“Green conundrum” | David Dodwell

Sources at OWiD

It’s the likes of the above chart that prompted ex Labor PM, Tony Blair recently to note -- correctly --

 “Don’t ask us to do a huge amount when, frankly, whatever we do in Britain is not really going to [affect] climate change.“ 

What’s the point of the UK impoverishing itself to achieve a “Net Zero” C02 emissions, when China is doing what it’s doing in the chart above. 

China in 2021 has CO2 emissions 47% higher than the United States and the EU combined!

China CO2 emissions 33 times those of the U.K. 

Australia total CO2 emissions per year are < than China’s annual CO2 emission increase!

My spreadsheet of various Compound Annual Growth Rates for fossil fuel emissions, since 1950, here. 

David Dodwell weighs in yet again on this climate change issue. And seems to give China a pass for building two new coal station per week. Because, he thinks, they’re there for backup in case renewables don’t deliver. Sure, perhaps. But I suspect they’re also being used for everyday electricity generation. I can hardly imagine China has hundreds of coal-fired stations sitting idle waiting to be fired up when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind  doesn’t blow. 

I noted China’s obsession with energy security -- a not at all a “curmudgeonly”view, imo -- a while ago, via Ross Clark. 

Gas is not something they ought be stopping.

Final para Dodwell above: no China will not soon give up burning coal. And no, it’s not a “global pacesetter” in reducing CO2 emissions: despite its huge push into renewables, it continues to increase emissions. See Our World in Data, at the top. 

China could be using more Gas-fired backup. It now imports more Gas than coal, so that ought feed through to lower emissions in due course, as Gas has about half of coal’s. That’s despite the Green’s trying to ban Gas as well, because, well... “perfection is the enemy of action”. 

Moving to fracked Gas is what got the US to reduce its CO2 emissions, despite not being a party to the Kyoto or Paris protocols. 

Hong Kong meantime also reduced CO2 emissions, partly from Nuclear -- we get Nuclear electricity from two stations in China --  and partly from changing coal fired stations to natural gas. If Australia had done the same it would already be at the target that it’s set for itself by 2030. 

‘Radical transgender movement’ targets children and their parents

I agree with every single word in this video.
Every. One.
Who will be on the right side of history when there a reckoning on gender transition for children? On the misogyny of allowing men in women's sports? Of allowing men in women’s prisons? In women’s spaces? I stand with women. 
Look at the pusillanimous public servants at the end of the video who can't even answer "what is a woman?"
The answer is simple: an “adult human female”. Even Wikipedia agrees now. 

“I had always been anti-nuclear — I was wrong” | Mark Dawes

Climate change is a serious issue that needs to be addressed but there is a danger that the only solutions are seen as those proposed by the more extreme groups like Just Stop Oil. We need practical solutions such as nuclear power.

I was a Green Party activist for more than 20 years and stood as a candidate numerous times but felt I had to leave because of this issue.

I had always been anti-nuclear, believing the myths that it was dangerous, the waste problem unsolvable and that it would lead to more nuclear weapons. I was wrong.

“Do not ignore the science” | OK, I won’t

SCMP -- with the likes of this article and repeated David Dodwell scare pieces -- has become Climate Alarmism Central. 

*The Science*:  data from Hong Kong Observatory shows Typhoons in our region (Northern West Pacific and SCS) have slightly reduced in number and intensity in recent decades. And we know how to handle them. Why then, all the typhoon scare-nonsense from "PhD in chemistry" Martin Williams who focusses on typhoons? 

He mocks the HK Climate Action Plan with emphasis on “decarbonisation” with a “lack of urgency”. What should be done? “Advocate for changes by companies and governments”. That’s it?! My simple answer: Nuclear and gas. And ditch the catastrophism. 

Williams says he’s fear mongering because “doom and gloom climate news may scare, but also encourage audiences”. Beg to differ. Didn’t work for Covid (people became hyper scared). And has made young ones depressed and without hope on Climate. 

I’m heartily sick of these climate alarmist articles. It’s all that the South China Morning Post carries now. They have become Climate Alarmism Central. There is nothing anywhere else either, in mainstream media, that is anything other than alarmist. Yet most of what is happening to the daily weather -- temperature aside -- is not measurably changing due to climate change. 

“Held to account” | The Coutts Star Chamber

I’ve hardly ever if at all written about Nigel Farage. Still, whatever his views about whatever — even on Brexit - should matter nought to his bank. I can’t imagine, when I was banking with the NAB in Oz back in the sixties, that they cared two jots about my Vietnam war views. Nor should they have. Nor should any bank today. But they do. And it’s wrong.

