The desert city finally confirmed

Yet again, the Bureau of Meteorology is predicting heavy rainfall for Victoria without the smallest sign of it.

Although not quite as extreme as my previous prediction, the weather since I wrote a month ago is further proof of just how dire the situation is. The evidence from the past month-equivalent’s weather is, without question, that the situation is much worse than I thought last month.

Rainfall for the first sixteen days of October. What is amazing is how the driest areas are almost precisely those where climate models were expecting heavy rainfall! This is proof of the state of runaway climate change brought about by the inability to expropriate the oil sheikhs of the Gulf and coal barons of Australia. Under a just global economic system these super-polluters would have their wealth cut by ten to twelve orders of magnitude without the tiniest compensation!

Last evening, writing on Wikipedia, clouds were so dark I became really confident of some decent rain for the first time in many months.

Total rainfall so far this year, reflecting runaway climate change as a necessary result of failing to expropriate Australia’s coal barons and establish a genuine “boycott, divestment and sanctions” against the Gulf oil sheikhs that would weaken their geopolitical power 

However, as the night wore on with me extremely tired and unable to stay up, I went to bed, but the noisy blinds in my bedroom inhibited my sleep, which was extremely erratic. There were tiny traces of rain, but I was aware by the time I settled that there would not be any rainfall in Melbourne. This morning, I decided to get up earlier than I have in recent days, feeling I had had a reasonable sleep.

Later this morning, my undeniably incurable inability to react to the weather other than emotionally reared its ugly head. Pointing out that it is never going to rain again in Melbourne in a screaming voice, and hitting the kitchen bench with a clenched fist, constitute awful behaviours. Although I am frequently told I like it, I do not!. However, there is no possibility of:

1. it ever raining properly again in Melbourne to calm my anger, or
2. me developing a more measured response when it fails to rain
• I have frequently been told I simply “don’t want to” react in a measured way
• this is utter garbage
• the fact being that I simply cannot and never will be able to react to unfulfilled expectations of rain in a measured manner
• the fact is also that it is many orders of magnitude easier for others to get used to my screaming

The early afternoon saw an even more violent anger on my part about rain. Whilst my brother is willing to see it will rain less — and this has been observed — over the past month and a half it has rained probably one-sixth to one-eighth the amounts predicted when the Bureau of Meteorology made its spring forecast. It is almost definitive that, when above-average rainfall was confidently expected, Melbourne will record its driest spring this year. The city needs to receive more rain in less than half the time to equal the record low 67 millimetres from 1938. Given that predictions in August were for above-average rainfall, it is thus practically certain that Melbourne’s average annual rainfall from 2026 onwards will be substantially less than one-eighth of the historic average. Likely with increasing global warming it will be substantially less than such an already catastrophic decline. One-eighth is around 80 millimetres — corresponding to the record low Victoria annual rainfall of 75.9 millimetres. Given that we should expect less annual rainfall even than that, how low Melbourne’s annual rainfall will be from 2026 onwards is difficult to comprehend. Likely it will be substantially less than 50 millimetres — less than the record low annual rainfalls of Broken Hill or Tibooburra. With that, and similar declines in historically wetter areas, absent an extraordinary revival if class war by the workd's workers Victoria is faced with an ecological carastrophe whereby all native flora are left with unsuitable climates, and even nurseries and gardens cannot survive.

For capitalists, needless to say, a hot desert city is the best of all possible worlds. The hot climate provides the lowest subsistence minimum to pay workers, while the abundant land gives them the advantage in the class war, so capitalists can lower taxes and pressure them downwards elsewhere. They can and do drive capital out of cooler or wetter regions more favourable for the immense majority, and indeed stop labour moving out.

Channelling anger into initial measures with the ultimate goal of expropriating the polluters and ensuring every confiscated cent pays for remedies and compensation at zero cost to the sufferers stands infinitely easier and more likely than the two possibilities noted three paragraphs above. It is also really gross to say that catastrophic climate change is not as bad as having me scream and scream until it rains — which will be never.

