I am currently debating several people about global warming on the talk.origins newsgroup.
Only I and one other person are espousing the skeptical viewpoint. The rest are committed warmists.
A couple of the warmists are claiming that about 10% of the longwave radiation being released by the earth is absorbed by the 0.04% of the atmosphere that is CO2, and that even a slight increase in the CO2 will cause big warming.
Does anyone have a source for how much of that radiation is absorbed by CO2? I find it difficult to believe that such a tiny percentage of CO2 could absorb such a large percentage of radiation.
Any of you who are so inclined, please feel free to join our discussion there. I am an economist by trade, so I have a good knowledge of statistics but not so good in the natural sciences.
Get hold of the Infrared absorption spectrums of water & CO2.
The difference between the 2 should be a sufficient talking point, as most of the CO2 absorption wavelengths are masked by water vapour. There is only a tiny amount that CO2 could absorb.
This won’t convince them anyway, but good luck trying.
James:
Watts up with that.com/2008/06/21/a window on water vapor-and-planetary-temperature-part2/
(I would suggest Google).
Frankly I think debating with these people is a waste of time. They refuse to accept any facts or information which does not conform to their beliefs, see any series of comments on these pages from John Brookes. Good luck anyway.
Warning. There is lots to read and it is all layman talk but you might get some ideas. Good luck. Feel free to use anything you want but on your head be it. š I find greenies get cross if they can’t find an answer.
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I coded up the img src code in your comment (sorry the machine may or may not let you use the html š )
But the link is not quite right. Just ask the mods to help if you get the right link. – Jo
James, the 10% figure is a red herring.
Even alarmist climate modelers agree that CO2 on it’s own will only cause 1.2C if it doubles. The real action is not CO2 but the feedbacks, which mostly involve water vapor. So the modelers could be right on CO2 but if they are wrong on clouds and humidity there is no catastrophe.
As I mentioned on facebook (but may not have explained well) the water vapor bands are wider and there is a lot more water vapor as well. Blocking some CO2 bands still means energy can escape through other wavelengths – especially H20 wavelengths.
I suspect they get the 10% figure from Trenberth’s Global Energy Budget. The total back-radiation from all sources according to Trenberth is 333W/sq.m and back-radiation from CO2 is 32W/sq.m. That works out at about 10%. It seems rather high to me though. I mean we know that CO2 by volume makes up about 4% of the atmospheric greenhouse and water vapour makes up about 96% (Source: NASA Earth Fact Sheet gives 0.038% for CO2 and 1% for water vapour) with other greenhouse gases like methane existing in negligible trace amounts. As well as being significantly more abundant than CO2 water vapour also absorbs IR-radiation over a far wider spectrum. Even if CO2 does absorb 10% of the radiation emanating from Earth though that still gives them only about 1C of warming as Jo sayas. The debate is all about the feedbacks.
Don’t trust percentages or in particular don’t trust warmists wielding percentages. As Jo says challenge them to provide sources and numbers in real units.
Until you know the real numbers you don’t know what they’re talking about, as I suspect they don’t either.
Unqualified percentages are a great bamboozle device.
Thanks to Graeme, Richard and Joanne for your assistance. I can see now what the warmists are trying to do. Like every other argument they make, they will take some little fact out of context and try to twist it around to prove their point.
Actually, they’ll quote a figure, pulled out of thin air that “sounds like somebody worked it out”. I’m surprised they didn’t say 9.8%, because that number is much more credible!
Typically, they’re just recycling garbage that they’ve been fed.
If CO2 absorbs radiation, then it cannot re-radiate. i.e. the “back-radiation” cannot happen because the energy can only be used once.
The re-radiation happens in tiny fractions second, if that is what happens. In 50% or more of the case of re-radiation, it will be towards space, because the CO2 molecule is in the air above the ground; above a spheroid. The higher up the CO2, the more likely it is that it’ll radiate to space; that’s simple (spherical) geometry.
If the CO2 does absorb the energy, then it would heat it, increasing its velocity and therefore the likelihood that it’ll collide with a colder N2 or O2 molecule. When they get more energy, they will, like any other gas including CO2, become more buoyant and tend to convect upwards away from the surface, removing heat more rapidly from the surface by drawing colder air across it.
Once the heat (energy) is in the gas, it will tend to stay in it for a long time because most of the surfaces that it’s likely to encounter will be warmer; and gases are ALL poor radiators of heat as they have negligible surface area. That IMNSHO is the fundamental reason for the atmosphere being warm(er) than that predicted by simplistic physics models.
In our atmosphere, it’s the water cycle that does much to cool the atmosphere when condensation occurs and droplets form. Those droplets can radiate millions of times better than a gas of the same volume. And they can cool down to well below the temperature of the surrounding bulk of air; and cool air in it the proximity of the droplets.
Without condensation and the formation of a surface area, water in the air as a gas (vapour) is a substantial means of heat storage… humid nights feel warmer because there is more heat stored per unit volume, and it’s not going to lose that heat until condensation is triggered.
All of the above is from “first principles”; something seemingly forgotten by most climate modellers; perhaps deliberately because it’s impossible to model numerically to build a model with any useful predictability beyond 36 hours. Boundary conditions and many other unknown quantities and yet-to-be-determined (e.g. droplet nucleation) processes produce “chaotic results”.
If CO2 absorbs radiation, then it cannot re-radiate. i.e. the āback-radiationā cannot happen because the energy can only be used once.
I can see that there is a lot wrong with the so-called āphysicsā of CAGW, but I do not see how the concept of back-radiation is an artefact of wrong physics and why it “cannot happen”. It is my understanding that all material bodies in the universe possessing any temperature above -273Ā°C radiates energy into their surroundings and CO2 in the atmosphere is no exception to that rule. Furthermore every such warm body is held to be radiating its energy in all directions. Therefore āback-radiationā seems inevitable to me and I can find nothing wrong with it conceptually.
While it is true that most of the radiation from CO2 will be absorbed by other molecules in its immediate environment, perhaps within a few meters, a small but nevertheless real amount must make it down to the surface. By my understanding Beer-Lambert law holds that radiation can very be completely absorbed and that some will continue its never-ending journey to infinity, implying that some radiation, however small, must reach the Earthās surface where it will be absorbed. And when a body absorbs radiation, no matter from what source, its internal temperature increases in accordance with the 1st law of thermodynamics.
I think the arguments that back-radiation cannot exist and that AGW violates thermodynamics are based on a misunderstanding of physics. Even Postma confuses a thermodynamically closed-system with an open-system by comparing the Earth-Sun-Atmosphere relationship with a flask.
To clarify:
If CO2 has absorbed the photon’s energy, then that different from re-radiation (some of which is “back-radiation”).
Radiation can only be achieved if there is enough energy available to emit at the corresponding wavelength.
In the case of re-radiation, the photon can be thought to “bounce” off the CO2 in a random direction. In a spherical direction. The surface of the Earth subtends less than 50% of all spherical angles from a CO2 molecule above the surface, becoming smaller with increasing altitude so the probability of it being back-radiation diminishes.
The re-radiation happens so quickly that the energy cannot be considered to have been absorbed. Using the term “absorbed” can be misinterpreted as the photon being stored indefinitely. CO2 isn’t a “sponge” for infra-red photons.
My primary objection was to the use of the word “absorbed” in conjunction with “back-radiation”.
You are correct that warmists will quote something out of context. There lots of other tactics they employ. Here are just a few.
1. Discourage people from examining and questioning the evidence for themselves. In many subjects, like history and economics, understanding is brought about by this questioning, along with comparing and contrasting different conclusions.
2. Polarization into “scientists” and “skeptics”. In so doing they fail to state that different interpretations are possible, nor the diverse skills required in climatology. The also fail to address issues about quality of the science, or how new methods or data can undermine established scientific opinion.
3. Failure to distinguish between science and policy. To understand policies like the carbon tax or emissions trading needs skills in economics and public-policy making.
4. Failure to distinguish between the positive (facts and scientific theories) from the normative (what ought to be). Much of the dogma is around environmentalist ideology, and a refusal to recognize that any other views are possible.
5. Failure to address issues of magnitude and relevancy. Like how a few million dollars of funding by a business can completely undermine the billions poured into climate alarmism.
6. Failure to trumpet successes. If science is as unintelligible to lesser mortals, they could show a good track record in predictive successes. Things like accelerating surface temperature rises, accelerating sea level rises, lack of snow in England, hurricanes getting worse etc.
7. Biased language, both positively (Nobel-Prize winning scientist, Professor …..), or negatively (well-known climate denier / blogger etc.)
8. Plain old lying about the science, the meaning of the data and the fact that there isn’t a single shred of detectable warming from GHGs, since anything happening is buried in the noise of everyday temperature differences.
But isn’t lying so easy when you haven’t a clue where the numbers come from or what they meanand then is it really lying š
RC and ‘Skeptical’ Science site exist to pump out such ready made factoids for largely unwitting warmist followers to regurgitate with conviction.
Well, Joe, if those who say Bush lied when in fact he acted as any prudent leader would on the basis of the best available information at the time, can continue that nonsense claim on into the future seemingly forever, then I can claim lying on the part of the global warming pushers. š
But doesn’t it go deeper than that? How many of them have manipulated data to make it show what it otherwise couldn’t show? Has not the top dog at CRU admitted that there hasn’t been any statistically significant warming as of the time of the interview; yet they continue to claim all sorts of hottest years on record?
When it’s a lie we need to call it a lie.
Then there’s the matter of how to deal with such as skepticalscience. How many times do they need to be confronted with the evidence against them and allowed to ignore it before we can call them liars? Bush acknowledged that the information he was given turned out to be wrong. Now what about skepticalscience and their ilk?
I believe the hydrogen atom is more responsive to IR….is it a tri state atom? Something like that anyway thats why methane CH4 and water H2O are a lot more reactive in the IR band than CO2 maybe you could attack them from this angle although it does involve physics so maybe not.
Hi James (aka junglejim?),
You are certainly up against it with this lot. Most of the usual arguments are thrown back, eg the GISS chart, but no mention of Pachauri, Met Office UK, Trenberth etc conceding (quietly or resentfully) that there has been no significant warming for 15-17 years.
I read as much as I could stand, and it seems the “accepted” theory is the thermal one, eg conduction, thermal balance, no apparent recognition of the importance of convection, ENSO or any other cycles etc.
As I have said before here, if this theory was right, here in the tropics we would already be experiencing the warming they are on about. We aren’t. I recall the odd “hot” summer in the 90s, but nothing comparable since. It still cools down, takes a bit longer if there is cloud cover, but always well before dawn.
NASA’s arguements say one thing one minute and the opposite the next.
– http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence
“Certain facts about Earth’s climate are not in dispute:
The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.2Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many JPL-designed instruments, such as AIRS. Increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response”.
BUT…….
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āA recent NASA report throws the space agency into conflict with its climatologists after new NASA measurements prove that carbon dioxide acts as a coolant in Earthās atmosphere. NASAās Langley Research Center has collated data proving that āgreenhouse gasesā actually block up to 95 percent of harmful solar rays from reaching our planet, thus reducing the heating impact of the sun. The data was collected by Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry, (or SABER). SABER monitors infrared emissions from Earthās upper atmosphere, in particular from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances thought to be playing a key role in the energy balance of air above our planetās surface.ā Tiny URL:
– http://tinyurl.com/ljyqxbzhttp://www.drudge.com/news/167663/nasa-study-proves-carbon-dioxide-cools
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NASA ā The Report: Solar Storm Dumps Gigawatts into Earthās Upper Atmosphere Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/6rdou6xhttp://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/
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NASA ā The Movie. CO2 ScienceCasts: The Surprising Power of a Solar Storm http://tinyurl.com/mcxd683http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEFQHDSYP1I
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See The Two Minute Conservative via Google or: http://adrianvance.blogspot.com and when you speak ladies will swoon and liberal gentlemen will weep. http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/163-new-discovery-nasa-study-proves-carbon-dioxide-cools-atmosphere.html#.UVYwRz4bXF4.facebook
– http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/06/28/al-gore-lied/
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As Tony Abbott stated on ABC24 – ” The Carbon Tax is socialism wrapped up as environmentalism”.
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CO2 is a ātrace gasā in air, insignificant by definition. It absorbs 1/7th as much IR, heat energy, from sunlight as water vapor which has 80 times as many molecules capturing 560 times as much energy in the form of latent heat [ steam ]. Oxygen and Nitrogen absorb 4 times more IR heat energy than CO2. For this we should destroy our economy?
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Control and taxing of carbon [CO2] will place the productive working class at the mercy of the unproductive money power.
I used to be taken in by the idea that the amount of CO2 is important, IF, the scheme had any sense at all.
We all know that water and methane are also active in “soaking up” heat energy and obliterate any effect from man made CO2 which is about 3% of all CO2.
The ultimate reason that amount of CO2 does not matter is that CO2 is forced by Universal Gas Laws to distribute any heat gain almost instantaneously to other nearby gas molecules species.
The warm gas parcel then rises and takes the “trapped” energy that one step closer to deep space where it is radiated away from Earth.
The limiting factor in the process is not CO2 but the amount of SUNSHINE reaching Earths surface.
Whatever, Man Made CO2 is so so inconsequential compared to natural CO2 and water and this whole thing is a gigantic scam with no scientific/ engineering basis.
I’ve been arguing with the warmists on talk.origins for a few days now. Their arguments get lamer and stupider by the minute and they often result to insults.
Like many people of their ilk, they rarely if ever listen to dissenting opinions on global warming or any other subject. So they have been using tired old arguments that have been refuted years ago.
When I raised the matter of the medeival warm period (MWP), and asked how the temperatures warmed during that time without any increase in CO2 emissions, a couple of them tried to raise the ridiculous argument that the MWP was confined to Europe. They had never heard of Loehle and McCulloch’s 2008 paper that uses temperature proxies from all over the world going back 2,000 years and shows a strong warming period in medeival times:
And then some of the idiots tried to mention Mann’s hockey stick papers that show little or no MWP. Most of them have never even heard of how McItyre and McKitrick debunked that flawed research years ago.
Global warming is more like a religion than science.
Another thing one of the warmists on talk.origins tried was the Venusian atmosphere analogy. Another stupid argument.
It goes something like this: Venus’ atmosphere is about 97% CO2. At the surface the temperature is about 460 degrees celsius. Look what happens when you increase the CO2 concentration!
The only problem with that are there are two other important differences between the Venusian and the terrestial atmospheres. For one thing, Venus is in an orbit about 27 million miles closer to the sun than the earth is. Solar radiation decreases with the square of the distance.
Also, the Venusian atmosphere is extremely dense. About 90 times that of the earth, at the surface.
Not at all surprising that Venus is a bit hotter than earth.
I’m waiting for Bob Carters new book to arrive. There was an interesting point in the ad about a 69 year drought in Australia on the geological records. I look forward to finding out more about this. It certainly gives some context to short term observations and projections of rainfall. It would make an excellent heckling point in an interview with Flannery.
Of course, their usual retort to previous record-breaking events is that although these exceptions occurred in the past, they are now becoming the ‘new normal’, we have reached a ‘tipping point’ and ‘it’s worse than we thought’. All this in the face of empirical evidence which demonstrates the complete opposite.