Here’s a thing I don’t get: that those on the Left quickly supported Farage’s Debanking. Because they hated him. Even said “he has views that should not be allowed” (tho goodness knows what those might be, even as he pushed Brexit and has robust views on illegal immigration). 

Yet the Left see no principle at stake. Or if they do, are quite willing to jettison it, because they find Farage horrid. Whereas on the Right plenty of people have said that if the oleaginous Owen Jones were  debanked they would speak against it. And I know they would. It’s a principle. We should not deprive anyone of a basic right like banking — or telephones, or water, or electricity, or food — because we don’t agree with their political views. 

All Lefties should watch this (What you won’t see on CNN)

Click above for video 

Or anyone who gets their news from CNN only. Or BBC. Or ABC. 

This — all that’s discussed in the podcast above— won’t be there. 

Matt Taibbi is a man quintessentially of the Left. The Classic Left. As in writing for Rolling Stone-type Left. As in he didn’t move but the Left left him type Left. 

As in “How the Left lost its mind” type Left. 

I still remember the morning after Trump won 2016, and I was, like, “Huh! Well that’s something!” and settled down for the ride. I didn’t immediately realise that big sections of the Left were going to go bananas, totally lose it, and do so for years. The defining image is that woman screaming on the morning of the results. 

How Fauci Fooled America | Opinion

A repost of Jay Bhattarachaya’s 2021 piece in Newsweek

I guess Jay reposted this via Twitter because there’s a lot around right now about senior scientists belief that Covid may have come from a lab leak in Wuhan. And what they did at Fauci’s urging to hide it. Because he had deals going on with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And the virologists were getting money from Fauci for doing hiding the lab leak.  IOW major corruption. Now being outed. 

“Heat a silent killer” | David Dodwell. My comments and counters

Another sloppy scare piece from David Dodwell

PRE-WORD: This is not a “climate denier” post. I’m big renewables fan, support also Nuclear (and Gas). But I’m solidly against the sort of sloppy scaremongering that Dodwell does here. The data don’t warrant the scaremongering. And it’s counterproductive, as kids become disillusioned that they can even do anything. Or support extremist outfits that don’t help, like Just Stop Oil. 

My comments and counters to Dodwell’s piece above:

1.  Cold vs Heat: According to The Lancet, COLD kills more people globally than does Heat.

With a warming world, more people have survived because temperatures are not quite as cold  (“non-optimal” per The Lancet) as they were, than have died from increased heat. (The Lancet, July 2021). In other words, one result of increasing temperatures is a net decrease in excess deaths due to that temperature change. Of course, this is not to call for more warming! But it is to say that there is an upside to the warming that is completely ignored by Dodwell.

2.  Deaths from disasters:  The number of people who die each year from disasters — including landslides, drought, wildfires, storms and flooding — has fallen 98% since 1920. (Source: Our World in Data)

3.  Storm strength: The number and strength of typhoons (hurricanes) in our region has fallen slightly in the last century (source: the Hong Kong Observatory)

My chart from HKO data. See also here
Looking back to 1950 the trend is the same

4.  Low confidence in climate link: According to the US National Academy of Science, Climate scientists have Low Confidence that floods, wildfires, storms are climate-change related. The only thing with High confidence is the change in temperatures (higher maxima and minima).

Source: National Academy of Science

5.  Financial Costs: Looking at money costs of meteorological disasters, according to the United Nations, as a proportion of global GDP they have slightly decreased in recent decades:

From Munich RE and UN, via here. Most increases are
due to people living closer to the sea or in fire-prone forests

===========================================

Most of Dodwell’s figures quoted in the article above are either slippery (huge range) or spuriously (suspiciously) accurate. They are often trivial when calculated per unit of GDP, per year. 

ADDED: Commenter says: 

@Peter F. Mitigation will slow down but not avoid the consequences. And mass extinction in land and maritime ecosystems haven't been mitigated at all.

My response: 

@Roberthackel H. We are not in a Sixth Great Extinction event (or at least it's arguable). See “Earth in Not in the Midst of a Sixth Mass Extinction” by Peter Brannon in The Atlantic magazine (left wing!). Quoting Smithsonian anthropologist Doug Erwin:

"In fact, of the best-assessed groups of modern animals—like stony corals, amphibians, birds and mammals—somewhere between 0 and 1 percent of species have gone extinct in recent human history. By comparison, the hellscape of End-Permian mass extinction claimed upwards of 90 percent of all species on earth."