Were education not clouded by capitalist dogma and the hegemony of the parasitic super-rich in funding, the facts and solutions re climate change could be understood much more accurately at much less cost at a much younger age. That capitalism is the cause of climate change is undeniably demonstrated by such documents as:

• ‘Elon Musk’s electric planet-suicide vehicle: Automobiles, emissions and degrowth’
• Environment, Capitalism and Socialism (in 1990!)
• The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World
• The Disenchanted Earth: Reflections on Ecosocialism and Barbarism
• ‘Tropical Cyclone Alfred and the politics of “keeping politics out of it”’
• ‘Why only socialism can save us from climate catastrophe’

That genuine socialism — a society in which workers run production without bosses via instantly recallable workers’ councils and production is planned in the collective need — could potentially solve the climate catastrophe with an apparently miraculous rapidity is also virtually undeniable.

That the wealthy oil sheikhs and coal barons have an incomprehensible amount to lose is also undeniable. Indeed, the polluters who gain their wealth from runaway global warming would minimally need to be stripped of all bar one-billionth of their accumulated wealth to reduce that wealth to a level adequate to maintain a society in which mass interest groups actually have any influence upon government policy. Red Flag discussed this in their ‘The United States Is Not a Democracy’ from 2020. After the Kyōtō Protocol, BDS-type campaigns against the Gulf petromonarchies — globally the greatest per capita emitters yet permitted carte blanche emissions increases — were already overdue. However, the blindness of socialist groups obsessed with prewar conflicts with Zionism meant that only in 2015 did anyone even suggest BDS was deserved more by the oil monarchies than by Israel.

“pet room Archie’s”!

Today, attempting to comment upon a recent post by Robert Spencer in Jihad Watch — one, in fact, where I was pleased that he was showing a small inclination to discuss something utterly pivotal to fighting jihad — I saw that I was having my writing corrected, amazingly I felt than and now, to

“pet room Archie’s”!

I laughed so hard at “pet room Archie’s” — a correction repeated twice — that I had to tell my mother and brother, and I still feel amazed.

The correct word I intended to type, of course, was “petromonarchies”. As the graph below from Google Ngram shows, the word “petromonarchies” has existed for almost half a century to describe the Persian Gulf states of Baḥrain, Kuwait, Qaṭar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, alongside the Bornean state of Brunei.

Use over time of the word “petromonarchies” and the phrases “oil monarchy” and “oil monarchies” according to Google Ngram. The singular “petromonarchy” was not found

The word “petromonarchies” has its first documented use (from Ms. magazine) in 1982. That ought to be enough for the web to recognise it, even if the graph above does show “petromonarchies” to have become a more frequently used word since the middle 2000s. “Pet Room Archie’s” sounds so artificial one wonders how it came about unless these were seen as the only possible words with the group of consonants p-t-r-m-r-ch-s.

What is amazing is not merely that “pet room Archie’s” is so funny, but how frivolous it seems. What a “pet room Archie” would be is not clear. What petromonarchies are is anything but frivolous. They are a massive problem for the planet and for the immense majority of the world’s population, because their ability to maintain huge revenue with zero taxes on capital:

1. produces a continuous downward pressure on capital taxation at a global scale
2. prevents the smallest possibility of reducing emissions to curtail climate change
1. this is because doing so would necessarily weaken the power of the petromonarchies
2. as implied by 1), weakening the petromonarchies would reduce or eliminate the downward pressure on capital taxation that has so enriched the world’s richest since the energy crisis
3. allows them to sponsor terrorism that has the effect of weakening the resistance of the world’s lower classes to the upward transfer of wealth made possible by their high revenues and zero taxes on capital

nth year when the desert city finally appears?