I watched a National Geographic doco on ‘Superstorm Sandy’ last night. Interesting, despite the overblown American-style narration. But it was a 40-minute lead-up to a 5-min conclusion that we are all going to see more of the same much more often and it will get worse much faster than we expect. Yet the ACE index shows a lull in storm activity. And the US is currently in the longest hurricane drought since records began. Sandy was not a hurricane upon US landfall, just a big storm coinciding with a full-moon high tide, and coming after a lot of rain resulting in many trees coming down across power lines causing fires everywhere plus extensive flooding. Armageddon soundbites all over the place. Ideal canvas for the likes of Scott Mandia to issue dire warnings about the coming apocalypse.
The BBC has been running a news segment on the heatwave in south-west US.
To my amazement, the word ‘climate’ never appeared, nor was there any discussion of ‘records’ or the like. At the end, they even had an interview with a local resident.
BBC (voiceover): But some people say this is nothing new.
Resident: “I was here in 1990. Compared with that, this is just a breeze.”
I think that they’re beginning to realise that anything they say in the context of a seventeen year absence of GW sounds, well, unconvincing, particularly as the amount of atmospheric CO2 continues its time lagged gentle climb and the biomass flourishes. More importantly, I think they realise that we realise they sound unconvincing.
NBC here in the states has tied the western heat wave to climate change — and they are not even talking about how much cooler the eastern United States is compared to last year.
It’s certainly hot, 99 F (37.2 C) on my patio yesterday, which is not our usual summer day with a nice ocean breeze usually keeping us cooler. But that’s been a normal thing all the time I’ve lived here. Sometimes conditions are right and it gets hot. Do they claim it breaks any record? I’ll stick my neck out and say no (I don’t watch NBC).
My office is in the western end of the San Fernando Valley northwest of Los Angeles. 100 degree plus temperatures have been a summertime norm there for as long as records have been kept. The prediction for Friday was 99 degrees (F). I don’t know what it actually got up to but it was hot. And it was by no means a record setter. I’ve worked for that company since 1996 and summer days are always pushing or exceeding 100 degrees at some time or another.
I live in west-central Arkansas. The “normal” high temperatures this time of year is low to mid 90s and very humid. It was 99Ā°F (37.2Ā°C) on Thursday. Today may not get to 80Ā°F (26.7Ā°C)and the next 10 days are all forecast for highs in the 80s. The June 30th high here last year, on the other hand, was 106Ā°F (41.1Ā°C).
Yet the media doesn’t report on the good weather stories such as the relief from the drought that hit the middle of the country so hard last year. Instead they hype and amplify the weather stories that have the most entertainment value, it seems.
Yet the media doesnāt report on the good weather stories such as the relief from the drought that hit the middle of the country so hard last year. Instead they hype and amplify the weather stories that have the most entertainment value, it seems.
Mike,
Yep, it’s all for the ratings. Good things don’t draw viewers but tell people they’ve a problem and you have an instant constituency = higher ratings. Then voila, advertising dollars roll in.
I’d say it’s not the entertainment value but the fear factor.
Our usual summer temperatures at home are about mid to upper 80s with lower humidity. But by 5 or 6 PM sometimes it can get too cool to stay out on the patio until dark.
Personally I’ve seen 122 F before, Blythe California in August of 1993. I was on my way to Phoenix and stopped for lunch about 1:00 PM. When I gassed up after lunch I asked the attendant what the temperature was. 122 F at approximately 2:30 PM.
Palm springs may be a bit hotter than anyone has seen before but it’s all just ho hum, who cares kind of stuff in the grand scheme of things.
Roughly 7 million people in and around Southern California, including about a million in the San Fernando Valley are dealing with it without trouble. Until it became a politically correct subject I never heard or saw any dire warnings about the heat, much less were any deaths reported, although I suspect there were some.
I never went to an air conditioned school, K through 12 and much of my college work too. And school was never let out on a hot day the way they do it now. And we have some sizzlers after school starts in late August or early September. Even October can get to the high 90s.
Perception is everything and guess which perception is being force fed to everyone?
I have never found a totally satisfactory explanation of the greenhouse effect.
Yes, CO2 does absorb infra red. It causes the CO2 molecule to vibrate internally. That does not change its temperature. What no-one ever seems to mention is that CO2 also gives up this energy almost straightaway. So it does not permanently “trap” heat. In most places in the atmosphere the CO2 molecules will be close to many non GHGs and so CO2 will actually give up its energy even sooner by collision. This will warm the molecule it collides with.
Another thing that is often not mentioned is how does the earth give energy back to space. We have three methods: conduction, convection and radiation. The first two do not work because space is empty. So earth loses heat by radiation (including reflection from the earth, directly, and clouds etc). In other words, the GHGs are the only gases that can cool the earth because the emissivity of N2 and O2 etc is practically zero. That is, even though they are warm enough to emit radiation they do not.
So the only thing I can think of would be a kind of “pin ball effect”Ā®. That is, the visible radiation comes straight in but, after being converted to IR by the earth, it is delayed by bumping into things (GHGs) on the way out.
Your “pinball effect” is pretty much the way I understand it too, though I describe it as “a radiative delay which increases energy density”.
You can use HITRAN On The Web to generate absorption spectra, here’s one I did earlier to save you the time.
A very thin band at 15μm is the only card CO2 has to play near the surface, every other wavelength is dominated by water vapour which usually absorbs 100x as much. There’s a taller peak at 4.5μm (2200cm^-1) but IIRC there is not much outgoing radiation to work with at these shorter wavelengths.
So there is no way CO2 can absorb 10% of outgoing surface radiation, water will get the photons first.
N2 has an emission line in the UV and would require a vastly higher temperature to emit due to these electron jumps alone.
At high density N2 and O2 will absorb and emit radiation in the IR band (and all other bands) due to what’s called “continuum emission”, look it up (eg this). Also called “thermal bremsstrahlung” in astrophysics. We don’t hear much about this effect in greenhouse lore. I guess that’s because at 100kPa and 290K it is still a really small power level (??), but I don’t know the number for it and some brief googling has not found anything specifically about N2. It could be zero. Just an interesting diversion.
All substances that are above absolute zero radiate heat. O2 and N2 radiate heat just fine, but at a different frequency than that radiated off of the surface of the earth (hence they are not greenhouse gasses). O2 and N2 receive their heat from conduction and convection and radiate it to space at their characteristic frequency just fine. In fact, that is how satellites measure the earths temperature, buy measuring the characteristic infrared frequency given off by O2 molecules.
Sometimes, as a person who is not electrically trained, it’s hard to refute some arguments, so when people mention that rooftop solar power has now reached parity with coal fired power, you’re at a loss to try and refute it.
OK then, here’s an idea, and I’ll use an analogy.
Next time you’re in Coles, stand in front of the Milk fridges and look at the prices. Just the plain milk.
Then, go into Woolies and do the same thing. The prices are the same.
That is price parity.
Now, both supermarket chains have their home brand milk selling at a considerable mark down, $2 for their 2 litre plastic bottle of milk, which is $1/litre. Coles and Woolies have negotiated with some suppliers to actually supply the milk at a lower price so they can sell it this cheaply. Using the typical waterbed principle, and because there are so many Coles and Woolies, selling a vast amount of products, they can then spread any losses on this cheap milk across their whole range of products, a cent he, a cent there, and voila, they still make their huge profits, even selling milk, almost a staple of household life, so cheaply.
That is also price parity.
Now, imagine the government actually legislating that milk from one source is costed at $16 per litre and then forcing those retailers to purchase that milk, milk that they can still only sell at market price for milk.
Forcing them to do this, by legislation.
OK now, let’s look at rooftop solar power. Here, the legislation is that FIT and they also force the retailers to then purchase all rooftop solar fed back to the grid.
That FIT is 44 cents per KWH, and the retailers then also put in up to 6 cents per KWH, so now, those retailers have to purchase that power being fed back to the grid at 50 cents per KWH, which equates to $500 per MWH.
$500 per MegaWattHour.
Power that they can only sell at retail, (after adding on all the other costs and then factoring in their profit margin) at around 25 cents per KWH. ($250/MWH)
Power retailers negotiate with power generating companies to purchase electricity, and where possible they buy it at as cheap a price as they can.
Go now to 4AM every morning, when Australia is still consuming 18,000MW of power, while we all sleep.
The only plants running at this time are those large scale coal fired plants, the only plants that can actually supply those huge amounts of power. Power is at its cheapest wholesale price at this time of every day, and check any graph at AEMO for costs when related to time.
This power, in every State comes in at around $30/MWH.
During the day, as consumption increases, that cost increases marginally to around $40/MWH, and as other more expensive plants come on line, that cost per MWH rises, and the Australian average is around $55 to $60 per MWH.
All except for rooftop solar power, which is legislated at that cost of $500/MWH, which is 16 times higher than the negotiated cheapest price for coal fired power.
The same as in the case of the milk analogy above.
So, there you have it.
If anyone can call that parity, then it sure beats me.
So, when you hear how rooftop solar power has now reached price parity with coal fired power, do what I do, shake your head and laugh.
Young girls tend to think laterally – I recall one instance where a young girl modified a solenoid by winding the wire once around the former, then on the second wind back only wound it partially of the way, and back and forth until the solenoid had a bulge of wire in the middle. The effect that winding method was to produce a linear solenoid, in which the metal rod moved through solenoid at constant speed. Normally the movement accelerates when the current is applied. Been patented too I understand.
No matter how useful (or not) her flashlight may be, this girl is a pretty sharp physicist for 15 years old. She’s exactly what the world needs. She just needs to be steered in the direction of more practical problems to work on.
I guesstimate there’s about 100 million people who could afford to buy a bodyheat powered flashlight that would also get fair value out of it. In developing countries flashlights powered by crank generators are actually now quite popular because they do not require charging infrastructure or continual purchase of expensive batteries. They are powered by fuel that the people already have plenty of, which is their own food.
A flashlight powered by body heat would not work at all in tropical countries, but in the others it would fit right in.
Practicality is a function of circumstance. You aren’t in the circumstance in which this invention is practical.
Tony – the power companies no longer pay you for the power you return to the grid. A friend recently put in a solar system and they get nothing for the power they return. Yet they still claim they got $250 off their quarterly bill recently because they used their aircon during the day and washed their clothes etc using their solar power.
Oh by the way Tony do you believe in coincidences? Fridays Adelaide Advertiser was saying that our power prices will rise by about $100 a year on Monday which just happens to be the same day the carbon dioxide tax gets jacked up from 23 to 24.15 a tonne………………now thats uncanny
Seems the EU referendum is getting to the same conclusion I did a few weeks ago, and commented on here a couple of days ago. Hospitals are not the only ones whose diesel generators are being used as part of the STOR scheme. This is utilizing existing infrastructure. What is even crazier is that there is sufficient potential profit for new small-scale (around 20MW) power plants to be built. An example is a proposed scheme in Plymouth. I worked out that this is expected to operate at just 2% of capacity. If stand-by fees are included, this level of utilisation will cost Ā£0.65 KWH. That is $1000 MWH, or double the amount Tony claims is the cost of solar panels. Even whilst operating it generate $350 MWH at current rates. That compares with a cost of around $230 MWH for the diesel. My last electric bill was $0.15 KWH. In terms of climate policy stupidity, Britain is a more advanced nation than Australia.
Only $500 MWH for solar? Until the British Government slashed the rates for solar panels 15 months ago the FIT here was Ā£0.413 KWH, or $620 MWH. Householders also got paid the standard rate by the grid, plus any generated electricity was netted off the bill.
Another thing to consider. Australia has somewhat more sunshine that Britain. A government backed example estimated that a typical panel would generate more than five times the electricity in July as in December. Peak usage is the other way round.
Tony what a bloody great analogy!, may I use this for a local debate on so called renewable energy?
This would really connect with the general populous.
Keep in mind with the milk analogy the number of dairy farmers who have said that the $1 a litre milk that the 2 Supermarkets are selling at is less than they can actually produce it for so the figure of $16 per litre here is a good analogy.
The recession in Europe has resulted in less industrial output, which that means less pollution.
Notice which part is important to them!
They see people’s standards of living as less important than demonising CO2.
Here is your pro-science economically sound “global warming is crap” totally politically differentiated Opposition party:
So the suggestion that with the stroke of a pen the carbon price could be switched to be in line with the floating European scheme might sound good for industry and consumers, but it could put a hole in the government’s revenue forecasts – perhaps as much as $15 billion.
The Coalition says this would blow another black hole in the budget.
Notice which part is important to them!
Siphoning an extra $15B/y out of your pocket is considered essential, and they’ll keep a price on carbon to do it.
Here is your worker-friendly ALP:
But there would be major bureaucratic and administrative hurdles in doing this immediately, and there would be very big concerns within the government about whether this would harm its environmental objectives and its relationship with the Greens.
Notice which part is important to them!
Keeping the Greens co-operative is more essential to the ALP than encouraging big business to create jobs in this country.
Don’t vote for them, Vote for Themm. NUNNOV, Themm.
Siphoning an extra $15B/y out of your pocket is considered essential, and theyāll keep a price on carbon to do it.
That’s just bald faced crap inspired by your dream of Them Nunnov. Of course the opposition is going to say that it will blow a hole in Labor’s budget – that’s part of their job. It will.
Do you really think that after pledging so many times that they will abolish the tax that the Coalition won’t? Really, we all know happened with “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”, so I don’t think they would be that stupid.
Andrew, I think in fact that you are a Labor supporter and as such you know full well that as many potential Coalition voters you can fool then the better. If you deny this, then tell me this: Do you REALLY think that another hung parliament would be a good thing?
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Not sure which of those two thought-bubbles I find the weirdest, BS:
Andrew McRae, one of the most consistently “dry” commentators on this site, as a closet Labor Supporter, or Andrew secretly having the hots for a product of my imagination.
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As for the thrust of your comment: BS, never, ever, ever, ever underestimate the capacity of Australian politicians of ALL persuasions, to do really, really, really stupid things. It’s virtually a prerequisite for the job.
Oh, sorry I wasn’t explicit enough. I don’t have any problem with you using those words, it’s just a turn of phrase, anyone could have thought of it. No attribution nor compensation are required.
IP law is a strange thing. It’s just like Lawrence Lessig questioned: Who owns culture?
You have to release the website THEMM or this is an imaginary argument.
You said in an earlier post, the release was July – depending on the election date.
I think you have plenty of time as Kevin will want to utilise the Car C1, Bureaucracy C1, Power C1, Twitter C1, Facebook C1, @PMOpressoffice C1, Lodge C1, Kirribilly C1, Cabcharge C1 and the Jet C1 for as long as possible.
I can understand Backslider for his comments, as to date, an alternative has not been given by anyone except the Joker Palmer (Not for me).
I am not going to vote for a PHANTOM THEMM until I find out the facts – the same applies to CAGW.
The Themm campaign is a series of play-offs. It can be broken down into the following phases.
1) – It is a dismal failure from the beginning and will be ignored, in which case no harm done except to my time and bank balance.
2) – It touches a raw nerve with some of the voting public and has the capacity to have an effect.
Assuming (1) then there is nothing to discuss. Assuming (2) then timing becomes critical because:
1) – The longer it runs, the more successful it can be, which is balanced by:
2) – The longer it runs, the more opportunity there is to mount a counter-campaign in the MSM.
So, timing becomes critical.
Now, if I were Simon Sheikh heading up GetUp, financed by the unions, a week would be more than enough, with no chance of a counter-campaign.