ADDED (ii): re comment above, that “mitigation will slow down but not avoid consequences”, I’d say that given the drop of 98% in deaths since 1920 — in a century when we did little if anything about reducing CO2 — is pretty much “avoiding” the consequences! We got better at avoiding them. I’ve seen his during my forty years in Hong Kong. When I first came here people used to die in typhoons. Then we moved people out of shanty towns. Now it’s rare for anyone to die in a typhoon. 

The same is true for financial costs. 

In a century of doing nothing but add CO2, we’ve reduced both the deaths from and financial costs of climate related disasters. 

Again, this is not to diminish the importance of reducing CO2 emissions, but to get a bit more real about the actual human and financial costs. We used to have regular famines. We don’t any more. Unless they are war-induced, as in Yemen.  

Cornel West: Ralph Nader Redux?

Click above for video: West talking with Greenwald

Democrats are having conniptions over Cornel West’s third party candidacy. They say it’s a “game” and will only help Trump.

Cornel West and his supporters deny this. They say — with some logic — that the mainstream parties ought to take note of what West is saying and what support he gets, and amend their policies accordingly, instead of complaining. 

They deny that Ralph Nader running as a Green in Florida 2000 cost Al Gore the 2000 presidency. They deny the same for West, also running as a Green, on the same grounds. A vote for Cornel is Not a vote for Trump, they insist. 

Whether or not Nader cost Gore the election in 2000 is a counterfactual and impossible to know. Each view is unfalsifiable. But which view is more likely? Let’s revisit. (I already looked at a few years ago).

Gore lost the election in 2000 to W Bush because he lost Florida. Bush won the Florida popular vote by just 524 votes in over 2 million votes. That gave him the 25 Electoral Votes of Florida, which put him over the line to win the presidency. 

In that election, Ralph Nader, running as a Green, won 97,488 popular votes in Florida. 

Here are the two sides to the argument:

1. Ralph Nader’s 2000 campaign in Florida did NOT throw the election to Bush. 

The argument here is that the Greens who turned out for Nader would not have turned out for Gore, had Nader not run in Florida. IOW it was “Nader or Nothing”. Or if they did turn out they would have voted in equal numbers for Bush as for Gore. That’s it. That’s the argument.

2. Ralph Nader’s 2000 campaign in Florida DID throw the election to Bush. 

The argument here is that it only needed 537 votes out of 97,488 to go to Gore, or 0.6%. Is it likely the same amount would have gone to Bush to balance it out? No. Because Greens are of the Left. If they don’t have a Green to vote for they’ll go for the Democrat. 

There’s more. A Gallup exit poll at the time asked Green voters who they would have voted for if Nader had not been there. 80% said Gore. That would have given an overwhelming victory to Gore. And the world would be a different place, as Gore would not have invaded Iraq after 9/11: he said so at the time. 

I find the latter argument more persuasive.

And so I also think that if Cornel West goes on as a Green candidate, he will draw votes from the Democrats, to the benefit of (the presumed) Trump. 

November 2019 North Plaza Discovery Bay

A study in pastels

“Far-right’s rise in Europe a warning signal for an EU beset with challenges” | James Downes

Majority of illegal migration to Europe
is economic, not fleeing war or persecution 

Comment at site:

Why is it "Far Right" to:
(1) Be concerned about illegal immigration as ~75% of Europeans are, by all polls.
(2) Be concerned about Law and Order? Has James Downes not seen the destruction of great cities, like LA and San Francisco, by “progressive” anti-law & order policies?
(3) Support the "ordinary person" against the diktats of an elite bureaucracy in Brussels?
Answer: it's not "far right" to be worried about these issues! It's normal human beings worried about their environments, their neighbourhoods, their lives and their livelihoods.
But to Leftie Luvvies like Downes, this is all Nazi adjacent.
Rather a Meloni than a Marxist! Rather a Sunak than a Soros.

The mods didn’t like the above, deleted it. I have another go:

Downes claims the "far right" in Europe concentrates on "three core issues".  In my view these are reasonable concerns of reasonable citizens, and callilng them "far right" is to demonise them.
(1) Immigration. EU citizens' concern is with *illegal* immigration, which around 75% of people are against according to all polls (similar, btw, to the US and the UK). 

(2) "Tough on crime and promoting .. law and order". Who doesn't want a peaceful society in which criminals are apprehended and law and order followed? How on earth is that "far right"?  We can see in the rampant crime, open drug taking and widespread shoplifting in cities like LA and San Francisco, what happens when you ignore law and order.  

