send, every social media post, while putting up with comments from our colleagues that spark a mixture of rage, fear and impotence.
"I understand Hagay’s anger with the Israeli security forces and his solidarity with the doctor they attacked. But he and the IMA have remained silent as the Israeli military has killed almost five hundred medical staff in Gaza."
...
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/june/red-lines
Today Cater taught me the oxymoron that an industry is an anti-industry. He also tells me that the environmental movement aims to destroy wealth while becoming a quarter billion dollar industry and growing faster than primary industries and the resources sector. It does not create wealth although it promotes the renewables industry, which while being an industry apparently does not create wealth even those its investors' portfolios would be threatened by nuclear power. It also makes a lot of money for the legal industry. It might occur to some readers that it is Nick who aims to destroy wealth by destroying the renewables industry. He also taught me that what we should not allow is people without power and money to be to be given legal support and funds to be able to take legal action against people with power and money.
ReplyDeleteI did not learn that Santos plans to turn the gas into LNG and export it instead of supplying households and businesses in Australia.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-30/santos-tiwi-islands-barossa-traditional-owners-legal-fight/104025414
From Mitchell I discover that science, recent floods, wildfires and extreme heatwaves are just a belief, and that if another country does something like allow people to carry concealed guns in the street or ban abortion and books, then Australian voters should not oppose doing it here.
Mitchell appears to suggest that if a government has a problem with the practical rollout of infrastructure, it should abandon the whole policy in favour of a theoretical, undetailed announcement which will only increase costs.
Mitchell also appears to believe that the northern hemisphere is apparently the same as the southern hemisphere (there go all those lessons in science and geography).
Mitchell claims that 32 countries use nuclear energy, but that while we invest in renewables, the rest of the world continues to increase CO2 emissions. So we must conclude that most of the world is still using fossil fuels more than nuclear energy.
Oh pish tush, Anony: how long did humans (the 'medicos' of their time) persist with that appalling nonsense of 'blood letting' to "cure" various ailments - at least nearly about two millennia, wasn't it ? So why expect anybody much to pick up on 'climate change' in under a couple of hundred years at a minimum ?
ReplyDeleteBesides, what we really need is people to stay ignorantly stupid and thus die off soon (heat deaths, drownings, starvation, thirst etc) - the quicker we can at least halve the human population (down to at most 4 billion) the sooner we will make serious reductions in long-life greenhouse gas emissions (ie mainly CO2) and the less impact our continuing stupidity will have on us and on a large number of other species.
Polls x 4.
ReplyDeleteI do not understand how people view global heating as a variable, changing because... I like a politician. My hip pocket is hurting???
- Oct 2021 51% agree climate change is a serious problem.
- June 2024 41% agree.
"Labor gains in Newspoll as Australians narrowly oppose the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan"
...
"In additional questions, 41% (down four since August 2023 and down ten since October 2021) said climate change is a serious problem and we should take action now even if that involves significant costs."
...
"Asked to choose between “Labor’s plan to use 100% renewables (supported by gas for the next decade or two)” and “the Coalition’s plan to use nuclear power and some gas to support the renewables”, voters backed Labor’s plan by 43–33%.
Published: July 1, 2024 10.32am AEST
Adrian Beaumont
https://theconversation.com/labor-gains-in-newspoll-as-australians-narrowly-oppose-the-coalitions-nuclear-energy-plan-232693
Mr Beaumont is a polling 'expert' usually caught in the pages of The Conversation, and that's where I usually catch his stuff. But now I won't have to bother, thanks Anony.
DeleteOh dear: "Sin bin for rebel who called Labor's bluff". Yeah, what a "bluff" that was. So once upon a time 'Labour/Labor' parties insisted on 100% voting agreement. And this was why ? Something called 'scabs' who would vote against their own party and thus defeat its proposed legislation.
ReplyDeleteBut we don't really have 'scabs' these days, what we have is 'vote by conscience'. As far as I can see, Ms Payman is actually voting according to her conscience as she expects her "god" would want her to vote. How would Labor respond to somebody who voted according to a Catholic Christian conscience ? Is there any Laborite who would ?
So just because the Labor types were once upon a time screwed by scabs, so now there is no such thing as voting in accordance with conscience. C'mon Laborites, at least join the late 19th/early 20th centuries.
While the Cater continues his version of climate discussion here in Girtby, the one who we understood to be his companion in life, Ms Weisser, tells us she has been editing the ‘Quad Rant’ from Budapest. That is - Editor-in-Chief, you must understand. As with Rupert’s Flagship, every second contributor is some kind of editor.
ReplyDeleteThe theme of her article - ‘The Green Tide Turns in Europe’ - does not extend beyond her celebration that that nasty concern for our future on this planet is broadly being put in its place by a particular set of politicians. I could not find any further thought from her on why that should be desirable, but then she IS being accommodated at the Danube Institute.
Her writing otherwise is of a piece with much of what pops up on the ‘Rant’ these days. She tells us how ‘mercilessly clear-eyed in describing all this is the brilliant Mark Steyn.’ She goes on to tell us that Steyn is ‘Fresh from a punishingly long defamation case in Washington DC’.
Well - ‘fresh’ has a particular interpretation with the Cater/Weisser combo. That case was ‘punishingly long’ largely because Steyn made it so, to some extent deliberately, but also by his bumbling attempts to make his own legal case. Which is how he was assessed US$1 000 000 in punitive damages, plus costs for various proceedings on the way through. Ms Weisser did not see a reason to tell us of those outcomes; or that the defamation was against Michael Mann - that this was the widely-known ‘hockey stick case’. I guess an Editor-in-Chief considers that to be trivial detail when she is trying to persuade us that the planet will survive human insult without humans needing to be bothered by any of that.
But Chad, NickC and Ms Weisser are just "living their best lives...apart" aren't they ? And the Danube Institute is just a Hungarian equivalent of the Menzies Research Centre only they didn't have a politician as famous as Robert Gordon to name it after.
ReplyDeleteBesides, one way or another, Planet Terra won't have all that much longer to have to endure human depredation - not unless we can last much longer than a million years anyway (and we've made less than 200,000 so far), especially given that eukaryotes have been around for about 2.33 billion years.
Then again, we don't really need plants or animals now since we can manufacture quite satisfactory edibles artificially - does that mean we really might be immortal as a species and that we could live on the moon and Mars ? What will we look like in 100 million years ?
And, of course, future governments need to be prepared for the collision with Andromeda, currently approaching at an estimated 110 km/s.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10765
Although that projects serious mingling of Andromeda and the Milky Way 4 billion years hence, it would be wise to prepare for events from around 2.5 billion years, if only to protect our eukayrotes for eternity. No doubt the Capt Spuds of that time will argue that the Milky Way has about a billion years in hand, so there would be no need to be hasty,
Oh yes, the Andromeda merger is something to really look forward to. Although galaxies are really mostly so sparse that few stars will collide any real distance out from the more crowded centre - and that's where Sol and Terra stage their daily dance.
Delete