Southeast Australia’s bushfire crisis culminated in the devastating bushfire season of 2019 and 2020 that burnt nearly 25 million hectares of bush.
Our new research demonstrates how the scale of this disaster blew out due to legislation introduced in the 1970s, which was based on idea that nature should be left to grow freely without human intervention.
We investigated the bushfire history of one of the worst hit areas: Buchan on Gunaikurnai Country in Victoria.
We found no bushfires burned there for almost a century until the mid 1970s, following the establishment of the Land Conservation Act of 1970—legislation that sought to protect the Australian bush from humans.
This legislation banned farmers from mimicking Aboriginal burning practices by using frequent fires to promote grass for livestock. As a result, the amount of flammable trees and shrubs exploded in the region.
It was only after this prohibition on burning that catastrophic bushfires became an issue in the Buchan area.
The prolonged neglect of southeast Australian forests under the guise of conservation means our forests now carry dangerous levels of fuels.
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – TimothyWirth, President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.” – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
Another inconvenient scientific study contesting “settled science” theology that carbon dioxide is the ‘climate control knob’.
Japanese climate scientists arguing that they have been able to show that El Niño natural weather oscillations have driven “atmospheric teleconnection” and shifted the tropical rainfall zone to the north. The higher warming up to 2012 was “accelerated” by heat from the Pacific and a phase in the North Atlantic sea current oscillation that favoured warmer conditions over Greenland and enhanced ice melt…
A popular scare story running in the media is that the Greenland ice sheet is about to slip its moorings under ferocious and unprecedented Arctic heat and arrive in the reader’s front room any day now (I exaggerate, but not much). Meanwhile back in the scientific world, scientists are scrambling to understand what natural causes lie behind the sudden slow-down in Greenland’s summer warming and ice loss dating back to 2010. The recovery of Arctic summer sea ice has been spectacular of late, with the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Center reporting that this year’s September minimum was 1.28 million square kilometres higher than the 2012 low point of 3.39 million square kilometres.
Three Japanese climatologists have recently published a paper noting that “frequent occurrence of central Pacific El Niño events has played a key role in the [abrupt] slow-down of Greenland warming and possibly Arctic sea ice loss”. Of course such findings play havoc with the simplistic ‘settled’ science notion that carbon dioxide produced by humans burning fossil fuel is the main, if not only, driver of global temperature warming or cooling – a notion that leads many green activists to claim that the climate will stop changing if society signs on to a ‘Net Zero’ CO2 emissions agenda.
For instance, a bizarre ‘fact check’ on a recently published Daily Sceptic article by Facebook partner Climate Feedback claimed there had been no natural climate change for almost 200 years. It quoted Professor Timothy Osborn of the University of East Anglia, who said: “The warming from the late 1800s to the present is all due to human-caused climate change, because natural factors have changed little since then, and even would have caused a slight cooling over the last 70 years rather than the warming we have observed.”
The Japanese scientists argue that they have been able to show that El Niño natural weather oscillations have driven “atmospheric teleconnection” and shifted the tropical rainfall zone to the north. The higher warming up to 2012 was “accelerated” by heat from the Pacific and a phase in the North Atlantic sea current oscillation that favoured warmer conditions over Greenland and enhanced ice melt. Changes around Greenland can be attributed to “natural variability, rather than anthropogenic forcing”, note the scientists, “although most climate models were unable to reasonably simulate the unforced natural variability over Greenland”.
What the scientists are talking about of course are the huge heat exchanges that regularly change the climate of the Earth. As the Daily Scepticrecently reported, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT noted that the Earth had many climate regimes, and there have been “profound” changes in temperature between the tropics and the polar regions over millennia. Meteorologist William Kininmonth recently argued that the heat exchanges were little understood, but they are one of the great drivers of climate changes. It might be suggested that these gaps in climate knowledge have allowed a view to take hold, now enforced by rigid Net Zero political control, that CO2 is the only driver of climate change.
The Daily Scepticrecently reported on a series of media scare stories about the Greenland ice sheet that followed publication of a paper in Nature Climate Change. Cherry-picking the one-off record melt year of 2012, and assuming it will be a regular occurrence, delivered a “staggering” 78cm of sea level rise between now and 2100. According to the U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts, the claims were “false and easily disproved”. In his view they were “just modelled hokum”.
Ice amounts around the Arctic have always been highly cyclical, with periods of substantial melt and freezing common across just a few decades. As we have seen, evidence is starting to build that a recent Arctic low point is in a period of recovery, with a significant trend towards higher surface sea ice becoming apparent from the recent data.