Alas, these days I am just me, so prior experience tells me I will need at least six weeks, probably eight, and in that timeframe I will be leaving myself open to a counter-campaign of sorts. There is nothing I can do about that. On the other hand, anything more than eight weeks will mean wholesale slaughter in the MSM. Up until a few days ago that meant a launch between July 20, and August 3, depending on a daily reading of the entrails, for a September 14 election.
Now KRudd is ascendant, and that means the only date on which we can guarantee there will be no election is September 14 (Yom Kippur). So we must wait patiently and see what KRudd intends to do.
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Anybody with more than four functioning brain cells would say go with the sugar hit (the wicked witch is dead) and go to an election as soon as possible (August 3 or 10). Unfortunately, we are not dealing with a rational person. KRudd’s ego is such that he really believes the longer he can delay the election, the greater the victory (yes you read that right) he can deliver to the Labor Party. Such is the man’s delusions of grandeur. That means an election late October, or even November.
So, for the moment the Themm campaign must wait on the whim of a maniac.
Who amongst those four is thinking of the children’s children as they fly first class, after promoting fraudulent action on carbon (sic)?
That is just one example of these supercilious hypocrites.
As you know, our voting system is preferential, so, either 6 degrees of separation, or three, the votes eventually lead to the red tie/blue tie sell out traitors to the UN.
Meh? I don’t wanna vote for none of them, first, second or fifth preferential. They don’t deserve my vote.
If Abbott wants my vote, let him give up his gold pass, or, give up his direct action plan.
If Rudd wants my vote, let him give up his gold pass, or, give up his cprs/ets/carbon (sic) tax.
I understand where you are coming from. But let me give you a far more simple, easy to use, and more widely applicable example.
There is not a politician in Australia today who does not pepper their rhetoric with terms such as “sustainable”, or “environmental”. Fair enough. Let us put it to the test.
What if a simple change to one paragraph of one bit of legislation could save the equivalent of 30,000 hectares of forest? EVERY election? Surely there is not an “environmentally aware” politician who would not support such a move?
The truth is, every state and federal election, the equivalent of 30,000 hectares of forest is turned into “how-to-vote” cards. There is a section of the Australian Electoral Act which dictates nothing will appear in a polling booth to indicate how a person should vote for one candidate or another.
Simply changing that section of the act so that every candidate supplied a standardised “how to vote” card in every polling booth would save 30,000 hectares of forest every election, in printing unnecessary “how to vote” cards.
This is not a new idea. Up until I stopped tracking it in 1986, it had been put forward by Independents and small party representatives eleven times in Federal Parliament, and eight times in the Queensland state parliament.
It gets knocked back EVERY time by the major parties (and I include the Greens in that), because they perceive, rightly or wrongly, that “how-to-vote” cards give them an electoral advantage over small parties and independents.
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So much for any actual commitment to “the environment”.
30,000 ha? That sounds like a zero or two too many MV. Can you show how you arrived at that figure? Also might want to think about how much of it is sourced from recycled paper, and goes back into the recycling bin.
To my downvoters and detractors, okay it’s political so there may be no way to agree, but try me anyway.
Why would anyone vote for the LNP?
Is there any reason for thinking the LNP will ACTUALLY repeal and void the commonwealth-mandated fiat currency on carbon-equivalent emissions OTHER than the “blood pledge” encapsulated on this Liberal Party page?
Because over a year after the “blood pledge”, with the election drawing closer, we are now hearing murmurs about how much government tax revenue will be lost by letting the price float, let alone repealing it completely.
Here is Greg Hunt just yesterday (my bolding):
Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt said the government was in chaos over the carbon tax. A revision of the tax could lead to a $15 billion hole in the forward estimates, he said.
“The budget is already in deficit and this will be another major blow to the economic management of the country and is a bill which taxpayers will have to pay,” Mr Hunt said in a statement.
He said the government had previously argued a three-year fixed price was essential for business certainty.
“Quite clearly it is about politics for Kevin Rudd, rather than sound policy,” he said.
That appears to mean that “sound policy” is spending the 15B that have been promised to various government appendages in the Budget, instead of throttling down government spending.
It appears to mean that “sound policy” is keeping the fixed price period in place for as long as it was scheduled.
It sounds like the men in blue ties are getting blue feet.
And far from stopping the nonsense on carbophobia, Abbot has an EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE scheme of “direct action” (the irony that this term used to be a euphemism for terrorism is not lost on me) which, based on prior testimony seen in this forum, would have to be made even more expensive just to deliver some short term increase in soil carbon content. The moment the planted trees die it will go straight back into the air! It’s an attempt to use mortals that participate in the carbon cycle to permanently sequester CO2! It cannot work. Even if it worked, it doesn’t stop the carbophobia nonsense, it replaces a rigged market mechanism with a centrally planned conscripted Green Army marshalling the taxpayers funds to tailor a very fine invisible suit for his Royal Greenness.
Stopping the boats? You’ve gotta be kidding me. “Illegal” immigrants have been arriving recently at the rate of 1,440 per month. Australia’s population increases at 32,400 per month anyway. You could let them ALL in, no offshore processing, save a billion dollars a year, and it makes only a 5% difference to the pressure on Australia’s economy and land development.
The boats are a non-event floated by both parties as a divisive and xenophobic diversion from real issues, and gee isn’t it working well!
Quite aside from the carbon tax, how will the LNP differ in any way whatsoever in their policy on important issues such as…
* preserving private property rights such as in farm and water management,
* the automatic account raiding programme implemented into all major banks in the G20 (including Australia) to make Cypress-style “bail-ins” easy to invoke,
* The bail-out of RBS in the UK was done partly by NAB in Australia in 2010 which then had to be bailed out by the government, which means Rudd bailed out the Rothschilds and we the people will be expected to pay for it… presumably with a slashing of government services and a raise in taxes, i.e. – the austerity measures we thought was just somebody else’s problem,
* the double-taxing of rich super accounts according to an arbitrary definition of rich,
* applying community standards to oversight of government surveillance activities,
* excessive government spending,
* the misguided institution of league tables for schools which has lead to declines in education standards in other countries that tried them (eg UK 1,2),
* the eggshell-walking regime of concurrent Sino-American supplication,
* our respectful alliance with a government that carpet bombs villages abroad, murders journalists at home, and sends John Kerry for friendly talks with Jhabat al-Nusra,
* preserving Weekends from enterprise profiteering,
* no concerted effort by CSIRO to track down the environmental chemical source of cancers in people under 50,
* the flight of manufacturing from the country,
* the bulging national debt, and
* the 2nd most unaffordable housing in the developed world for 8 years running?
You can be guaranteed all the important issues will NOT be on the election agenda because LNP and ALP are two sides of the same coin produced by the political party system that has failed us.
Andrew McRae, you obviously haven’t thought through the boat arrivals. Yes they are illegal, not “illegal” otherwise would you tell me why in hell I wait in line at customs and immigration when arriving from overseas as a passport holding citizen? Or can I simply walk in?
Now do some numbers. The population of Australia is around 22 million people. To the west and north of us live at least 2.2 Billion people, many of whom would probably be personally better off economically on the dole in Australia than gainfully employed in their home countries. If 1% of them come here it will make no difference to their home countries but will double the population of Australia and turn this place into the sort of hell hole their home countries are.
So my question to you is: How many of them do you want? Because unless you make serious efforts to stop them the above scenario is the best case estimate of the end game.
Ask the aborigines how well it worked out for them.
BTW it is a fair bet that to a physicist’s order of magnitude estimate these people cost $100,000 per year each for the first year(includes Navy , detention, transport, social welfare, legal aid etc.) At roughly 20,000 per year that is $2 billion right there. The downstream costs and damage to this country will be much, much higher.
Hehee, ah, I know when someone is particularly pissed off at me because they address me by full name.
Okay I’ll cop the language point about the illegality of their immigration method. The point that a person cannot be illegal still stands. Only their method of immigration into Australian territorial waters was illegal.
“So my question to you is: How many of them do you want?”
None. But when I said you “could” let them all in, I wasn’t seriously suggesting to actually do that. My point was to illustrate how small the problem currently is even with the record high numbers of recent arrivals.
The cost of processing adds up to about a billion dollars a year from one news article I read. How could you cut the cost without having the Navy just blowing the boats out of the water? I don’t see any other way, it’s just costly to do the right thing.
Doubling Australia’s population will make it a hell hole? Okay, so on current trends Australia will be a hell hole by 2070. We’ll both be dead before then, but should you plan to stop this tragedy?
And now that you have admitted we need a population growth control plan, how many people do you want in Australia?
That limit would actually create “illegal” people. How would you inhibit people from reproducing and how would you remove the “illegals”?
It’s a bit more complicated than “stop the boats”.
As for the numbers, the TRENDS are going in a worrying direction. All this for a problem that had been essentially completely solved before the current Labor idiots messed with it.
If we had blown the first boat out of the water, far fewer people would have been killed than has been the case so far.
No, doubling Australia’s population over the next 50 years won’t necessarily make it a hell hole. Doubling it by adding as many illegal immigrants (thieves and home invaders is a good term for them if you don’t like illegal immigrants) as current population, will.
For starters we should leave the Navy in port. Any SOS will be responded to only if the ship has filed a sail plan with AMSA that has been approved by the Australian government. Any others will be assumed to be hoaxes. Any takeover of a ship by illegals or any pressure applied to the crew will be treated as piracy. We know how to deal with pirates. How long before legitimate mariners die because our SAR resources are fully occupied with illegals?
As for your list of other problems, some of the points are to do with excessive government spending and national debt, both of which are added to by the boat arrivals.
The rest seems to be a grab bag of lefty talking points although some of them are things leftists seem to approve of.
Yep, can agree on leaving the Navy in port. No need to roll out the red carpet for this lot, we can just let them die at sea if they don’t make it all the way to the 100nmi limit. Saves a tonne of money.
The Christmas island facility will become the most likely target, so we’ve still got to send them back from there somehow. You may prefer to let them crash against the sheer volcanic cliffs, it’s cheaper again.
The SAR resource shortage is a false dilemma, no SAR ship captain will ever ignore an SOS just because they’re dealing with one boat already. The risk can never be removed because no matter how many ships and helis you have you can always imagine another legitimate SOS occurring at the same time. It’s an imaginary threat up until it becomes tough luck.
Sorry to hear you’re still blinded by the Left/Right paradigm. You might wanna get that fixed. It’s not about communism versus capitalism these days since our enemy uses both, it’s about humanity versus psychopaths and the exempt kleptocratic rich versus the rest of us.
As for your cussing, it seems to be directed at someone who holds views utterly dissimilar to my own and is based on things I’ve never said. I guess you’re the type to project every evil upon anybody who disagrees with you about even one single thing. Not worth attempting to argue then.
I have found this page to be an interesting counterargument to the humanitarian approach: http://www.hotheads.com.au/immigrants.htm
Like you it is unapologetic, but it is less nasty and less hotheaded and it presents some evidence. I will use that page instead, thanks. Bye.
The immediate solution is to hand Christmas island back to Indonesia, this way most of the boats launched will not make it to the continent. This of course will cause a slight problem to a certain sector of defence but this loss is well worth it as the financial returns will be imense.
What i dont like about this whole sorry saga is that we have people in this country sleeping in the streets and there does not appear to be enough financial support or any support of any kind to help them however illegals enter this country and get everything handed to them on a plate.
It must be wonderful to turn up to a country unannounced, uninvited and be handed cash, house and all the perks that go with it. These people get everything and i for one am sick and tired of it.
Did you know my son does not qualify for the student allowance for uni? He does not because i earn too much (really? Me?) but an illegal will get that even though they have never paid a tax dollar and no doubt never will.
I dont get discounts on prescriptions but illegals get it all, enough is enough Andrew.
Gotta go so sorry this response was brief, maybe we can debate a bit more later
crakar24, agree. What about the bloke down the road who needs a cataract op or a hip replacement? These resources are being stolen from taxpayers who in most cases have held down jobs, raised and educated their children, paid taxes all their lives and who now suffer because the resources are being used by the invaders. They weren’t asked to come here. They are breaking in. Enough is enough. We are being taken for fools.
As for Andrew, I’d like to know how the SAR ship captain can be in two places at once? I should care what mishaps happen to burglars who are breaking in to my house. I don’t. Really. You’re a complete waste of time.
The moment the planted trees die it will go straight back into the air! Itās an attempt to use mortals that participate in the carbon cycle to permanently sequester CO2! It cannot work.
*sigh*
Do you know what a forest is? Do you really think that a tree just grows and then dies?
Hello James. Ask the warmists for experimental evidence using real gases to show how much warming one molecule in a million of CO2 causes – in other words, no suppositions using computer calculations or ‘models’. I mean real world laboratory bench data. They won’t know because it hasn’t been done, and a letter I sent to the UK’s Met Office some time ago confirms it.
Have a look at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.gif
This shows the lack of warming since the late 1990s – despite a continuing increase in CO2 from 361ppm (in 1997) to 391ppm (in 2012).
Ah memories memories, this is your Prime Minister speaking:
Here’s a measurement which people should just sit back and pay a bit of attention to – the 12 hottest years in human history have occurred in the last 13 years. That’s a fact ā¦.
Mr Smith! You’ve returned!
And so soon on the heels of Rudd’s installment into the top job. That’s purely an unconnected co-incidence I’m sure.
There will be much carbophilic and carbophobic discussion of party policy in the weeks ahead.
Welcome back.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Backslider, if you want to see a closet Labor supporter here is your canonical example!
If not done already by far the biggest story since climategate http://climateaudit.org/2013/06/28/cru-abandons-yamal-superstick/
Basically they (TEAM) are admitting that they cooked the books and were wrong about AGW based on Paleo from Yamal tree (in an indirect way of course). They now include ALL the trees from same area and get exactly the same graph that SM got in 2009 and 2012. I would have thought that is 100% plagiarism even though it was published on the net not a journal
u should have listened to bbc’s science prog on the following:
BBC Science: Ancient DNA found in horse bone
Genetic material has been extracted from a 700,000 year old fossilised horse bone preserved in the Canadian permafrost. Older, by half a million years, than any other sequenced DNA, this opens up the possibility of extending our understanding of animal and hominin evolution to the ancient past. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01b5fqx
bbc presenter freaked that just when scientists have acquired the ability to get more info out of minimal dna material, CLIMATE CHANGE HAPPENED, & that means fossils preserved in ice are being destroyed before we can discover more about them!
wonder what the MSM thought the climate did before we had CAGW “CLIMATE CHANGE”!
If you were in any doubt about the ignorance and lunacy of the greens, then read the link.
If Tony is around can he tell me the break even point for buying a diesel generator?
A litre of diesel according to Wikipedia is supposed to yield about 10 kwh. Therefore on (current local prices) a generator would cost $0.16 per kwh for my own electricity needs. Threefold this cost is still cheaper than S.A. electricity.
that link to Senator Milne’s attempt to imitate Pixie Ann Wheatley always shows that she’s worthy of a laugh.
She says that the 20% from renewables by 2020 should be a start point. So, see at this Comment here at Joanne’s site why that seemingly small target is virtually impossible.
She then says that we could feasibly aim for 90% from renewables by 2030.
For the same reason (they will NEVER find the money for that) that the smaller 20% target is unreachable, I would add, and here I actually have to place this in block quotes so I can highlight in bold the relevant word.
Australia will NEVER have 90% of its power supplied from renewables, let alone have it by 2030.
Now, you may think this is a bold statement to make, but let’s have a look shall we.
Australia currently has in TOTAL Nameplate Capacity power generation from EVERY source is 54GW, and actual consumption is 256TWH.