(3) "...claiming to represent ordinary people against ... the political elite". Again, how is this "far right"? Why shouldn't the "ordinary people" be represented, when all the policical power is with unelected bureaucrats in the EU Commission? 

EU people concerned with the above issues are concerned about their environment, their neighbourhoods, their lives and their livelhoods. Nothing "far right" about that.

Nighthawks

"Nighthawks" is an iconic painting created by the American artist Edward Hopper in 1942. It has become one of the most famous and recognizable works in American art history. The painting depicts a scene of urban solitude and loneliness, featuring four people in a brightly lit diner late at night. The diner's interior is the central focus, with large windows allowing viewers to glimpse the empty streets and buildings outside.

To understand the historical background of "Nighthawks," it is crucial to consider the broader context of the time in which it was created:

"Reporter Who Broke Hunter Laptop Story TESTIFIES!” | Jimmy Dore

Another in “you won’t see this on CNN” series. 

And I know you won’t because I’ve been watching CNN a lot more recently. To see what is and what’s not on the channel. To get an idea of what people who only get their info from CNN know about the world. It’s eye-opening. As in what you don’t know. Like the above. As Jimmy says at the end “I bet there are many Democrats who still think the Hunter Laptop is Russian disinformation”. I think so too. I know mates who still think that there was Russian Collusion. That Russia elected Trump. 

By the way, how do we know that the FBI knew the “Laptop from Hell”, Hunter’s laptop, was real? Because they have told us -- in the Congress, under oath -- that they knew it was Hunter’s laptop because they matched the laptop’s serial number with Hunter’s Cloud number. They knew. In October 2019. One year before the election. One year before Anthony Blinken organised 50 ex intelligence folks, ex heads of the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, to say that it was “Russian disinformation”. This ought to be a HUGE scandal. But it’s simply not covered, not on CNN or MSNBC or ABC, or any other of the mainstream media. 

Kurt and Jimmy quote Sam Harris: he said to the Triggernometry lads that he didn’t care if Hunter Biden had had “the corpses of children in his basement". That was not as bad, said Sam, as Trump and his Trump university scandal. So anything to stop Trump was ok, Anything. That’s what drives the whole of the Democratic party, it seems to me. Real, genuine, fear. Misplaced fear, one could argue, cause after all what did Trump do in the four years of his presidency that was dictatorial, or neo-Hitlarian? But still, a real fear. That lasts to this day. And drives the campaign against him. 

These guys are amazing

	The Best ⁦‪@ThebestFigen‬⁩ These guys are amazing pic.twitter.com/RNJSoa1Oo1   27/7/2023, 6:45 am

“You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest...” Li Po (Li Bai)

Mountain Q & A

You ask for what reason I stay on the green mountain,

I smile, but do not answer, my heart is at leisure.

Peach blossom is carried far off by flowing water,

Apart, I have heaven and earth in the human world.

山中问答  Shānzhōng wèndá

问余何意栖碧山  Wèn yúhé, yì qī bì shān

笑而不答心自闲  Xiào ér bù dá, xīn zì xián

桃花流水窅然去  Táohuā liúshuǐ, yǎo rán qù

别有天地在人间  Biéyǒu tiāndì, zài rénjiān

Quick scrawl with Sharpie.
Plan to do more with a brush

ESG is poison and I’m going to have a go at this letter!

Online here

LETTER TO SCMP

I refer to the letter by HKPU professors “How the city can help companies raise their standards in ESG”, July 27.

I am against promoting ESG in Hong Kong (as I said in “For business owners ESG is just red tape”, 12 June). I speak from a thirty-year career in Hong Kong in the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade) and as founder of an SME company in Hong Kong (Wall Street English). [1]

The last thing SMEs need is yet more paperwork to apply for an ESG score. Especially since the ESG score itself is bogus:

1. Companies game the system. The ESG is not a certification (like Hong Kong’s “Excellent Service Certification"). It is instead a score, like that of Business Schools. Companies have worked out how to game the system for the best score.

2.  The score is political. Tesla had its ESG ranking removed two days after Elon Musk announced his bid for Twitter, and replaced by  Exxon/Mobil. The world’s largest electric car company was replaced by a monster fossil fuel company, because the ESG overlords didn’t like Musk buying Twitter. A purely political decision -- no wonder Musk called ESG “a scam”.

3.  Better ESG score doesn’t mean better performance. That’s one of its selling points, but it’s not true, as companies with high ESG score are at best average in terms of returns, and in some cases worse. ESG is a “weapon of mass distraction”. Correlation between ESG score and returns, average = 0.5. Which means ESG fund as likely to do worse than average funds as it is do do better. Terence Keeley. 