Today, despite recent forecasts that a negative IOD would lead to good rainfall over eastern Australia, Melbourne, at a mere 5.4 millimetres, is experiencing its driest September on record after another prediciton of rain overnight “high chance of showers” failed yet again to materialise. In fact, on present trends Melbourne is headed for its driest spring month on record, beating out October 1914 by 1.5 millimetres and November 1895 by 0.6 millimetres. Most likely, Melbourne, despite th forecast of Weatherzone, will see less rain still in October and November. Weatherzone, even said “rain” today but already the sky is clearing!

Despite this Weatherzone forces, no rain has fallen in Melbourne. This will almost certainly be Melbourne’s not merely driest September, but driest spring month and driest year ever — but much, much worse is to come

A fortnight ago, a prediction of 10 millimetres — possibly in fact 15 —of rainfall and heavy thunderstorms was followed up by just 0.6 millimetres of rainfall!

Rainfall for the first sixteen days of September 2025. Note the very dry conditions over the inland southeast, and wet conditions over a central band of NSW and southwestern Australia. Courtesy Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Despite the fact that quite good rainfall over the rapidly drying southwest of Australia has weakened my tendency towards violent temper outbursts over climate change and the three-decades overdue call for expropriation of the fossil fuel polluters to the final cent and immediate transfer of every last cent of their accumulated wealth to renewable energy and compensation for the costs of climate change, the contrast between BOM predictions and actual rainfall in Melbourne — and to a lesser extent the rest of Victoria and the settled parts of South Australia — is so great that something must be utterly wrong with their forecast modelling.

Total Victorian rainfall for the first sixteen days of September, 2025

What has been virtually continuous for most of August and the first half of September is a sustained block that has produced extreme rainfall over Sydney — 530 millimetres over 45 days — and good rainfall over the aridifying southwest of Western Australia. This is, it must be noted, utterly opposite to what Weatherzone is predicting in its analysis of the negative IOD. However, given that based on the late-2000s documentation of Diane J. Seidel, Fu Qiang, William J. Randel and Thomas J. Reichler it is known that the tropics have shifted at least six degrees poleward since 1964 — equivalent to Melbourne shifting to the latitude of Bourke or Coober Pedy— it is to be expected that higher-latitude anticyclonic systems would severely dry out southern Australia.

Given that with a normally wet negative IOD Victoria is experiencing record drought, it can be expected that when the IOD turns positive it will be far, far worse — if that be possible. Two years ago, Melbourne saw just 0.2 millimetres in the last three weeks of September. As we are seeing something equally dry under conditions predicted to be wet, it is virtually certain that — as I have been predicting for two decades and counting — Melbourne’s annual rainfall is headed for an extremely steep decline to levels comparable to historical totals in Australia’s driest deserts or probably even less. So far this year, Melbourne is 7 millimetres below its 1967 record low of 332 millimetres. It is virtually certain that Melbourne will not receive 7 millimetres for the rest of 2025, and will definitively exceedingly rarely — like one year out of twenty or thirty — receive 332 millimetres in a year again. Most years, Melbourne’s annual rainfall will be a tiny fraction of its former 1967 record low, and about what was received in northern South Australia back in 2019.

The extremely low annual rainfall for northern South Australia in 2019 is what will be received in most years from 2026 onwards. Since the late 2000s, it has been known that the tropical belt has shifted sufficiently to place Melbourne in the same zone as the driest areas on this map, and runaway global warming will from now on place Melbourne there without doubt

For the world’s rich capitalists, unfortunately, the hot desert is the best possible environment because it gives bosses the smallest possible subsistence wage to pay workers, as noted two decades ago by Branko Milanovic, Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson. Desert states can also typically out-earn states in less ecologically fragile regions, and thus avoid having to rely upon taxes, creating downward pressure on capital taxation at a global scale.

