Soft Yakka – How Australia has Given the Nod to Climate Alarmism

Anjali Sharma

The Australian Government has appealed against the latest judgment in the Shama v Minister for the Environment litigation. But much of the key ground has already been conceded in favour of fantastical climate change alarmism. The result is utterly bonkers.

The case arises out of a coal mine in New South Wales, for which approval was granted some time ago. The owners of the mine applied for permission to extend the mine, so as to increase coal production from 135 to 168 million tonnes. The legal case was brought on behalf of all children residing everywhere in the world (the applicants did not stint themselves here), seeking an injunction to stop the extension project, on the basis that it would expose them to hazards including “more, longer and more intense bushfires, storm surges, coastal flooding, inland flooding, cyclones and other extreme weather events”.

There have been two decisions so far, both by Bromberg J in the Federal Court of Australia. In the first, decided in May of this year[1], an injunction was refused. In the second, decided in July[2], the court made a declaration that the government was under a duty to children resident in Australia[3] in relation to carbon dioxide emissions, and ordered the government to pay all of the applicant’s costs. What is remarkable is not so much these outcomes themselves, but rather the findings of fact, substantially based on concessions by the Government.  The applicants filed substantial evidence, in essence asserting that climate change caused by carbon dioxide emissions will cause catastrophic personal injury and death to children.  Extraordinarily, the Government filed no evidence at all. It was a turkey shoot, and unsurprising, therefore, that the applicant’s evidence was accepted, the judge saying in the first case:

A Couple Of Things About Vaccines

There are a couple of things that Covid vaccine fans might like to know, if they’re prepared to look at the data rather than just the propaganda:

• getting vaccinated does not make you less infectious;
• getting vaccinated is less effective than a past brush with Covid as a protection for you against Covid.

As to the first point, the thing to look at is Public Health England’s Technical Briefing Number 20, of 6 August 2021  SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England: technical briefing 20.   It has a section (section 1.7.1) on whether the unvaccinated are any more infectious than the unvaccinated. They say:

there is limited difference in viral load (and Ct values) between those who are vaccinated and unvaccinated. Given they have similar Ct values, this suggests limited difference in infectiousness.

When you look at their graph at figure 12, it appears that when they say “limited difference” what they actually mean is “no difference”:

State-Creep

What bothers me about young people today is that they know so little. They do not know that the Norman invasion of England led to 400 years of repression. They do not know that the Nazis were not just some weird sect, but that they captured the hearts and minds of the great majority of Germans in the 1930s. They do not know that the policies of Mao-Tse Tung killed millions, with the sheepish acquiescence of most of the Chinese people.  As did Stalin.  They do not know that time after time, uncritical groupthink allowing totalitarian control has led to disaster.  They have not known wars on, or even close to, their home soil. They do not know that this stuff happens, in real life, to people like us.

It bothers me that freedom of speech is being systematically rolled back, and that the young don’t care. Indeed, they positively want to prevent the expression of anything other than mainstream views.

It bothers me that tax has, in recent years, reached unprecedented levels across the Western world. This is an experiment that has never been tried before. All the evidence from history is that taxation, at its current levels, will lead to the destruction of our liberal democracies. The young  pooh-pooh this, partly because they don’t pay much tax themselves, and partly because they have so little knowledge of history. They do not read what Professor Tainter has written about the reasons for the collapse of civilisations over the past few thousand years (it’s tax). They do not read what Dominic Frisby has written about the rise of Islam (it’s low tax, at least in part).

It bothers me that on issues like climate change, they don’t look at the data. They just unthinkingly and eagerly swallow the propaganda.  In issues like gender, they do not seem to understand even the most basic biology: that regardless of the ambitions of any individual, it is only women who can get pregnant, give birth, and breastfeed their children.

The extent of state control has crept up, and up, and up. As has the level of taxation, up and up and up. The levels of tax that are regularly imposed in Western democracies are now several times higher than just a generation or two ago, when our democracies evolved into their current form.

State-creep bothers me. 

Two Boxes – McKitrick Opens Box 2

For decades now, climate change alarmists have been warning that we are in the grip of runaway global warming catastrophe, and that we only have a short period of time to fix things before that catastrophe arrives.  Obviously, they are wrong. Catastrophe has not arrived.

It seems to me that there are essentially two ways of looking at their failure, closed box and open box.