4.  Larger companies get better ESG scores than smaller companies. Larger companies have more resources to fill out ESG paperwork, while smaller companies are too busy running the business [2]

 Should larger companies benefit even more than they already do?

5.   Early adopters are giving up on ESG. Example: Larry Fink of Blackrock. An early proponent of ESG, he has now stepped back from touting it, having realised how problematic it is. 

The world has reached “Peak ESG”.  And now is the time our good professors choose to start pushing ESG?

ESG is an American invention, via the United Nations of Kofi Annan. Yet another bit of woke nonsense. What on earth are we doing promoting it? 

I urge the government to ignore the advice from these good professors. 

Let’s instead celebrate: “RIP to ESG”.

====================

[1] I mention my career only because the letter writers include all their titles (presumably) as part of their authority. My running an SME company is part of my authority. And more than academics, I’d say. What do they know about business? Answer: nothing. Pretty much. I’ve never met an academic that does. Apart from Aswath Damodaran, below vid.

[2] "Using environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores as a proxy for CSP [Corporate Social Performance], our research supports past studies showing a large cap bias in measures of CSP.” Portfolio Management Research. [My emphasis].

ADDED: 

• The difficult truth about ESG investing, with professor Aswath Damodaran 
• The problem with ESG, Zach De Gregorio
• We are not going to waste time on ESG reporting, Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger 
• Poor returns on ESG funds, Terence Keeley
• The false promise of ESG. Finance professor Damodaran 

ADDED (ii): The letter writers are all feeding off the ESG trough. Professor Haitian Lu, Dr Sirui Han and Dr Xiaolin Zhu. All with connections to ESG related companies. 

"Why This NASA Battery May Be The Future of Energy Storage” | Matt Ferrell

Renewables need to have backup. That can be fossil fuel or nuclear. Or batteries or stored hydro power. Or something new. In any case, something. 

If it’s not to be Gas or Nuclear, then most often mentioned is battery storage. Problem with battery storage is that it’s expensive. 

How expensive? If we decide we need a week of stored power (we currently have only a few minutes of stored battery power around the world), that would cost around $300 Trillion over ten years, at the current battery energy price of $100 per kWh. That’s already a very optimistically low price, as it’s actually around three times that.

At the end of the video above, Matt answers “why haven’t we been using this type of battery more widely?” Which is: price. He suggests that at the price might drop to $100 per kWh. Might. 

In which case it would still be hugely expensive to have battery back up. More than Nuclear and way more than Gas. My own, sitting-on-the-sidelines guess: go for Gas. A bit pricier but greener: Gas with Carbon Capture Systems. 

“Climate goals can’t be met without investing more in renewable energy in poor nations” | David Dodwell

A wind turbine in India 

My comment at the site:

Dodwell: "…the world needs about 1.5 times today's global GDP in investment between now and 2050." (To control climate change).  Global GDP =~ 100 T US$. 1.5 x = 150 T. To 2050, say 25 years. Annual "needs" = $US 6 TRILLION, or 6% of annual world GDP.  

"Stretch goals" are all very well. But 6% of GDP is simply ludicrous. It only harms the campaign for renewables to set out such blatantly unreachable targets.

ADDED: Hong Kong had a stretch goal for road traffic accidents (maybe still does):

"Our goal: Zero road accidents". 

This was so patently ludicrous that no one took any notice and there was no change in the three years after they introduced it. 

Better to have policies that reduce traffic accidents. Same with the climate thing. Better have policies that reduce CO2 emissions rather than grand "stretch goals" like Dodwell's 6% of global GDP to be given to poor countries; or "Net Zero" (unattainable).

One of the comments at the site notes that more money to poor countries will be more money in elites' pockets. Sadly he's right. I've seen it with mine own eyes in Africa. And simply ignoring this truth, as does Dodwell, doesn't make it go away. Comment from “c.c.”:

The problem when you pour more money into poor countries is that those monies will end up somewhere other than climate projects. Accountability, transparency and governance are patchy with the governments of these poor countries. Better to do it like the OBR project financing. Instead of cash flowing in, it is know-how, materials, skilled labour being deployed by the sponsoring countries to build sustainable energy plants, and other projects. What these poor countries get in the end are plants and infrastructure that really works; not just debts with nothing concrete to show. And of course, some people have to lift sanction on solar companies and solar materials from China, esp. from Xinjiang .... but we all know these countries will NEVER agree to do that.