That’s 54GW and 256TWH.
30GW of that Nameplate Capacity is coal fired power generation, and that supplies 180TWH (70%)
Let’s then look at somewhere that does have a huge amount of renewables.
The U.S. currently has 62GW of Wind power Nameplate Capacity. That total Capacity actually supplies to U.S. grids 149.8TWH of Power, and that’s a Capacity Factor of 27% overall.
That’s 62GW and 149.8TWH.
Notice something here.
The U.S. has 115% of Australia’s total power Nameplate and only supplies 58.5% of Australia’s actual power consumption.
That 149.8TWH does not even reach the absolute 24/7/365 requirement (the Base Load).
I mentioned that there’s not enough money to actually construct that much renewable power.
Let’s actually pretend that the money is already there, those (literally) hundreds of Billions of dollars.
That U.S. total of 62GW comes in at 30,000 towers (or more)
Australia currently has around 1500 towers, so we’re looking at the current Australian total multiplied by 20.
That new total needed comes in at around 120 NEW wind plants, and with 17 years until Christine Milne’s 2030 target, that means we need to construct bring on line SEVEN new wind plants every year, starting TODAY.
This Milne woman is absolutely clueless.
Notice I haven’t mentioned Concentrating Solar which they (blindly) hope can replace the 24/7/365 coal fired plants, well, I haven’t mentioned them, because at 17 MW Nameplate Capacity, huh! why would you even bother, and they don’t run for 24 hours extrapolated over a whole year, but for barely 16 hours.
This is something I would expect from a fabricated Pixie Ann Wheatley, but from a serving Senator who actually has a mouth which she can ask questions with, this is positively laughable.
Thanks Tony.
Your figures speak for themselves. If we presume that the “jokes” are the ones that make the laws then electricity is about to get disproportionately expensive.
My question is given diesel at (say) $1.60 at what price per kwh is it worth buying a household diesel generator?
I have diesel with some solar and batteries. Of grid.
Diesel can get in the ball park for bulk but it’s the “off peak” supply (standby) that wrecks it. Internal combustion engines don’t like to run at low loads. My batteries fix the low loads but they aren’t cheap. Getting users to start the generator for a minutes hair drier when they don’t “have” to is not friendly.
our politicians must be forced to face the “coal” reality. where are the journos to question them?
28 June: Bloomberg: Rakteem Katakey: India to Eclipse China as Worldās Coal Power, Buoying BHP
India is burning coal in power plants at the fastest pace in 31 years…
Indiaās growing appetite for imported coal should benefit suppliers in the $69 billion global coal trade such as BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) (BHP) and Indonesiaās PT Adaro Energy (ADRO). India is set to eclipse China as the top importer of power station coal by 2014, as China burned the fuel in 2012 at the slowest pace since 2008, and U.S. demand fell for a second year, according to Energy Aspects Ltd.
āIndia is increasingly becoming an important swing factor in the coal markets and exporters will look there for price support as Chinese imports slow,ā said Michael Parker, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. āChinese imports will start to fall as they use more of their own coal.ā…
As Asiaās second-biggest energy consumer, with an economy expanding 5 percent last year, India used 10.2 percent more coal from a year earlier…
China will have a coal-production capacity of 4.3 billion metric tons by the end of this year, compared with estimated consumption of 4.1 billion tons, Bernstein said in a May 30 report. The nation bought 142 million tons of thermal coal from overseas in 2012, 39 percent higher than a year earlier, said Trevor Sikorski, an analyst at Energy Aspects in London…
Adani Enterprises Ltd. (ADE) and the Tata Group were among buyers of 15.6 million metric tons of the fuel in April, according to Interocean Group, a New Delhi-based shipper. The purchases drove up imports by 51 percent from a year earlier owing to lower prices ahead of summer when demand for electricity increases…
Coal-fired power stations provide about 59 percent of Indiaās electricity. State-owned Coal India Ltd. (COAL), which supplies more than 80 percent of the nationās needs, has been unable to meet demand that is forecast to climb 43 percent to 730 million tons by 2017 from last yearās levels. Supplies from local coal mines may gain 38 percent in the period, the nationās Planning Commission said last year… http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-27/india-to-eclipse-china-as-world-s-coal-power-buoying-bhp.html
1 July: Business Spectator: Is carbon pricing reducing emissions?
Jenny Riesz and Roger Dargaville
Jenny Riesz is research fellow with the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets (CEEM) at the University of NSW. Roger Dargaville is a Research Fellow, Energy Research Institute at University of Melbourne.
Jenny Riesz does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations. Roger Dargaville receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
This article was originally published at The Conversation.
The greenhouse emissions from the National Electricity Market (covering around 80 per cent of electricity supply in Australia) showed a 7 per cent reduction from 2011-12 to 2012-13. However, much of this is due to demand, which reduced 5 per cent over the same period. According to the electricity market operator, the reasons probably include dramatic increases in rooftop solar, customer responses to higher prices (mostly caused by rising network costs), increasing incentives for energy efficiency, and reduction in industrial and manufacturing loads (driven by the high Australian dollar).
Much of the remaining reduction in emissions is probably related to significant increases in renewable generation over the past year…
Although itās difficult to point to concrete short term changes in the electricity market, the carbon price is having an impact on long term investment decisions, which is where the real benefits will start to play out. The economics of power systems mean that itās much easier to materially affect the investment decisions for a new plant than to affect the short-term dispatch decisions of an existing plant. It has been argued that this already means wind is now cheaper than coal if youāre building a new plant, due to the very large impact of the carbon price on financing costs for emissions-intensive generation options…
But the lack of proposals for significant new coal-fired plant is a good indication that the carbon price is having an influence over investor decisions. This is where the real pay-off lies ā by avoiding the installation of more coal-fired generators we avoid the very significant greenhouse emissions that would result from those power stations over their 30-year-plus lifetime.
This highlights an underlying truth ā the intention of the carbon price is to drive a long-term transformation of Australiaās economy… http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/7/1/carbon-markets/carbon-pricing-reducing-emissions
In the same vein as the continuing saga of expensive power costs in South Australia, with the Month of May the stand out here with an average of $120/MWH for power during the main 15 hour Peak period (7AM to 10PM) the average cost for June came in at $131.73/MWH for that period when there was most consumption.
The Northern power plant (coal fired) was quietly brought back on line during this Month, and now has one unit supplying power into the SA grid.
So, with coal fired power, there were five days all Summer (all three Months) when power spiked beyond $100/MWH, and here we have 16 days one Month (May) and 11 days in June when power costs spiked beyond that Summer peak cost, with the average for both Months considerably higher than those 5 Summer spikes.
That’s what power costs will look like with a reliance on wind power, and with coal fired power shut down.
The average for the other (coal fired States) was half the average in South Australia
I’m pleased as punch that this forum has become a way for trolling TonyFromOz. š
“Gee, here’s a story that will get RIGHT UP Tony’s nose, (copy, paste).”
In fairness it’s quite complimentary of both paster and pastee.
The complainant is skeptical enough to not be satisfied with just having an intuition that a news item is outrageous, they want to know precisely the REASON it is outrageous. At the same time they believe Tony’s the bloke with the reason for the season.
The only trolling I have ever done was at Burrinjuck back in the early 70’s.
Small rod and a spinner, I think they were called.
We went there around four times while we were undergoing trade training for electrical trade.
There were usually five of us, and we’d arrive late Friday afternoon, be out on the lake at around 6AM and would fish until around 4PM, for Trout, mainly Rainbows, and on a a couple of occasions, a nice healthy Brown.
Anything under twelve inches had to be released, but one foot equated to around a pound and a half, a nice feed, and they were beautiful cooked in butter.
Five guys, one driving the putt putt boat as the other 4 trolled out the back, two each side. When one guy hooked up, the other 3 would pull in their lines, and the driver would then go square on to the side the fish was on, so the catcher could play it, and Trout were nice little fighters, especially those wily old Browns, always larger than Rainbows.
I got to drive the boat very rarely, because any fish I caught committed suicide, as I am a very poor fisherman.
All up, I would have caught around a dozen fish in all on those trips and only one was a Brown.
Beautiful eating though.
That’s the extent of my trolling, but yes, I do take your point. I guess I am a Troll really.
The good thing about Joanne’s site is the many number of eyes I now have access to, to go looking for articles that they think might have some importance, and with each one, even I learn something from them.
All I have to do is explain it for those who I know really would like to be able to understand what has been written, and what surprises me most is in fact the number of people who really DO want to know about what I originally perceived as being dry and boring.
The sporting pursuit you are referring to here is *trawling* not trolling, trolling is when you pinch a trolley from Coles, jump in it and roll down a hill as seen on TV in the Jackass series.
gah! no! You’ve misunderstood. You aren’t trolling, we are.
When I said “a way for trolling TonyFromOz” I meant “a place to troll TonyFromOz”, as in dangling news stories in front of you hoping to get a bite (and an explanation).
But the fishing story was well received nonetheless.
The origin of “trolling” in the Internet sense is most likely the fishing method of trolling, just as you say. Some have claimed the stirrer is like a Troll lurking under a bridge waiting for someone to eat, but I find this fanciful given that the term was most likely appropriated by American and British users and not Nordic people.
My appreciation of fishing is entirely at the plate end of the process. š Favourite is still barramundi, but I did once eat a local Poulet Fish in Vanuatu which was particularly nice.
Coral trout and salmon get runners up prizes, but I believe they are shallow sea and deep sea fish respectively, so unlike the barra you can’t catch them in a river.
When eating a barra, it’s best not to think of them as hermaphroditic cannibals. heh.
You do realise Andrew that Tony is not the only one around here that is familiar with electricity generation and understands the concepts of MW per hour etc.
I for one have “pasted” many stories for Tony’s pleasure not for his approval as you have attempted to claim. I suggest if you had a modicum of knowledge about the subject you would understand just how silly your comment appears.
crakar24, are you referring to me?
If so as a visitor to JoNova’s site since it began I am well aware of commenters contributions here over the years.
My comment to Tony was a friendly compliment and joke on him being compared to an internet troll, which I thought amusing.
As far as the rest I’ll take a mature approach and just assume you had a bad day, as no rational thinking person could truly believe they know someone’s depth of knowledge purely from an internet chat.
crakar24, I do apologize as I see now your comment was to Andrew DOH!
All I can say is that I think I need glasses soon as this has been happening for a while, one too many weld arc flashes I think. š
Here’s one for windmill devotees, or should it be windmill – one – rare off-course bird – nought.
It is incomprehensible why the journalist describes this as ‘ironic’ in this equally incomprehensible sentence.
It was seen by birders fly straight into the turbine. It is ironic that after waiting so long for this bird to turn up in the UK, it was killed by a wind turbine and not a natural predator, ā Josh Jones of Bird Guides said.
The Needletail was apparently thousands of miles off course when two bird spotters identified it on the isle of Harris Monday. By Wednesday, scores of watchers had gathered in the
Tarbet area of Harris, Outer Hebrides, Scotland to catch a glimpse of the rare bird…
…The birdās body will be sent to a museum.
I’d say Josh Jones of the Bird Guides struggles in a state of cognitive dissonance. There is no alternative. He simply must be a windmill devotee or he’d be foaming at the mouth over the pointless loss of this rare bird. At least no one actually blamed the bird for being off-course!
“The owner of a cattle station involved in a controversial carbon farming project in central Australia has gone into receivership.
R.M. Williams Agricultural Holdings bought Henbury Station in 2011 for $13 million, with an $11 million contribution from the Federal Government.
Luke Bowen from the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association said de-stocking the station had implications for all pastoralists in the region.
“It does reduce the critical mass of the industry in the region,” Mr Bowen said.
“It reduces the amount of people employed.
“It reduces the amount of services and goods I guess which churn through the economy to supply these businesses.”
SOME history:
October 12 2011: Focus on flames of climate change (The Australian)
July, 2012: Qantas has entered into an agreement to buy more than a million tonnes of carbon credits from Henbury Station in central Australia.
November 11 2012: Carbon Sunk (ABC Lateline)-
“It’s not clear from either side of the fence what exactly would happen to the Government’s $9 million investment.
The former Agricultural Minister Tony Burke, who signed off on the Henbury deal, was unavailable for comment, leaving some in the local pastoral industry uneasy.”
“In 2006, the United Nations concluded that the livestock industry was a big contributor to climate change.
In its report āLivestockās Long Shadow,ā the U.N. concluded that livestock were contributing 18 percent of the worldās greenhouse gases ā allegedly more than the entire worldās transpiration.
Mitloehner convinced the U.N. to recant its claim in 2010.”
.
You gotta wonder about the “dated” scientific advice the Australian government receives before it invests hard earned Australian tax payer dollars in it’s Failed Cargo Cult of Carbon.
I am currently debating several people about global warming on the talk.origins newsgroup.
Only I and one other person are espousing the skeptical viewpoint. The rest are committed warmists.
A couple of the warmists are claiming that about 10% of the longwave radiation being released by the earth is absorbed by the 0.04% of the atmosphere that is CO2, and that even a slight increase in the CO2 will cause big warming.
Does anyone have a source for how much of that radiation is absorbed by CO2? I find it difficult to believe that such a tiny percentage of CO2 could absorb such a large percentage of radiation.
Any of you who are so inclined, please feel free to join our discussion there. I am an economist by trade, so I have a good knowledge of statistics but not so good in the natural sciences.
30
Get hold of the Infrared absorption spectrums of water & CO2.
The difference between the 2 should be a sufficient talking point, as most of the CO2 absorption wavelengths are masked by water vapour. There is only a tiny amount that CO2 could absorb.
This won’t convince them anyway, but good luck trying.
Sorry, but device limitations prevent link.
11
James:
Watts up with that.com/2008/06/21/a window on water vapor-and-planetary-temperature-part2/
(I would suggest Google).
Frankly I think debating with these people is a waste of time. They refuse to accept any facts or information which does not conform to their beliefs, see any series of comments on these pages from John Brookes. Good luck anyway.
70
James, I stumbled down that path a while ago. Have a look here.
Warning. There is lots to read and it is all layman talk but you might get some ideas. Good luck. Feel free to use anything you want but on your head be it. š I find greenies get cross if they can’t find an answer.
30
The MODIS site on my link above is not working. See why here.
All I can say is “Bloody hell!”
00
Have a copy of sea water emissivity here. Hope you can see it.
http://s787.photobucket.com/user/RichardDH/media/AGW/seagol01.gif
00
Sorry. Don’t know how to do html image link.
———–
I coded up the img src code in your comment (sorry the machine may or may not let you use the html š )
But the link is not quite right. Just ask the mods to help if you get the right link. – Jo
10
Thanks for trying Jo. All links are working as of this post. Fingers crossed they will stay working.
00
James, the 10% figure is a red herring.
Even alarmist climate modelers agree that CO2 on it’s own will only cause 1.2C if it doubles. The real action is not CO2 but the feedbacks, which mostly involve water vapor. So the modelers could be right on CO2 but if they are wrong on clouds and humidity there is no catastrophe.
As I mentioned on facebook (but may not have explained well) the water vapor bands are wider and there is a lot more water vapor as well. Blocking some CO2 bands still means energy can escape through other wavelengths – especially H20 wavelengths.
