Recorded temperatures at the Bureau of Meteorology’s Thredbo Top automatic weather station have dropped below -10C in the past week, after action was taken to make the facility “fit for purpose”.
A record of the Thredbo Top station for 3am on Wednesday shows a temperature reading of -10.6C. This compares with the BoM’s monthly highlights for June and July, both showing a low of -9.6C.
The BoM said it had taken immediate action to replace the Thredbo station after concerns were raised that very low temperatures were not making it onto the official record. Controversy has dogged the bureau’s automatic weather station network since Goulburn man Lance Pigeon saw a -10.4C reading on the BoM’s website on July 2 automatically adjust to -10C, then disappear.
Later independent monitoring of the Thredbo Top station by scientist Jennifer Marohasy showed a recording of -10.6C vanish from the record.
BoM initially claimed the adjustments were part of its quality control procedures. But bureau chief executive Andrew Johnson later told Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg that investigations had found a number of cold-weather stations were not “fit for purpose” and would be replaced.
Several other temperature measurement stations are also receiving the fix to stop adjusting the raw data:
An in-house investigation that includes two independent experts has been called. The bureau said it rejected allegations aired in some media outlets that it had sought to tamper with temperature data.
It has been reported online that electronic smart cards were allegedly fitted to the BoM’s automatic weather stations, which put a limit on how low temperatures could be recorded in official weather data. The BoM declined to comment ahead of the internal review.
[…]On her website yesterday, Dr Marohasy said it was not the recording devices that were at fault. “To be clear, the problem is not with the equipment; all that needs to be done is for the smart-card readers to be removed,” Dr Marohasy said.
And this was not a situation where the government, which had been lying, corrected itself. Oh no! Challenges to the faked government data came from outside the government, as Bureau of Meteorology minister explained:
“The first we heard of the problem was in early July after (The Australian) approached the Bureau of Meteorology,” the minister said.
You might remember a recent scandal where it was discovered that scientists in the UK had been adjusting the temperatures to “hide the decline” of temperatures in their simulation code.
Here was the data before hiding the decline:
Raw temperature measurements before hiding the decline
And here was the data after:
Raw temperature measurements after hiding the decline
That second graph, with “Mike’s Nature trick” to “hide the decline” was sent then to the IPCC to influence climate policy. I have no doubt that socialist governments were very grateful for this “evidence”. Just what they needed to get a mandate from the masses to control businesses and consumer spending were grateful for this hiding of the decline, and rewarded the scientists with many research grants. This is why we call global warming alarmists “watermelons”: green on the outside, and red on the inside.
If you’ve never heard of that Climategate story from 2009 before, you should definitely read about it. Here is a good single post that explains what happened.
Two socialists shake hands: Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez
There is a podcast to go with this post in the video below, for those who don’t want to watch the podcast on The Daily Wire.
Excerpt:
On Tuesday, Maduro dragged opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma off to prison; on Sunday, the dictatorship killed some ten people during election riots.
[…]The latest controversy in Venezuela arises thanks to Maduro’s brutish attempt to overthrow the legitimate legislature of the country in favor of a constituent assembly that would essentially allow Maduro to redraw the constitution. Maduro is, of course, the successor to thug dictator Hugo Chavez, who seized power in January 1999 through election, and then proceeded to nationalize foreign oil projects, socialize virtually every other industry, institute price and wage controls, ratchet up tariffs, and entirely destroy the economy of one of the most natural-resources-blessed countries on the planet. Chavez took office with promises to end income inequality in the country. Instead, his brutish regime exacerbated poverty to the point of crisis – but at least they minimized income inequality! Just for good measure, Chavez also essentially destroyed the free press and made employment in key industries contingent on loyalty to his regime.
The consequences: no bread, no sugar, no toilet paper, ordinary citizens hunting dogs in the streets and waiting in line outside bakers not for bread, but for the ability to comb through the garbage for crumbs. Hyperinflation has set in: according to CNBC, “On Friday, $1 equaled 10,389 bolivars. Earlier this week, on Monday, it was worth 8,820 bolivars. At the start of this year, $1 equaled 3,164 bolivars, according to the unofficial exchange rate calculated by dolartoday.com, which millions of Venezuelans use.” Venezuelan hospitals lack gloves, soap, water, paper. Electrical blackouts aren’t infrequent. Caracas has become the most violent city in the Western hemisphere.