“Wang Yi back…” in Foreign Minister imbroglio

Online here 

But the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China didn't take my advice from yesterday: “Tell the Truth!”. Silly, silly CCP….

My advice was: Tell us —  tell the world — what happened to now ex-Foreign Minister Qin Gang. If he had an “inappropriate” relationship, so be it. Being open now will save aggro and angst in the long term. And burnish your “soft power”.

Instead we have "terse statements", "huge embarrassments", and "more questions than answers". Honestly, the mind boggles at the continuing bull-headed opacity. 

Note that in the front page story above no mention of the rumours that Qin had had a baby with journo Fu Xiaotian. 

Foreign Affairs: The mystery of China’s missing Foreign Minister and the Phoenix Journo

Fu Xiaotian (left) and Qin Gang, in Guangzhou, 2022

China’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Qin Gang has been missing for a month or more and we’re told it was due to “health reasons”. Then it was due to something else, but we’re not sure what. The rumours are that he’d had a relationship with Phoenix TV journo, Fu Xiaotian (傅晓田) and that they’d had a baby together. Oookay. 

I don’t know what the truth is. Nobody does, except for the senior leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. 

Here’s my advice to them, to China’s Politburo and to President Xi Jinping. Assuming the Foreign, Domestic, Family Affair is what’s happened, that Qin and Fu got it on, and even had a child together: tell the truth. Lay it out, have him make a mea culpa, if you wish. But in any case, tell the truth. It will save time and angst. And will do wonders to the soft power diplomacy that China claims to care for. 

Just tell the truth, for goodness sake!

Because, end of the day, who cares? I don’t. Most people don’t. They had an affair. Get over it. 

Rumors swirl as suspicions deepen over 'missing' China FM Qin Gang. Hong Kong Standard

South China Morning Post video here. 

ADDED: Thanks to an Occasional Reader, link to a Video of Fu Xiaotian opening a garden at Churchill College Cambridge in her name, the "Xiaotian Fu Garden”. What does it take to get to be able to name a garden in your name at Cambridge? Mmmm....

“May your trails be crooked...” | Edward Abbey

I’d never heard of Edward Abbey before my day-date Zen-themed calendar today. 

Of Abbey, here’s a wiki, which also helps to explain the rather provocative snip above: 

Regarding his writing style, Abbey states: "I write in a deliberately provocative and outrageous manner because I like to startle people. I hope to wake up people. I have no desire to simply soothe or please. I would rather risk making people angry than putting them to sleep. And I try to write in a style that's entertaining as well as provocative. It's hard for me to stay serious for more than half a page at a time.” ^[48] 

Abbey felt that it was the duty of all authors to "speak the truth--especially unpopular truth. Especially truth that offends the powerful, the rich, the well-established, the traditional, the mythic".^[49]

Moving in Melbourne

J and J move into Coburg

What a sleaze bag | Eunice Yung, the “legislator quizzed over fugitive father-in-law”

Snitching on relatives. A specialty of dictatorships. And of "pro-Beijing lawmaker" Eunice Yung. Either she's doing this to save her own skin; or she's doing it to please Beijing. Either way it’s a sleaze-baggy thing to do. 

I don’t give much more time to her marriage to Derek Yuen, the son of “fugitive” Elmer Yuan -- note the qualification “at the moment” below:

Eunice:  “The incident [snitching on her father-in-law] has not affected my relationship with Derek Yuen at the moment. I believe he will cooperate with the investigation,” she said. Before adding the snark: “I hope the police will arrest the eight people as soon as possible.” 

How does anyone expect this when the eight are all over the world in countries that are absolutely NOT going to cooperate with Hong Kong police?

Her father-in-law, the one she's snitching on — Elmer Yuan Gong-yi — is in the United States. Does anyone seriously believe — even this brain-dead lot — that he's going to be captured, let alone extradited? What is their game here? Except bull-headed brutish stupidity? 

Shame on all involved in the horrid events above. Especially Eunice Yung. Lapdog and lickspittle. I’m sorry, but sometimes only ad hominem will do…

The Hong Kong Fugitive Eight:

According to local media, Law, Mung Siu-tat and Lau are in Britain; Yuen Gong-yi, Anna Kwok and Dennis Kwok are in the U.S., and Yam and Hui are in Australia. [Link]

“Lee’s regional tour nets 7 deals already” | SCMP

Can imagine a similar headline on the front page of any western paper? I dunno.

Also: Memorandums of Understanding (MOU). These are not "deals". 

