An atrocious waste of money when farmers are doing it as tough as they are and people are homeless.
Stop the Govt spending $50m on commemorating Cooks first Voyage!
What Makes A Difference
What We Do In Life Echoes In Eternity
This puts a whole new slant on our daily decisions!
How To Store Without Plastic
I thought tomatoes and bananas were better kept out of hte fridge…
Fish kill shows Murray-Darling Basin Authority failure
I love it when someone has the time to dig into the records to disprove the lies told by the climate change alarmists!
Numerous dead fish now floating down the Darling River and in the Menindee Lakes is more evidence that the Murray-Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) has mismanaged the basin, as the CEC has long documented. So-called “environmental flows” since the MDBA’s notorious “Basin Plan” commenced in 2012 have flushed precious water into swamps and out to sea, and in the process caused riverbank erosion previously never seen. Now there’s no water left when it’s needed most! And the failure to build the Clarence River Scheme—which has been on the books in some form since at least the early 1920s—means that water from the flash flooding that hit the Clarence Valley in October 2018 did not get to flow down the Darling River.
As of 22 January, the Menindee Lakes held a mere 3.6 per cent of their capacity. The lakes have an official nominal combined capacity of 1,731 gigalitres (GL), three and half times the capacity of Sydney Harbour, but during floods can fill to more than 2,000 GL. Under the “environmental flow” regime, water may be released to leave a mere 480 GL (28 per cent) in the lakes. Environmental releases from the lakes have enraged many locals at Broken Hill who depend on the water. They blamed a release of about 300 GL in late 2012 and early 2013 as contributing to the lakes running dry. Dam levels recovered in 2016 with good rains from August through to December. But from mid-December 2016 to present, dam levels have continuously trended downwards. Despite this, in October 2017 the MDBA ordered the release of about 70 GL of water, much to the horror of many locals as the ABC’s Sofie Wainwright reported from Broken Hill at the time: “Given that Lake Victoria is 99 per cent full and there’s more than 90 per cent water in Lake Hume, I was hoping that they wouldn’t be considering [releases] until 2018”, Lower Darling irrigator Rachel Strachan said.
These “environmental flows” were never based on sound science. Numerous reports identify that some of these flows are so damaging that several metres of river frontage are lost to erosion. Riverside trees collapse under these man-made floods and silt has been clogging up pumps and tanks at rates never seen before. The CEC reported in a media release on 14 December 2010 that Snowy Hydro, in government mandated “environmental flows”, was releasing 4,000-5,000 ML/day into the already flooded Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers, risking increased flood damage.
Historical evidence
As bad as the current fish kill is, any simplistic talk of blaming “climate change” or “over-allocation of water rights” to irrigators ignores historical facts. The Age of 11 February 1903 reported that one Captain Anderson had recently described thousands of dead fish in the Darling River, “nearly all of them very large ones, on the surface of the river”. The Bathurst Times of 11 November 1914 reported that in the Darling River, “the fish were dying in thousands”. The Murray Pioneer of 4 June 1920 reported: “The River Darling is reputed to have recently reached the lowest ebb ever witnessed by the oldest inhabitant along its banks. … [It] had the effect of killing large numbers of fish in and around Wilcannia.” In the NSW Parliament’s Hansard of 16 October 1929, member for Murray Mat Davidson referred to “the fact that an excessive number of dead fish are being carried down the Darling River”. The Barrier Miner (a Broken Hill newspaper) of 8 November 1929 reported the Darling River was very low and dead fish, some as large as 50 lb (23 kg), floated down the river from above Wilcannia (130 km north-east of Menindee) to Cal Lal (on the Murray River about 10 km from the South Australian border). “The cause of death is a mystery. One man, speaking on the matter, said: ‘Of late there have been more dead fish than water coming down’.” The Dubbo Liberal of 30 January 1951, with an article headlined “Darling River Smells of Dead Fish”, reported that “The death of so many fish will mean years must elapse before they breed sufficiently to replace losses.” Authorities were unable to explain the cause of this colossal fish kill.
Blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) are said to be the cause of the present fish kill. Warm conditions and low water levels assisted a massive bloom, but a cold front hit the region and killed the algae. Bacteria feeding on the dying algae sucked the oxygen out of the water. This killed the fish. But algal blooms in Australian rivers are not a new issue either. As the Wagga Wagga Express of 22 April 1933 reported, a conference of users of Murray River water was held at Echuca to discuss “every aspect of … pollution by algae, and its effect on the public health and the dairying industry”.
