Weekend Unthreaded

/s3/jo.nova.s3.amazonaws.com/photo/myshots/ocean/port-denison-w.jpg

Port Denison, Western Australia, April 2015. JoNova | Click to enlarge.

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119 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

  • #
    Annie

    I’ve just been reading about the Nepal earthquake…such a sad time for those caught up in it.

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      Lank

      How long will it take before an alarmist links this terrible tragedy to climate change?

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      I have a good friend, who is married to a Sherpa. Communication with Nepal is never good, at the best of times, but it is a lot worse at the moment, so it is hard to find out what is happening.

      The sad thing for me is that, because the population is so small, everybody knows everybody else. Nobody will be unaffected.

      Many Nepalese men work overseas on contract, in order to support their families back home and in turn, their local economy. They are unable to return, while those contracts remain in force.

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    el gordo

    Weatherzone has another East Coast Low off Sydney heads by Saturday. Its intensity is hard to predict, here what Rob Sharp (Weatherzone) told Hannam about the recent ECL.

    Two systems “combined and we saw that [cyclonic] rotation,” Mr Sharp said. “That rotation was created with the warm moist air along the coast interacting with the really cold upper level air inland.”

    ‘The strength of the current event was driven by the steep gradient between the warm over the Tasman and cool air at upper levels of the atmosphere, making for a classic east coast low set-up.

    ‘At this time of year, sea-surface temperatures off Sydney are about the warmest they get during the year, and this year they have been abnormally warm – right around Australia.’

    ——

    So is this a cooling or warming signal?

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    • #

      As Leonardo DiCrapio would describe it: It’s a “climate event”.

      It’s climate disruption. Quite correctly as “climate” is defined as the statistical average of certain weather metrics over a finite period (30 years). And any non-average event during the period under consideration is disruptive to the average.

      The average temperature of the day changes throughout the day; until the end of the day. But how often during the day does the BoM report the day’s average temperature?

      For sane people; it’s called weather.

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    • #
      handjive

      That’s amusing.
      They completely failed to predict destructive storms in –

      Brisbane: Brisbane storm catches city by surprise (smh)
      Melbourne: Bureau of Meteorology prepares to cop flak for failing to forecast Geelong storm (theage.com)
      Sydney: Beaches pummelled by strong winds and surf (smh)
      Blue Mountains: Snow clean up bill estimated at more than $500,000: natural disaster application being lodged (abc)
      . . .
      The BoM failed to predict some/any of these storms, 3 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 3 days, one week, one month, 3 months, 6 months, a year, 2 years,
      5 years away from the climate event, but, claim the BoM, they can accurately predict 100 years in advance, and only a carbon(sic) tax can stop those predictions?(smh)

      Introducing the Hillary Laugh Button.

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    • #

      So is this a cooling or warming signal?

      Like a true climate scientist I have not read what you said. Any major event is a warming signal. The climate models, have told me.

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    • #
      el gordo

      I thank my learned colleagues for their input, ECL appear to be only weather which is hard to predict.

      We know they are more ferocious in winter, quite a few ships have gone down in August, so I’m thinking in a cooler world we might see a trend.

      One thing is for sure, if the Klimatariat claim increasing ECL is a sign of things to come under AGW, then I’ll have them by the short and curlies.

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      • #
        el gordo

        ‘The week of storms that have battered NSW is expected to be the worst event in the 60-year history of the state’s emergency services.’

        Marie Hogg / Oz

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        • #
          el gordo

          ‘Weather modelling shows between a 60 and 70 per cent chance of an intense low-pressure system forming off the east coast between Thursday and Monday.’

          Levy and Hannam / SMH

          00

          • #
            el gordo

            ‘Meteorologist Don White said last week’s storm was unprecedented for NSW — a 48-hour hammering of wind and rain throughout the Hunter, Central Coast and parts of northern Sydney.

            “Normally east coast lows start spinning close to the coast and 12 hours later they’re drifting towards New Zealand,” he said.

            Neil Keene / Daily Tele

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            • #
              el gordo

              Warming to the occasion.

              ‘According to Nature Climate Change last week, 75 per cent of extreme heat and storms are due to human-induced climate change. On the current track to 3 degrees change, extreme weather predictions spiral even more crazily out of control.’

              Liz Farrelly / SMH

              00

      • #
        el gordo

        ‘The rains come after the wettest April for NSW for 25 years, with the statewide average 47 per cent above the norm.

        ‘For Sydney, the rainfall in April was the most for that month since 1989, and the most for any month since June 2007 – which saw the last big east coast low to smash the region.’

        Hannam / SMH

        What a blessed relief, for the past week of reporting on this ECL not one word on climate change or global warming.

        Hopefully the Warragamba dam will fill to 97% capacity, just to smite Flummery.

        00

  • #
    Manfred

    We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.”

    I have been waiting for an open threaded opportunity to reiterate the elegant and prophetic words of J. Robert Oppenheimer above, particularly in the light of those that seek to eradicate dissent from the ideological orthodoxy of klimate skience, daily revealed as an increasingly flimsy proxy for the imposition of eco-marxism.

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  • #
    pauline young

    Hi Jo
    The Global Warming Policy Foundation is launching an investigation into temperature adjustments and calling for submissions. Since you have put your submission into the renewable target so eloquently, I hope you might find some time to submit some data to this investigation. http://www.tempdatareview.org This was announced by Christopher Booker in the 26th April Telegraph.co.uk

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    • #
      Ron C.

      Here’s an overview of my submission to the Temperature Data Review Project.

      I did a study of 2013 records from the CRN top rated US surface stations. It was published Aug. 20, 2014 at No Tricks Zone. Most remarkable about these records is the extensive local climate diversity that appears when station sites are relatively free of urban heat sources. 35% (8 of 23) of the stations reported cooling over the century. Indeed, if we remove the 8 warmest records, the rate flips from +0.16°C to -0.14°C. In order to respect the intrinsic quality of temperatures, I calculated monthly slopes for each station, and averaged them for station trends.

      Recently I updated that study with 2014 data and compared adjusted to unadjusted records. The analysis shows the effect of GHCN adjustments on each of the 23 stations in the sample. The average station was warmed by +0.58 C/Century, from +.18 to +.76, comparing adjusted to unadjusted records. 19 station records were warmed, 6 of them by more than +1 C/century. 4 stations were cooled, most of the total cooling coming at one station, Tallahassee. So for this set of stations, the chance of adjustments producing warming is 19/23 or 83%.

      https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/04/26/temperature-data-review-project-my-submission/

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      • #
        PeterPetrum

        Very impressive, Ron. These results would have to be of interest to the GWPF working group. If there is no good explanation for the adjustments, then I think “reprehensible” would be a fair description.

        10

    • #
      lmwd

      This is interesting and I wonder if Greg Hunt knows of this? The independent GWPF investigation might ‘encourage’ a more robust analysis of BoM and the methods they’ve been using? If Hunt’s handpicked crew are tempted to do a whitewash, then it could end up being politically embarrassing if the results of the GWPF investigation come out very differently.

      10

  • #
    Annie

    Nice pic there Jo. Was that where you were staying recently? WA is beautiful; the parts we’ve been fortunate to see at any rate.

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    • #

      Thanks Annie. Yes. Port Denison – 300km north of Perth. April 2015. Click to enlarge. :-).

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      • #
        Annie

        Lovely. I hope you had an enjoyable break there.

        The furthest north of Perth we went was to The Pinnacles…fascinating to see. There was a lake with stromatolites on the way back; I forget its name. It’s all very different from the eastern states; another world really.

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    • #
      toorightmate

      Jo has come up with an innovative engineering technique.
      You just click on the jetty and it becomes larger! Incredible.

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    • #
      Reed Coray

      With rising ocean levels I thought the picture was the top of Australia’s “Statue of Liberty.”

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  • #

    Coming soon to a United Nations near you.

    Rudd o Rama

    In 70 years, there have only been 8 SecGens.

    Article on Rudd not seeking the top job.

    Tony.

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    • #
      James Bradley

      Tony,

      Maybe not, if he is depending on the vote from China – who in the words of then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd himself said “those little rat f#ckers are trying to rat f#ck me”.

