June Update. Kidding Ourselves, Temperatures, Corals, and Kings

It has been a cold start to winter here in Yeppoon, just across from Great Keppel Island that is part of the southern Great Barrier Reef. And it has also been very cold in Sydney if you believe the readings from the automatic weather stations – and the complaining.

Before they deleted the minimum temperature as recorded at the air force base in Richmond (western Sydney), it got down to minus 6.4 C on 19th June, which would have been a new record cold day. But. Alas. The officials here in Australia do not want to know about cold days. As a nation we have already officially committed to overheating.

Long continuous temperature records for anywhere along the East Coast of Australia – unadjusted/unhomogenised, that is before remodelling – tend to show a cooling trend from about 1920 through to about 1950 (though there were every hot summers from 1938 through 1941) – but overall the trend is cooling and then warming. Until the last few years. At places like Gympie, about halfway down the East Coast of Australia, annual average maximum temperatures were about as hot a few years ago, back in 2018, as they were back in 1919, but over the last few years they have been falling – again.

I recently attended a conference in Gympie – in the Mary Valley, a catchment at the very southern tip of the Great Barrier Reef. The conference was organised in part to draw attention to the real environmental damage caused by massive new pumped hydro, and wind and solar installations.

These billion-dollar investments are ostensibly to save us from the (non-existent) overheating.

Certainly, government coffers are being emptied, someone is being paid. I gather much of the money is going to rich people in Europe. To show for all of this, here in Queensland, we have much scaring of the landscape – not just a bit, but terribly and if they continue to have their way it will get a lot worse.

At the conference in Gympie, I heard lawyer Tom Marland explained the extent of the investment in what is being called the necessary energy transition, with reference to new developments in central Queensland: 10,000 hectares used to be a large solar installation, now they are planning for 100,000; and the wind farms are ten times larger than before, with ridge lines excavated to fit 300 turbines.

It seems extraordinary to me, that the first time a majority of Australians voted for climate change was at the federal election last year, and yet the investments in this necessary energy transition have already been approved.

And the European companies making the installations are apparently exempt from local development approvals because as a nation we are overheating to such an extent – so the propaganda goes – that this is an emergency.

Apparently, what is happening in my home state of Queensland, that runs the length of the Great Barrier Reef and some, is typical of what is happening round the world. And the elites are being rewarded with fantastic profits at huge cost to local communities, not just in the Mary Valley.

I was recently scanning the 2021 report by Bank of America, a multinational investment bank and financial services holding company, that explains the crusade against climate change is going to cost $150 trillion over 30 years with nearly $5 trillion in annual investments. That is a lot of money, that could be spent on other things. (But the new kings are not investing in things like schools or hospitals, they are invested in the necessary energy transition – I will get to explaining this.)

As I understand it, the Queensland government is paying European companies billions of dollars from coal royalties to infill hillsides the length and breadth of Queensland with concrete by way of bases for wind turbines, and infill valleys with silicon – by way of solar panels. That is what the Europeans are being paid to do, with money earned from the profits from coal mining.

If ever it was a case of killing the goose that laid the golden egg, it is in full swing here in Queensland.

To be clear, it is all on the pretext that we have a climate emergency because of overheating – while everyone dons an extra cardigan.

An extraordinary effort has actually gone into recording temperatures across Australia over the last 100 years, and while there are problems with the detail of the methodology – certainly the Bureau should be retracting the many record hot days it has announced over recent years because these are almost certainly spurious because they were not numerically averaging, something they are going to do going forward, apparently – more information here – but the data is good enough to conclude there has never been a recent unprecedented uptick in temperatures as we have been falsely lead to believe.

To be clear, the Bureau of Meteorology, and everyone else who claims Australia is overheating is speaking nonsense, and probably unintentionally – like Jordan Shanks, except he should know better.

Queensland, where I live, runs the length of the iconic Great Barrier Reef and a bit more. Anyone who visits the reef regularly, like Stuart Ireland who produces the Reef Today series, will tell you that the coral is looking exceptionally good at the moment – and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) official surveys support this contention documenting record high coral cover.

But according to popular YouTuber Jordan Shanks this must be nonsense. A video that he posted last week ridiculing Peter Ridd quickly received more than 100K likes and there were more than 500 comments in the thread when I attempted to post some rebuttal. Each of my attempts failed, with my comments and links being removed within the minute.

The YouTube video now has more than 160K likes and over 600 comments, but I am still unable to successfully post a single comment in the thread.

Yesterday, my comment began:

“On the topic of 500-year-old corals, well I went out looking for them in November 2020 all the way to Myrmidon Reef. I made a 23-minute documentary about it, that you can watch here: https://vimeo.com/766755037

“… it has been reported that they are all dead because the reef is stuffed. You know the story, the popular narrative as per this video that you have made, focused on The Riddler – Peter Ridd.

“To be clear, the Porites are the massive, ancient bolder corals, some as big as minibuses, that have growth rings like tree rings faithfully recording the climate history of the oceans. Well, they used to. As the story goes.

“I wanted to go all the way out to Myrmidon Reef, because that is where the scientists used to go on really big ships to core the really, really old Porites. To my surprise I found whole gardens of these corals, and so healthy. [end quote]

No sooner had I posted these few words, and taken a screen shot, and it was gone. Deleted. Scrubbed from YouTube.

I can only conclude that Jordon Shanks diligently deletes relevant facts and information, while leaving comments that incite actual physical violence against Peter Ridd, because he really doesn’t care about the truth – not one bit. I can only conclude that Peter Ridd and the Great Barrier Reef are simply content, that he successfully uses to generate followers and income and thus power. This is also the history of the European royal families.

I am currently reading Shelley Pukak’s The Dark Queens, a gripping tale of power, ambition and murderous rivalry in early medieval France.