How do they get “10%” — ask for some sources…
102
I suspect they get the 10% figure from Trenberth’s Global Energy Budget. The total back-radiation from all sources according to Trenberth is 333W/sq.m and back-radiation from CO2 is 32W/sq.m. That works out at about 10%. It seems rather high to me though. I mean we know that CO2 by volume makes up about 4% of the atmospheric greenhouse and water vapour makes up about 96% (Source: NASA Earth Fact Sheet gives 0.038% for CO2 and 1% for water vapour) with other greenhouse gases like methane existing in negligible trace amounts. As well as being significantly more abundant than CO2 water vapour also absorbs IR-radiation over a far wider spectrum. Even if CO2 does absorb 10% of the radiation emanating from Earth though that still gives them only about 1C of warming as Jo sayas. The debate is all about the feedbacks.
40
Don’t trust percentages or in particular don’t trust warmists wielding percentages. As Jo says challenge them to provide sources and numbers in real units.
Until you know the real numbers you don’t know what they’re talking about, as I suspect they don’t either.
Unqualified percentages are a great bamboozle device.
70
Thanks to Graeme, Richard and Joanne for your assistance. I can see now what the warmists are trying to do. Like every other argument they make, they will take some little fact out of context and try to twist it around to prove their point.
70
Actually, they’ll quote a figure, pulled out of thin air that “sounds like somebody worked it out”. I’m surprised they didn’t say 9.8%, because that number is much more credible!
Typically, they’re just recycling garbage that they’ve been fed.
If CO2 absorbs radiation, then it cannot re-radiate. i.e. the “back-radiation” cannot happen because the energy can only be used once.
The re-radiation happens in tiny fractions second, if that is what happens. In 50% or more of the case of re-radiation, it will be towards space, because the CO2 molecule is in the air above the ground; above a spheroid. The higher up the CO2, the more likely it is that it’ll radiate to space; that’s simple (spherical) geometry.
If the CO2 does absorb the energy, then it would heat it, increasing its velocity and therefore the likelihood that it’ll collide with a colder N2 or O2 molecule. When they get more energy, they will, like any other gas including CO2, become more buoyant and tend to convect upwards away from the surface, removing heat more rapidly from the surface by drawing colder air across it.
Once the heat (energy) is in the gas, it will tend to stay in it for a long time because most of the surfaces that it’s likely to encounter will be warmer; and gases are ALL poor radiators of heat as they have negligible surface area. That IMNSHO is the fundamental reason for the atmosphere being warm(er) than that predicted by simplistic physics models.
In our atmosphere, it’s the water cycle that does much to cool the atmosphere when condensation occurs and droplets form. Those droplets can radiate millions of times better than a gas of the same volume. And they can cool down to well below the temperature of the surrounding bulk of air; and cool air in it the proximity of the droplets.
Without condensation and the formation of a surface area, water in the air as a gas (vapour) is a substantial means of heat storage… humid nights feel warmer because there is more heat stored per unit volume, and it’s not going to lose that heat until condensation is triggered.
All of the above is from “first principles”; something seemingly forgotten by most climate modellers; perhaps deliberately because it’s impossible to model numerically to build a model with any useful predictability beyond 36 hours. Boundary conditions and many other unknown quantities and yet-to-be-determined (e.g. droplet nucleation) processes produce “chaotic results”.
140
I can see that there is a lot wrong with the so-called āphysicsā of CAGW, but I do not see how the concept of back-radiation is an artefact of wrong physics and why it “cannot happen”. It is my understanding that all material bodies in the universe possessing any temperature above -273Ā°C radiates energy into their surroundings and CO2 in the atmosphere is no exception to that rule. Furthermore every such warm body is held to be radiating its energy in all directions. Therefore āback-radiationā seems inevitable to me and I can find nothing wrong with it conceptually.
While it is true that most of the radiation from CO2 will be absorbed by other molecules in its immediate environment, perhaps within a few meters, a small but nevertheless real amount must make it down to the surface. By my understanding Beer-Lambert law holds that radiation can very be completely absorbed and that some will continue its never-ending journey to infinity, implying that some radiation, however small, must reach the Earthās surface where it will be absorbed. And when a body absorbs radiation, no matter from what source, its internal temperature increases in accordance with the 1st law of thermodynamics.
I think the arguments that back-radiation cannot exist and that AGW violates thermodynamics are based on a misunderstanding of physics. Even Postma confuses a thermodynamically closed-system with an open-system by comparing the Earth-Sun-Atmosphere relationship with a flask.
I suggest taking a look at Joanne Novaās post here: http://joannenova.com.au/2011/05/why-greenhouse-gas-warming-doesnt-break-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics/
I think one has to be very careful when suggesting such things.
10
That should read ‘can never be completely absorbed’
00
To clarify:
If CO2 has absorbed the photon’s energy, then that different from re-radiation (some of which is “back-radiation”).
Radiation can only be achieved if there is enough energy available to emit at the corresponding wavelength.
In the case of re-radiation, the photon can be thought to “bounce” off the CO2 in a random direction. In a spherical direction. The surface of the Earth subtends less than 50% of all spherical angles from a CO2 molecule above the surface, becoming smaller with increasing altitude so the probability of it being back-radiation diminishes.
The re-radiation happens so quickly that the energy cannot be considered to have been absorbed. Using the term “absorbed” can be misinterpreted as the photon being stored indefinitely. CO2 isn’t a “sponge” for infra-red photons.
My primary objection was to the use of the word “absorbed” in conjunction with “back-radiation”.
00
James,
You are correct that warmists will quote something out of context. There lots of other tactics they employ. Here are just a few.
1. Discourage people from examining and questioning the evidence for themselves. In many subjects, like history and economics, understanding is brought about by this questioning, along with comparing and contrasting different conclusions.
2. Polarization into “scientists” and “skeptics”. In so doing they fail to state that different interpretations are possible, nor the diverse skills required in climatology. The also fail to address issues about quality of the science, or how new methods or data can undermine established scientific opinion.
3. Failure to distinguish between science and policy. To understand policies like the carbon tax or emissions trading needs skills in economics and public-policy making.
4. Failure to distinguish between the positive (facts and scientific theories) from the normative (what ought to be). Much of the dogma is around environmentalist ideology, and a refusal to recognize that any other views are possible.
5. Failure to address issues of magnitude and relevancy. Like how a few million dollars of funding by a business can completely undermine the billions poured into climate alarmism.
6. Failure to trumpet successes. If science is as unintelligible to lesser mortals, they could show a good track record in predictive successes. Things like accelerating surface temperature rises, accelerating sea level rises, lack of snow in England, hurricanes getting worse etc.
7. Biased language, both positively (Nobel-Prize winning scientist, Professor …..), or negatively (well-known climate denier / blogger etc.)
80
8. Plain old lying about the science, the meaning of the data and the fact that there isn’t a single shred of detectable warming from GHGs, since anything happening is buried in the noise of everyday temperature differences.
50
But isn’t lying so easy when you haven’t a clue where the numbers come from or what they meanand then is it really lying š
RC and ‘Skeptical’ Science site exist to pump out such ready made factoids for largely unwitting warmist followers to regurgitate with conviction.
40
Well, Joe, if those who say Bush lied when in fact he acted as any prudent leader would on the basis of the best available information at the time, can continue that nonsense claim on into the future seemingly forever, then I can claim lying on the part of the global warming pushers. š
But doesn’t it go deeper than that? How many of them have manipulated data to make it show what it otherwise couldn’t show? Has not the top dog at CRU admitted that there hasn’t been any statistically significant warming as of the time of the interview; yet they continue to claim all sorts of hottest years on record?
When it’s a lie we need to call it a lie.
Then there’s the matter of how to deal with such as skepticalscience. How many times do they need to be confronted with the evidence against them and allowed to ignore it before we can call them liars? Bush acknowledged that the information he was given turned out to be wrong. Now what about skepticalscience and their ilk?
40
I believe the hydrogen atom is more responsive to IR….is it a tri state atom? Something like that anyway thats why methane CH4 and water H2O are a lot more reactive in the IR band than CO2 maybe you could attack them from this angle although it does involve physics so maybe not.
Good luck and Gods speed
12
Hi James (aka junglejim?),
You are certainly up against it with this lot. Most of the usual arguments are thrown back, eg the GISS chart, but no mention of Pachauri, Met Office UK, Trenberth etc conceding (quietly or resentfully) that there has been no significant warming for 15-17 years.
I read as much as I could stand, and it seems the “accepted” theory is the thermal one, eg conduction, thermal balance, no apparent recognition of the importance of convection, ENSO or any other cycles etc.
As I have said before here, if this theory was right, here in the tropics we would already be experiencing the warming they are on about. We aren’t. I recall the odd “hot” summer in the 90s, but nothing comparable since. It still cools down, takes a bit longer if there is cloud cover, but always well before dawn.
61
Hi Martin:
yes, JungleJim c’est moi.
i will say one thing for these guys. At least they are willing to debate. Most warmists I know cut and run.
30
James, could you provide a link to the thread? I would like to have a look.
00
Hi Sean:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/talk.origins/2smKYqseyYQ
Would love to have you join us!
00
Thanks. I have submitted a small post.
Cheers,
Sean
00
NASA’s arguements say one thing one minute and the opposite the next.
–
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence
“Certain facts about Earth’s climate are not in dispute:
The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.2Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many JPL-designed instruments, such as AIRS. Increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response”.
BUT…….
–
āA recent NASA report throws the space agency into conflict with its climatologists after new NASA measurements prove that carbon dioxide acts as a coolant in Earthās atmosphere. NASAās Langley Research Center has collated data proving that āgreenhouse gasesā actually block up to 95 percent of harmful solar rays from reaching our planet, thus reducing the heating impact of the sun. The data was collected by Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry, (or SABER). SABER monitors infrared emissions from Earthās upper atmosphere, in particular from carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitric oxide (NO), two substances thought to be playing a key role in the energy balance of air above our planetās surface.ā Tiny URL:
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http://tinyurl.com/ljyqxbz http://www.drudge.com/news/167663/nasa-study-proves-carbon-dioxide-cools
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NASA ā The Report: Solar Storm Dumps Gigawatts into Earthās Upper Atmosphere Short URL: http://tinyurl.com/6rdou6x http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/22mar_saber/
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NASA ā The Movie. CO2 ScienceCasts: The Surprising Power of a Solar Storm http://tinyurl.com/mcxd683 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEFQHDSYP1I
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See The Two Minute Conservative via Google or: http://adrianvance.blogspot.com and when you speak ladies will swoon and liberal gentlemen will weep.
http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/163-new-discovery-nasa-study-proves-carbon-dioxide-cools-atmosphere.html#.UVYwRz4bXF4.facebook
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http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/06/28/al-gore-lied/
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As Tony Abbott stated on ABC24 – ” The Carbon Tax is socialism wrapped up as environmentalism”.
–
CO2 is a ātrace gasā in air, insignificant by definition. It absorbs 1/7th as much IR, heat energy, from sunlight as water vapor which has 80 times as many molecules capturing 560 times as much energy in the form of latent heat [ steam ]. Oxygen and Nitrogen absorb 4 times more IR heat energy than CO2. For this we should destroy our economy?
–
Control and taxing of carbon [CO2] will place the productive working class at the mercy of the unproductive money power.
20
James, a good question.
I used to be taken in by the idea that the amount of CO2 is important, IF, the scheme had any sense at all.
We all know that water and methane are also active in “soaking up” heat energy and obliterate any effect from man made CO2 which is about 3% of all CO2.
The ultimate reason that amount of CO2 does not matter is that CO2 is forced by Universal Gas Laws to distribute any heat gain almost instantaneously to other nearby gas molecules species.
The warm gas parcel then rises and takes the “trapped” energy that one step closer to deep space where it is radiated away from Earth.
The limiting factor in the process is not CO2 but the amount of SUNSHINE reaching Earths surface.
Whatever, Man Made CO2 is so so inconsequential compared to natural CO2 and water and this whole thing is a gigantic scam with no scientific/ engineering basis.
10
I’ve been arguing with the warmists on talk.origins for a few days now. Their arguments get lamer and stupider by the minute and they often result to insults.
Like many people of their ilk, they rarely if ever listen to dissenting opinions on global warming or any other subject. So they have been using tired old arguments that have been refuted years ago.
When I raised the matter of the medeival warm period (MWP), and asked how the temperatures warmed during that time without any increase in CO2 emissions, a couple of them tried to raise the ridiculous argument that the MWP was confined to Europe. They had never heard of Loehle and McCulloch’s 2008 paper that uses temperature proxies from all over the world going back 2,000 years and shows a strong warming period in medeival times:
http://www.econ.ohio-state.edu/jhm/AGW/Loehle/Loehle_McC_E&E_2008.pdf
And then some of the idiots tried to mention Mann’s hockey stick papers that show little or no MWP. Most of them have never even heard of how McItyre and McKitrick debunked that flawed research years ago.
Global warming is more like a religion than science.
30
Another thing one of the warmists on talk.origins tried was the Venusian atmosphere analogy. Another stupid argument.
It goes something like this: Venus’ atmosphere is about 97% CO2. At the surface the temperature is about 460 degrees celsius. Look what happens when you increase the CO2 concentration!
The only problem with that are there are two other important differences between the Venusian and the terrestial atmospheres. For one thing, Venus is in an orbit about 27 million miles closer to the sun than the earth is. Solar radiation decreases with the square of the distance.
Also, the Venusian atmosphere is extremely dense. About 90 times that of the earth, at the surface.
Not at all surprising that Venus is a bit hotter than earth.
00
I’m waiting for Bob Carters new book to arrive. There was an interesting point in the ad about a 69 year drought in Australia on the geological records. I look forward to finding out more about this. It certainly gives some context to short term observations and projections of rainfall. It would make an excellent heckling point in an interview with Flannery.
70
Of course, their usual retort to previous record-breaking events is that although these exceptions occurred in the past, they are now becoming the ‘new normal’, we have reached a ‘tipping point’ and ‘it’s worse than we thought’. All this in the face of empirical evidence which demonstrates the complete opposite.
I watched a National Geographic doco on ‘Superstorm Sandy’ last night. Interesting, despite the overblown American-style narration. But it was a 40-minute lead-up to a 5-min conclusion that we are all going to see more of the same much more often and it will get worse much faster than we expect. Yet the ACE index shows a lull in storm activity. And the US is currently in the longest hurricane drought since records began. Sandy was not a hurricane upon US landfall, just a big storm coinciding with a full-moon high tide, and coming after a lot of rain resulting in many trees coming down across power lines causing fires everywhere plus extensive flooding. Armageddon soundbites all over the place. Ideal canvas for the likes of Scott Mandia to issue dire warnings about the coming apocalypse.
50
The BBC has been running a news segment on the heatwave in south-west US.
To my amazement, the word ‘climate’ never appeared, nor was there any discussion of ‘records’ or the like. At the end, they even had an interview with a local resident.
BBC (voiceover): But some people say this is nothing new.
Resident: “I was here in 1990. Compared with that, this is just a breeze.”
Even the webpage http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23116333 has no mention of climate.
What’s going on? An outbreak of sanity?
50
I think that they’re beginning to realise that anything they say in the context of a seventeen year absence of GW sounds, well, unconvincing, particularly as the amount of atmospheric CO2 continues its time lagged gentle climb and the biomass flourishes. More importantly, I think they realise that we realise they sound unconvincing.
30
NBC here in the states has tied the western heat wave to climate change — and they are not even talking about how much cooler the eastern United States is compared to last year.