      Who better in the Secretary General’s seat than the Grand Dragon.

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    • #
      James Murphy

      I like this take on the matter.

      Mr Beattie said: “I just say to Australians, love him or hate him, it’s a good thing to have Australia being considered for this position.”. well, I vehemently disagree with that statement.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Helen Clark is sitting at the number 3 position in the UN, and she has a much better chance of taking the number 1 slot, than Rudd does. For one thing, she has never demonstrably been caught with her hands in the till.

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    • #
      LightningCamel

      He may have a bit of competition from the big BO. Our Kev’s ego is up to the job but methinks his pockets are too shallow in that kind of competition.

      00

  • #
    Neville

    Here’s a transcript of Bolt’s interview with Greg Hunt this morning on the BR.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/the_bolt_report_today_april_26/

    Even Hunt wasn’t game enough to answer the Bolt question. But then again who is? Bolt uses a rough calculation of 0.0005c ( IOW SFA degrees C) reduction in global temp if OZ meets it’s 2020 co2 reduction target.
    We’ll waste billions more $ for ZIP impact on climate, temp or co2 levels. But if that idiot Shorten wins govt they’ll waste many more billions $ for an even worse result.
    As Jo has said at least the Coalition’s direct action plan is much cheaper than Labor’s idiocy and electricity prices won’t be anywhere near as high.
    Hunt makes the point that DAaction costs about 1.1% of Labor’s co2 tax, but there is no doubt that the mitigation of so called CAGW is a total fraud and con.
    If not surely everyone would easily answer the Bolt question? But Rudd wouldn’t, Gillard wouldn’t and Hunt wouldn’t this morning. What have they got to hide?

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    • #
      toorightmate

      Therefore, if 1,000 countries contribute, we can all reduce global temperature by 0.5 degrees.

      We have at last unearthed the problem.
      There are simply not enough countries.
      We quickly need another 800 countries.

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  • #
    Matt

    “Top Scientists Start to Examine Fiddled Global Warming Statistics”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11561629/Top-scientists-start-to-examine-fiddled-global-warming-figures.html

    Reality according to the CO2mageddon religion and its modeled reality versus the presently idyllic and quite real global climate:

    http://imablawg.blogspot.com/2015/04/new-paper-uses-lindzen-choi-2011-iris.html

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  • #
    pat

    sympathies go to all those affected by the earthquake in Nepal, India, China.

    meanwhile,

    25 April: National UAE: Gavin du Venage: Southern Africa looks to prosper from rich coal resource
    One of the most energy-starved regions on the planet, southern Africa, is gearing up to build a fleet of more than a dozen coal plants to eliminate rolling power cuts.
    South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania are all in the process of putting together agreements with independent contractors to build coal-fuelled thermal electric plants.
    If there’s one thing that southern Africa has plenty of, it’s coal. According to the Southern Africa Development Community’s master plan for energy, proven coal reserves are about 32 billion tonnes of economically recoverable reserves; the estimated total resources are more than ten times that figure.
    The most-ambitious is South Africa, which has two big coal plants now under construction – each one with a capacity of about 4,800 megawatts (MW)…
    One will be fitted with gas cleaning equipment during construction to comply with air quality legislation, while the other will be upgraded a few years after construction is completed. The clean coal adaptations will be needed as South Africa voluntarily plans to introduce an aggressive carbon tax soon…
    Arabian Gulf companies are getting involved. A UAE company, Utico Middle East, has been signed up to develop a 300MW coal power station in the north of Namibia. And Saudi Arabia’s Acwa is behind the building of a US$1 billion plant in the north of Mozambique…
    http://www.thenational.ae/business/energy/southern-africa-looks-to-prosper-from-rich-coal-resource

    forget the “plan” to introduce the “aggressive” carbon tax, SA.

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    • #
      ianl8888

      The best part of that is the World Bank’s politically correct posturing is not needed. Both the UAE and China’s new infrastructure bank will finance these plants

      50

    • #
      tom0mason

      Thanks Pat for the good news –

      “According to the Southern Africa Development Community’s master plan for energy, proven coal reserves are about 32 billion tonnes of economically recoverable reserves”

      Note these reserve are economically recoverable at today’s price, how much more coal will be “economically recoverable” at a higher price?

      00

  • #
    pat

    26 April: UK Daily Mail: David Rose:
    Did exaggerated records make global warming look worse? Scientists to investigate whether ‘adjusted’ temperatures skewed data
    Climate sceptic group Global Warming Policy Foundation launch inquiry
    Panel drawn from leading universities includes experts with differing views
    Will look at whether ‘adjustments’ made to records cancel each other out
    Says it hopes people from all areas of climate change will help the panel
    The panel will also examine ‘extrapolations’ – when the records include virtual figures from places where there is no actual measuring station, instead basing them on the figures of other stations in the same region. In some areas, such as the Arctic, these may be hundreds of miles away. Sceptics claim that the effect of the adjustments is usually to revise temperatures from decades ago downwards, and to increase recent readings, so that the warming trend of the past 150 years looks larger than it really is.
    The panel has been drawn from leading universities around the world, and includes scientists with widely differing views on climate change…
    Panel member Professor William van Wijngaarden, a physicist and climate expert from York University in Toronto, said he had been concerned about the records’ quality for many years, after noticing that when you examined an individual station ‘you’ll see a sudden jump’.
    Such jumps, he said, were not natural, but the product of adjustments. ‘Sometimes you get “corrected” data without knowing exactly how it has been changed. I’m a scientist. I’m not going into this with any preconceptions. But if some of the corrections have not been properly made, then we’ll find out. We want to see all the actual station data.’…
    (Professor Terence Kealey, former vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham): ‘We hope that people who are concerned with the integrity of climate science, from all sides of the debate, will help us to get to the bottom of these questions by telling us what they know about the temperature records and the adjustments made to them.’
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3055646/Did-exaggerated-records-make-global-warming-look-worse-Scientists-investigate-adjusted-temperatures-skewed-data.html

    what percentage of the billions wasted on CAGW over the years would have been needed to reinforce buildings in the earthquake zone in Nepal?

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  • #
    TdeF

    Love the picture. Charming. Typical. I wonder how long that pier has been there but also why it is not underwater?

    In fact, having gone to many beaches and docks for decades, including Copenhagen, Shanghai, Melbourne, San Francisco, Manhattan and so many more and those airports built in water or right next to water, like Sydney, Nice and Hong Kong why they are not all under water after a hundred years of rapid sea rise? Does it really take science to discover there is a problem with sea levels we cannot see in a hundred years and if we cannot see it, how is it a problem?

    How can people like Flannery live on the riverfront or Al Gore on the water front and not notice they are talking rubbish? How can families go to the same beach for a hundred years and not notice that nothing has changed? Nothing, not even the temperature. That old pier is still there.

    How can people in all honesty spruik that there is really a rapid and very dangerous temperature rise despite the fact that the temperatures are not changing? Can they really propose that nothing happening is an illusion, that there is some unexplained natural variation which is of exactly the same magnitude, rate of fall and timing to exactly cancel out rapid warming exactly? What sort of mad world is it when the evidence of your eyes and thermometers is not enough? In the words of John McEnroe, “you cannot be serious!”

    Nothing is happening but according to the BOM and IPCC and our Climate Council and the Windmill people and solar panel vendors, the world is warming dangerously and rapidly, except that the temperature is not changing for perfectly good reasons which no one knows anything about.

    Has anyone noticed too that the BOM seriously cried wolf twice recently, suddenly upgrading two Queensland cyclones without justification from 3 to devastating Category 5, causing widespread alarm and evacuations only to find they quite wrong. Better to be safe? Now when the worse rain and floods in decades hits NSW and people die in their beds from drowning, there was no adequate life saving warning of serious flooding? Perhaps if the BOM concentrated on their jobs instead of hyping extreme events and pushing global warming, we would get better value from the early warning systems we expect from people paid to do a specific job, save lives and give good, timely news.