Dam solution
The Clarence River Scheme is the answer. It addresses the algae problem too, as Prof. Lance Endersbee described in a speech to the CEC on 23 November 23 1997: “There is the catchment of the Clarence River and it is a wonderful little cup in there and very steep country, high rainfall and one of the highest rainfall areas in Australia, and they get the summer rains from the monsoons coming down and they get the winter rains as well. … So I have worked out, designed a scheme for the diversion of the Clarence into the Darling. Now, as you know, there are a lot of algae in the Darling…. This would flush all the algae out of the Darling.” Prof. Endersbee went on to explain how hydroelectric generation capacity will make this scheme economic. But the economic advantages don’t stop here! Flood damage in the Clarence region, costing many millions of dollars, will be mitigated in future. Billions of dollars’ worth of new agricultural products will be generated every year. And rather than wasting $3.1 billion of taxpayers’ money to purchase water, only to flush it into swamps and out to sea, the government could allocate such funds to help improve the lives of Australians for a change!
Brilliant Moon Shot!
Change The Way We Talk
Chook Not Cooked
Had a chuckle at this one. Hope you do too! Happy Australia Day!
Childhood Diseases Protect Against Cancer
Febrile infectious childhood diseases (FICDs) are associated with a lower cancer risk in adulthood.
A Swiss study found that adults are significantly protected against non-breast cancers — genital, prostate, gastrointestinal, skin, lung, ear-nose-throat, and others — if they contracted measles (odds ratio, OR = 0.45), rubella (OR = 0.38) or chickenpox (OR = 0.62) earlier in life:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/9824838/
Chicken pox and reduced rates of brain cancer in adulthood:
https://www.bcm.edu/news/cancer/chicken-pox-may-reduce-risk-of-brain-cancer
Mumps and reduced rates of ovarian cancer:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10552-010-9546-1
Measles and reduced risk of lymphomas
https://physiciansforinformedconsent.org/measles/dis/
And on the contrary….both the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) and chicken pox vaccine contain human DNA which has been linked to childhood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma, autoimmune diseases and gender identify confusion….
https://www.facebook.com/marcellaterry/posts/10214742184256064
Food Fascism Is On The Rise
Fascism was a very bad idea. It turned the 20th century into a holocaust.
Fascism, essentially, means telling other people what to think and do, by naked force if necessary. Medical fascism has surfaced in the constraints to compel parents to have their children vaccinated. Differing opinions are branded as madness, delusion and/or criminality. NO-ONE MAY HOLD A CONTRARY VIEW TO THE CONSENSUS. Absolutely no dissent is tolerated.
One of Hitler’s slogans was, “If you are not with us, you are against us.” That position is logical nonsense but it silenced a lot of critics.
We are starting to get the same intolerance in relation to food and diets. Vegan fascism is emerging. Apparently, if you don’t care to follow their path, you are dumb, lunatic or cruel. Not only must you eat the way they do, but you must do so for the RIGHT reasons!
Sounds silly? I have very good friends who are vegans, but not from issues of animal cruelty, just health reasons. They feel much better eating vegan. Recently this couple went on a vegan cruise and were astonished to find themselves ostracized, because they explained to fellow cruisers they were vegans because they were “plantarians” (plant eaters by choice), not because they were animal lovers or activists.
That wasn’t enough for the thought police mob. Being vegan wasn’t enough. It was implied they must be cruel, evil people if they were not doing it because they were concerned about animal welfare!
Ugh!
Vivien pointed out for me that there are now bands of vegans roaming the streets, carrying placards and bursting in on diners in restaurants, screaming abuse, chanting slogans about animal cruelty and showing horrific pictures purportedly of farming practices they object to.1
It’s all dogma, of course, just like Nazism was all dogma. Dangerous dogma. I’m worried that we are not too far from the era when animal “activists” will actually hurt or kill humans who don’t share their concerns.
The Planetary Diet
I don’t know how many of you saw the recent brouhaha about another stream of food fascism. Someone has proposed that we must all eat responsibly, to “save the planet”. I’ve heard of lots of daft reasons to justify different diets: but politics instead of health?
The UK Guardian picked up on this story and I got it via MedScape, the doctors’ online newspaper. We must all, we are told, cut our intake of red meat and sugar consumption by half, while vegetables, fruit, pulses and nuts must double. North Americans need to eat 84% less red meat but six times more beans and lentils. For Europeans, eating 77% less red meat and 15 times more nuts and seeds meets the guidelines.2
The image above is it is as a graphic.
It translates to eating just 7g of pork a day, 7g of beef or lamb and 28g of fish – the equivalent of a quarter of a rasher of bacon, a 16th of a burger and two-thirds of a fish finger.
There is no concept of food allergies or intolerance in this “scientifically studied” diet, even though we already know that grains are very bad for the brain and carbs are very bad for metabolic health and diabetes! Beans and lentils too can be pretty toxic, unless cooked really well, which ruins their nutritional worth. It even recommends 31 grams daily of sugar, which is nothing short of criminal. Of course you can’t expect much integrity from a bunch of frauds who got paid serious money to “find” and recommend what the person who funded the study wanted to be “found”.
But the diet is a “win-win”, according to the scientists paid to come up with this plan. It would save at least 11 million people a year from deaths caused by unhealthy food, while preventing the collapse of the natural world that humanity depends upon. Just plain opinions, plucked from the air by “scientists” does not make it science.