00
Mike,
It’s certainly hot, 99 F (37.2 C) on my patio yesterday, which is not our usual summer day with a nice ocean breeze usually keeping us cooler. But that’s been a normal thing all the time I’ve lived here. Sometimes conditions are right and it gets hot. Do they claim it breaks any record? I’ll stick my neck out and say no (I don’t watch NBC).
My office is in the western end of the San Fernando Valley northwest of Los Angeles. 100 degree plus temperatures have been a summertime norm there for as long as records have been kept. The prediction for Friday was 99 degrees (F). I don’t know what it actually got up to but it was hot. And it was by no means a record setter. I’ve worked for that company since 1996 and summer days are always pushing or exceeding 100 degrees at some time or another.
20
Roy,
I live in west-central Arkansas. The “normal” high temperatures this time of year is low to mid 90s and very humid. It was 99Ā°F (37.2Ā°C) on Thursday. Today may not get to 80Ā°F (26.7Ā°C)and the next 10 days are all forecast for highs in the 80s. The June 30th high here last year, on the other hand, was 106Ā°F (41.1Ā°C).
Yet the media doesn’t report on the good weather stories such as the relief from the drought that hit the middle of the country so hard last year. Instead they hype and amplify the weather stories that have the most entertainment value, it seems.
40
Mike,
Yep, it’s all for the ratings. Good things don’t draw viewers but tell people they’ve a problem and you have an instant constituency = higher ratings. Then voila, advertising dollars roll in.
I’d say it’s not the entertainment value but the fear factor.
Our usual summer temperatures at home are about mid to upper 80s with lower humidity. But by 5 or 6 PM sometimes it can get too cool to stay out on the patio until dark.
10
Here’s the APs take on it from my Verizon home page.
Personally I’ve seen 122 F before, Blythe California in August of 1993. I was on my way to Phoenix and stopped for lunch about 1:00 PM. When I gassed up after lunch I asked the attendant what the temperature was. 122 F at approximately 2:30 PM.
Palm springs may be a bit hotter than anyone has seen before but it’s all just ho hum, who cares kind of stuff in the grand scheme of things.
10
PS:
Roughly 7 million people in and around Southern California, including about a million in the San Fernando Valley are dealing with it without trouble. Until it became a politically correct subject I never heard or saw any dire warnings about the heat, much less were any deaths reported, although I suspect there were some.
I never went to an air conditioned school, K through 12 and much of my college work too. And school was never let out on a hot day the way they do it now. And we have some sizzlers after school starts in late August or early September. Even October can get to the high 90s.
Perception is everything and guess which perception is being force fed to everyone?
20
NBC? Check out NBC’s history of lies and fakery:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_C/K#Sidesaddle_fuel_tank_controversy
00
@James McCown
I have never found a totally satisfactory explanation of the greenhouse effect.
Yes, CO2 does absorb infra red. It causes the CO2 molecule to vibrate internally. That does not change its temperature. What no-one ever seems to mention is that CO2 also gives up this energy almost straightaway. So it does not permanently “trap” heat. In most places in the atmosphere the CO2 molecules will be close to many non GHGs and so CO2 will actually give up its energy even sooner by collision. This will warm the molecule it collides with.
Another thing that is often not mentioned is how does the earth give energy back to space. We have three methods: conduction, convection and radiation. The first two do not work because space is empty. So earth loses heat by radiation (including reflection from the earth, directly, and clouds etc). In other words, the GHGs are the only gases that can cool the earth because the emissivity of N2 and O2 etc is practically zero. That is, even though they are warm enough to emit radiation they do not.
So the only thing I can think of would be a kind of “pin ball effect”Ā®. That is, the visible radiation comes straight in but, after being converted to IR by the earth, it is delayed by bumping into things (GHGs) on the way out.
40
Your “pinball effect” is pretty much the way I understand it too, though I describe it as “a radiative delay which increases energy density”.
You can use HITRAN On The Web to generate absorption spectra, here’s one I did earlier to save you the time.
A very thin band at 15μm is the only card CO2 has to play near the surface, every other wavelength is dominated by water vapour which usually absorbs 100x as much. There’s a taller peak at 4.5μm (2200cm^-1) but IIRC there is not much outgoing radiation to work with at these shorter wavelengths.
So there is no way CO2 can absorb 10% of outgoing surface radiation, water will get the photons first.
N2 has an emission line in the UV and would require a vastly higher temperature to emit due to these electron jumps alone.
At high density N2 and O2 will absorb and emit radiation in the IR band (and all other bands) due to what’s called “continuum emission”, look it up (eg this). Also called “thermal bremsstrahlung” in astrophysics. We don’t hear much about this effect in greenhouse lore. I guess that’s because at 100kPa and 290K it is still a really small power level (??), but I don’t know the number for it and some brief googling has not found anything specifically about N2. It could be zero. Just an interesting diversion.
30
All substances that are above absolute zero radiate heat. O2 and N2 radiate heat just fine, but at a different frequency than that radiated off of the surface of the earth (hence they are not greenhouse gasses). O2 and N2 receive their heat from conduction and convection and radiate it to space at their characteristic frequency just fine. In fact, that is how satellites measure the earths temperature, buy measuring the characteristic infrared frequency given off by O2 molecules.
20
What’s the emissivity of O2 gas?
Compare that to liquid water.
10
Sometimes, as a person who is not electrically trained, it’s hard to refute some arguments, so when people mention that rooftop solar power has now reached parity with coal fired power, you’re at a loss to try and refute it.
OK then, here’s an idea, and I’ll use an analogy.
Next time you’re in Coles, stand in front of the Milk fridges and look at the prices. Just the plain milk.
Then, go into Woolies and do the same thing. The prices are the same.
That is price parity.
Now, both supermarket chains have their home brand milk selling at a considerable mark down, $2 for their 2 litre plastic bottle of milk, which is $1/litre. Coles and Woolies have negotiated with some suppliers to actually supply the milk at a lower price so they can sell it this cheaply. Using the typical waterbed principle, and because there are so many Coles and Woolies, selling a vast amount of products, they can then spread any losses on this cheap milk across their whole range of products, a cent he, a cent there, and voila, they still make their huge profits, even selling milk, almost a staple of household life, so cheaply.
That is also price parity.
Now, imagine the government actually legislating that milk from one source is costed at $16 per litre and then forcing those retailers to purchase that milk, milk that they can still only sell at market price for milk.
Forcing them to do this, by legislation.
OK now, let’s look at rooftop solar power. Here, the legislation is that FIT and they also force the retailers to then purchase all rooftop solar fed back to the grid.
That FIT is 44 cents per KWH, and the retailers then also put in up to 6 cents per KWH, so now, those retailers have to purchase that power being fed back to the grid at 50 cents per KWH, which equates to $500 per MWH.
$500 per MegaWattHour.
Power that they can only sell at retail, (after adding on all the other costs and then factoring in their profit margin) at around 25 cents per KWH. ($250/MWH)
Power retailers negotiate with power generating companies to purchase electricity, and where possible they buy it at as cheap a price as they can.
Go now to 4AM every morning, when Australia is still consuming 18,000MW of power, while we all sleep.
The only plants running at this time are those large scale coal fired plants, the only plants that can actually supply those huge amounts of power. Power is at its cheapest wholesale price at this time of every day, and check any graph at AEMO for costs when related to time.
This power, in every State comes in at around $30/MWH.
During the day, as consumption increases, that cost increases marginally to around $40/MWH, and as other more expensive plants come on line, that cost per MWH rises, and the Australian average is around $55 to $60 per MWH.
All except for rooftop solar power, which is legislated at that cost of $500/MWH, which is 16 times higher than the negotiated cheapest price for coal fired power.
The same as in the case of the milk analogy above.
So, there you have it.
If anyone can call that parity, then it sure beats me.
So, when you hear how rooftop solar power has now reached price parity with coal fired power, do what I do, shake your head and laugh.
Then fight back.
Tony.
181
Don’t worry Tony, our energy problems are solved.
02
A $26 flashlight that delivers a 3LED light (nearly useless) for 20 mins.
Sounds more expensive that the warp coils on the Enterprise.
00
Come now Manfred – that’s how much it cost her to build it from scratch. I’m sure it could be manufactured for a whole lot less.
I have had an LED flashlight and it was quite good in fact.
Next time you are in a blackout and you forgot to get batteries for your flashlight, think again how “useless” you think such an invention is…….
30
i bought a light from ikea you just wind the handle and it works, more winding the longer it works and it has 6 leds.
12
Young girls tend to think laterally – I recall one instance where a young girl modified a solenoid by winding the wire once around the former, then on the second wind back only wound it partially of the way, and back and forth until the solenoid had a bulge of wire in the middle. The effect that winding method was to produce a linear solenoid, in which the metal rod moved through solenoid at constant speed. Normally the movement accelerates when the current is applied. Been patented too I understand.
11
Slider,
No matter how useful (or not) her flashlight may be, this girl is a pretty sharp physicist for 15 years old. She’s exactly what the world needs. She just needs to be steered in the direction of more practical problems to work on.
10
I guesstimate there’s about 100 million people who could afford to buy a bodyheat powered flashlight that would also get fair value out of it. In developing countries flashlights powered by crank generators are actually now quite popular because they do not require charging infrastructure or continual purchase of expensive batteries. They are powered by fuel that the people already have plenty of, which is their own food.
A flashlight powered by body heat would not work at all in tropical countries, but in the others it would fit right in.
Practicality is a function of circumstance. You aren’t in the circumstance in which this invention is practical.
10
When I went to school, girls were not allowed to do physics.
Now I know why. š
00
Tony – the power companies no longer pay you for the power you return to the grid. A friend recently put in a solar system and they get nothing for the power they return. Yet they still claim they got $250 off their quarterly bill recently because they used their aircon during the day and washed their clothes etc using their solar power.
20
Oh by the way Tony do you believe in coincidences? Fridays Adelaide Advertiser was saying that our power prices will rise by about $100 a year on Monday which just happens to be the same day the carbon dioxide tax gets jacked up from 23 to 24.15 a tonne………………now thats uncanny
52
Well Tony; this will make you fume:
UK Hospitals to run diesel generators to save the planet.
Lightyears beyond “Stupid”.
40
Bernd,
Seems the EU referendum is getting to the same conclusion I did a few weeks ago, and commented on here a couple of days ago. Hospitals are not the only ones whose diesel generators are being used as part of the STOR scheme. This is utilizing existing infrastructure. What is even crazier is that there is sufficient potential profit for new small-scale (around 20MW) power plants to be built. An example is a proposed scheme in Plymouth. I worked out that this is expected to operate at just 2% of capacity. If stand-by fees are included, this level of utilisation will cost Ā£0.65 KWH. That is $1000 MWH, or double the amount Tony claims is the cost of solar panels. Even whilst operating it generate $350 MWH at current rates. That compares with a cost of around $230 MWH for the diesel. My last electric bill was $0.15 KWH.
In terms of climate policy stupidity, Britain is a more advanced nation than Australia.
20
Tony,
Only $500 MWH for solar? Until the British Government slashed the rates for solar panels 15 months ago the FIT here was Ā£0.413 KWH, or $620 MWH. Householders also got paid the standard rate by the grid, plus any generated electricity was netted off the bill.
Another thing to consider. Australia has somewhat more sunshine that Britain. A government backed example estimated that a typical panel would generate more than five times the electricity in July as in December. Peak usage is the other way round.
10
Tony what a bloody great analogy!, may I use this for a local debate on so called renewable energy?
This would really connect with the general populous.
30
Yonniestone,
hey, go for your life.
Keep in mind with the milk analogy the number of dairy farmers who have said that the $1 a litre milk that the 2 Supermarkets are selling at is less than they can actually produce it for so the figure of $16 per litre here is a good analogy.
Tony.
50
This is most relevant to the KRudd thread 3 days ago, but I guess we’ve moved on since then.
Business groups pushing for Kevin Rudd to make changes to the carbon tax
Here is your unbiased ABC reporting:
Notice which part is important to them!
They see people’s standards of living as less important than demonising CO2.
Here is your pro-science economically sound “global warming is crap” totally politically differentiated Opposition party:
Notice which part is important to them!
Siphoning an extra $15B/y out of your pocket is considered essential, and they’ll keep a price on carbon to do it.
Here is your worker-friendly ALP:
Notice which part is important to them!
Keeping the Greens co-operative is more essential to the ALP than encouraging big business to create jobs in this country.
Don’t vote for them, Vote for Themm.
NUNNOV, Themm.63
That’s just bald faced crap inspired by your dream of Them Nunnov. Of course the opposition is going to say that it will blow a hole in Labor’s budget – that’s part of their job. It will.
Do you really think that after pledging so many times that they will abolish the tax that the Coalition won’t? Really, we all know happened with “There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”, so I don’t think they would be that stupid.
Andrew, I think in fact that you are a Labor supporter and as such you know full well that as many potential Coalition voters you can fool then the better. If you deny this, then tell me this: Do you REALLY think that another hung parliament would be a good thing?
40
.
Not sure which of those two thought-bubbles I find the weirdest, BS:
Andrew McRae, one of the most consistently “dry” commentators on this site, as a closet Labor Supporter, or Andrew secretly having the hots for a product of my imagination.
.
As for the thrust of your comment: BS, never, ever, ever, ever underestimate the capacity of Australian politicians of ALL persuasions, to do really, really, really stupid things. It’s virtually a prerequisite for the job.
I can offer plenty of examples if you like.
40
Well gee MV, I guess that you missed this part of his rant:
So tell me MV, who don’t you run for parliament then?
10
.
“Who” do you suggest I run for parliament, BS?
10
Once again your telepathy module has failed you, Backslider. I suggest you get it upgraded to the new Clairvoyance 3000.
Seems my “closet” support of the ALP is so secret… even I don’t know about it! š
You fool.
00
Correction – even YOU don’t know about it…. who’s the idiot?
02
That’s bloody brilliant, Andrew.
Mind if I use it?
20
I couldn’t stop you even if I wanted to.
20
.
You are probably right, Andrew.
Nonetheless, I will not use it if you have some objection.
00
Oh, sorry I wasn’t explicit enough. I don’t have any problem with you using those words, it’s just a turn of phrase, anyone could have thought of it. No attribution nor compensation are required.
IP law is a strange thing. It’s just like Lawrence Lessig questioned: Who owns culture?
10
MV
You have to release the website THEMM or this is an imaginary argument.
You said in an earlier post, the release was July – depending on the election date.
I think you have plenty of time as Kevin will want to utilise the Car C1, Bureaucracy C1, Power C1, Twitter C1, Facebook C1, @PMOpressoffice C1, Lodge C1, Kirribilly C1, Cabcharge C1 and the Jet C1 for as long as possible.
I can understand Backslider for his comments, as to date, an alternative has not been given by anyone except the Joker Palmer (Not for me).
I am not going to vote for a PHANTOM THEMM until I find out the facts – the same applies to CAGW.
10
Dave,
The Themm campaign is a series of play-offs. It can be broken down into the following phases.
1) – It is a dismal failure from the beginning and will be ignored, in which case no harm done except to my time and bank balance.
2) – It touches a raw nerve with some of the voting public and has the capacity to have an effect.
Assuming (1) then there is nothing to discuss. Assuming (2) then timing becomes critical because:
1) – The longer it runs, the more successful it can be, which is balanced by:
2) – The longer it runs, the more opportunity there is to mount a counter-campaign in the MSM.
So, timing becomes critical.