    This flagrant abuse of our meteorology warning systems to push an agenda has to stop. Like the ABC, Australians pay for fair, accurate and utterly unbiased paid government advice in which we can trust without question. The large activist elements of the BOM and the ABC and SBS have to be removed, or both should be sold. At least then we can use the billions money to buy good, reliable and timely advice, say from overseas. The pier is fine. In a lifetime, it is more likely to rot than drown.

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  • #
    Robert O

    Reading the weekend Aust. I note that AGL is going to close its coal stations by 2050. Its solar plant at Nyngan is about ready to start production with an estimated production of 223,000 Mwh per annum. (This plant and a smaller one at Broken Hill cost the taxpayers about $230 million for a total cost of $460 million).

    I wonder if this is totally political on AGL’s part, or do they really think they can produce 24/7 greenpower!

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    • #
      James Murphy

      Broken Hill operates on South Australian time, doesn’t it? Maybe they think that by having solar plants in 2 timezones, they can extend the available power… you know, the same way that daylight savings causes curtains to fade faster.

      I noticed that a lot of reports about the Nyngan plant did not include any mention of cost. I wonder why…

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    • #
      Mikky

      Companies have an obligation to their shareholders to maximise profits, so anything AGL does is probably driven by money. No doubt some planet/own-job/vested-interest (delete as applicable) saving politicians have rigged the market, the consequence of which is what AGL are doing.

      Note the renewables trick of making the output look more impressive by converting it to Mwh per annum. If you convert it back to good old Mw you get diddly squit, there being 8766 hours in a year, i.e. a piddling 25 Mw. Somebody (guess who) must be going to pay them a lot of money for this trickle of intermittent power.

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      • #
        Matty

        but tisnt hat 25Mwatt worth so many more of your Carbon Mwatts when you consider what it cost to produce.

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    • #

      Oh dear!

      Keep in mind here that the figure of 230,000MWH per year is theoretical only.

      This is from both plants, 102MW Nameplate and 53MW Nameplate, for 155MW total Nameplate.

      This theoretical power delivery of 230,000MWH per year is at the (modeled) Capacity Factor of 16.9%.

      Actual will be around 13% for that latitude.

      Even 16.9% is piddlingly small really.

      This Capacity Factor can be effectively translated to time, and equates to an average power delivery at its rated Nameplate for only 16.9% of a day, hence a year round average of 4 hours a day.

      When expressed like that, the green urgers just hate it.

      No wonder they prefer that age old crock of bovine waste ….. this plant will supply 33,000 NSW homes.

      Link to site (2 page pdf document)

      Tony.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        …this plant will supply 33,000 NSW homes.

        True enough, they’ll get them all connected up. But darkness is what they’ll supply. They just don’t say it. 🙁

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        • #
          Bobl

          I propose that they hook it up to 33000 green party supporters homes with no evil fossil power backup.

          What do you reckon?

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            I reckon they wouldn’t like it. I reckon it would be a good lesson too. Nothing changes minds faster than a brutal confrontation with the truth (if anything will).

            Alas, I also reckon we have no way to make it happen. 🙁

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        • #
          LightningCamel

          Ah yes, a wonderful thought, I suppose they will get used to cooking their evening meal over an open fire and sitting in the dark. That is after all what millions in developing countries are condemned to by the policies the watermelons advocate.

          Another fantasy I have is to implement a method to modulate the gain on ABC talking heads microphones every five minutes according to the wind farm capacity factor for the previous interval. Be generous and give them full gain at 80% CF and zero at zero CF. Would make our days much quieter.

          10

      • #
        Mikky

        Actually, whilst it is a tiny amount of electricity, it is good value for money!:
        Assume people pay 0.1$/kwh, giving an income of $22M per year, which pays for the power plants in 20 years time. The key advantage of solar is no fuel costs.

        Solar probably makes sense for a sunny place like Oz, you just need a lot of space, and a lot of up-front capital, and of course back-up for when the sun don’t shine.

        11

      • #
        Another Ian

        Tony

        “Larry | April 25, 2015 11:22 PM | Reply

        Solar energy is the power of the future…and always will be.”

        From http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/04/we-dont-need-no-516.html#comments

        01

      • #
        handjive

        Port Augusta solar thermal power promises better health SA Conservation Council says

        A study by Alinta Energy has found solar thermal technology is currently economically unviable. (abc)

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        … a year round average of 4 hours a day.

        That will be from 10am to 2pm, then.

        00

      • #
        Robert O

        Tony, actually my rooftop 3 Kw system is doing 16.8% over a 12 month period (4496 Kwh.) and I am a little north of Nyngan being at 17 degrees south of the equator.

        10

  • #
    James Murphy

    Poor old Tasmania, not only do they have literacy and numeracy problems (presumably related to the education policies set forth by the predominately Labor/Greens governments over the last few decades), but now they have towns with undrinkable tap water which is ‘too expensive to fix’.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      Interesting that infrastructure is blamed, if correct how long has lead piping been used to supply the towns?, from day dot probably!

      safetyguy66 might have some info on this area, it’s terrible to see older people put under duress especially from bureaucratic screw up’s, after seeing so many great older Australians yesterday at the Anzac service you really appreciate the important contributions they’ve made to this country, I always go the extra yard when serving older people at work, sometimes they may be grumpy but you never know what they’ve been through, any mistreatment of the elderly really pisses me off.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Surely no one has lead plumbing. That was what sent the Roman emperors mad, expensive lead plumbing. Ivan the Terrible went mad with the mercury treatment for his back. In the war, my father was tasked with checking the metal in the kit, to make sure no one was poisoned with metal. Stainless steel had just been invented and was rare. Lead will even leach out of crystal, in time.

        However I remember the very moment I realised lead explained a strange expression which nagged in its craziness. Plum crazy. Plum crazy. Plums made you crazy? No! Plum was not the fruit. Plum was Plumb, plumbum, lead as in plumber! Then mad as a hatter was from the arsenic in the treatment. Others were poisoned phosphorous in the matches (Phossy jaw) or by the radium in the watch faces and licking the paint brush. Poisons were everywhere, but we did not know it. The particulate matter from coal and wood was killing people and still is. Coal mining produced black lung. We have solved all those problems, at least in the West.

        Now we are to believe that the stuff we breath out, tiny CO2 is industrial pollution? No, but you need ventilation. So do the fish. Only plants can convert CO2 back into O2 and sugars, so we live in symbiosis with our environment. According to the science ignorant warmists, we should stop the industrial byproducts CO2 and H2O, starve the plants and ask forgiveness of the planet. Nutters. Plumb crazy.

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          toorightmate

          You can suck on lead metal and lead sulphide all today and your intake of lead will be negligible.
          However, the oxides, chlorides, carbonates, molybdates and sulphates of lead are quite dangerous.

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        • #
          James Bradley

          The story sounds like pure BS to me.

          A Green beat up to keep Tasmania on the tax funded drip to justify why they don’t want all that nasty mining, and industry, and manufacturing, rather than face the reality of having to create employment and opportunity from tangible enterprises because all the promises of employment in alternative industries was just a ‘pipe’ dream.

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      • #
        Kevin Lohse

        Thank you kind Sir, Next time I visit Oz I will be sure to patronise your establishment.

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        Roy Hogue

        I’m left wondering about lead piping being used. Lead is a very soft, not very strong material for the purpose. Water mains are under considerable pressure and a stronger material than lead is indicated strictly from the strength of materials consideration, never mind the toxicity, which wouldn’t have been considered. Could lead have been used as a joint sealing material? Or could the pipe be an alloy containing lead?

        Another question, are any of the longtime residents showing evidence of lead poisoning? They’ve apparently been exposed for years.

        Sadly, the ignorance of the past always comes back to bite us, one way or another.

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        • #
          James Murphy

          I agree, it does seem to raise more questions than it answers.

          It was said that some towns had to boil their water before drinking – this won’t remove heavy metals, so what is the problem with the water in those areas…?

          Based on the title, I was initially expecting that these towns were in the south-west of Tassie, near Queenstown and Rosebery, and that it was going to be another “mining is evil, think of the children” story, but it seems I was wrong.