I used to be senior in the Australian Trade Commission. If we were meeting senior officials from another country and had nothing concrete to announce — as in actual deals —  we'd make up some MOUs. They're the peanut butter sandwich of international relations — anyone can whip one up. 

The use of "already" at the end of the headline above really gets me. As in: Prepare for more fantastic news of more amazing deals as our most glorious leader continues his most extraordinary overseas jaunt.

What a beat up! On the front page!

"Nuclear Physicist REACTS to Sabine Hossenfelder Is Nuclear Power Green?” | Elina Charatsidou

Click above for the video

If it seems that I’m a bit obsessed with Elina Charatsidou, yes, I am! But it’s not a recent obsession. I’ve been watching her vids for years. 

And Sabine Hossenfelder the same. 

Two of my fave scientists, two of my fave women. Elina a Ukrainian-born Greek Nuclear physicist, now working in Sweden, and Sabine a German physicist. Both are prolific YouTubers of the “I’ll teach you” variety. They know their stuff and they aim to educate us. That’s really the wonder of YouTube. That we can get such expertise right there at our fingertips, for free. Marvellous!

Bin the Bill -- "Australia’s Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023" is a shocker!

Our Australian governments -- Liberal or Labor -- are always looking for more ways to restrict free speech. AKA to censor what we say. Because it makes their lives easier. They don’t have to deal with we horrid naysayers. We horrid critics. We horrid heretics. 

The latest attempt is the Labor Party's Communications Legislation Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023. 

It’s a shocker of a Bill. The government can decide what is and is not dis/misinformation and jail you if you don’t cut it out. Meantime, they, the government, are not subject to the Bill. They can never publish disinformation, because.... well, they just can’t. They can’t -- by definition -- publish disinformation. It’s right there in the Bill!

My submission, below. I clicked to make it “Public”.  

To make your own Submission, Click here and then click on “Have your say”. 

You need to be careful to check if your Submission has actually gone when you click “Submission” as they readily give you an “Error” message which is easy to miss -- in my case because I hadn’t clicked Public or Anonymous -- and I can’t help thinking it’s a ruse to reduce the number of submissions. Because submissions are running pretty much 100% against the Bill from what I’ve read. 

My Submission:

I don’t think the government should be in the business of deciding what is “disinformation” or “misinformation”. Full Stop. Not at all. 

I saw, with mine own eyes, what happened during Covid, and how much of what was labelled “mis/dis information” turned out to be true. Truth was harmed by not having allowed open and free dialogue.  

Free speech is democratic and messy, and people can abuse it. But the alternative - whereby the government decides what is allowable - is far more dangerous.

Stop it! BIN the BILL!

Peter Forsythe
Australian citizen in Hong Kong

Maryanne Demasi: "Australia’s own Ministry of Truth”  

ADDED: In the Netflix “Chernobyl” mini-series, a government apparatchik says: “people should simply be told to keep their minds on their labor and leave matters of the State to the State… contain the spread of misinformation, we will all be rewarded for what we do here tonight.”

We know how they were “rewarded”. By a much worse crisis than need have been. With many more dead than need have been. With a melt-down crisis that need not have been.

Down with banning “misinformation”! Down with controlling “disinformation”!

Orchid 2012

Cattleya Orchid 

In our backyard, Discovery Bay Hong Kong...

... edited on my iPhone in some way I forget how I did....

"EXPOSING Greenpeace Nuclear Energy LIES Part 2 - Nuclear Physicist DEBUNKS” | Elina Charatsidou

Click above for video

I’m a big NON-fan of Greenpeace. I’ve been a member of the Australian Conservation Foundation since 1969, shortly after Greenpeace was founded and had planned for many years to join them for the good work they were doing. Then I realised some time later that they were doing the work of the devil. They were going against nuclear power, because they had conflated in their own minds the dangers of nuclear weapons (“nukes”) and nuclear power. They became obsessed with this and successfully scarified the population to stop in its tracks the quick development of nuclear power that would otherwise have happened from the 1970s on. We would by now be carbon free in our electricity production if Greenpace had not existed. 

The founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, who led them to successful campaigns to ban nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere and the banning of baby seal slaughter, left the organisation he set up in the 1980s because he was disgusted at the scare tactics they used to campaign against nuclear power. Those tactics they use to this day -- huge banners dropped off bridges, people dressed as skeletons in front of bulldozers, that sort of thing. 

I realised the harm that Greenpeace had done some years ago, and wrote about it, here. I thought I was the only one to realise this. To say something shocking like “the greenies have ruined the planet”. 

