Month: November 2024

Skynet Hates You

Technology

Here’s one consequence of putting your trust in technology, this time from India:

Three men have died in a road accident after their car’s sat-nav sent them careening off the 30ft-high edge of an unfinished bridge. 

Their bodies, trapped inside the mangled car, weren’t discovered until 9:30am the next day, local media reported. 

Investigators found that the trio had been following an out-of-date map on Google Maps at speed. 

The mapping service allegedly told them to travel down the bridge, which had no signs indicating it was out of use after it suffered a collapse in 2022 following heavy flooding. 

Oops.

One would think that there should have been warning signposts about the bridge being down, but then again, this is Third World India.  Let’s review:

  • Trust technology:  not always wise.
  • Trust government:  also not always wise.

A life (-or-death) lesson, there.

Goodbye, Witchcraft

Eco-Crap, Good Stuff, Science!

If you look at all my posts about Global Warming Climate Cooling Change© over the years, you will see all the following points appear at some time or another.

1. The modest increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide that has taken place since the end of the Little Ice Age has been net-beneficial to humanity.
2. Foreseeable future increases in greenhouse gases in the air will probably also prove net-beneficial.
3. The rate and amplitude of global warming have been and will continue to be appreciably less than climate scientists have long predicted.
4. The Sun, and not greenhouse gases, has contributed and will continue to contribute the overwhelming majority of global temperature.
5. Geological evidence compellingly suggests that the rate and amplitude of global warming during the industrial era are neither unprecedented nor unusual.
6. Climate models are inherently incapable of telling us anything about how much global warming there will be or about whether or to what extent the warming has a natural or anthropogenic cause.
7. Global warming will likely continue to be slow, small, harmless and net-beneficial.
8. There is broad agreement among the scientific community that extreme weather events have not increased in frequency, intensity or duration and are in future unlikely to do so.
9. Though global population has increased fourfold over the past century, annually averaged deaths attributable to any climate-related or weather-related event have declined by 99%.
10. Global climate-related financial losses, expressed as a percentage of global annual gross domestic product, have declined and continue to decline notwithstanding the increase in built infrastructure in harm’s way.
11. Despite trillions of dollars spent chiefly in Western countries on emissions abatement, global temperature has continued to rise since 1990.
12. Even if all nations, rather than chiefly western nations, were to move directly and together from the current trajectory to net zero emissions by the official target year of 2050, the global warming prevented by that year would be no more than 0.05 to 0.1 Celsius.
13. If the Czech Republic, the host of this conference, were to move directly to net zero emissions by 2050, it would prevent only 1/4000 of a degree of warming by that target date.
14. Based pro rata on the estimate by the UK national grid authority that preparing the grid for net zero would cost $3.8 trillion (the only such estimate that is properly-costed), and on the fact that the grid accounts for 25% of UK emissions, and that UK emissions account for 0.8% of global emissions, the global cost of attaining net zero would approach $2 quadrillion, equivalent to 20 years’ global annual GDP.
15. On any grid where the installed nameplate capacity of wind and solar power exceeds the mean demand on that grid, adding any further wind or solar power will barely reduce grid CO2 emissions but will greatly increase the cost of electricity and yet will reduce the revenues earned by both new and existing wind and solar generators.
16. The resources of techno-metals required to achieve global net zero emissions are entirely insufficient even for one 15-year generation of net zero infrastructure, so that net zero is in practice unattainable.
17. Since wind and solar power are costly, intermittent and more environmentally destructive per TWh generatedthan any other energy source, governments should cease to subsidize or to prioritize them, and should instead expand coal, gas and, above, all nuclear generation.
18. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which excludes participants and published papers disagreeing with its narrative, fails to comply with its own error-reporting protocol and draws conclusions some of which are dishonest, should be forthwith dismantled.
Okay, there may be a couple in there that I didn’t write (e.g. #13), but I think you get the gist.
As it happened, the above came from a gathering of actual scientists in Prague.  These are actual scientists, as opposed to a bunch of gloomy watermelons subsidized by Leftist governments and universities.
I expect the response from the Fainting Goats On The Left will be the usual mix of screams, character assassination and assorted hysteria.
From right-thinking people, however, the response will just be nods of agreement and approval.

News Roundup

Bad News

I must give that one a try.  And speaking of celebratory drinks, there’s Political News, wherein we first take a look at how things are going over in Airstrip One:

   
 

...so much for thinking that the Communists couldn’t possibly be worse than the Tories.

Back home:


...considering he’s just going to close down the Dept. of Education down anyway, he could have nominated a tame monkey to the job so I can’t see what all the fuss is about.  And speaking of tame monkeys:


...hate to break it to you, fellas, but I’m not sure you ever were, that much.  And speaking of irrelevant people:


...can we hold you to that?  Anyway, I suggest that you and yer little girlfriend go and live in Bradford, just to see how much safer you are Over There.


