Was Eunice Foote, writing in 1856, the First Climate Alarmist? “The highest effect of the sun’s rays I have found to be in carbonic acid gas [carbon dioxide]. An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature; and if as some suppose, at one period of its history, the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present, an increased temperature from its own action, as well as from increased weight, must have necessarily resulted.” These are the conclusions of Eunice Foote, a farmer’s daughter from upstate New York, in a paper presented at the 10th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Albany, New York, in 1856. Read more.
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Where Will All the Electricity Come From in Our Electrically Powered Future? “ An epic number of citizens are video-conferencing to work in these lockdown times. But as they trade in a gas-burning commute for digital connectivity, their personal energy use for each two hours of video is greater than the share of fuel they would have consumed on a four-mile train ride. Add to this, millions of students ‘driving’ to class on the internet instead of walking. Meanwhile in other corners of the digital universe, scientists furiously deploy algorithms to accelerate research. Yet, the pattern-learning phase for a single artificial intelligence application can consume more compute energy than 10,000 cars do in a day.” Read more.
Is Reporting Lockdown Breaches the Same as Snitching on Jews? This poster appeared on lamp-posts in a Christchurch suburb in New Zealand recently. It uses Jim Halpert from The Office (played by John Krasinski) to ask the question, “If you will snitch on a person for violating quarantine, you would have snitched on Anne Frank and Harriet Tubman.” It refers to the police initiative to encourage people to dob in those breaking the strictest level of the lockdown, here called Alert Level 4 . As at 25 April there had been 55,000 reports about potential breaches from the public (we have now moved to Alert Level 3). That’s in a country of just under 5 million people. The writer continues: Same moral compass. Same choice of irrational fear over humanity. Irrational because many, many independent (not funded by [?]) experts are saying that Covid-19 has a lower mortality rate than influenza. There is a MUCH bigger picture here than Covid-19. Covid-19 is the Trojan horse to al
Did Jacinda Ardern Orchestrate the Perfect Response to Covid-19? For many people, the justification for the draconian lockdown in New Zealand is that it worked. Not only that, the rest of the world is hailing our government for its Covid-19 strategy, so it must have been the right thing to do. Of course what people mean by “the rest of the world” is that left-wing journalists in publications such as the New York Times approve of our handling of the crisis. I suppose as a New Zealander I should feel good about that. But then I recall that in the US this is election year, the presumed Democrat candidate can hardly remember his name let alone run a country, and so the (sole) Democrat policy of “Orange Man Bad” has to be ramped up and everything used as ammunition against him, including the performance of other leaders internationally. Of course our cringing media also like to refer to experts, excitedly quoting “ an internationally renowned virologist”, Dr Robert Webster
More Evidence, if it was Needed, That Greens Hate the Truth A day or so ago I hailed the release of Planet of the Humans , a film produced by a long-time member of the hard left, Michael Moore. The film takes a critical look at the use and abuse of various forms of green, sustainable energy, and not surprisingly the reaction has been extreme. Not in the sense of challenging any of the opinions or facts presented, but in terms of having the film banned. Read more.
Speech Control is Here and Inevitable According to two law professors writing in the Atlantic magazine: "In the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong. Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet, and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with a society’s norms and values." Inevitable? Really? So we should just give up the fight for any kind of freedom of speech? I've always known that a feature of the Left is a desire for Big Government to control our lives. But really? Read more.
The Dream is Over for Developing Hydrogen-fueled Cars "Daimler's Mercedes-Benz is killing its program to develop passenger cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The company has been working on fuel-cell vehicles for more than 30 years, chasing the dream of a zero-emissions car that has a long driving range, three-minute fill-ups, and emits only water vapor. In the end, the company conceded that building hydrogen cars was too costly, about double the expense of an equivalent battery-electric vehicle." Read more.
Michael Moore Shoots the Left in the Back You've probably already come across this, because it will be all over the internet, but I just had to go on record as being one of the ones promoting it. I was impressed by Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine back in 2002, but over the years his inevitable hard-left stance eventually alienated me. But you have to deeply admire someone who follows the evidence where it leads rather than blindly sticking to their principles. Moore has produced and lent his name to Planet of the Humans , which attacks green energy as an alternative to fossil fuels. In doing so Moore will have aroused the hatred of the Left, especially those promoting the Green New Deal, who will see the film as supporting Donald Trump's stance and presidential campaign. I see it as forcing people to think, actually think, which is getting to be a lost art. It will also function as a test. If you truly care about the planet and really want to do the right thing
Is There Such a Thing as a Universal Expert? I enjoyed watching the 2000s version of Battlestar Galactica, but it was sometimes a strain to overlook its flaws. For example, Gaius Baltar is an IT expert, but at one point he gladly takes on the complex biochemical task of coming up with a blood test that distinguishes cylons from humans. Everyone assumes that because he's a smart guy he can just apply his brilliance to this new problem. It's ridiculous, of course, although not more ridiculous than a cylon that no-one else can see, so it's better just to settle back and enjoy the ride. It's impossible to do the same thing in the real world when billionaires who have made their money underpaying their workers and overpricing their products start seeking redemption by acting as experts on health and society. For example, Bill Gates talks frequently and at length about vaccination, and Mark Zuckerberg pretends to be knowledgeable about freedom of speech and human ri
How to be a Useful Idiot It’s surprisingly easy, as was shown last Saturday when a collection of “celebrities” held a One World benefit concert to raise funds for the World Health Organization after Donald Trump withdrew US funding. I mean, if you’re bored in the lockdown and Lady Gaga says, “Hey guys, do you want to indulge in a huge bout of mindless virtue signalling that is misguided and counter-productive?”, who could say no? The fact that the WHO has behaved appallingly is irrelevant to people who live permanently in their own thought-free bubble. Read more .