Now, if I were Simon Sheikh heading up GetUp, financed by the unions, a week would be more than enough, with no chance of a counter-campaign.
Alas, these days I am just me, so prior experience tells me I will need at least six weeks, probably eight, and in that timeframe I will be leaving myself open to a counter-campaign of sorts. There is nothing I can do about that. On the other hand, anything more than eight weeks will mean wholesale slaughter in the MSM. Up until a few days ago that meant a launch between July 20, and August 3, depending on a daily reading of the entrails, for a September 14 election.
Now KRudd is ascendant, and that means the only date on which we can guarantee there will be no election is September 14 (Yom Kippur). So we must wait patiently and see what KRudd intends to do.
.
Anybody with more than four functioning brain cells would say go with the sugar hit (the wicked witch is dead) and go to an election as soon as possible (August 3 or 10). Unfortunately, we are not dealing with a rational person. KRudd’s ego is such that he really believes the longer he can delay the election, the greater the victory (yes you read that right) he can deliver to the Labor Party. Such is the man’s delusions of grandeur. That means an election late October, or even November.
So, for the moment the Themm campaign must wait on the whim of a maniac.
20
Backslider, I hear your exasperation in wasting a precious vote on the Themm Nunnov.
But, where is the choice?
For example:
If Rudd, or Abbott, or Gillard, or Combet, if any of them had any courage of conviction, they would STOP the lifetime Gold Pass entitling free air travel.
Who amongst those four is thinking of the children’s children as they fly first class, after promoting fraudulent action on carbon (sic)?
That is just one example of these supercilious hypocrites.
As you know, our voting system is preferential, so, either 6 degrees of separation, or three, the votes eventually lead to the red tie/blue tie sell out traitors to the UN.
Meh? I don’t wanna vote for none of them, first, second or fifth preferential. They don’t deserve my vote.
If Abbott wants my vote, let him give up his gold pass, or, give up his direct action plan.
If Rudd wants my vote, let him give up his gold pass, or, give up his cprs/ets/carbon (sic) tax.
40
Handjive,
I understand where you are coming from. But let me give you a far more simple, easy to use, and more widely applicable example.
There is not a politician in Australia today who does not pepper their rhetoric with terms such as “sustainable”, or “environmental”. Fair enough. Let us put it to the test.
What if a simple change to one paragraph of one bit of legislation could save the equivalent of 30,000 hectares of forest? EVERY election? Surely there is not an “environmentally aware” politician who would not support such a move?
The truth is, every state and federal election, the equivalent of 30,000 hectares of forest is turned into “how-to-vote” cards. There is a section of the Australian Electoral Act which dictates nothing will appear in a polling booth to indicate how a person should vote for one candidate or another.
Simply changing that section of the act so that every candidate supplied a standardised “how to vote” card in every polling booth would save 30,000 hectares of forest every election, in printing unnecessary “how to vote” cards.
This is not a new idea. Up until I stopped tracking it in 1986, it had been put forward by Independents and small party representatives eleven times in Federal Parliament, and eight times in the Queensland state parliament.
It gets knocked back EVERY time by the major parties (and I include the Greens in that), because they perceive, rightly or wrongly, that “how-to-vote” cards give them an electoral advantage over small parties and independents.
.
So much for any actual commitment to “the environment”.
.
PS – Works for Greenpeace and the WWF too.
00
30,000 ha? That sounds like a zero or two too many MV. Can you show how you arrived at that figure? Also might want to think about how much of it is sourced from recycled paper, and goes back into the recycling bin.
00
Thanks for the sanity check MH!
00
To my downvoters and detractors, okay it’s political so there may be no way to agree, but try me anyway.
Why would anyone vote for the LNP?
Is there any reason for thinking the LNP will ACTUALLY repeal and void the commonwealth-mandated fiat currency on carbon-equivalent emissions OTHER than the “blood pledge” encapsulated on this Liberal Party page?
Because over a year after the “blood pledge”, with the election drawing closer, we are now hearing murmurs about how much government tax revenue will be lost by letting the price float, let alone repealing it completely.
Here is Greg Hunt just yesterday (my bolding):
That appears to mean that “sound policy” is spending the 15B that have been promised to various government appendages in the Budget, instead of throttling down government spending.
It appears to mean that “sound policy” is keeping the fixed price period in place for as long as it was scheduled.
It sounds like the men in blue ties are getting blue feet.
And far from stopping the nonsense on carbophobia, Abbot has an EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE scheme of “direct action” (the irony that this term used to be a euphemism for terrorism is not lost on me) which, based on prior testimony seen in this forum, would have to be made even more expensive just to deliver some short term increase in soil carbon content. The moment the planted trees die it will go straight back into the air! It’s an attempt to use mortals that participate in the carbon cycle to permanently sequester CO2! It cannot work. Even if it worked, it doesn’t stop the carbophobia nonsense, it replaces a rigged market mechanism with a centrally planned conscripted Green Army marshalling the taxpayers funds to tailor a very fine invisible suit for his Royal Greenness.
Stopping the boats? You’ve gotta be kidding me. “Illegal” immigrants have been arriving recently at the rate of 1,440 per month. Australia’s population increases at 32,400 per month anyway. You could let them ALL in, no offshore processing, save a billion dollars a year, and it makes only a 5% difference to the pressure on Australia’s economy and land development.
The boats are a non-event floated by both parties as a divisive and xenophobic diversion from real issues, and gee isn’t it working well!
Quite aside from the carbon tax, how will the LNP differ in any way whatsoever in their policy on important issues such as…
* preserving private property rights such as in farm and water management,
* the automatic account raiding programme implemented into all major banks in the G20 (including Australia) to make Cypress-style “bail-ins” easy to invoke,
* The bail-out of RBS in the UK was done partly by NAB in Australia in 2010 which then had to be bailed out by the government, which means Rudd bailed out the Rothschilds and we the people will be expected to pay for it… presumably with a slashing of government services and a raise in taxes, i.e. – the austerity measures we thought was just somebody else’s problem,
* the double-taxing of rich super accounts according to an arbitrary definition of rich,
* applying community standards to oversight of government surveillance activities,
* excessive government spending,
* the misguided institution of league tables for schools which has lead to declines in education standards in other countries that tried them (eg UK 1,2),
* the eggshell-walking regime of concurrent Sino-American supplication,
* our respectful alliance with a government that carpet bombs villages abroad, murders journalists at home, and sends John Kerry for friendly talks with Jhabat al-Nusra,
* preserving Weekends from enterprise profiteering,
* no concerted effort by CSIRO to track down the environmental chemical source of cancers in people under 50,
* the flight of manufacturing from the country,
* the bulging national debt, and
* the 2nd most unaffordable housing in the developed world for 8 years running?
You can be guaranteed all the important issues will NOT be on the election agenda because LNP and ALP are two sides of the same coin produced by the political party system that has failed us.
22
Andrew McRae, you obviously haven’t thought through the boat arrivals. Yes they are illegal, not “illegal” otherwise would you tell me why in hell I wait in line at customs and immigration when arriving from overseas as a passport holding citizen? Or can I simply walk in?
Now do some numbers. The population of Australia is around 22 million people. To the west and north of us live at least 2.2 Billion people, many of whom would probably be personally better off economically on the dole in Australia than gainfully employed in their home countries. If 1% of them come here it will make no difference to their home countries but will double the population of Australia and turn this place into the sort of hell hole their home countries are.
So my question to you is: How many of them do you want? Because unless you make serious efforts to stop them the above scenario is the best case estimate of the end game.
Ask the aborigines how well it worked out for them.
BTW it is a fair bet that to a physicist’s order of magnitude estimate these people cost $100,000 per year each for the first year(includes Navy , detention, transport, social welfare, legal aid etc.) At roughly 20,000 per year that is $2 billion right there. The downstream costs and damage to this country will be much, much higher.
10
Hehee, ah, I know when someone is particularly pissed off at me because they address me by full name.
Okay I’ll cop the language point about the illegality of their immigration method. The point that a person cannot be illegal still stands. Only their method of immigration into Australian territorial waters was illegal.
“So my question to you is: How many of them do you want?”
None. But when I said you “could” let them all in, I wasn’t seriously suggesting to actually do that. My point was to illustrate how small the problem currently is even with the record high numbers of recent arrivals.
The cost of processing adds up to about a billion dollars a year from one news article I read. How could you cut the cost without having the Navy just blowing the boats out of the water? I don’t see any other way, it’s just costly to do the right thing.
Doubling Australia’s population will make it a hell hole? Okay, so on current trends Australia will be a hell hole by 2070. We’ll both be dead before then, but should you plan to stop this tragedy?
And now that you have admitted we need a population growth control plan, how many people do you want in Australia?
That limit would actually create “illegal” people. How would you inhibit people from reproducing and how would you remove the “illegals”?
It’s a bit more complicated than “stop the boats”.
00
No, it happens to be the name you post under.
As for the numbers, the TRENDS are going in a worrying direction. All this for a problem that had been essentially completely solved before the current Labor idiots messed with it.
If we had blown the first boat out of the water, far fewer people would have been killed than has been the case so far.
No, doubling Australia’s population over the next 50 years won’t necessarily make it a hell hole. Doubling it by adding as many illegal immigrants (thieves and home invaders is a good term for them if you don’t like illegal immigrants) as current population, will.
For starters we should leave the Navy in port. Any SOS will be responded to only if the ship has filed a sail plan with AMSA that has been approved by the Australian government. Any others will be assumed to be hoaxes. Any takeover of a ship by illegals or any pressure applied to the crew will be treated as piracy. We know how to deal with pirates. How long before legitimate mariners die because our SAR resources are fully occupied with illegals?
As for your list of other problems, some of the points are to do with excessive government spending and national debt, both of which are added to by the boat arrivals.
The rest seems to be a grab bag of lefty talking points although some of them are things leftists seem to approve of.
Jesus wept.
20
Yep, can agree on leaving the Navy in port. No need to roll out the red carpet for this lot, we can just let them die at sea if they don’t make it all the way to the 100nmi limit. Saves a tonne of money.
The Christmas island facility will become the most likely target, so we’ve still got to send them back from there somehow. You may prefer to let them crash against the sheer volcanic cliffs, it’s cheaper again.
The SAR resource shortage is a false dilemma, no SAR ship captain will ever ignore an SOS just because they’re dealing with one boat already. The risk can never be removed because no matter how many ships and helis you have you can always imagine another legitimate SOS occurring at the same time. It’s an imaginary threat up until it becomes tough luck.
Sorry to hear you’re still blinded by the Left/Right paradigm. You might wanna get that fixed. It’s not about communism versus capitalism these days since our enemy uses both, it’s about humanity versus psychopaths and the exempt kleptocratic rich versus the rest of us.
As for your cussing, it seems to be directed at someone who holds views utterly dissimilar to my own and is based on things I’ve never said. I guess you’re the type to project every evil upon anybody who disagrees with you about even one single thing. Not worth attempting to argue then.
I have found this page to be an interesting counterargument to the humanitarian approach:
http://www.hotheads.com.au/immigrants.htm
Like you it is unapologetic, but it is less nasty and less hotheaded and it presents some evidence. I will use that page instead, thanks. Bye.
01
Andrew,
The immediate solution is to hand Christmas island back to Indonesia, this way most of the boats launched will not make it to the continent. This of course will cause a slight problem to a certain sector of defence but this loss is well worth it as the financial returns will be imense.
What i dont like about this whole sorry saga is that we have people in this country sleeping in the streets and there does not appear to be enough financial support or any support of any kind to help them however illegals enter this country and get everything handed to them on a plate.
It must be wonderful to turn up to a country unannounced, uninvited and be handed cash, house and all the perks that go with it. These people get everything and i for one am sick and tired of it.
Did you know my son does not qualify for the student allowance for uni? He does not because i earn too much (really? Me?) but an illegal will get that even though they have never paid a tax dollar and no doubt never will.
I dont get discounts on prescriptions but illegals get it all, enough is enough Andrew.
Gotta go so sorry this response was brief, maybe we can debate a bit more later
Cheers
00
crakar24, agree. What about the bloke down the road who needs a cataract op or a hip replacement? These resources are being stolen from taxpayers who in most cases have held down jobs, raised and educated their children, paid taxes all their lives and who now suffer because the resources are being used by the invaders. They weren’t asked to come here. They are breaking in. Enough is enough. We are being taken for fools.
As for Andrew, I’d like to know how the SAR ship captain can be in two places at once? I should care what mishaps happen to burglars who are breaking in to my house. I don’t. Really. You’re a complete waste of time.
00
*sigh*
Do you know what a forest is? Do you really think that a tree just grows and then dies?
Think about this: Trees bear fruit.
00
Where are these farms that are private property?
Water courses are not private property, even if you do happen to own the land they run through.
10
Hello James. Ask the warmists for experimental evidence using real gases to show how much warming one molecule in a million of CO2 causes – in other words, no suppositions using computer calculations or ‘models’. I mean real world laboratory bench data. They won’t know because it hasn’t been done, and a letter I sent to the UK’s Met Office some time ago confirms it.
Have a look at http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.gif
This shows the lack of warming since the late 1990s – despite a continuing increase in CO2 from 361ppm (in 1997) to 391ppm (in 2012).
40
I think Kevin (not AGW) “is the greatest moral issue of our time”.
70
Ah memories memories, this is your Prime Minister speaking:
Kevin is a pea-brained jerk, and that’s a fact.
70
OMG!
00
“Kevin is a pea-brained jerk, and thatās a fact.”
Wow! Now that’s a really sophisticated argument isn’t it?
You’ve really convinced me that you’re right now!
19
Mr Smith! You’ve returned!
And so soon on the heels of Rudd’s installment into the top job. That’s purely an unconnected co-incidence I’m sure.
There will be much carbophilic and carbophobic discussion of party policy in the weeks ahead.
Welcome back.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Backslider, if you want to see a closet Labor supporter here is your canonical example!
60
If not done already by far the biggest story since climategate
http://climateaudit.org/2013/06/28/cru-abandons-yamal-superstick/
Basically they (TEAM) are admitting that they cooked the books and were wrong about AGW based on Paleo from Yamal tree (in an indirect way of course). They now include ALL the trees from same area and get exactly the same graph that SM got in 2009 and 2012. I would have thought that is 100% plagiarism even though it was published on the net not a journal
80
Are we on the precipice of the inevitable “death spiral” RegTM…………….
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
If so then we can expect another bone chilling winter in the NH but once again only time (or an accurate computer model) will tell.
43
Rick Bradford –
u should have listened to bbc’s science prog on the following:
BBC Science: Ancient DNA found in horse bone
Genetic material has been extracted from a 700,000 year old fossilised horse bone preserved in the Canadian permafrost. Older, by half a million years, than any other sequenced DNA, this opens up the possibility of extending our understanding of animal and hominin evolution to the ancient past.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01b5fqx
bbc presenter freaked that just when scientists have acquired the ability to get more info out of minimal dna material, CLIMATE CHANGE HAPPENED, & that means fossils preserved in ice are being destroyed before we can discover more about them!
wonder what the MSM thought the climate did before we had CAGW “CLIMATE CHANGE”!
10
Greens push for 90% renewable target
If you were in any doubt about the ignorance and lunacy of the greens, then read the link.
If Tony is around can he tell me the break even point for buying a diesel generator?
A litre of diesel according to Wikipedia is supposed to yield about 10 kwh. Therefore on (current local prices) a generator would cost $0.16 per kwh for my own electricity needs. Threefold this cost is still cheaper than S.A. electricity.