According to Hannah Dreier of Associated Press:
The government of President Nicolas Maduro blames the U.S. and right-wing business interests for the economic collapse, but most economists say it actually stems from government-imposed price and currency distortions. There often seemed to be a direct line between economic policy and daily hardship. One week, the administration declared that eggs would now be sold for no more than 30 cents a carton. The next week, eggs had disappeared from supermarkets, and still have not come back…. People started digging through the trash at all hours, pulling out vegetable peelings and soggy pizza crusts and eating them on the spot. That seemed like rock bottom. Until my local bakery started organizing lines each morning, not to buy bread but to eat trash.
It’s worth noting that the American Left praised both Chavez and Maduro for decades as halcyons of humanitarian redistributionism. As I noted at Breitbart at the time, when Chavez died in 2013, Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY) called him “a leader that understood the needs to the poor. He was committed to empowering the powerless.” Former President Jimmy Carter praised Chavez’s “commitment to improving the lives of his fellow countrymen,” adding that he would “be remembered for his bold assertion of autonomy and independence for Latin American governments and for his formidable communications skills and personal connection with supporters in his country and abroad to whom he gave hope and empowerment.” Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post called Chavez “quick” and “popular.” Larry King called him “huggable.” The Associated Press called him a “fighter.” The Atlantic stated, “Passionate and charismatic, Chávez slipped comfortably into the role of romantic Latin American revolutionary, championing the poor against an unfeeling local oligarchy and its imperial paymasters….Today millions of Venezuelans will weep tears of genuine anguish at his passing.” ABC News and Univision said he was “revered by Venezuela’s poor, who considered him one of their own.” And The New York Times sounded off, of course, calling him a “dreamer with a common touch and enormous ambition” who “maintained an almost visceral connection with the poor.”
During his tenure, Chavez received praise from Oliver Stone and Noam Chomsky, from Danny Glover and Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who said, “Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez appears to have had success in bringing health and education to the people in the poor neighborhoods of Caracas, to those who previously saw few benefits of the countries oil wealth…. It is not only important to have sustainable growth, but to ensure the best distribution of economic growth, for the benefit of all citizens.”
The Left owns Venezuela.
When you see people lining up to go through trash looking for food in Venezuela, remember the people who praised the damnable economic system that caused it.
Here is the podcast featuring Ben Shapiro:
Indeed. The first post I ever wrote on this blog about Venezuela’s descent into destruction was on February 8, 2009. I’ve been writing about this for over 8 years, and following Venezuela’s every little step down the road to socialism. Make no mistake.Your children are being told that socialism is the greatest economic system ever. And they think socialism is great, even though they’ve never set foot in any country that has actually tried it, like Venezuela.
What American schools produce:
Socialism is great, and they’ll vote for it, but they have no idea what they are voting for. Their unionized public school teachers and their celebrity masters taught them how great it is, but they never mentioned anywhere that it’s actually been tried.
This is actually a news article from National Post, the more prestigious and less progressive of Canada’s two national newspapers.
Excerpt:
Couples without kids are outpacing their procreating counterparts, same-sex relationships are blossoming, multiple generations are living under the same roof and more people than ever are living alone, Statistics Canada revealed Wednesday as the 2016 census showcased more seismic changes in the way Canadians are living their lives.
[…]Canada is skewing older, with fewer children and less affinity for marriage — forcing legislators to adjust and adapt their policies and programs to fit a rapidly evolving reality.
[…]Higher rates of separation and divorce also mean more people living alone or as lone parents, as does an increasing number of women in the workforce, which fosters a greater sense of economic independence.
Childless couples grew in number at a faster rate over the last five years than couples with at least one child, leaving the latter group at 51.1 per cent of the population, the lowest level ever recorded.
The baby boomers who fuelled such population growth in the 20th century are empty nesters in the 21st. The census found younger Canadians who do have kids are living in places like Alberta, long a magnet for job-seeking families, or Nunavut, where fertility rates are high.