          What is interesting is that everyone assumed the problem was caused by the historical mining activities contaminating the water at its source, but the science showed otherwise. Good thing they didn’t just go with the consensus then…

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        • #

          “Could lead have been used as a joint sealing material?”
          Yep. Soldered or “sweated” joint.
          “Or could the pipe be an alloy containing lead?”
          Brass compression joints apparently still contain some lead. Older ones more.
          Source water can be reactive and result in leeching. Water pipes are no longer used for grounding for the same reason.

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        • #
          James Bradley

          Roy,

          Australia used galvanised steel water pipe, which had a useable life of about 50 years, from mains to businesses and homes until gradually replaced by copper pipe as the steel pipes corroded and blocked or simply broke. The mains are all steel or cast iron. The modern copper piping has soldered joints and we’ve been using that for the last 80 years or so in plumbing.

          The Tasmanian story is a BS beat up.

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          • #
            James Bradley

            That should have been : “the last 50 years or so in plumbing”.

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            Roy Hogue

            It certainly sounded questionable to me — lead water mains don’t add up from an engineering standpoint.

            On the more general question of lead exposure in the water supply — sweat soldered copper pipe has been used in homes here for probably 50 years too, though certainly not all. About 20 years ago (give or take) the scare went around about the lead in the solder leaching into the water. Subsequently lead based solder for potable water was banned, which is no doubt a good idea. But the scare was way overblown. If lead was getting into the water at a rate high enough to be dangerous the pipe joints would soon be coming unglued. Just the normal running of water every day is more than enough to keep the lead problem from being a problem.

            The house I’m in is copper, built before the lead solder ban and I know of no harm it’s done to me. The far worse mistake of the builder was to use galvanized nipples to connect taps to the copper inside the wall and galvanized from the meter to the house. Those nipples were clogged in half a dozen years. The main under the front yard was the same and being in contact with the ground — somewhat acidic around here — was leaking too. I replaced those galvanized nipples with brass and the run from the meter to the house with good old PVC and I’ve had not a single problem since.

            Unfortunately the designers of the solar water heating systems I had made the same mistake, mixed galvanized with copper and I had the same problem all over again with some very expensive junk.

            Glass lined water heaters don’t seem to last long enough to test the insulating connections between the copper pipe and the steel tank well enough to know how well they work.

            Now they’ve gone so far as to ban lead based solder for any use. The EU wants certification of lead free solder before you can ship any product into Europe. I think the U.S. will still tolerate it, been a while since I was involved with that aspect of our products. It’s too bad I have a large stash of lead based solder still unused. Can’t do anything with it and can’t trash it except at a hazardous waste disposal site. But harm from it? No. Just wash your hands if after you handle it is more than sufficient.

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    Raven

    Been thinking . .

    Here’s yet another paper seeking to explain away the troublesome hiatus by a reanalysis of data . . and lo and behold, it miraculously appears that our much revered IPCC models (with 95% confidence levels) can be restored to their rightful place by confidentially showing that it’s all down to Natural Climate Variations

    […] the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) has been associated with large T anomalies over both ocean and land. Combined with another leading mode of ICV, the IPO explains most of the difference between observed and model-simulated rates of decadal change in global-mean T since 1920, and particularly over the so-called ‘hiatus’ period since about 2000. We conclude that ICV, mainly through the IPO, was largely responsible for the recent slowdown, as well as for earlier slowdowns and accelerations in global-mean T since 1920, with preferred spatial patterns different from those associated with GHG-induced warming or aerosol-induced cooling. Recent history suggests that the IPO could reverse course and lead to accelerated global warming in the coming decades.

    Here’s the NEWS RELEASE from Dr. Aiguo DAI, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences . . because I don’t intend to pay Nature US$32 for the privilege.

    It occurs to me, if you take a failed model and then look to tweak it to restore plausibility once again, there’s inevitably potential for confirmation bias to creep in, if indeed it doesn’t constitute the original motivation . . and particularly if you scored well in the confounding art of statistics.
    You know . . . the putting of lipstick on the pig . . or perhaps like a game of darts using four darts and claiming treble tops.

    As Richard Feynman said . . The first principle is that you must not fool yourself.
    He’d probably turn over in his grave contemplating the classical vague hypothesis that is CAGW.

    Now, I’m no climate scientist in the remotest sense, so have to content myself with picking up on the logical fallacies from the likes of Phillip Sheehan et al. Where is he, by the way.

    Anyway, sometimes I look down the bottom of the paper in question and do a rudimentary scan of the cited (and presumably supporting) papers. Sometimes those supporting papers are hyperlinked and I click the link just for a quick gander.
    I look down the bottom of that paper and find a subset of the same names again! Sometimes you can click a further link from there and get the same picture yet again . . Sheesh!

    One only has to observe the round-robin of both collaboration and inter-citings to recognise the potential issue of independence. In Australia, we don’t dob in our mates all that easily.

    And I’m not really seeking to malign any particular author here . . just taking note.
    Additionally, it seems to me that a lot of of these recent papers are undertaken by relatively newcomers and no doubt they are either trying to make their way in their new career or possibly suffering from the dreaded ‘publish or perish’ paradigm . . . or both.

    I don’t expect this to be news to the well credentialed readers here, but I’d wager there are a lot of mug punters like me who visit Jo’s site to read but are reluctant to post.
    To those folks . . Cheers, from Melbourne Oz.

    That’s my 2 cents worth for a Sunday evening and considering I’ve just polished off a whole bag of Maltesers, I’ll be reanalysing the potential sugar hit . . don’t you worry about that.

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      Just-A-Guy

      Raven,

      I hope there’s room for me to add another two cents to your’s. Here goes.

      Many of the warmist web-cites ‘out there’ have been repeatedly saying that warming has actually continued and cite global land temperature data sets to prove it. You know, those ‘homogenized’, i.e. ‘tampered with’, data sets that are unevenly distributed around some parts of the world.

      From the paper you linked to:

      Despite a steady increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs), global-mean surface temperature (T) has shown no discernible warming since about 2000, in sharp contrast to model simulations, which on average project strong warming. . .

      Here we have ‘peer-reviewed’ verification that there has not been any warming since 2000. That’s the first penny.

      Here’s the second.

      The IPCC has continously and consistently stated in their reports that internal natural variability was/is too weak to influence the effects of CO2 and the warming that it causes via the greenhouse effect. All of the model projections are based on this conclusion.

      From that same article:

      We conclude that ICV, mainly through the IPO, was largely responsible for the recent slowdown, as well as for earlier slowdowns and accelerations in global-mean T since 1920, with preferred spatial patterns different from those associated with GHG-induced warming or aerosol-induced cooling. Recent history suggests that the IPO could reverse course and lead to accelerated global warming in the coming decades.

      To admit today that INV can impede or reverse the greenhouse effect of CO2 is the same as saying that INV is not too weak to influence the effects of CO2 and the warming that it causes via the greenhouse effect. And so all of the model projections are based on a false conclusion.

      Any attempt to say, as many have, that the hiatus is temporary and CO2 induced global warming will continue when INV weakens is nothing more than saying INV controls the rise and fall of temtperatures. When INV is strong, the temps go down, when INV is weak the temps go up. And so, CO2 induced global warming is falsified right there in this and any other paper making similar claims. Did I mention this paper is peer-reviewed?

      Abe

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        Raven

        Just-A-Guy,

        Yes, you’re absolutely welcome to chime in. 🙂
        You’ve succinctly distilled the points I knew were in there somewhere but couldn’t properly assemble.
        Many thanks for that.

        Kevin Lohse at #9 provides a link which leads to a very similar paper (from what I can figure) with very similar conclusions done by Duke University.

        Kevin Lohse wonders if this might signal a long retreat, and I wondered the same thing.
        While both papers tug the obligatory forelock, they don’t seem to be unduly perturbed by that either.
        Perhaps you’d care to take a look.
        And particularly when they say that Over the years 2002–2013, a linear trend fit to GISTEMP reveals a slightly negative slope (Figure 3a, 3b, 3c).

        Actually, I wonder if both of these very new papers might perhaps be posted/examined as if they were one and in more detail.
        I don’t know if Jo sees it the same way but they appear to be just two of a growing number, all following a similar theme. The significance of these two in particular seems to be that they don’t come with any *cough* distracting ‘baggage’ *cough*.
        Thanks again.