...you fucking well should be.
#CovidLockdown

In Global Warming Climate Cooling Change© News:


...remind me again how EVs were going to take over the world?  And on the topic of lost jobs:


...LOL and just when the bosses thought they’d found a way to bypass those human labor unions...


...better late than never, I guess.  And speaking of criminals:


...and?  What, are they going to send Interpol to arrest him in Israel?


...or, 0.00000001% of his personal fortune, at time of writing.


...in related news, Red Bull is going to sue them for patent infringement.

And in this week’s 

 

...now let’s see the reaction to an AI Mohammed.  No?


…which gives us all a chance to see who’s getting their jollies on… oh look, it’s the pneumatic (and toothy toothsome) Claire Sweeney:

And more informally:

Which brings this Roundup to a close.

Random Totty

Gratuitous Chick Pics

Well, this caught my attention:

Sacha Baron Cohen turns heads on set of Ladies First alongside Rosamund Pike

Sacha Baron Cohen is a total twat and a plonker, but Rosamund Pike?  Hoo-ah.

I first saw this hottie in Episode 1 of the wonderful TV show Foyle’s War, and have been smitten ever since.  I know, I know, she’s a lot skinnier than my typical objets d’amour, but good grief, she’s beautiful.

LOL No

Corporate Fuckery, Gummint, Subsidies

If this doesn’t make you chortle, nothing will:

Executives at Ford Motor Company, General Motors (GM), and Stellantis are begging President-elect Donald Trump to keep in place President Joe Biden’s Electric Vehicle (EV) mandates. The plea comes as automakers have invested billions in EVs that have failed to turn a profit.

Aw diddums.  How my heart bleeds for your lost profits, you chiseling bastards.

What’s the old expression?  Oh yeah:  lie down with the dogs, get up with fleas.

Well, you kowtowed to the government stupidity, always forgetting the other old dictum:  what the government giveth, the government may take away.

Had there not been so much virtue-signaling from the auto manufacturers as they glommed onto those subsidies (#Jaguar #Volvo #etc), I might have had a little sympathy.  As it is, however, I don’t give a rat’s ass.

And I know the followup threat:  “Without subsidies, we’re going to have to close factories and lay off workers!”

Here’s a thought:  take all the executive bonuses you were going to pay your management — yeah, right down to junior levels — and pay those billions (and it is billions) into an independent investment fund, i.e. a fund that’s managed by a financial institution so that you can’t raid it whenever you feel like it (#PensionPlans), and let the interest payments go to the workers you’re going to lay off.

It won’t be enough, but it sure as hell is better than the alternative, which is continuing to make a product that nobody wants, partially (or mostly) funded by taxpayers.

You should have done your research before sinking to your knees — anyone with a brain could have told you that the whole eco-electrical boondoggle was doomed to failure, especially if it was going to be dependent on government building the charging-station infrastructure (and which we’ve already seen has been a catastrophic failure).

The best lessons are those which come through suffering;  so suffer, and learn.

You idiots.

Unnecessary Death

Morons & Idiots

I once knew a fellow-immigrant who had arrived in the U.S. because his parents had moved their family out of Iran.  When I asked why they’d done so, he replied, “They were Catholics.”

Here’s one that intrigued me:

UAE officials have arrested three people suspected of killing an Israeli Rabbi who went missing in Dubai.

…which makes me ask:  “What was a rabbi doing in an Arab country to begin with?”   Seems like you’re asking for trouble — like being a rabbi in Bradford or Dearborn, only worse.

Oh… this explains it:

He had been working for the Chabad movement in Abu Dhabi since late 2020 – when the UAE recognised Israel as a state.

For the benefit of my Gentile Readers, the Chabad Lubavitch movement is akin to the old London Missionary Society, which sent priests and nuns out into foreign lands to convert the natives to their specific brand of Christianity.  Chabad is the kosher version.

As with the Christians, though, who have traditionally come to a gruesome end (#CongoleseMurderAndRape) my sympathy is somewhat tempered by the questions: “What the hell were you thinking?” and “How else did you think this was going to end?”

It’s a little like hearing that the guy who made his living in a circus by putting his head into a lion’s mouth eventually had his head bitten off — and we’re all supposed to get the sadz because #OhTheHumanity.

Nope.  Try selling that at some other address.

I can say with absolute certainty that I am never going to get attacked by a shark, because I have no intention of ever swimming in the sea, even if someone tells me it’s all part of Saving Teh Whales or something.

Don’t go where you’re not wanted.

Update:  I couple of my Readers have written to remind me that Chabad does not go outside Israel to proselytize, but to minister to the existing Jewish population is there. I knew that, but my writing was sloppy, so thankee for the correction.

My last sentence, however, remains unchanged.  Why ANY Jews would willingly go to the UAE, or indeed to any Muslim country is beyond me.