In between the reading, I emailed Jordan Shanks, that was a week ago. You can read the note I sent as a recent blog post. I invite this popular faux champion of all that is true and fair to actually visit the Great Barrier Reef and see for himself.

Of course, at the very same time that John Brewer Reef was being reported around the world as dead and dying – bleached stark white from global warming – I visited and found an unusually colourful reef. Remember, Stuart Ireland and I made a film about it, funded by the Institute of Public Affairs. https://vimeo.com/775205373

To be clear, the Great Barrier Reef doesn’t need saving. The mainstream media uncritically report propaganda from aerial surveys/from flybys by faux scientists who have also bought into the popular narrative.

And John Brewer reef was reported by Graham Readfearn in The Guardian as the worst of the worst bleached, and then there were the official aerial surveys that also reported on the bleaching.

Last year, there was even the United Nation’s UNESCO people who visited – but not John Brewer Reef. They said it was all dead and dying.

But guess what: the assessment team never actually visited any of the reefs that were reported as bleached/dead and dying. The experts relied for their stories about the bleaching from the flybys that score the state of the corals out an aeroplane window from an altitude of 150 metres.

I’ve tried that. You can’t see much. To know the state of the corals you need to get in and under-the-water.

John Brewer Reef is just off Townsville, a large port that is now receiving so many wind turbines.

To be sure, the wind turbines necessary to solve the faux climate emergency are so many, and so large, that now they are having to be redirected from the port of Gladstone to Townsville.

I’m wondering, where are they being made. Who is being paid for them?

Is it Denmark, with Vestas the largest producer of wind turbines in the world?

I know it was the Danish King Cnut, who was also at one time the King of England and Norway, that once tried to hold back the sea tides.

That was a long time ago, about 1,000 years ago.

The Kings and Queens of Europe have been ruling over us for even longer than that – demanding things like ‘energy transitions’ though in the past they have had other names. Crusading, but not climate crusading. All of them, they have been at great inconvenience to ordinary souls, while at the same time distracting us, and of course causing much fear and loathing.

Go to the website of Danish company Vestas and you can read that: ‘Vestas is the energy industry’s global partner on sustainable energy solutions. We design, manufacture, install, and service wind turbines across the globe, and with +166 GW of wind turbines in 88 countries, we have installed more wind power than anyone else.’

Denmark, is of course, the home of Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark, Countess of Monpezat, R.E. She is married to Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, the heir apparent to the Danish throne. It is not a secret that she met Frederik at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

Frederick was there with his cousin (albeit distant cousin) Willem-Alexander from Holland, the son of Queens Beatrix of Holland, including to discuss long term plans for how they would save the Great Barrier Reef. It is not so well understood that many of the plans and regulations that have come into effect here in Queensland over recent years have their origins in what was discussed over cocktails in Sydney twenty years ago.

Imogen Zethoven was flown from Brisbane to Sydney at the time of the Sydney Olympics specifically to meet Willem-Alexander the grandson of the actual founding President of WWF. Known as the ‘Flying Prince of Conservation’, HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands held that position from 1962 to 1976.

Imogen had previously been the co-ordinator for all the conservation groups in Queensland and she subsequently delivered them, on a platter so to speak to WWF – that is variously controlled from Geneva, New York, and London.

That was the end of proper meaningful, locally driven conservation here in Queensland. That was when the transition occurred from conservation being about local things to conservation being run by global multi-national corporations who as it turns out, are quite greedy. Apparently there is quite a lot of money to be made our of carbon credits, not to mention contracts for wind turbines and so it goes on, and on.

I know all of this because at the time I was Environment Manager for the Queensland sugar cane farmers, and like Imogen I was living in Brisbane.

I remember being explained some of this at a function at Queensland Parliament House, where we were served wine and cheese. I remember that there were no chairs.

We stood, sipped, and listened to then Queensland Environment Minister, who was at the time Rod Welford, announce yet another new environmental initiative. We clapped.

Imogen told me money, tens of millions of dollars from rich people in the United States (even from Hollywood), that they wanted to donate to save the Great Barrier Reef. That she would be discussing the roll out of the program, that would inevitably result in better laws and regulations, with Prince Willem-Alexander of Holland.

Dean Wells, a lawyer, was appointed Queensland Environment Minister in 2001, and he began the process of legislative change – especially to our environment and planning laws.

Annastacia Palaszczuk was a member of his staff back then, and she also liaised with Imogen, who liaised with Willem-Alexander who is now the King of Holland.

I once got to fly on the government jet with some of them, all the way from Mackay to Brisbane – that is not very far. They were doing me a favour because my commercial flight had been cancelled, and Annastacia didn’t want me stuck in Mackay overnight – so, she said they could find a seat for me, on the government jet. We travelled together.

This is the same woman who is now the Premier of Queensland. And over the last few years she has been organising for her government to own the $19 billion of pumped hydro, wind, solar and battery projects. That is a lot of money. This is wealth that will be transferred mostly, I suspect, to rich people that Annastacia still feels comfortable traveling with on the government jet.

It is about twenty years since I have travelled on a government jet with Annastacia.

How this time has passed, and so quickly.

I image Willem-Alexander has been ticking the boxes, in terms of what they hopped to achieve back in Sydney when they all meet to watch the Olympics back in 2000.

No doubt he has been proudly relaying how much has actually been achieved, when he gets to meet his cousin (albeit a distant cousin), who is now the King of England. I can’t image they discuss the earnings. They would count it all for the environment. How we kid ourselves, even King Canute, all those 1,000 years ago.

That was also when they had crusades, but not climate crusades.

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The feature image is King Willem-Alexander sporting a WWF-branded cardigan, of sorts.

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