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          Just-A-Guy

          Raven,

          Your very welcome. I enjoy commenting on stuff that’s interesting so it’s good to know the effort is appreciated.

          You said:

          Kevin Lohse wonders if this might signal a long retreat, and I wondered the same thing.
          While both papers tug the obligatory forelock, they don’t seem to be unduly perturbed by that either.
          Perhaps you’d care to take a look.
          And particularly when they say that Over the years 2002–2013, a linear trend fit to GISTEMP reveals a slightly negative slope . . .

          Before I comment on this, here’s a graph of GISTEMP for the period 2002-2013.

          I took a look at that article that Kevin linked to and found that the author says something similar to what I mentioned earlier:

          Steven Hayward said:

          This is a fairly damaging comment on current computer climate models. For those of you still reading, here is one possible translation into English: the current temperature pause falls within the likely range of natural variability, but is also consistent (barely) with the climate models that predict the “forcing” effect of human greenhouse gas emissions. Keep hope alive!

          But here’s the problem: the climatistas keep saying that the sharp intermittent warming periods we have seen over the last century are due to a human cause and are beyond the bounds of natural variability, but that the pauses (or even the decline in global temps from roughly 1940 to the late 1970s) are the result of natural climate variability after all. Very convenient if you are a climatista. But also inconsistent and unpersuasive. The bumper sticker should read: “If it warms, it’s our fault; if it doesn’t warm, it’s Nature at Work!

          In other words, you can’t have it both ways.

          If the CO2 conjecture is correct, then the steady growth in CO2 concentration in our atmosphere must cause a steady rise in temperatures. The rise in temperatures has been observed to not be steadily rising. In fact, temperatures follow a cyclical pattern of warming periods followed by cooling periods. Therefore, the effect of CO2 is negligible against the stronger influence of internal natural variability.

          Abe

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            Raven

            Just-A-Guy,

            Yes, on reflection, I agree it would be better to examine these papers separately for the reasons you outline. There’s no point in merely comparing them.

            […] Therefore, the effect of CO2 is negligible against the stronger influence of internal natural variability.

            Understood, but playing the devil’s advocate here:
            I imagine the response from the AGW advocates might be to assume the fall back position; that the CO2 induced warming is reflected in the longer term upward trend in global T, and that the conclusions from the paper don’t refute that.

            I’m not sure how they might support that claim other than relying on the ‘basic physics’ argument? Perhaps outgoing radiation?

            Cheers.

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          Just-A-Guy

          Raven,

          You said:

          Actually, I wonder if both of these very new papers might perhaps be posted/examined as if they were one and in more detail.

          I agree with you that these papers should be reviewed here. I tend to disagree that they be evaluated together for two reasons. Firstly, each one is based on a different method of analysis and so they should be treated accordingly. Second, it’s much more effective to say, “This paper refutes CAGW, and so does this one, and this one.”, (yes, there are more than two, or even three!) than it is to say, “These three papers refute CAGW”. Need I explain why?

          Abe

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      tom0mason

      RAVEN,

      I’ve seen that and the one from Duke Uni and a few more, all of them are back-peddling like crazy of past claims of measurable warming.
      IMO, it’s kinda nice to see such academic gymnastics as reality kicks the alarmists in the butt.

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    Roy Hogue

    Love the sunset, Jo. It’s one of natures finest displays.

    Before I retired I was driving east into the rising sun in the morning and back west again into the setting sun and at the right times of the year it was blinding for drivers. But if there were clouds just right I had the opportunity to catch some truly award winning sunrise and sunset photos — really spectacular. And there I was, driving along at freeway speed with with no camera even if I could have stopped to take the shot. 🙁

    I’m looking at the sunrise from my office window right now and though there’s nothing but a thin high overcast, really just a haze, the sky is looking bright white in a big circle around where old Sol is beginning to show his face.

    Morning is so beautiful. Sunset is so peaceful. Is that our world telling us nothing is so bad that we can’t cope with it? Our world that can be so hostile, with volcanoes, storms, pestilence and war, is also a haven that supports and nurtures us. Why can’t we get along with it and with each other better than we do?

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      “Why can’t we get along with it and with each other better than we do?”

      I suggest that those of us who value being alive and understand what that implies have no problem getting along with each other and with the world. It is those who fear and resent the responsibility of being alive, as a human being that cannot “get along”.

      It is the freedom of thought, action, and interaction that they cannot tolerate. Such freedom is so unpredictable and places so much responsibility upon the individual for his choices and the consequences of his chosen actions. They feel they cannot take a risk of being free nor allowing anyone else to be free either. They are driven to control everyone and everything even as their own lives are “out of control”.

      To be successful, one has be be right. Being right means having real knowledge of the real world and making correct choices based upon that knowledge. Such things are not automatic. Neither the collective nor the individual expert are reliable sources of knowledge. The collective does not know even as much as the most knowledgeable member of the collective. An expert only knows what he knows which may or may not apply to any given circumstance.

      Ultimately, each individual must stand alone and make his own decisions about the things that matter. This only terrifies those who fear freedom even more. It is not so much that such people want to live, they want that terror to go away. This, even at the cost of the lives of everyone on earth including their own.

      Our fundamental metaphysical choice is life or death. We either choose life and all that implies or we have implicitly chosen death. Those who have chosen death cannot get along even with themselves let alone everyone else and the world too.

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    handjive

    Climate Denial 101x

    John Cook and his ‘denial 101x’ course start tomorrow, 28/4/15.

    I have signed on, and am wondering on the best tactic.

    Is it better to post scientific links contradicting the the 97% junk science, and fail(?) denial, or, is it best to play the game, and become qualified to call other people names like …”denier”?

    Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

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      James Bradley

      HJ,

      Have fun.

      Play the game.

      The only way to beat them is to join them.

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        handjive

        FIY

        Via theconversation advert above for ‘denial101x’, John Cook pops into comments with this link (it’s a secret)

        youtube: UQx DENIAL101x 1.3.5.2 From the experts: Skepticism vs Denial (7 min video)

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      Hat Rack

      I agree with James Bradley. Have fun and play the game.

      The real challenge is to get through the entire course without “outing” yourself. Therefore, under no circumstance show any level of intelligence – that would be a dead giveaway.

      If things become a little sticky have a red herring prepared – Kevin Rudd would make a great Secretary General – Penny Wong should be the next female PM.

      Enjoy yourself and good luck.

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      Glen Michel

      In the fullness of time climate denial 101 will reveal its mysteries little grasshopper

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    James Bradley

    On a lighter note,

    My ANZAC Day.

    I drove up to Sydney for ANZAC day. Traffic was light all the way along the M5 and through the city tunnel to the casino and a little over 2 hours drive from the Southern Tablelands.

    The light rail from there to Chinatown and the markets was quick and easy. ANZAC day was very well attended and commemorated by all nationalities. Lunch in Chinatown was a delight. Never felt threatened nor did I notice an overwhelming security presence.

    Hopped the light rail back to the casino and the Lyric Theatre where we saw the afternoon performance of The Rocky Horror Show, brilliant, Craig McLachlan may even have been better that Tim Curry, he certainly threw a few great ad-libs in, scripted or not, it was impossible to tell because it was so good. Bert Newton was a joy to watch and listen to.

    Trip home was the same, met a couple from Newcastle in the car park on the way out who showed us a picture from their iphone of the storms and hail and wished us a safe trip. Listened to Hadley call the football with a weather break on the way home. Missed the worst part of the storms leaving Sydney and home in time to feed the dogs, light the fire and watch “If You Are the One” a thoroughly delightful, Chinese dating show.

    The best ANZAC Day evvvaaaa.

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    Another Ian

    “SMH – the voice of the hidden vested interest

    DateApr 24, 2015

    The Sydney Morning Herald is giving much publicity to the anti-Lomborg rantings of someone called Professor Ray Wills.

    Adjunct Professor Wills, who has been a spokesman for the university on climate change issues for the past seven years, said there was a lot of disquiet among the university ranks about the centre.

    “The appointment tarnishes the reputation of the university,” he told Fairfax Media.