Without mass international worker struggle to globally

1. expropriate the super-polluters
1. socialists have long demonstrated that the only just rate of capital taxation is 100 percent's and the only just profit rate zero,
2. justice demands that workers keep every single cent of what they produce as wages 
2. trailing the corporate polluters under “workers’ courts”
1. these would undoubtedly find them guilty of theft for their entire accumulated wealth and profits
2. the corporate polluters would then be locked up or executed 
3. the entire loot [profit] corporate polluters have stolen from workers, other poor people and the environment as profits would be returned to the people and completely redirected to achieving zero emissions in the absolute minimum possible time
3. completely abolishing profit and private ownership

nothing can be done to limit damage from climate change, let alone to limit its extent. This has long been documented by countless journals and magazines from Red Flag to Socialism Today to Liberation News to Organization Theory. 

Eight new sequences

Two years ago, I discussed the phenomenon of possible numbers of primes ending in a particular digit [1, 3, 7, or 9] between 100k and 100k+99

For a long time afterwards, I wanted to actually make centuries with the maximum number of primes ending in each of 1, 3, 7 or 9 into a reasonable sequence. However, my inability to use the software used by professional mathematicians to find centuries with unusual prime configurations, alongside the fact that the software is not normally used to find this sort of configuration, made if difficult, Recently, however, over several days and nights I have managed to list all centuries with seven primes ending in the same digit up to 10¹⁰:

Centuries [100k to 100k+99] Containing Seven Primes Ending in the Same Digit Up to 10¹⁰:

1	80562, 812412, 830407, 1922407, 3221175, 4246561, 4699195, 5163822, 5972635, 6889392, 10824559, 11647131, 12871998, 14414719, 15209863, 17067460, 23006325, 24014386, 30768175, 31608072, 32133534, 37443006, 44082616, 44823097, 44980450, 47731935, 48607213, 54022315, 54958684, 58407306, 65250324, 65672949, 72608932, 76150752, 76171500, 76967232, 82229494, 91365756, 93799572, 94346032, 94632495, 97150540, 98820502, 99906057,...
3	0, 190783, 768052, 1089709, 1844258, 2076875, 2386669, 3003353, 3440953, 3645619, 4992263, 6363542, 7768946, 11771275, 12201733, 14280710, 19513177, 19916480, 21137401, 21365041, 23104154, 25313755, 26820232, 29518856, 31861282, 32615117, 36697244, 43681403, 44142899, 44160098, 45218771, 45965531, 47014733, 48467767, 48732661, 49482781, 50885369, 52788433, 53482777, 58303430, 60432874, 67088696, 70714409, 79505765, 79644008, 83922821, 85742996, 87239311, 90260663, 92520958, 98023460,...
7	224241, 1599235, 3884413, 6898356, 8428813, 8759248, 10924537, 11838333, 12435657, 15219837, 16784694, 19087533, 19821189, 20164873, 21484788, 25402399, 25564267, 28697595, 28701604, 33482947, 34976343, 37674297, 39663438, 41820411, 46977862, 50299747, 61913167, 74271037, 77368852, 79458772, 84251478, 86998843, 93082627, 96209697,...
9	211696, 974015, 1173662, 1225261, 1239646, 1790287, 2159824, 2815148, 2972188, 4179688, 5416987, 6741980, 7300811, 9143479, 9945887, 10982447, 12604004, 15818663, 16486988, 16835336, 19558576, 20439547, 24812921, 25024748, 25910927, 27292792, 33721163, 34760854, 36064070, 36880424, 42930020, 43607125, 43869583, 44703220, 53590126, 54638992, 55794473, 55944560, 58510697, 58944284, 61995880, 62609960, 66563149, 70544810, 71355032, 71403374, 78722777, 83384546, 83826323, 90718103, 94922326, 98440832,...