40
rambler,
that link to Senator Milne’s attempt to imitate Pixie Ann Wheatley always shows that she’s worthy of a laugh.
She says that the 20% from renewables by 2020 should be a start point. So, see at this Comment here at Joanne’s site why that seemingly small target is virtually impossible.
She then says that we could feasibly aim for 90% from renewables by 2030.
For the same reason (they will NEVER find the money for that) that the smaller 20% target is unreachable, I would add, and here I actually have to place this in block quotes so I can highlight in bold the relevant word.
Now, you may think this is a bold statement to make, but let’s have a look shall we.
Australia currently has in TOTAL Nameplate Capacity power generation from EVERY source is 54GW, and actual consumption is 256TWH.
30GW of that Nameplate Capacity is coal fired power generation, and that supplies 180TWH (70%)
Let’s then look at somewhere that does have a huge amount of renewables.
The U.S. currently has 62GW of Wind power Nameplate Capacity. That total Capacity actually supplies to U.S. grids 149.8TWH of Power, and that’s a Capacity Factor of 27% overall.
Notice something here.
The U.S. has 115% of Australia’s total power Nameplate and only supplies 58.5% of Australia’s actual power consumption.
That 149.8TWH does not even reach the absolute 24/7/365 requirement (the Base Load).
I mentioned that there’s not enough money to actually construct that much renewable power.
Let’s actually pretend that the money is already there, those (literally) hundreds of Billions of dollars.
That U.S. total of 62GW comes in at 30,000 towers (or more)
Australia currently has around 1500 towers, so we’re looking at the current Australian total multiplied by 20.
That new total needed comes in at around 120 NEW wind plants, and with 17 years until Christine Milne’s 2030 target, that means we need to
constructbring on line SEVEN new wind plants every year, starting TODAY.This Milne woman is absolutely clueless.
Notice I haven’t mentioned Concentrating Solar which they (blindly) hope can replace the 24/7/365 coal fired plants, well, I haven’t mentioned them, because at 17 MW Nameplate Capacity, huh! why would you even bother, and they don’t run for 24 hours extrapolated over a whole year, but for barely 16 hours.
This is something I would expect from a fabricated Pixie Ann Wheatley, but from a serving Senator who actually has a mouth which she can ask questions with, this is positively laughable.
She is the joke.
Tony.
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Thanks Tony.
Your figures speak for themselves. If we presume that the “jokes” are the ones that make the laws then electricity is about to get disproportionately expensive.
My question is given diesel at (say) $1.60 at what price per kwh is it worth buying a household diesel generator?
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IR. The question is complex.
I have diesel with some solar and batteries. Of grid.
Diesel can get in the ball park for bulk but it’s the “off peak” supply (standby) that wrecks it. Internal combustion engines don’t like to run at low loads. My batteries fix the low loads but they aren’t cheap. Getting users to start the generator for a minutes hair drier when they don’t “have” to is not friendly.
Doug
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It’s official Obama’s clueless energy policy will reduce temp in 2100 by 0.02C or two hundredths of 1C.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/30/the-grand-prize-in-obamas-war-on-coal/#more-89047
This will hurt the poor now but won’t change the climate or temp by a mesasureable jot.
But it will cost billions pa and thousands of jobs.
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Yes, that’s the objective: destroying the US. The temperature is only a red herring.
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http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/CO2_Versus_Water.html
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our politicians must be forced to face the “coal” reality. where are the journos to question them?
28 June: Bloomberg: Rakteem Katakey: India to Eclipse China as Worldās Coal Power, Buoying BHP
India is burning coal in power plants at the fastest pace in 31 years…
Indiaās growing appetite for imported coal should benefit suppliers in the $69 billion global coal trade such as BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) (BHP) and Indonesiaās PT Adaro Energy (ADRO). India is set to eclipse China as the top importer of power station coal by 2014, as China burned the fuel in 2012 at the slowest pace since 2008, and U.S. demand fell for a second year, according to Energy Aspects Ltd.
āIndia is increasingly becoming an important swing factor in the coal markets and exporters will look there for price support as Chinese imports slow,ā said Michael Parker, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. āChinese imports will start to fall as they use more of their own coal.ā…
As Asiaās second-biggest energy consumer, with an economy expanding 5 percent last year, India used 10.2 percent more coal from a year earlier…
China will have a coal-production capacity of 4.3 billion metric tons by the end of this year, compared with estimated consumption of 4.1 billion tons, Bernstein said in a May 30 report. The nation bought 142 million tons of thermal coal from overseas in 2012, 39 percent higher than a year earlier, said Trevor Sikorski, an analyst at Energy Aspects in London…
Adani Enterprises Ltd. (ADE) and the Tata Group were among buyers of 15.6 million metric tons of the fuel in April, according to Interocean Group, a New Delhi-based shipper. The purchases drove up imports by 51 percent from a year earlier owing to lower prices ahead of summer when demand for electricity increases…
Coal-fired power stations provide about 59 percent of Indiaās electricity. State-owned Coal India Ltd. (COAL), which supplies more than 80 percent of the nationās needs, has been unable to meet demand that is forecast to climb 43 percent to 730 million tons by 2017 from last yearās levels. Supplies from local coal mines may gain 38 percent in the period, the nationās Planning Commission said last year…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-27/india-to-eclipse-china-as-world-s-coal-power-buoying-bhp.html
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TonyfromOz –
any comments?
1 July: Business Spectator: Is carbon pricing reducing emissions?
Jenny Riesz and Roger Dargaville
Jenny Riesz is research fellow with the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets (CEEM) at the University of NSW. Roger Dargaville is a Research Fellow, Energy Research Institute at University of Melbourne.
Jenny Riesz does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations. Roger Dargaville receives funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
This article was originally published at The Conversation.
The greenhouse emissions from the National Electricity Market (covering around 80 per cent of electricity supply in Australia) showed a 7 per cent reduction from 2011-12 to 2012-13. However, much of this is due to demand, which reduced 5 per cent over the same period. According to the electricity market operator, the reasons probably include dramatic increases in rooftop solar, customer responses to higher prices (mostly caused by rising network costs), increasing incentives for energy efficiency, and reduction in industrial and manufacturing loads (driven by the high Australian dollar).
Much of the remaining reduction in emissions is probably related to significant increases in renewable generation over the past year…
Although itās difficult to point to concrete short term changes in the electricity market, the carbon price is having an impact on long term investment decisions, which is where the real benefits will start to play out. The economics of power systems mean that itās much easier to materially affect the investment decisions for a new plant than to affect the short-term dispatch decisions of an existing plant. It has been argued that this already means wind is now cheaper than coal if youāre building a new plant, due to the very large impact of the carbon price on financing costs for emissions-intensive generation options…
But the lack of proposals for significant new coal-fired plant is a good indication that the carbon price is having an influence over investor decisions. This is where the real pay-off lies ā by avoiding the installation of more coal-fired generators we avoid the very significant greenhouse emissions that would result from those power stations over their 30-year-plus lifetime.
This highlights an underlying truth ā the intention of the carbon price is to drive a long-term transformation of Australiaās economy…
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/7/1/carbon-markets/carbon-pricing-reducing-emissions
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National hara-kiri. Yes, that will be a long-term transformation.
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pat, thanks for the link,
that same article is repeated across at The Conversation.
I went and read the article, which had some factual errors, but hey, you expect that.
I then logged in and left a Comment, not ever expecting that it would actually get posted.
Imagine my surprise when they did post it, and scroll down to the bottom.
I can see the flames coming from some ears right now, and the personal abuse will begin to flow I have no doubt.
Is carbon pricing reducing emissions?
Tony.
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In the same vein as the continuing saga of expensive power costs in South Australia, with the Month of May the stand out here with an average of $120/MWH for power during the main 15 hour Peak period (7AM to 10PM) the average cost for June came in at $131.73/MWH for that period when there was most consumption.
The Northern power plant (coal fired) was quietly brought back on line during this Month, and now has one unit supplying power into the SA grid.
So, with coal fired power, there were five days all Summer (all three Months) when power spiked beyond $100/MWH, and here we have 16 days one Month (May) and 11 days in June when power costs spiked beyond that Summer peak cost, with the average for both Months considerably higher than those 5 Summer spikes.
That’s what power costs will look like with a reliance on wind power, and with coal fired power shut down.
The average for the other (coal fired States) was half the average in South Australia
Tony.
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you better get over there and reply to the reply.
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TonyfromOz –
good to see your comment is still up at The Conversation.
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I’m pleased as punch that this forum has become a way for trolling TonyFromOz. š
“Gee, here’s a story that will get RIGHT UP Tony’s nose, (copy, paste).”
In fairness it’s quite complimentary of both paster and pastee.
The complainant is skeptical enough to not be satisfied with just having an intuition that a news item is outrageous, they want to know precisely the REASON it is outrageous. At the same time they believe Tony’s the bloke with the reason for the season.
It’s all fun and games until the lights go out.
Wait, what did I just say? š
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Hey thanks Andrew.
The only trolling I have ever done was at Burrinjuck back in the early 70’s.
Small rod and a spinner, I think they were called.
We went there around four times while we were undergoing trade training for electrical trade.
There were usually five of us, and we’d arrive late Friday afternoon, be out on the lake at around 6AM and would fish until around 4PM, for Trout, mainly Rainbows, and on a a couple of occasions, a nice healthy Brown.
Anything under twelve inches had to be released, but one foot equated to around a pound and a half, a nice feed, and they were beautiful cooked in butter.
Five guys, one driving the putt putt boat as the other 4 trolled out the back, two each side. When one guy hooked up, the other 3 would pull in their lines, and the driver would then go square on to the side the fish was on, so the catcher could play it, and Trout were nice little fighters, especially those wily old Browns, always larger than Rainbows.
I got to drive the boat very rarely, because any fish I caught committed suicide, as I am a very poor fisherman.
All up, I would have caught around a dozen fish in all on those trips and only one was a Brown.
Beautiful eating though.
That’s the extent of my trolling, but yes, I do take your point. I guess I am a Troll really.
The good thing about Joanne’s site is the many number of eyes I now have access to, to go looking for articles that they think might have some importance, and with each one, even I learn something from them.
All I have to do is explain it for those who I know really would like to be able to understand what has been written, and what surprises me most is in fact the number of people who really DO want to know about what I originally perceived as being dry and boring.
Tony.
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Tony,
The sporting pursuit you are referring to here is *trawling* not trolling, trolling is when you pinch a trolley from Coles, jump in it and roll down a hill as seen on TV in the Jackass series.
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we always called it trolling when it referred to trout fishing.
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Tony it’s not dry and boring to people when it costs them an arm and a leg!
If your a troll then I hope there’s more like you out there š
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gah! no! You’ve misunderstood. You aren’t trolling, we are.
When I said “a way for trolling TonyFromOz” I meant “a place to troll TonyFromOz”, as in dangling news stories in front of you hoping to get a bite (and an explanation).
But the fishing story was well received nonetheless.
The origin of “trolling” in the Internet sense is most likely the fishing method of trolling, just as you say. Some have claimed the stirrer is like a Troll lurking under a bridge waiting for someone to eat, but I find this fanciful given that the term was most likely appropriated by American and British users and not Nordic people.
My appreciation of fishing is entirely at the plate end of the process. š Favourite is still barramundi, but I did once eat a local Poulet Fish in Vanuatu which was particularly nice.
Coral trout and salmon get runners up prizes, but I believe they are shallow sea and deep sea fish respectively, so unlike the barra you can’t catch them in a river.
When eating a barra, it’s best not to think of them as hermaphroditic cannibals. heh.
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You do realise Andrew that Tony is not the only one around here that is familiar with electricity generation and understands the concepts of MW per hour etc.
I for one have “pasted” many stories for Tony’s pleasure not for his approval as you have attempted to claim. I suggest if you had a modicum of knowledge about the subject you would understand just how silly your comment appears.
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crakar24, are you referring to me?
If so as a visitor to JoNova’s site since it began I am well aware of commenters contributions here over the years.
My comment to Tony was a friendly compliment and joke on him being compared to an internet troll, which I thought amusing.
As far as the rest I’ll take a mature approach and just assume you had a bad day, as no rational thinking person could truly believe they know someone’s depth of knowledge purely from an internet chat.
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crakar24, I do apologize as I see now your comment was to Andrew DOH!
All I can say is that I think I need glasses soon as this has been happening for a while, one too many weld arc flashes I think. š
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See:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2013/7/1/the-insanity-of-central-planning.html#comments
DISCOMBOBULATION is too pale a word for the situation now
Lessons:
1) Do not undergo a triple bypass in a UK hospital
2) Do not underestimate the stupidity of people. If you do, you will be mugged for it … guaranteed
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And now for something completely different…
Here’s one for windmill devotees, or should it be windmill – one – rare off-course bird – nought.
It is incomprehensible why the journalist describes this as ‘ironic’ in this equally incomprehensible sentence.
I’d say Josh Jones of the Bird Guides struggles in a state of cognitive dissonance. There is no alternative. He simply must be a windmill devotee or he’d be foaming at the mouth over the pointless loss of this rare bird. At least no one actually blamed the bird for being off-course!
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/06/28/birdwatchers-flock-to-see-rare-bird-then-watch-it-killed-by-wind-turbine/?intcmp=trending
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UPDATE!
Owner of Henbury Station goes bust
“The owner of a cattle station involved in a controversial carbon farming project in central Australia has gone into receivership.
R.M. Williams Agricultural Holdings bought Henbury Station in 2011 for $13 million, with an $11 million contribution from the Federal Government.
Luke Bowen from the Northern Territory Cattlemen’s Association said de-stocking the station had implications for all pastoralists in the region.
“It does reduce the critical mass of the industry in the region,” Mr Bowen said.
“It reduces the amount of people employed.
“It reduces the amount of services and goods I guess which churn through the economy to supply these businesses.”
SOME history:
October 12 2011: Focus on flames of climate change (The Australian)
July, 2012: Qantas has entered into an agreement to buy more than a million tonnes of carbon credits from Henbury Station in central Australia.
November 11 2012: Carbon Sunk (ABC Lateline)-
“It’s not clear from either side of the fence what exactly would happen to the Government’s $9 million investment.
The former Agricultural Minister Tony Burke, who signed off on the Henbury deal, was unavailable for comment, leaving some in the local pastoral industry uneasy.”
17 December, 2012: RM Williams wants cattle back on carbon farm
1 July 2013: Henbury goes bust!
.
And the moral of the story is Never Cook your Turkey’s Goose before it’s Lit.
00
UPDATE!
Prof debunks flatulence as major cause of global warming
“In 2006, the United Nations concluded that the livestock industry was a big contributor to climate change.
In its report āLivestockās Long Shadow,ā the U.N. concluded that livestock were contributing 18 percent of the worldās greenhouse gases ā allegedly more than the entire worldās transpiration.
Mitloehner convinced the U.N. to recant its claim in 2010.”
.
You gotta wonder about the “dated” scientific advice the Australian government receives before it invests hard earned Australian tax payer dollars in it’s Failed Cargo Cult of Carbon.
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Desertec deserted
Nobody of any substance is left, Bosch and Siemens having abandoned their seats on the pie in the sky last year.
(BTW: Bosch’s solar panel branch is reported to have made a loss of 2.6 billion EUros before being shut down.)
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you are going to love this TonyfromOz
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/1044677_10151745584286753_1397353585_n.png
00
sorry
source
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