    “It’s like appointing Brian Burke to look after your economics.

    But take a look at Professor Wills’ CV. As the article correctly notes, Wills is an adjunct professor: someone who turns up to give a course once in a while. He actually makes his living from his roles in a series of businesses, all within the subsidised green sector.

    So in fact the calls to silence Lomborg are coming from a man whose livelihood depends on Lomborg’s message not being heeded. The Sydney Morning Herald is essentially giving Wills a platform to protect his flow of public subsidy while pretending that he is an academic.

    Very virtuous, I must say.”

    From

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      Raven

      “The appointment tarnishes the reputation of the university,” he told Fairfax Media.

      Ha . . !
      I’d have thought Stephan Lewandowsky would have already done that.

      But OK, let’s put aside my personal bias and distaste for Lewandowsky.

      The Govt. funding of Lomborg is a mere $4 million over four years and since it seems UWA are happy to accomodate both sides of the debate, one might conclude they’re primary interest is in the money.

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      tom0mason

      Safetyguy66

      Rant and rage does not mean the people in the US will feel and see the effects of the increased warmth just as predicted over the last 20 years or so. Well for most, not at the moment, maybe never.

      Here is the end of a long list of failed predictions courtesy of WUWT

      93. November 7, 1997, (BBC commentator): “It appears that we have a very good case for suggesting that the El Niños are going to become more frequent, and they’re going to become more intense and in a few years, or a decade or so, we’ll go into a permanent El Nino. So instead of having cool water periods for a year or two, we’ll have El Niño upon El Niño, and that will become the norm. And you’ll have an El Niño, that instead of lasting 18 months, lasts 18 years.”

      ****

      94. July 26, 1999 The Birmingham Post: “Scientists are warning that some of the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within ten years because of global warming. A build-up of greenhouse gases is blamed for the meltdown, which could lead to drought and flooding in the region affecting millions of people.”

      ****

      95. October 15, 1990 Carl Sagan: “The planet could face an ‘ecological and agricultural catastrophe’ by the next decade if global warming trends continue.”

      ****

      96. Sept 11, 1999, The Guardian: “A report last week claimed that within a decade, the disease (malaria) will be common again on the Spanish coast. The effects of global warming are coming home to roost in the developed world.”

      ****

      97. March 29, 2001, CNN: “In ten year’s time, most of the low-lying atolls surrounding Tuvalu’s nine islands in the South Pacific Ocean will be submerged under water as global warming rises sea levels.”

      ****

      98. 1969, Lubos Moti, Czech physicist: “It is now pretty clearly agreed that CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.”

      ****

      99. 2005, Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation: “Scholars are predicting that 50 million people worldwide will be displaced by 2010 because of rising sea levels, desertification, dried up aquifers, weather-induced flooding and other serious environmental changes.”

      ****

      100. Oct 20, 2009, Gordon Brown UK Prime Minister (referring to the Copenhagen climate conference): “World leaders have 50 days to save the Earth from irreversible global warming.”

      ****

      101. June 2008, Ted Alvarez, Backpacker Magazine Blogs: “you could potentially sail, kayak, or even swim to the North Pole by the end of the summer. Climate scientists say that the Arctic ice…is currently on track to melt sometime in 2008.”
      [Shortly after this prediction was made, a Russian icebreaker was trapped in the ice of the Northwest Passage for a week.]

      ****

      102. May 31, 2006 Al Gore, CBS Early Show: “…the debate among the scientists is over. There is no more debate. We face a planetary emergency. There is no more scientific debate among serious people who’ve looked at the science…Well, I guess in some quarters, there’s still a debate over whether the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona, or whether the Earth is flat instead of round.”

      ****

      103. January 2000 Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund commenting (in a NY Times interview) on the mild winters in New York City: “But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.”

      ****

      104. 2008 Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute (NASA) on a visit to Britain: “The recent warm winters that Britain has experienced are a sign that the climate is changing.”
      [Two exceptionally cold winters followed. The 2009-10 winter may be the coldest experienced in the UK since 1683.]

      ****

      105. June 11, 1986, Dr. James Hansen of the Goddard Space Institute (NASA) in testimony to Congress (according to the Milwaukee Journal): “Hansen predicted global temperatures should be nearly 2 degrees higher in 20 years, ‘which is about the warmest the earth has been in the last 100,000 years.’”

      ****

      106. June 8, 1972, Christian Science Monitor: “Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.”

      ****

      107. May 15, 1989, Associated Press: “Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide [USA] two degrees by 2010.”

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        Safetyguy66

        Excellent list, I have saved it.

        I just loved the way POTUS managed to say things like “rising sea levels and increased storm activity” without a shred of correlation to the fact that sea levels are rising by less than 4mm/year and there is absolutely no credible data to support any sort of claim of increased storms/cyclones/tornadoes or anything of that nature.

        It goes straight back to what I said recently about alarmists being able to make any claim they like in the media and just get away completely unchallenged.

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    Neville

    Just reading this Calvo et al 2007 study. This just highlights the nonsense peddled by the MSM, extremists and most govts around the world.

    http://people.rses.anu.edu.au/dedeckker_p/pubs/12.pdf

    The study found that temps in SE OZ are 2c cooler today than at anytime during the last 12,000 years Prof De Deckker was part of this study and they used his Murray Canyons core work to find that as the temps cooled to the present day this area has seen a reduction in rainfall as well.
    For how much longer can this CAGW con and fraud persist? Of course the PAGES 2K study found that Antarctica was warmer than today from 141AD to 1250AD and a 30 year warmer spike from 1671 to 1700.

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      el gordo

      ‘Antarctica was warmer than today from 141AD to 1250AD and a 30 year warmer spike from 1671 to 1700.’

      This must be the see-saw effect, Antarctica gets warmer just as the Northern Hemisphere grows cooler and then through the Medieval Warm Period. As the LIA kicks off both hemispheres are in sync.

      Not sure what to make of the 30 year spike, it looks unnatural.

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    pat

    seeking comments/comparative analysis!
    abc RN repeating this program last nite:

    ABC Classic FM, Midday: Margaret Throsby: Guest: Tony Windsor
    His support allowed passage for policies such as the carbon tax…
    Resigning at the 2013 Election, his seat was subsequently claimed by National Party member Barnaby Joyce.

    only heard the final 15 minutes.
    Throsby saying u claim new govt has gone backwards with environmental policies, etc & u cite in your book the case of Binderee Beef.

    Windsor boasts that Binderee Beef got Govt funding support (on the back of funding partly coming thru the Clean Energy Fund) for a biodigestion plant. when it’s all done, cost of production will decline, they’ll put on another 200 workers, will be more competitive domestically & internationally, etc. fearmongerers were wrong – scares, slogans.

    Throsby: Gosh.

    still speculative, it seems:

    2 pages: July 2014: The Land: Bio-gas could replace coal in Inverell
    http://www.theland.com.au/news/agriculture/cattle/beef/biogas-could-replace-coal-in-inverell/2706235.aspx

    nowhere near to up-and-running:

    Dec 2014: ABC: Bindaree’s $40 million bio-digester gets green light
    Mr Clements said the plant will take about 18 months to build, and then experts will work out what mix of bacteria is needed for optimum productivity…

    by comparison, the following is self-funded, costing $5 million & expected to deliver a return on investment within four years.
    article can’t be copied, but it says Binderee method is unproven, while Nippon is using latest-generation COHRAL (read the article in full):

    10 March 2014: BeefCentral: Self-funded Oakey methane project looks to slash millions off energy bill
    By Jon Condon
    A new methane gas collection project has been launched at Nippon Meat Packers’ Oakey abattoir in Qld – promising to slash the plant’s annual gas energy bill by close to half, as well as greatly reducing its carbon footprint…
    http://www.beefcentral.com/processing/self-funded-oakey-methane-project-looks-to-slash-millions-off-energy-bill/

    as for Throsby, her next program is a repeat from 2003 – another great ABC guest choice!

    27 April: ABC Midday: Margaret Throsby: Guest: Helena Norberg-Hodge
    Helena Norberg-Hodge is a linguist and environmentalist. She is the founding director of Local Future, a non-profit organisation focused on promoting a systemic shift from economic globalisation towards localism.
    Note: this interview was first recorded on 20 March 2003.