But Elena Charatsidou has realised it too. And there are others. Greenpeace has been a net harm to the world*. That’s my conclusion. And they continue to be. 

Part I of Elena’s "Greenpeace Lies" is here.

=====================

*ADDED: When I went to Antarctica in 2007 (twice!), I learned of something Greenpeace had done which was an unalloyed good: they campaigned to get rid of all the junk and rubbish the had accumulated at the various Bases. Countries did so, and it was indeed a Good Thing. Had they stuck to that sort of workaday fixing the environment, instead of nuclear scaremongering, the world would be a better place. 

No, Sicily and Spain didn’t have a 50 C day...

BBC projected maxima vs actual 

Last week there were reports all over the media -- on the BBC, on CNBC, on ABC, on CNN -- that there were record maxima around the world, Sicily and Spain special mentions. We were told we were experiencing "The highest recorded temperatures in history". Some said the highest in over 120,000 years. 

At the time I though “huh?”. I mean, temperatures multiple degrees higher than the highest previous recorded? Seemed a bit weird. We know that temps are increasing, but by fractions of a degree per decade. We know that maxima and minima are increasing, with minima increasing a bit more than maxima. But, again not by multiple degrees, in a single year!

So it was weird to be told that temperatures in Sicily and Spain were going to hit up to 50 C. World highest temperatures! 

The first hint that that was not true was when people actually IN Sicily and Spain said “hang on a minute; I’m here right now and it’s 32 C not 50 C!”

Turns out that what was reported was the GROUND temperature from the satellites of the European Space Agency (ESA). They were measuring the ground temperature, when what we measure when we’re told the temperature is from a thermometer in a shaded ventilated box 2 metres above the ground.  

I just went out to test our own temperature. I know it’s 32C by own thermometer and by what our Hong Kong Observatory tells me. But I point my thermometer to the ground and it reads 46C in the back yard and 51C in the front yard! HUGE differences between Ground temperatures and Air temperature (the latter the one we actually use and refer to in normal discussion). Whether the ESA meant to fool people is not clear, but fool people they did. And everyone went into a panic. 

The world has been scared by these reports. But they are Fake reports. 

As far as I can see from Mr Google, there is nothing about this in the Mainstream Media. They reported the high -- and wrong -- maximum figures, that is the Ground Temperatures from the ESA,  but have not reported the correct figures. The ESA has corrected itself as reported here, but the MSM have not carried the correction / clarification. Strange, huh!

[I am NOT a “climate denier”!! But we must keep our data true and straight]

ADDED: I’m guessing it won’t be too long before I’m told that believing this temperature anomaly is due to misreporting by the ESA and the MSM is itself a conspiracy theory! And that to doubt Sicily hit 48-50 C is to be a Climate denier!

Socialism in the classroom leads to all getting an F

	Laurence Fox ⁦‪@LozzaFox‬⁩ It's that simple. Sleep well. H/T ⁦‪@atticrahman‬⁩ pic.twitter.com/Hx1qPfVTOg   23/7/2023, 6:48 am

A funny story in the Tweet above, an analogy for socialism, carried out in the classroom.

An Occasional Reader asked me about my first Red Pill moment.

I answered it was when I arrived in China in the 1976, a graduate of the Australian National University where I was the typical Chardonnay Socialist student. We were all Left, innit!

China of 1976 made it clear to me. Socialism sucks.

I was a student at the Peking Language Institute, on local conditions: that is, the same as all the local Chinese, and not like the foreign diplomats and business people.

Almost the only food we had was cabbage. All other Food was rationed. Clothing too. Consumer goods didn't exist. 

We needed "rice coupons" to get our rice ration. "Cotton coupons" to buy our clothes. Piles of Bai Cai (Pak Choi) smelled up every street corner, untouched, because there was so much -- too much... socialist central planning....

China was then, by its own description "a socialist state on the path to glorious Marxist-Leninist communism”.

Instead they were lucky to have a Deng Xiaoping and his "socialism with Chinese characteristics". AKA the free market. I watched as the free market made Chinese people rich over the next forty years. 

You try to make everyone the same, you all end up at the bottom. All same. All bottom. 

As did the students in the above tweet story. 

It's true!

===================

ADDED: China still wrestles with Socialism vs Capitalism. Xi Jinping took China further Left (Socialist) for a while. They’re trying a course correction now, but without much conviction, I think. 

My summary of China over the last half century: It has become rich to the exact degree to which it has allowed market forces to prevail. As soon as it swings back to socialist central control, growth falters and the wealth of Chinese falls. That’s the fulcrum China is balanced on right now.