To preserve the fiction that humans are responsible for all recent changes in the climate, it is often argued that the current temperature is the highest for 12,000 years, since the last major ice age started to lift. This is political nonsense-on-stilts, not least because geologists have a phrase for the period when temperatures were much higher than today – the Holocene Thermal Maximum. The latest science paper to show significant higher temperatures comes from a group of geoscientists led by Dr. Katrine Elnegaard Hansen of Aarhus University. According to a précis published by the No Tricks Zone climate site, the Arctic and northern Greenland were 2-4°C warmer than now between 11,700 to 4,500 years ago. Carbon dioxide levels were in the mid 200 parts per million (ppm), compared to today’s 419 ppm, ice-free open waters prevailed, and Greenland warmed 10°C in just 60 years.
Numerous other scientists have discovered equally dramatic temperature changes in the recent past. The graph below was presented by a German broadcaster in 2013 and was compiled from a number of science sources. It shows the overall long-term trend, ending in the current small rebound from the so-called little ice age,
But cyclical changes have also occurred over very short periods. A number of scientists have pointed to an abrupt global multiple degree cooling and warming period that occurred about 8,200 years ago over 150 years. Dr. Takuro Kobashi examined the paleoclimatic records from this time and found a drop of 3°C within two decades, followed by a similar rise over 70 years. Dr. Seren Griffiths of Manchester Met University reported that the event was first identified in Greenland ice cores, but subsequently noted in multiple proxies across Europe. Another abrupt cooling period is said to have occurred about 4,000 years ago.
It is legitimate to conclude from all this under-reported science that it is becoming increasingly difficult to ask us to believe that CO2, and more specifically human-caused CO2, is the only or main climate control thermostat. The evidence suggests that the gas played no such starring role in the previous 11,000 years and more of the paleoclimatic record.
Chris Morrison isthe Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
“In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet” (Alimonti et al., 2022).
Alimonti, G., Mariani, L., Prodi, F., & Ricci, R. A. (2022). A critical assessment of extreme events trends in times of global warming. The European Physical Journal Plus 137(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02243-9
Frightening study out of the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research August 2022 documenting abnormal changes to blood cells following mRNA (Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna) ‘vaccination’.
The Italian, peer-reviewed study found a staggering 94 percent of vaccinated patients with subsequent abnormal blood issues.
Figure 1. These photos are at 40x magnification. At the left side, (a) shows the blood condition of the patient before the inoculation. The right side image, (b) shows the same person’s blood one month after the first dose of Pfizer mRNA “vaccine”. Particles can be seen among the red blood cells which are strongly conglobated around the exogenous particles; the agglomeration is believed to reflect a reduction in zeta potential adversely affecting the normal colloidal distribution of erythrocytes as seen at the left. The red blood cells at the right (b) are no longer spherical and are clumping as in coagulation and clotting.
“Engineers have always played a leading role in the development of powerful adaptation technology. Engineering education should therefore stay far away from ideology-driven computer models. These models steer them in the wrong direction. That is my message to the Academies of Engineering and the Universities of Technology.”
I’ll take the undeniable power, safety and consistency of technical-based decisions made through reason, data and the scientific method (engineering) over politics, ideology, UN climate models and fact-free emotions any day.
Professor Guus Berkhout has published a challenge to the engineering community, to step up and make the Western energy transition work. He emphasizes that reliable and affordable energy is the key to future prosperity and well-being. So, if the transition fails then the Western world will fall back into poor economies without any power and authority. His opening call is pointed and clear:
“Experienced Engineers must take the lead in the Energy Transition. Green politicians made a big mess of the energy transition and climate scientists encouraged them with their computer models. Putin and Xi JinPing must have watched the self-destruction of the Western World with utter amazement and gratitude. Experienced engineers must pick up the pieces soonest.”
Berkhout says there are actually three distinct challenges, all engineering intensive. One is developing the technology needed for adaptation to climate change, whatever the cause of…
For those who didn’t panic and remained curious throughout the long two years of the (ongoing) ‘pandemic’, take a bow and enjoy this quality reflection by Author Gabrielle Bauer. Nothing in her story is dissimilar to how sceptics of climate alarm are smeared, vilified, othered, and cancelled. Exact same tactics employed.
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“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule it.” – H.L. Mencken
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” – C. S. Lewis
“Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.” — Bertrand Russell
“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.” — Bertrand Russell
For the first 62 years of my life, I don’t recall anyone calling me a selfish idiot, much less a sociopath or a mouth-breathing Trumptard. All that changed when Covid rolled in and I expressed, ever so gingerly, a few concerns about the lockdown policies. Here’s a sampling of what the keyboard warriors threw back at me:
Enjoy your sociopathy.