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  • #

    I’d like to show you why renewables are not the answer in Countries which are still Developing, say Africa, India, and (now) to a lesser extent, China, and those poorer Countries.

    Either way, you still have to construct a power grid to get the power from the Power Plant (any type of plant) out to the ‘people’.

    Construct a large scale wind plant, say 100 towers, and let’s not go overboard here, so that’s around 300MW. At it’s operational Capacity Factor of 30%, that’s now a total of 100MW. You now have a large area covered with 100 towers, so that grid infrastructure to connect all that up becomes larger and a little more complex. Life span 20 to 25 years tops, but, but, but, all you have is a total of 100MW, and on a sporadic basis.

    Construct a large scale Solar PV plant of around the same 300MW Nameplate, and believe me here that this is a huge Plant for Solar PV. It will be in the (relative considering its size) one place. However, this Plant will only have a CF of 13 to 17%, so now all you have is a plant operational for hopefully 20 years, but only an available total power of 40 to 50 MW.

    Construct a large scale Concentrating Solar Plant of a similar 300MW. Current technology is that they can drive a generator of 125MW tops, but commonly they are 50MW, so here we now have six of these CSP solar plants, six sites, hence greater infrastructure to get the power to the grid. These have a CF of around 28%, so now all we have is 85MW total.

    Or, you could build a 2 unit coal fired plant at one site, and lets not go overboard here with more units, as two is sufficient. Each unit dives a 1300MW generator, hence 2600MW total power With a lifespan of around 50 years, you’ll get the full 1300MW while ever coal is fed into the furnace.

    Coal – 2600MW

    Wind – 100MW

    Solar PV – 50MW

    Solar CSP – 85MW

    Either way, you STILL have to build the grid to get the power out to the ‘people’.

    With a ‘similar’ cost for each of these types of plant, you tell me which of them SHOULD be the choice here to bring people out of poverty by giving them access to reliable and constant electrical power.

    Tony.

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    TdeF

    Even the Australia editorial this morning talks about big carbon polluters, the power generators, that they should pay and presumably not the ordinary workers.

    This is a major achievement on two fronts for the carbon industry, that people are so afraid to call out the scam that they adopt the language as a way of deflecting criticism, a conciliatory gesture to show that they agree with ‘the science’. Secondly the idea that greedy power generators are not paying their way, that they and not we should pay. How fundamentally wrong and socialist.

    So firstly the idea that simply generating CO2 is polluting. A power company which releases CO2 into the atmosphere is a major polluter and they should pay, which is code for we should pay what is effectively a ‘carbon tax’ as there is no alternative in sight. This is notwithstanding the fact CO2 is is not poisonous or unnatural and is required by nature and the essence of all life on earth. After all, burning coal or oil or gas is only the last phase in the slow combustion of old leaves which have been fossilized anaerobically. However they are polluters and they, not we, should be punished.

    This has been half the battle. Getting everyone talking about ‘carbon pollution’, hanging those words together. It is appalling that anyone has to use such language to appear conciliatory. Then there is the fantasy that the ‘big polluters’ means anyone other than ourselves. We should go back to burning wood to stay alive? Is there enough wood? No. For example, there is hardly a tree in Finland which is over 200 years old, as they were all cut down to make coke for steel. Coal saved the huge forests. So it’s back to briquettes for us and the cycle continues.

    It is sad that the editor of the Australian has been sucked into the black void and thinks that we will eventually have to start paying people overseas for the right to burn our own coal. That is the only way to stop carbon pollution, to pay others for the right to pollute. If global warming is a religion, carbon credits are indulgences and as much use.

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    pat

    LOL.

    24 April: National Post Canada: William Marsden: Believer among the skeptics: A Canadian’s crusade to convert Christians to climate change belief
    Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, a cheerful, Toronto-born evangelical Christian, has become the hottest ticket in the highly polarized U.S. debate over climate change.
    Named in 2014 by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in America, she is sought out by Hollywood stars, applauded by environmentalists and fellow scientists, and a huge draw on the Christian speaking circuit because she has opened the door, if only a crack, to the largest and single most stubborn community of climate skeptics in America — evangelicals…
    Then she married Andrew Farley, a PhD in linguistics, who grew up in a Republican household of evangelical Baptists in Virginia where he attended Christian schools and where nobody believed that the burning of fossil fuels was altering the climate…
    It took two years of discussion and research — mostly on his part — to turn him around.
    (His conversion eventually resulted in the 2009 book A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions, co-authored with his wife.)…
    After she appeared early last year with actor Don Cheadle in the Showtime documentary Years of Living Dangerously, which recounted the effects of climate change in west Texas and her work as an evangelist, her fame spread. She says she now gives about five presentations a week…
    Climate activist and scientist John Abraham has called her “perhaps the best communicator on climate change” in America…
    http://news.nationalpost.com/news/a-believer-among-the-skeptics-a-canadians-crusade-to-convert-christians-to-climate-change-belief

    her fame spread after the YOLD series flopped!

    btw some well-known CAGW Evangelicals pre-Hayhoe:
    Mike Hulme
    John Houghton
    Bill McKibben
    John Cook

    following excerpts re Richard Cizik, then “Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals and one of the most prominent Evangelical lobbyists in the United States” -Wikipedia:

    Transcript: 2006: PBS: Bill Moyers On America: Is God Green?
    BILL MOYERS: Cizik says he’s experienced two conversions. He credits the first to Jesus, the second to a British scientist, Sir John Houghton.
    SIR JOHN HOUGHTON: We had a heat wave in Europe in 2003. Twenty-thousand people died because of that. By the middle of the century the average summer will be rather like this.
    BILL MOYERS: Houghton is one of the world’s leading climatologists. He’s also a lifelong Christian.
    SIR JOHN HOUGHTON: The science we do is God’s science. The laws of science we use and we study and we discover, they are God’s laws, because they’re the way he runs the universe.
    BILL MOYERS: It was in Oxford, England, in 2002, that Cizik heard the evidence on global warming at a conference Sir John Houghton had helped convene. It brought top scientists and religious leaders together for the first time. It was there, on a walk in the woods with Houghton, that the scales fell from Richard Cizik’s eyes.
    RICHARD CIZIK: For me, to hear from this scientist whom I trusted, and I have to admit-
    BILL MOYERS: You trusted him because?
    RICHARD CIZIK: He was an evangelical. And what he said to me was, “Richard….As a fellow follower of Jesus, I’m not spinning you. I’m telling you what is happening. And I trust that God will speak to your heart. The fate of the earth may well depend on how Christians, especially evangelical Christians who take the Bible seriously, respond to the issues of climate change.”
    BILL MOYERS: Did you realize that Richard Cizik represented a substantial number of Americans who, if they came around, could change government policy on global warming?
    SIR JOHN HOUGHTON: Yeah. I did recognize that he was a very important person. Perhaps I didn’t recognize how important and how influential he was. But I realized that he belonged to these organizations, you know? The National Association of Evangelicals with- what? Thirty, 40 million Americans within their constituency? Then- and if he, with the influential position he had, could do something about it, I was just hoping he would.
    BILL MOYERS: And he did. Richard Cizik came home from that conference determined to mobilize evangelicals to act on global warming…
    http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/print/isgodgreen_transcript_print.html

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    pat

    2013 Letter to Congress from 200 Evangelical “scientists and academics”. none of the signatories declare their field of study:

    pdf: July 2013: As evangelical scientists and academics, we understand climate change is real and action is urgently needed…
    List of Signatories
    http://sojo.net/sites/default/files/Evangelical%20Scientists%20Initiative%20Letter.pdf

    the following gives some clues as to who signed. essay uses the obligtory, deceptive chimney smoke pic for illustration, & is heavy on the false memes:

    July 2013: Religion&PoliticsBlog: Essay by Dorothy Boorse: An Evangelical Scientist’s Notes on Climate Change and Faith
    (Dorothy Boorse is an aquatic ecologist and a professor at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts. She was the lead author of a 2011 publication by the National Association of Evangelicals, Loving the Least of These: Addressing a Changing Environment.)
    Recently, in order to spark another kind of change, I and more than 200 other evangelical scientists signed a letter to Congress, demanding action on climate change…
    While I am not specifically a climate scientist, I am a broadly trained ecologist…
    The signers of the recent letter all have earned masters degrees or doctorates in the natural sciences and have some type of connection to climate change. Some do mathematical modeling on climate while others look at basic chemistry and, in their teaching, explain climate change from a chemistry perspective. Many, like me, are in environmental science or ecology…
    I asked another signer, Brian Aukema, a professor of entomology at the University of Minnesota, how he sees climate change in his work…
    My friend illustrates a point that everyone can understand: climate change makes hard things harder, and harms the poor first. In heat waves, low-income people are less likely to have access to cool areas, are more likely to suffer respiratory distress, and more likely to die. Around the world, the poor suffer disproportionately from many of the other effects of warming such as extreme weather events, sea level rise, increase in diseases, and changes in food availability…
    http://religionandpolitics.org/2013/07/30/an-evangelical-scientists-notes-on-climate-change-and-faith/

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    TdeF

    To quote from The Australian editorial this morning..

