March 2025 – The Saltbush Club

Scorched Earth Disease Control

By Viv Forbes

Way back in 1858 Nongqause, a prophetess of the Xosa Tribe in South Africa, had a vision telling her that all cattle of the tribe would have to be slaughtered, having been reared by contaminated hands. She said that she had met the spirits of three of her ancestors who had told her that the Xhosa people should destroy their crops and kill their cattle. In return, the spirits would sweep the British settlers into the sea. Then their granaries would fill again and their kraals would have more and better cattle.

In the cattle-killing frenzy that followed they killed between 300,000 and 400,000 head of cattle. In the resulting famine, the population of the province dropped from 105,000 to fewer than 27,000. This is a photo of Nongqause’s gravestone:

Neither the cattle nor the Xosa tribe recovered from this deadly cure.

Towns and States Don’t Want Green Energy

By Steve Goreham

Originally published in RealClear Energy.

Trump Administration actions to scale back renewable energy capture headlines, but citizens are also pushing back. Efforts to deploy wind and solar systems face a rising tide of opposition in towns, counties, and states. Mandates for electric vehicles and electric home appliances are being challenged. The combination of rising local opposition and Trump funding cuts threatens to end the transition to green energy.

The green energy revolution in the United States has run almost unopposed for the last two decades. Driven by the fear of human-caused global warming, federal regulators enacted an expanding array of incentives for renewables in the form of mandates, tax credits, loans, and subsidies. States added incentives to push for the adoption of wind, solar, electric vehicles, heat pumps, green hydrogen, and carbon dioxide (CO2) capture systems.

Misplaced Green Energy

By Viv Forbes

Why are we always putting green energy assets in all the wrong places?

The main electricity demand comes from big cities and their industries, so the electricity generators should be nearby, thus reducing capital costs and transmission losses, and supporting local jobs

Why put wind turbines, access roads and power lines in rural and remote areas where there is little demand for electricity, where neighbours hate them, and where they destroy forests, wipe out resident eagles and start bush fires? And of course it is foolish to locate wind turbines anywhere along the cyclone coasts of Queensland, Northern Territory or the Kimberly coast in Western Australia.

Cancel Climate Science – and the Scientists

By Dr. Graham Pinn

There is little debate around climate science, with the much-publicised phrase “The science is settled” used to curtail any dispute. In fact, there is considerable dispute, but it remains unpublished in scientific journals, for fear of loss of job or funding.

A recent international survey, published in The Conversation, found that over 40% of scientists were being harassed or intimidated by their institutions, with climate science being a common indication; the survey did not indicate whether those scientists were protagonist or antagonist to the theory.

There are numerous examples of authors of scientific papers, supporting the CO2 theory, refusing to release underlying details, because others might find errors in their conclusions; there are also many examples of contrary articles being rejected by editors. The “Climategate” scandal of 2009, is just one example of this worldwide phenomenon.