In addition, owing to the irregularity of the first centuries containing six primes ending in each of 1, 3, 7, or 9, I have decided to tabulate these up to sixteen million — slightly more than the first million primes. Searching for centuries containing six primes ending in 1, 3, 7 or 9 using the PARI software would undoubtedly be possible, but working out the formula to do so would be far beyond what I managed to grasp of PARI seeking centuries with seven primes ending in one digit. Thus, I simply used a table of the first million prime numbers, filtered them by modulus (10), and looked for cases where the difference between six successive primes with a given modulus 10 was less than 100. I then filtered these to identify cases where the last six consecutive primes with the same modulus (10) was 7x, 8x or 9x mod (100). I did have to weed out the 80563^rd century with seven primes ending in 1, but a thorough check by this inefficient method, as well as mere memory of that century, can do this:

Centuries [100k to 100k+99] Containing Six Primes Ending in the Same Digit In First Million Primes:

1	42, 2986, 4437, 6747, 9780, 11134, 12067, 12268, 15462, 23970, 24352, 24597, 24679, 24865, 32913, 36714, 37108, 39070, 39087, 50664, 51900, 54151, 54646, 59869, 61486, 61986, 64428, 67922, 70279, 70585, 84277, 85257, 87633, 90775, 96048, 96646, 104044, 106856, 108156, 117270, 117795, 119046, 133342, 143152, 146023, 146610, 150891, 150929, 151393, 161685,...
3	2054, 2413, 3587, 5362, 6418, 8543, 13583, 16067, 17510, 22298, 24829, 27086, 29174, 31238, 31637, 32815, 36557, 44101, 44205, 50690, 55856, 57307, 59132, 73752, 77639, 79441, 82757, 97577, 103202, 109975, 113480, 115622, 125819, 126931, 128113, 132637, 133682, 134963, 135920, 137590, 139583, 143606, 150925, 154184, 158697, 160835, 162620,...
7	0, 1, 3, 9, 16, 69, 313, 633, 1095, 1209, 2197, 2817, 3655, 4002, 4833, 7813, 10488, 12414, 13485, 13966, 14661, 15535, 19134, 19231, 20947, 21148, 25142, 27049, 28414, 30745, 32702, 36606, 46791, 48291, 49437, 49733, 52967, 55350, 56235, 59492, 75370, 75771, 78186, 79635, 79818, 79885, 80410, 84912, 88363, 88404, 89467, 89818, 91023, 91798, 96166, 98953, 123678, 130377, 131415, 132847, 134137, 136383,...
9	4, 14, 175, 320, 397, 1232, 6043, 6373, 6400, 7211, 11837, 12082, 24183, 28337, 28852, 34178, 44419, 54530, 56156, 58384, 64225, 68056, 71338, 73663, 79742, 82910, 85174, 92523, 95314, 95331, 98525, 101641, 102301, 108040, 117880, 129901, 130852, 147371, 150586, 153361,...

Are prime-poor small centuries “expectedly” so?

On Mersenne Forum, there was a recent response to my previous blog post about moduli (3003), showing that not all centuries that are exceptionally poor in prime numbers have unusually few “potential” primes [“potential” primes being defined as numbers not divisible by 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, or 13 according to modulus (3003), with 3003 being the product of the first four primes coprime to 100].

In order to see whether centuries with abnormally few primes actually have few “potential” primes, I have aimed to test the modulus (3003) of every century up to ten million that has a record-low or equal-record-low number of primes (compared to smaller centuries only of course). These centuries, with their modulus (3003) and “potential” primes, are tabulated below