Go lick a pole and catch the virus.
Have fun choking on your own fluids in the ICU.
Name three loved ones that you’re ready to sacrifice to Covid. Do it now, coward.
You went to Harvard? Yeah, right, and I’m God. Last I checked, Harvard doesn’t accept troglodytes.
From the earliest days of the pandemic, something deep inside me—in my soul, if you will—recoiled from the political and public response to the virus. Nothing about it felt right or strong or true. This was not just an epidemiological crisis, but a societal one, so why were we listening exclusively to some select epidemiologists? Where were the mental health experts? The child development specialists? The historians? The economists? And why were our political leaders encouraging fear rather than calm?
The questions that troubled me the most had less to do with epidemiology than with ethics: Was it fair to require the greatest sacrifice from the youngest members of society, who stood to suffer the most from the restrictions? Should civil liberties simply disappear during a pandemic, or did we need to balance public safety with human rights? Unschooled in the ways of online warriors, I assumed the Internet would allow me to engage in “productive discussions” about these issues. So I hopped online, and the rest was hysteria.
Village idiot, flat earther, inbred trash, negative IQ… Let’s just say that my thin skin got the test of a lifetime.
And it wasn’t just me: anyone who questioned the orthodoxy, whether expert or ordinary citizen, got a similar skinburn. In the words of one community physician, who for obvious reasons shall remain anonymous: “Many doctors including myself, along with virologists, epidemiologists and other scientists, advocated a targeted approach and a focus on the most vulnerable cohorts of patients, only to be dismissed as anti-science, tin foil hat kooks, conspiracy theorists, antivax and other equally colorful disparaging labels.”
Early in the game I decided I wouldn’t respond to such insults with more insults—not because I’m especially high-minded, but because mudslinging contests just leave me angry and it’s not fun to walk around angry all day. Instead, I took the shaming on the chin (and still walked around angry).
The Shame Game
The shaming impulse asserted itself right from the start of the pandemic. On Twitter, #covidiot began trending on the evening of March 22, 2020, and by the time the night was over, 3,000 tweets had coopted the hashtag to denounce poor public health practices. When CBS News posted a video of spring breakers partying in Miami, outraged citizens shared the students’ names in their social media networks, accompanied by such missives as “do not give these selfish dumbfucks beds and/or respirators.”
In the early days of the pandemic, when panic and confusion reigned, such indignation could perhaps be forgiven. But the shaming gained momentum and wove itself into the zeitgeist. Also: it didn’t work.
As noted by Harvard Medical School epidemiologist Julia Marcus, “shaming and blaming people is not the best way to get them to change their behavior and actually can be counterproductive because it makes people want to hide their behavior.” Along similar lines, Jan Balkus, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Washington, maintains that shaming can make it harder for people to “acknowledge situations where they may have encountered risk.”
If shaming “covidiots” for their behavior doesn’t accomplish much, you can be sure that shaming people for Wrongthink won’t change any minds. Instead, we heretics simply stop telling the shamers what we’re thinking. We nod and smile. We give them the match point and continue the debate in our own heads.
Gloves Off
For two years I’ve been that person. I’ve smiled politely while dodging insults. To put my interlocutors at ease, I’ve prefaced my heterodox opinions with disclaimers like “I dislike Trump as much as you do” or “For the record, I’m triple-vaxxed myself.”
Just today, I’ll allow myself to drop the pandering and call it as I see it.
To everyone who dumped on me for questioning the shutdown of civilization and calling out the damage it inflicted on the young and the poor: you can take your shaming, your scientific posturing, your insufferable moralizing, and stuff it. Every day, new research knocks more air out of your smug pronouncements.
You told me that without lockdowns, Covid would have wiped out a third of the world, much as the Black Death decimated Europe in the 14th century. Instead, a Johns Hopkins meta-analysis concluded that lockdowns in Europe and the US reduced Covid-19 mortality by an average of 0.2%.
What’s more, long before this study we had good evidence that anything less than a China-style door-welding lockdown wouldn’t do much good. In a 2006 paper, the WHO Writing Group affirmed that “mandatory case reporting and isolating patients during the influenza pandemic of 1918 did not stop virus transmission and were impractical.”
You told me that social interaction is a want, not a need. Well, yes. So is good food. In truth, social isolation kills. As reported in a September 2020 review article published in Cell, loneliness “may be the most potent threat to survival and longevity.” The article explains how social isolation lowers cognitive development, weakens the immune system, and puts people at risk of substance use disorders. And it’s not like we didn’t know this before Covid: in 2017, research by Brigham Young University professor Julianne Holt-Lunstad determined that social isolation accelerates mortality as much as smoking 15 cigarettes per day. Her findings splashed the pages of news outlets around the world.