As usual The Guardian newspaper (only one step up from communist “Daily Worker”) got it all wrong. This EAT-Lancet diet they said was created by an “international commission”, making it sound very official. You’ll laugh (or spit) when I tell you WHO actually commissioned it…
Norwegian model turned doctor, wife-of-a-billionaire, Gunhild Stordalen funded this vaunted study. She thinks she’s going to save the planet by reducing red meat consumption globally.
This hypocrite wants to tell people what they must eat, to avert planetary disaster, yet she jets around the world in her $25 million Bombardier Challenger 350 private plane, releasing pollution and a massive carbon footprint wherever she goes.
Stordalen has rightly been accused of hypocrisy after flaunting her wealth on her Instagram channel, showing herself and her husband Petter jetting off to Cuba, Spain, Antibes and Mexico. Aircraft fuel consumption and emissions are far more damaging to the environment than the farting of livestock, which is what the scientists were most concerned about, apparently.
Mike Carrato (@MikeCarrato) did the Googling for me and found that a cross country round trip private flight releases about 42 tons of carbon. Another Google estimate was that each cow emits about 6 tons a year. So Stordalen consumes about 7 cows PER TRIP! That’s also her projected beef quota for 20 people for A WHOLE YEAR, every trip.
Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, told the UK Daily Mirror: ‘The hypocrisy of this is breathtaking. This is a campaign telling ordinary people they should be eating less than half a rasher of bacon per day for the sake of the environment, while the patron is flying people around the world in private jets creating one enormous carbon footprint.
This is a classic case of do as I say not as I do. Militant environmentalists can’t resist the chance to tell people how to live their lives and demonise everyday items of food.3
Nutritional Science
There is something fundamentally bad about nutritional science. It is heavily perverted and corrupted by those on an agenda, causing a great deal of confusion over WHAT to eat. Take the 2013 PREDIMED study (Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Diseases with a Mediterranean Diet), billed as one of the most important recent diet studies published.4
It found what we all know: the Mediterranean Diet is good. Eating like the Spanish, Italians, and Greeks do—dousing food in olive oil and loading up on fish, nuts, and fresh produce—cuts cardiovascular disease risk by a third. As Stanford University health researcher (and a famous critic of lousy nutrition science) John Ioannidis put it, as a study: “It was the best. The best of the best.”
Not anymore. In June 2018, the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine issued a rare retraction. Apparently the process of randomization was not done correctly. Far from being scientifically excellent, PREDIMED now appears to be quite flawed.
NEJM republished a new version of PREDIMED, based on a reanalysis of the data that accounted for the missteps.5 It did not change the finding that the Mediterranean Diet was remarkably healthful. But it was a warning to those who want to trust institutional science. Beware!
To date, PREDIMED remains the largest dietary intervention trial to assess the effects of the Mediterranean diet on cardiovascular disease prevention. It is far more telling and prescriptive than the deceptive one from Ms. Stordalen (sorry, Dr. Stordalen).
Basically, Stordalen has commissioned and launched a scam. Walter Willett is the principal nutritionist on the EAT-Lancet report. The other nutritionists on the paper have published almost nothing on the subject of diet and disease, and nothing that contradicts Willett’s views. Thus, on the subject of diet and health, the report presents only one viewpoint. This report cannot be considered a balanced paper.
Nor can Willett be taken seriously as an objective, unbiased scientist. Look at these conflicts of interest, found by Nina Techolz @BigFatSurprise and reported on her Twitter Channel.6
In fact we cannot take any of these so-called “experts” seriously because, according to The Sun reporter Nick McDermott, none of them ate the recommended diet!7
Let me finish by saying I have no issue with someone being a vegan. But I DESPISE self-righteous fools trying to take over other people’s thoughts and lives. It’s fascism, by any other name.
To freedom!
Prof. Keith Scott-MumbyThe Official Alternative Doctor
References:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6301237/Vegan-protesters-kicked-steakhouse-storming-restaurant.html https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/16/new-plant-focused-diet-would-transform-planets-future-say-scientists https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/16/new-plant-focused-diet-would-transform-planets-future-say-scientists Estruch R, Ros E, Salas-Salvadó J, Covas MI, Corella D, Arós F, Gómez-Gracia E, Ruiz-Gutiérrez V, Fiol M, Lapetra J, Lamuela-Raventos RM. Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease with a Mediterranean diet. New England Journal of Medicine. 2013 Apr 4;368(14):1279-90. Estruch R, Ros E, Salas-Salvadó J, Covas MI, Corella D, Arós F, Gómez-Gracia E, Ruiz-Gutiérrez V, Fiol M, Lapetra J, Lamuela-Raventos RM. Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease with a mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts. New England Journal of Medicine. 2018 Jun 13. https://isupportgary.com/uploads/articles/397606854-Walter-Willett-Potential-Conflicts-of-Interest.pdf https://isupportgary.com/articles/is-the-eat-lancet-vegan-rule-book-hijacking-health