The Pope is a Greenie Gaian "Bad enough that, as we know, the Pope subscribes to the anti-human, anti-science anthropogenic global warming scam, which is based on dodgy modelling, ideological bullying and financially manipulated intellectual corruption "Worse, his remarks on the virus don't just fly in the face of robust scientific evidence but are simply bonkers." So argues Melanie Phillips in a scorching criticism of the remarks made by Pope Francis in The Table t. Read more .
Peter Hitchens: A Sane, Supremely Articulate Voice in the Midst of Blather and Hysteria Peter Hitchens is a well-known English journalist and author. If his name doesn't ring a bell, you may have heard of his brother, Christopher Hitchens, who died in 2011. He, too, was a prolific writer, and arguably the more controversial of the two in his role as public intellectual. Peter has recently appeared in podcasts and YouTube interviews talking about the handling of Covid-19 and its implications. The two brothers must have spent their formative years talking incessantly, because the staggering thing about Peter’s off-the-cuff remarks is their articulacy: a complete lack of pauses, no searching for a word or a name, just an ongoing, smooth connection between thought and speech that is something to behold when one is used to the stumbling speech of many public figures. His most recent interview is with Peter Whittle on The New Culture Forum , here . He covers controversial t
Internet Stoicism and Covid-19 Emil Cioran Not coping with some of the more outrageous aspects of the lockdown? The internet can help. For example, Epictetus: Fortify yourself with moderation, for this is an impenetrable fortress. But the Stoics lived in simpler, even if physically more dangerous, times. Dangerous to their personal existence, that is. The modern danger is more subtle and far-reaching: the danger that the living of your life will be sacrificed to someone else’s ludicrously impassioned idea. Cioran: In itself every idea is neutral, or should be. But man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them; impure, transformed into beliefs, ideas take their place in time, take shape as events. The trajectory is complete, from logic to epilepsy … whence the birth of ideologies, doctrines, deadly games. [1] Yet every time I read a reasonable-sounding put-down of Cioran, usually by a well-read American, I end up thinking: but why is the world exactly
Do You Worry that the Covid-19 Response is a Huge Over-reaction? You Should The Swiss Propaganda Research website has a frequently updated section "Facts about Covid-19". It quotes various experts and research that undermine the current hysterical narrative about Covid-19. For example: Professor Klaus Püschel, head of forensic medicine in Hamburg, explains about Covid19 : "This virus influences our lives in a completely excessive way. This is disproportionate to the danger posed by the virus. And the astronomical economic damage now being caused is not commensurate with the danger posed by the virus. I am convinced that the Corona mortality rate will not even show up as a peak in annual mortality." In Hamburg, for example, "not a single person who was not previously ill" had died of the virus: "All those we have examined so far had cancer, a chronic lung disease, were heavy smokers or severely obese, suffered from diabetes or had a cardiovasc
Why Has New Zealand Got Such a Low Covid-19 Death Rate? [Note: I have caved in to pressure. We will be presenting articles on Covid-19, Cate with a special focus on her home country, New Zealand, while David and I will be trying hard to give you something else to think about in this pandemic-obsessed world. Harry.] Overnight the number of people who have died from Covid-19 in New Zealand doubled. The total went from one to two. Both of those dying were elderly women with underlying health conditions. The first was in her seventies, the second was aged 95. Yet New Zealand had clocked up 1,283 cases as of 10 April. If we divide the number of deaths by the number of cases we get a crude mortality rate of 0.15%. Most of the initial modelling was based on a mortality rate of 1%, which is 6.6 time higher. So why aren’t people dying from Covid-19 in New Zealand? The international left-wing media are pouring out their adoration on our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, who has
A Classroom Lesson in Epidemiology and Political Decision-making Teacher: Now class, I want you to put away your maths books and listen. We’re going to do an exercise in – Angela Wilson if I see that cellphone in your hand again I’ll confiscate it for a week. Angela: You can’t. Teacher: Just watch me. As I was saying, we’re going to do an exercise in epidemiology and political control. Grant: What? Teacher: I want you to imagine that you are the Prime Minister of New Zealand, OK? You are the Prime Minister… David: Do I have a hot secretary? Teacher: The female Prime Minister of New Zealand, and you have been told that there is a growing epidemic overseas of a flu-like virus, which could turn into a pandemic – that means it’s everywhere – and you have to decide what to do about it. It seems it will mainly affect the very old who are already ill. You can’t just tell people what to do. You’re not a tyrant. Remember what we talked about last week? Yo
Making the Most Out of Other People’s Misery This is Sam McGlennon. Lets’ face it, he looks like a nice guy: honest, decent, well educated, undoubtedly with good intentions. Maybe that’s how he managed to land the ideal job. He describes himself as a “ climate risk and resilience advisor, as well as a sustainable supply chain expert, for NZ businesses and governments”. Sounds very cool, very now. I mean, advising governments , plural. Wow. Of course this might not be a real job. I mean, I write stuff, and it’s just possible that people from businesses and governments read it, so I guess I could say I advise businesses and governments. But cynicism aside, the best part of Sam’s job, what makes it ideal, is that he gets to take smug satisfaction out of the misery of millions of people who have lost their jobs and whose businesses have gone bust. How cool is that! You see Sam is a New Zealand greenie, but he represents the views of many environmentalists around the wo