You told me we need not worry about the effects of Covid restrictions on children because kids are resilient—and besides, they had it much worse in the great wars. Meanwhile, the UK saw a 77% increasein pediatric referrals for such issues as self-harm and suicidal thoughts during a 6-month period in 2021, in relation to a similar stretch in 2019. And if that doesn’t shake you up, a World Bank analysis estimated that, in low-income countries, the economic contraction ensuing from lockdown policies led 1.76 children to lose their lives for every Covid fatality averted.
You told me that vaccinated people don’t carry the virus, taking your cue from CDC director Rachel Walensky’s proclamation in early 2021, and we all know how well that aged.
You told me I had no business questioning what infectious disease experts were telling us to do. (I’m paraphrasing here. What you actually said was: “How about staying in your lane and shutting the eff up?”) I got my vindication from Dr. Stefanos Kales, another from Harvard Medical School, who warned of the “dangers of turning over public policy and public health recommendations to people who have had their careers exclusively focused on infectious disease” in a recent CNBC interview. “Public health is a balance,” he said. Indeed it is. In a 2001 book called Public Health Law: Power, Duty and Restraint, Lawrence Gostin argued for more systematic assessments of the risks and benefits of public health interventions and more robust protection of civil liberties.
So yeah. I’m upset and your finger-wagging posse left me alienated enough that I had to go looking for new tribes, and in this quest I’ve been rather successful. I have found more kindred spirits than I could ever have imagined, in my city of Toronto and all over the world: doctors, nurses, scientists, farmers, musicians, and homemakers who share my distaste for your grandstanding. Epidemiologists, too. These fine folks have kept me from losing my mind.
So thank you. And get off my lawn.
Author
Gabrielle Bauer Gabrielle divides her time between writing books, articles, and clinical materials for health professionals. She has received six national awards for her health journalism. She has written two books—Tokyo, My Everest, co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Prize, and Waltzing The Tango, finalist in the Edna Staebler creative nonfiction award—and is working on two more.READ MORE
This video is a sad testament to the power that public health has to induce panic and then tell noble lies about how to mitigate that fear. Imagine instead if public health had recognized who was most vulnerable (primarily the elderly), and poured resources into protecting them.
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule it.” – H.L. Mencken
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” – C. S. Lewis
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If the issue were less tragic, one might quip that the editor of Australia’s state-run media monolith was on holiday’s for the taxpayer funded ABC to even begin to think about running this story for the great unwashed to digest.
The UK Health Security Agency recently released data showing an overrepresentation of fully vaccinated people contracting Covid-19 over the non-vaccinated, especially in the over 30 year old cohort where actual risks begin.
Government data, released to the ABC, has revealed 36 of the 49 aged care residents that died after contracting COVID-19 during NSW’s Delta outbreak were fully vaccinated.
All had underlying health conditions or were in palliative care.
Until now, the overall number last year’s deaths in NSW aged care facilities had been reported weekly by the Federal Department of Health and their vaccination status occasionally mentioned in NSW Health daily updates, but no cumulative figure had been publicly released.
Deaths from COVID among the elderly are lower this year compared to 2021, says Professor Low.(ABC News)
Professor Lee-Fay Low, who specialises in ageing and health at the University of Sydney, said it shows the elderly were still vulnerable.
“Last year, 33 percent of aged care residents that got COVID-19 died,” Professor Low said.
“This year, it’s come down to 14 per cent but it’s still a lot higher than the 0.4 per cent of Australians that die if they get COVID-19.”
When lockdown lifted in NSW on Monday, new health advice permitted aged care residents two fully vaccinated visitors a day and permission to leave their facilities to attend family gatherings.
Given community transmission of the virus was expected to rise as restrictions ease, Professor Low said residents and families should be asked what level of risk they were willing to accept.
“There’s a balance, if you’re trapped, locked in a home which can’t meet your needs for love and can’t see your grandchildren, how do you balance that against maybe a 14 per cent chance of dying if you get COVID?”
Professor Low was concerned that some aged care facilities were rejecting health advice and enforcing tighter restrictions without consulting families.
“Because it was so catastrophic last year when there was an outbreak in nursing homes, facilities are really scared to reopen, and I think we should shift that risk balance towards wellbeing a bit more.”
Vicki Dowling’s mother Lorna Willmott is a resident at Ashfield Baptist Homes in Sydney’s inner west.
“It’s time to move on,” Ms Dowling said.
“There’s risks in life with everything we do. There’s a risk when we get in the car and cross the road.”