They also important large numbers of unskilled immigrants who paid less in taxes than they used in social programs:
Canada’s 35.15 million people are getting older; there are now more seniors than children under the age of 14. Immigration contributed two-thirds of the country’s population growth between 2011 and 2016, and that diversity has also added complexity to the Canadian family portrait.
At the time, the Liberal Party thought that importing a lot of non-Christians who would vote for bigger government dependency was a good idea. And it was a good idea to keep them getting elected, but now they are facing the long-term consequences of importing a lot of unskilled have-not socialists.
Canada legalized same-sex marriage, and same-sex marriages don’t produce children naturally:
And a decade after census-takers first collected numbers on same-sex marriage, such couples now make up one per cent of all households, with their overall numbers having increased by 60.7 per cent since 2006. Opposite-sex couples grew by just 9.6 per cent during the same period.
Today, about 12 per cent of all same-sex couples are living with children, be they biological offspring, adopted or members of a stepfamily. In raw numbers, there were 10,020 children aged 14 and under living with 8,770 same-sex couple parents on census day last year.
Canada legalized same-sex “marriage” a decade before America did.
Basically, the problem here is that men don’t get married in a big government socialist country, because they are taxed to pay for the big government, but they aren’t allowed to lead the family. The money men earn that would be used to make decisions about their households is eaten up by secular socialist government programs. Instead of gun ownership, they have a politically correct and ineffective police force. Instead of home-schooling or a network or private schools, there are failing public schools that indoctrinate rather than educate. Instead of a choice of medical providers, there is a single-payer system that makes you take a number and wait your turn. Instead of stay at home mothers, they have expensive, ineffective government-run daycare. Instead of deciding what kind of car to drive, car money is confiscated for public transportation. And so on and so on. This makes men opt out of marriage, and then you don’t get children being raised in two-parent homes. The whole society is set up to undermine the male aspiration to be the provider, and to make all the important decisions. There was a deep suspicion of letting men lead in their own homes.
Canadian schools are secular and they teach socialism. They undermine religious liberty and traditional moral values. There is affirmative action for women in the schools and in the workplace that discriminates against boys (in school) and men (in the workplace). The police and divorce courts regularly punish men for faked domestic violence and no-fault divorce. The entire Parliament and legal system is a hotbed of misandry and radical feminism.
In Canada, it’s now a criminal offense to disagree with transgenderism, and in the province of Ontario, if parents disagree with transgenderism, the government will seize your children. Speaking as a Christian man with a high income, and a high net worth, I find it unappealing to think that I would be paying the salaries of secular socialists so that they could then interfere in my life and rule over me. I would be forced to give social engineers my money, and they would be continuously overruling my leadership in the home.
Canada, as a nation, decided a while back to embrace non-judgmentalism and redistribution of wealth to make sinful lifestyles produce the same outcomes as traditional lifestyles. Everybody gets free health care. What this means is that only working people pay for health care, but only the immoral people used it. They thought that this was “compassion”, but it just meant that fewer people would work, and more people who go off down immoral rabbit trails in their personal lives. They have free abortions and free drug injection clinics and free sex change surgery. But they don’t have free homeschooling, free stay at home moms, or tax breaks for chastity and sobriety. Everything wrong was subsidized, and everything right was taxed. The state became an unofficial arbiter of disputes between husbands and wives, always siding with the unhappy, emotional wife against the husbands who attempted to lead their families to be moral and spiritual.
What we are seeing now is similar to what has been observed in European countries for decades. An aging population that is depending on government to provide health care and pensions for them in their old age. When government grows large, human beings become more and more irresponsible. The population of Canada has been trained to think that their future needs are government’s problem. They don’t have to marry and make children to care for them in their old age – that’s government’s problem. They don’t have to save their own money for old age – that’s government’s problem. When the government taxes all your money and takes over everything in the private sector, including the traditional roles of churches and charities, people become passive and irresponsible. Canada proudly embraced abortion and the redefinition of marriage, and now they don’t have a new generation of taxpayers to pay for their bloated government.
Next stop, Greece. Well done, Canada. If you want to have secularism, socialism and feminism, then you can’t have liberty, marriage and family. They made their choice, and we ought to be learning from their mistakes.
WINTERY KNIGHT 