pmccarthy

I'm glad that Trump has done something to sort those crazy bas-rds out. They have been responsible for much of the grief and destruction in the world for the past 30 years. If only he felt the same about Putin, he would get serious helping the Ukrainians.

Despite forecasts, not a drop here yet.

I Come To Bury Howard by David Archibald 10 February 2026 Certainly not to praise him. The evil he did as Prime Minister has gone on for too long. Howard’s last dark deed, after he lost the September 2007 election, was to pass the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act. To put that in context, when he was a teenager Howard used to cross Sydney to sit at the knee of Sir Philip Baxter, former head of the Australian Energy Commission, and hear of the wonders of nuclear energy. As an elected politician, he became a one-man sleeper cell of nuclear advocacy. In private conversations, Howard used to call global warming nonsense. Nevertheless, he worked towards bringing in a carbon tax. He wanted Australia to adopt nuclear energy. To force Australia to that result, he needed to make coal-fired power generation more expensive. He was being two-faced and too cute. The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act was the accounting basis for the tax. The idea was to bring it in, settle it down over a couple of years and then start taxing. Some 1,000 Australian companies continue to report their carbon consumption under that act. The total cost of employing all the accountants for this may be of the order of $500 million per annum. All of which is wasted. Close to $10 billion has been wasted over the years, for nothing. Fifteen years ago I used to be invited to give speeches at anti-carbon tax rallies on the east coast. After one such rally in front of Parliament House, I went in to meet Senator Nick Minchin, then considered to be the hard man of the Liberal right. I said to the Senator that the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act should be repealed. He replied “Why would we do that?,” which meant that he had no idea how the world worked. He also said that nobody in cabinet asked Howard why he was proceeding with the carbon tax. Not that they weren’t curious about doing something so stupid, they were afraid of upsetting him. They would rather national self-harm than lose their spot in cabinet. Abbott won the 2013 election on a platform of getting rid of the carbon tax. Three days later Greg Hunt, then Liberal member for Goldstein and a Klaus Schwab protégé, talked him out of repealing the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act. Why get rid of the carbon tax but keep the accounting basis for it? So stupid, but he did it. The carbon tax came back in other forms. The price of electric power tripled. Businesses and whole industries are closing. Last year the Liberal Party formally abandoned a commitment to carbon taxes, but they still yearn to remain in the Paris mutual suicide pact of 2015. This confused position means they don’t believe the words coming out of their own mouths. The electorate have noticed and are now looking elsewhere for the promise of rational government. But there is an easy test of any party’s grip on reality. If their platform does not include repeal of the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, they don’t understand anything and their professed concern for the future of our country is only performative. So far, no political party has undertaken to do so and the country remains on a glide slope to oblivion. In the meantime, as our standard of living keeps falling, curse John Howard. Curse him in living and curse him in dying. He could have killed the global warming monster in its crib but chose instead to live a lie. We continue to suffer because of his contempt for the Australian people.

I could solve a lot of the world's problems with that. Or….

Folsom prison blues

We are promised 100-150mm over the next three days. Could be interesting.

Then cost of domestic electricity is the monthly bill, not the unit rate. To suggest otherwise is misleading. As a consumer I don’t care if a big part of my monthly bill is now going to build power lines across paddocks, or whatever. Just the total. And yes, I have rooftop solar. The blackouts today are not as long as they were a few years ago. But even a short blackout is annoying when you have to reset several clocks in modern devices like the oven. And it is very annoying when your CPAP stops in the middle of the night and you wake up gasping for air.

I accept my own data. I have been paying for electricity for over 50 years. It was nearly all coal and it was cheap and reliable. Now it is woke electricity and it is expensive and we get blackouts. What more data do you need?

The Klimanachrichten article references a ZDF documentary by journalist Johannes Hano, which notes that locals in Tuvalu aren’t fearful of climate change. A 2018 study (Paul Kench, University of Auckland) found that 74 out of 101 of Tuvalu’s islands have remained stable or have actually grown in size, despite an approximate 15 cm rise in sea level over recent decades. This is attributed to coral-derived sediments being washed onto the islands by currents and storms, increasing their area

SWMBO can leave the house for ten minutes o two hours. But you can guarantee that when I let a big one rip, she will walk in immediately afterward.

Coal has been a cheap, reliable source of electricity since the 1920s. What planet do you guys live on?

Of course, I meant to write the temperatures have risen to what they were 1500 years ago.

Get a dog.

Friends won a house on the Gold Coast. They moved there but couldn't stand it.

I just read an article a 1,500-year-old reindeer trap that was discovered in the mountains of Norway last year. It says: Increased snowfall during the sixth century reshaped migration routes and limited access to mountain regions. Heavier snowpack extended winter conditions and pushed communities to relocate hunting activity to lower elevations, where herds adjusted more easily. The wooden trap and other objects have been frozen under ice ever since and have just emerged. In this location at least, temperatures have fallen to what they were 1500 years ago.