    The Australian continues to believe, as we have for more than a decade, that in the long term, a market mechanism that encourages large polluters to change their behaviour by charging them for carbon emissions is the most viable way to reduce greenhouse gases”.

    Pure Christine Milne, or perhaps Malcolm Turnbull.

    Villainous energy producers. Class struggle. Evil behaviour. Charge them. Make them pay.

    Of course almost all energy generators were public service, clean energy systems built by the people for the people. It appears the real reason to privatise after getting their cash, is to then tax the shareholders to pay for the terrible damage they have done. Can anyone see the problem with that logic?

    Besides, you would think in ten years of no global warming whatsoever, The Australian might have had time to reflect on ‘the Science’. Being utterly wrong appears to make no difference. Soon it will be twenty years with no evidence of any warming, but once sold, some people cannot change their minds and admit they were deceived. Soon we will have to pay Rapture tax too. Anti earthquake tax. Tsunami tax. Journalists need to get out more.

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      TdeF

      You would have to think that in the NSW and QLD rush to privatise energy supply and distribution, anyone handing over their hard cash to buy public assets in electricity distribution would now demand an indemnity from any such punishment for simply doing what the previous owners, us, did. They would also demand that any such punitive charges (for their behaviour) would be passed onto the public, with a substantial markup for simply handling the money.

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    pat

    a woefully poor piece of writing in the Independent. readers, on the whole, not impressed – see comments:

    26 April: UK Independent: Ben Tufft: Leading group of climate change deniers accused of creating ‘fake controversy’ over claims global temperature data may be inaccurate
    GLACIER PHOTO CAPTION: ‘This is a very obvious attempt to create a fake controversy’
    According to the GWPF, questions have been raised about the reliability of temperature data and the extent to which recordings may have been adjusted after they were collected…
    On launching the inquiry Professor Kealey said: “Many people have found the extent of adjustments to the data surprising. While we believe that the 20th century warming is real, we are concerned by claims that the actual trend is different from – or less certain than – has been suggested.”
    Bob Ward, policy and research director at the Grantham Institute of climate change and the environment, told The Independent: “I think this is a very obvious attempt to create a fake controversy over the global temperature record ahead of the [UN Climate Change] Paris summit.
    “The only purpose of this review is to cast doubt on the science. It is a political move, not a serious scientific one.”…
    Former chancellor, Lord Lawson, set up the GWPF in 2009. His book on the subject of climate change, titled An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, was labelled “misleading” by Sir John Houghton, a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
    While Bob Watson, another former head of the IPCC, said that Lord Lawson did not understand “the current scientific and economic debate”.
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/climate-change-sceptic-group-sets-up-inquiry-into-accuracy-of-global-temperature-records-10204961.html

    the writer:

    Ben Tufft: About Me
    I am a freelance journalist currently studying Newspaper Journalism at City University.
    When not studying and keeping up to date with my patch in Stoke Newington I do freelance online reporting for The Independent.
    Over the past year I have undertaken work experience at The Sunday Times, The Independent, Press Association and The Times…
    http://www.bentufft.com/about-me/4584880862

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    pat

    i shouldn’t have been too critical about Ben Tufft’s article on the Inquiry; at least they reported it!

    Daily Times in Pakistan carries the UK Daily Mail David Rose article:

    27 April: Daily Times Pakistan: Did exaggerated records make global warming look worse?
    http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/entertainment/27-Apr-2015/did-exaggerated-records-make-global-warming-look-worse

    no other MSM.
    it’s times like these when the monolithic nature of the MSM when it comes to CAGW is most evident.

    of far more interest to the MSM? Buzzfeed does a thorough investigation of this serious matter:

    27 April: Buzzfeed: Kyle Blaine: Al Gore’s Climate Change Concerts Won’t Commit To Being Vegan Only And PETA Is Not Happy About It
    On stage at Davos this year, Gore and Pharrell Williams announced the return of the Live Earth music festival — a concert series meant to raise awareness of climate change. And now the animal rights group is demanding each of the concerts exclusively serve vegan products, arguing that Gore’s own group touts the benefits of giving up meat to reduce greenhouse gas production.
    In a series of emails obtained by BuzzFeed News, representatives from PETA repeatedly ask Live Earth’s organizers if they plan to serve vegan only food, meaning the menu would be absent from all animal products like meat and dairy. The organizers do not directly answer PETA’s questions in the emails, but say that they were working with their partner organizations on sustainability at the events and that they were invested in promoting the vegan lifestyle…
    “They either care about stopping climate change or they’re more interested in the appearance of caring,” Lange (PETA) said in an email to BuzzFeed News…
    Gore and his climate change movement are no strangers to the charge of hypocrisy. The original Live Earth concert event that took place in 2007 was criticized for featuring acts that flew in on private jets and whose songs promoted gas-guzzling SUVs.
    BuzzFeed News contacted the venues where the two main concerts where the events are expected to be held — MetLife Stadium in New Jersey and Stade de France in Paris — asking whether animal products would be served during the event. A representative for MetLife stadium said that LiveEarth is not on their events calendar, and therefore she couldn’t comment. Representatives for Stade de France have yet to respond.
    http://www.buzzfeed.com/kyleblaine/al-gores-climate-change-concerts-wont-commit-to-being-vegan

    what a farce.

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    Andrew McRae

    As this blog is inhabited by geologists and related rock-hounds, I wondered if someone could surmise the process that created Stein’s Pillar in Oregon,USA.
    * http://media.oregonlive.com/terryrichard/photo/trsteinspillar-9jpg-165a935ab67c81cc.jpg
    * http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/52/Steins_Pillar,_Ochoco_National_Forest,_Oregon.jpg

    To me it looks like a volcanic plug, where a column of lava has found a way up to the surface and erupted, cooled into some sort of igneous rock, then the surrounding softer mountain material has eroded leaving only an igneous column. Basically the same as our Glasshouse Mountains.
    Wikipedia says a lot of volcanism occurred in that area during the Eocene, so the main ingredient is certainly present.

    On the other hand, I thought all igneous rock was dark or black in colour but Stein’s Pillar appears quite light brown in colour. Any ideas on what happened there?

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      DavidH

      Googling for “steins pillar geology” threw out this PDF (originating from 1966):

      http://www.oregongeology.org/pubs/og/OBv28n08.pdf

      [bottom of p142] Stein’s Pillar itself is a single cooling unit, but it is composed of at least three successive hot avalanche deposits, each of which must have arrived practically on the heels of its predecessor.

      and

      [p144] Rainwater dissolved some of the soluble zeolites and other minerals in the rock, then concentrated them in hard crusts by evaporation on the rocks’ surface. The walls of Stein’s Pillar have been “case hardened” in this way, and in places are “painted” by a yellow-brown stain from the strong pigment formed by the oxidation of the few iron-bearing minerals in the ignimbrite.

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    el gordo

    Stumbled across this informative link.

    http://austhrutime.com/climate.htm

    Imagine living in Australia during the Last Glacial Maximum, the weather was very stable.

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