k	Total primes	mod (3003)	Total possible primes	...1	...3	...7	...9
2	16	2	17	5	5	3	4
3	16	3	19	4	5	6	4
5	14	5	18	4	4	5	5
7	14	7	19	4	5	4	6
9	14	9	18	6	3	6	3
11	12	11	17	4	5	3	5
13	11	13	18	4	5	5	4
21	10	21	15	4	5	3	3
24	10	24	18	4	3	6	5
31	10	31	20	6	4	5	5
41	9	41	17	4	4	5	4
43	9	43	21	4	5	6	6
48	8	48	19	7	4	5	3
59	7	59	19	3	6	5	5
95	7	95	18	4	5	5	4
142	7	142	20	4	5	5	6
165	7	165	18	5	3	5	5
167	7	167	19	5	3	5	6
186	6	186	17	5	3	5	4
188	5	188	17	3	4	5	5
273	5	273	20	6	5	5	4
314	4	314	17	3	5	4	5
356	4	356	19	5	4	6	4
524	4	524	18	4	4	6	4
588	3	588	19	5	5	4	5
695	3	695	17	5	4	4	4
797	3	797	16	4	3	5	4
1430	3	1430	17	5	5	3	4
1559	1	1559	17	4	5	4	4
2683	1	2683	20	5	4	4	7
4133	1	1130	17	5	6	3	3
10048	1	1039	20	5	6	5	4
11400	1	2391	18	5	3	5	5
12727	1	715	21	5	5	7	4
12800	1	788	19	3	6	5	5
13572	1	1560	21	6	4	6	5
14223	1	2211	19	6	4	4	5
14443	1	2431	19	5	3	6	5
14514	1	2502	16	3	4	5	4
14680	1	2668	21	5	5	6	5
14913	1	2901	19	4	4	6	5
15536	1	521	19	4	7	4	4
15619	1	604	20	5	4	4	7
16538	1	1523	17	4	6	3	4
16557	1	1542	18	5	4	5	4
16718	0	1703	20	6	6	3	5
26378	0	2354	17	5	5	3	4
31173	0	1143	17	4	4	5	4
39336	0	297	18	3	4	6	5
46406	0	1361	18	5	5	4	4
46524	0	1479	17	4	3	6	4
51782	0	731	17	4	6	3	4
55187	0	1133	16	3	4	4	5
58374	0	1317	20	5	6	6	3
58452	0	1395	19	6	4	6	3
60129	0	69	20	6	5	6	3
60850	0	790	19	5	5	4	5
63338	0	275	16	4	5	2	5
63762	0	699	19	5	4	6	4
67898	0	1832	17	3	5	4	5
69587	0	518	20	5	5	3	7
71299	0	2230	20	6	4	4	6
75652	0	577	20	5	5	5	5
78035	0	2960	20	4	5	5	6
78269	0	191	19	5	5	4	5
80277	0	2199	18	5	4	5	4
83674	0	2593	19	5	4	5	5
84213	0	129	19	3	5	6	5
89052	0	1965	19	6	4	4	5
95490	0	2397	17	5	4	5	3
97080	0	984	18	5	3	5	5

Results:

If we consider all centuries up to ten million that have an (equal) record low number of primes vis-à-vis preceding centuries, we find that:

“Potential primes”	All centuries	%	“Record few” centuries	%	Difference in %	Difference in ratio
15	4	0.13%	1	1.41%	1.28%	1057.39%
16	46	1.53%	4	5.63%	4.10%	367.79%
17	244	8.13%	17	23.94%	15.82%	294.68%
18	580	19.31%	13	18.31%	-1.00%	94.80%
19	954	31.77%	19	26.76%	-5.01%	84.24%
20	725	24.14%	13	18.31%	-5.83%	75.84%
21	336	11.19%	4	5.63%	-5.56%	50.35%
22	88	2.93%	0	0.00%	-2.93%	0.00%
23	26	0.87%	0	0.00%	-0.87%	0.00%

The table does seem to indicate systematic differences between centuries with the fewest primes up to that point, and all centuries, in terms of the number of potential primes. Whilst it is true that the proportion of moduli (3003) yielding 22 or 23 “potential primes” is very small, it is revealing that no century up to ten million with a record low number of primes has so many. With 19, 20 and 21 “potential primes”, the difference appears to be just as systematic inasmuch as the proportion of centuries with a record small number of primes having so many is consistently fewer than of all centuries. Contrariwise, for 15, 16 and 17 “potential primes”, the proportion is consistently higher for centuries with record few primes than for all centuries. This does imply that centuries with a record small number of primes do have a distinct tendency to have fewer “potential primes” than other centuries, even if the tendency is not consistent enough to apply to every such century.