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” – C. S. Lewis
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule it.” – H.L. Mencken
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins,all of them imaginary.” – H.L. Mencken
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When the 24-hour mainstream media ‘news’ cycle is intentionally geared to keep you fixated through mechanisms of fear, hysteria and alarm it is perhaps beneficial to be grounded, often, by good old fashioned hard data.
CDC and Stanford University data demonstrating the actual risk of death by Covid may be one way to help defend against the merciless attack on reason, sanity and calm by Covid-19 power-hungry politicians and compliant mainstream media.
Perspective: Look Up Your Risk of Dying of COVID-19
Get some perspective folks. Our good friend Phil Kerpen has updated the COVID-19 mortality tables by age – specific age actually! So look up your own risk between you and your peers below.
First, find your age on the chart on column #1.
Second column: how many people your age have died of COVID-19 since January 2020
Third column: the number of people in the U.S. who are that age.
Fourth column: the % of the people that age who have died of COVID.
If you’re 49 there have been 3,965 49-yr-olds who have died of COVID-19. There are over 4.3 million 49-yr-olds olds – which means that 0.085% of 49 year olds have died of COVID. As I always note, if you are over the age of 65 strongly consider getting vaccinated as there is acute risk to you. Under the age of 45 there is a near zero statistical risk of mortality. Otherwise – your choice but stay informed!
You might also choose to look up how many people your age have died of ANYTHING since January 2020 and how that gives you perspective on COVID-19 deaths.
Lastly, consider the types of deaths which occur at these ratios. We’ve mapped these to mortality risks provided by insurance companies for comparison.
And of course we provide some perspective on age comparisons. The median age of death of a COVID-19 victim is about 80 years old. The risk tables show that for every 20 years below 80 your risk decreases by 10x. So if you are 60 your risk is 10x lower than that of an 80 year old. If you are 40 your risk is 100x lower and if you are 20 your risk is 1000x (ONE THOUSAND!) times lower than an 80 year old.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” – C. S. Lewis
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule it.” – H.L. Mencken
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins,all of them imaginary.” – H.L. Mencken
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At some point, the majority will conclude that the Left’s pet, and intentionally emotional causes; climate, Covid, race, gender etc., have absolutely nothing to do with the subject and the people involved, rather, about the clever, tactful and intentional use of highly emotive issues designed to divide and polarise the masses (you and I), in order for absolute power and control by them (the elites).
This simple tweet via VP Harris, perhaps an insightful example.
By vaccinating the unvaccinated, increasing our testing and masking, and protecting the vaccinated, we can end this pandemic. That’s exactly what we are committed to doing.
Think about it. If the vaccine works, as they assure us that it does – with anyone who dares question efficacy; punished, silenced and cancelled accordingly – then how can the unvaccinated possibly pose a threat to the vaccinated?
Who then are the real “science deniers”?
What exactly is the risk to the vaccinated from the unvaccinated?
Your ruling class, Jo Biden, Kamala Harris, CDC, AMA, Scott Morrison, mainstream media et al., will not tell you.
Why? Because they’re lying to you.
No one knows. There is no answer.
The entire; vaccine, mask, lockdown argument by ‘science’, for your ‘protection’, is transparently absurd.
And once you realise that, you realise that none of the endless talking about “public health”, at this point, is really about “public health”.
If it was about “public health”, everyone pushing the vaccine so feverishly would simply make the vaccines available to the infirm, the elderly-infirm, to high risk categories, and anyone else who wanted it, then celebrate, and leave it there.
But that’s not what it’s about.
It’s about power.
Forcing you to accept something without complaint is the whole point of the exercise. It’s a form of sadomasochism — dominance and submission.
It’s all about power, obviously. Power, either newly found, or conveniently manipulated and maintained.
If they can make you take experimental medicine that you don’t want, or need, then they’ve won. They then own you. You belong to them.
Things are certainly moving fast, and they are heading in a specific direction.
Which direction?
You be the judge.
(That is, if you’re still even allowed to formulate thought or opinion, less be cancelled or fined, under the statute of ‘forbidden’).
By David Wojick, Ph.D. ~
Berkhout says there are actually three distinct challenges, all engineering intensive. One is developing the technology needed for adaptation to climate change, whatever the cause of…
Gabrielle Bauer Gabrielle divides her time between writing books, articles, and clinical materials for health professionals. She has received six national awards for her health journalism. She has written two books—Tokyo, My Everest, co-winner of the Canada-Japan Book Prize, and Waltzing The Tango, finalist in the Edna Staebler creative nonfiction award—and is working on two more.READ MORE 
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