The closed box approach acknowledges we do not know what has gone into their models; our only source of knowledge is the outputs.  Despite manipulation of data, cherry picking and outright falsities repeatedly pumped out by the alarmists, the overall picture is undeniable.  There has not been any runaway global warming. For sure, some parts of the globe have got a bit warmer. But others have got colder (like the Southern hemisphere, now 0.3 degrees colder than it was 40 years ago. But hey! New York has got a bit warmer, so that is all right then).[1] There is no evident link with the emission of carbon dioxide.

When I was at university, supposed to be reading theoretic physics, there was a module in which they tried to teach me some electronics. One of the tests they gave us was to give us a black box, with

Consolidation?

There has been a fair bit of speculation about how Prince Andrew might respond to the lawsuit brought against him by Virginia Roberts Giuffre.

I wonder if he might be able to get the action consolidated with the action that she has against the prominent lawyer Alan Dershowitz. He has responded with evidence that Virginia Roberts was a prostitute for about a year before she got to know Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, that she then paid an active part in recruiting young girls for Mr Epstein’s dubious tastes. More recently, she has embarked upon a different an even more lucrative career, says Professor Dershowitz, of blackmailing men that she had sex with, and also those that she did not, lying all the way to the bank. Virginia Roberts apparently collected $½ million from Jeffrey Epstein before his demise, an undisclosed amount from Ghislaine Maxwell, and she and her lawyers seem rather put out that Prince Andrew has been slow reaching for his cheque book.

Meanwhile, it seems that Mr Dershowitz has no intention of paying anything. “We will get her…she will end up in prison for perjury” he has said.

Quiz XVI

What do the data on this graph show?

Hint:

A Vaccine Prediction

I am not an anti-vaxxer, by any means. Vaccines against smallpox, polio and other diseases have done huge good in the world. But I have a prediction. That the universal imposition of the Covid vaccines will, with the benefit of hindsight, be characterised as one of the worst medical mistakes the world has ever made.

It is not possible to be sure about this, of course. Any more than it is possible to be sure in the opposite direction. This is an experiment. The evidence is not fully in yet.

But here is my take on how it looks right now:

Census Yuk

I am feeling unseasonably unhappy this afternoon having been required to fill in the Australian census form.

What a series of impertinent questions! How dare they enquire how much time I spent last week doing house work? Or looking after children? Or about the ethnic origins of my parents? Or about which languages we choose to speak at home? Let alone about my religious beliefs.[1]

Unhappily, the only plausible explanation for this questioning is a governmental desire increasingly to interfere in my life, and in the lives of other people. The number of census questions, and their intrusions into our privacy, seem to grow every time.[2]  Fuck off!

Governments do useful things in terms of protecting the nation from invasion and fixing the roads. They have no legitimate business enquiring as to people’s private affairs.  I have remarked before, and will remark again, government is a parasite on the tree of human well-being and this census information is just another synthetic fertiliser for that parasite.

They say they want to use census data connect local families through play, learning and friendship.  As it happens, I do not want the government to tell me how to play, what to learn, or who to be friends with. Even less do I want them to dictate these matters to a younger generation, who are already much too much in thrall to totalitarianism.

Social Immobility, US Style

This is an interesting graphic:

It suggests two things:

Firstly, that the odds of a poor kid in the US getting out of poverty are far better in the centre of the country (predominantly Republican) than on the seaboards (predominantly Democrat). There might be all sorts of reasons for that. None of them suggests that left-of-centre policies actually work in the social context. Not in the real world, anyway. Or, more exactly, not for poor people in the real world.

Australian Gold

I am not, to be honest, particularly interested in the Olympics. But I did have a quick look, whilst waiting for the kettle to boil, as to who was winning.

China has the most gold medals, with 32 so far. Which is about 22 gold medals per billion of population. That does not even get them into the top 10.

Leading, by far, is Australia, whose 15 gold medals so far is equivalent to 588 gold medals per billion of population. Second, perhaps surprisingly, is the Netherlands, with 350 gold medals per billion of population with Great Britain third, at 191 gold medals for billion of population. Those three are well ahead of the field. South Korea comes fourth, and then a gaggle of Germany, France, et al. The United States, who one thinks of as being good at this sort of thing, are languishing with 75 gold medals per billion.