Weekend Unthreaded

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132 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

  • #
    Aussieute

    As is usually the case … the truth will out

    The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man’s stewardship of the environment. But we know that’s not true.

    A United Nations official has now confirmed this.

    At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

    “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.

    Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.“

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      Quoting from Galt’s Speech in Atlas Shrugged:

      They do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to die; they desire nothing, they hate existence, and they keep running, each trying not to learn that the object of his hatred is himself . . . . They are the essence of evil, they, those anti-living objects who seek, by devouring the world, to fill the selfless zero of their soul. It is not your wealth that they’re after. Theirs is a conspiracy against the mind, which means: against life and man.

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      • #

        This is why all actual scientific evidence is irrelevant to those who follow the likes of a Christiana Figueres.

        Science requires a functioning mind in contact with reality seeking the truth – that which actually is and actually works. The truth thereby found sustains and advances life, mind, man, and his thriving on earth . Since this is the exact opposite of what her kind seeks, it will be rejected as damaging to their cause to be violently, if necessary, removed from the face of the earth.

        The first step in dealing with such people is the recognition of who and what they are. The second step is to know that they desire your demise even at the cost of their own lives. The third step is to stop feeding them and they will soon vanish as any parasite would when separated from his host. The final and most important step is to avoid being collateral damage as they end their existence in a final desperate conflagration.

        It is this last step that is the hard part. The rest will happen no matter what anyone does. Using their words: “their approach is not sustainable.” Once the makers have been destroyed, the takers will run out of wealth to take. The destroyers will destroy themselves when they destroy everything else that remains.

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      • #
        Annie

        That part struck me too, after I struggled through the earlier part of the speech. The last third of it was fascinating.

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      • #
        Graham Richards

        I read this book about 35 years ago. Many messages from that book are more than valid today as International Socialism (communism) tightens it’s grip. The creeping control & propaganda are throttling our freedoms.

        Look at the Socialist disasters that the EU is becoming, the poor & almost non existent leadership of the once great USA.. Not pro mention our own dismal leadership fiasco.

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    • #

      Christiana Figueres has made another incorrect statement. Two months ago she was quoted as saying by the BBC.

      The INDCs have the capability of limiting the forecast temperature rise to around 2.7C by 2100, by no means enough but a lot lower than the estimated four, five, or more degrees of warming projected by many prior to the INDCs.

      The message is “we are most of the way to achieving the objectives on emissions reductions“.
      If you look at the difference to emissions, this is patently untrue. The UNFCCC’s own analysis of the country INDCs submissions show they make very little difference. Crucially to achieve the objective, global emissions should be falling by 2030. Even with the USA, EU, Australia and others implementing their reduction policies, global emissions will still be rising.
      The 2.7C figure comes from the foot of a technical annex to a 65 page report. It is from two other organisations that for the period 2030 to 2100 substitute modelled data. This data includes fictional assumptions about policy and technology. The authors of the data state clearly that it should not be used for policy evaluation. The full story is here.

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      Roy Hogue

      At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.

      And did we not know that for some time already? As they do, so do they mean to do. The action defines its meaning quite adequately, in fact with great accuracy and precision.

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      • #
        Ross

        Exactly my thoughts Roy. She has said the same thing at least twice and there is a video on the UN site recording the first time she said it. She could bluff her way out of the first saying it was misinterpreted or it had to be taken in context or some other spin but now having said almost exactly the same words again leaves no doubt.
        My question to all those environmentalists would –is this what you are really fighting for or are you being played for your beliefs ?

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          Yonniestone

          Better question would be “Are you fighting for self destruction?”

          Their beliefs are equivalent to cutting off ones head to spite ones body.

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            Their beliefs are equivalent to cutting off ones head to spite ones body.

            Now that’s putting it in the right terms. This whole thing is a death spiral for human civilization.

            Our dependence on capitalism is the difference between what we have now and North Korea or Cuba.

            Dows Figueres live in a tent somewhere in a remote jungle that she can so calmly ignore her dependence on capitalism?

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    • #
      Manfred

      Aussieute, I believe that this Figueres statement has been around the traps for awhile (U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres stated this during an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2014) and it is being usefully re-peddled to remind us all of the intent and potential consequences of the eco-marxist UN aspirations.

      “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution,” Figueres said.

      Figueres’s remarks come ahead of a meeting in Geneva next week where delegates will pour over draft treaty texts that the U.N. hopes countries will agree to in December. She doesn’t expect global warming to be solved by one treaty, but was optimistic in will be solved in the coming years.

      “That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 – you choose the number,” she said. “It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.”

      The UN have previously made their awful intentions publicly crystalline in 2010 – courtesy of Ottmar Endenhofer.

      Christiana Figueres, head of the UNFCCC, is also on record as a proponent of depopulation where she resonates at the harmonic level with Maurice Strong who made it clear that,

      “Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”

      What to do with prosperous CO2 producing populations beset with declining birthrates, and impoverished populations with huge birthrates? The predictable UN solution featuring as part of ‘The Agenda’, one solution that is de rigueur for the left, centrally orchestrated wealth ‘re-distribution’, here aka the ETS and The Green Fund, together with other support funding evident when reading ‘The Agenda’.

      Impoverishing productive economies to reduce CO2 may in fact result in an unintended increase in the birthrate. Importing ‘prosperity’ to impoverished economies appears little more than UN driven eco-colonisation. The need is for opportunity above all, not subsidy. Locking them into subsidised Green energy schemes and ‘The Agenda’ is locking them into poverty and high birth rates. Such is the myopia of single ideated ideologies.

      They betray themselves at every turn.

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      • #
        Ross

        Manfred

        As safetyguy66 has pointed out she has said this on other occasions. The link Aussieute gave is the Davos press conference you refer to. But the Brussels press conference is different and I’ve seen it reported elsewhere.
        She has a definite view on what this about and it is not to do with climate.

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    • #

      She has made that clear a number of times now. Pointing out the pure facts of her position still gets you labeled as a tin foil hatter by warmists. Its like they read and hear something different to the rest of us.

      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/05/unfccc-boss-christiana-figueres-dreams-spell-a-nightmarish-future-for-earths-citizens/

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    Peter C

    A few weekends ago I asked about the noisiness of the global temperature record. The temperature record is very saw toothed at all time scales! i.e. it goes up and down a lot.

    This reference suggest it is a natural consequence of CHAOTIC systems which seek an equilibrium.
    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/23/chaos-climate-part-2-chaos-stability/

    Naturally with a Chaotic System the outcome is not predictable in detail. However the system may oscillate about an equilibrium.

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      KinkyKeith

      Yes Peter

      There are a lot of “sawtooths”.

      Look at the variations between 8 am one day and 8 am the next. An obvious 24 hour cycle.

      Look at the annual cycles we move through on account of the tilt of the Earths axis in relation to the Sun. A 12 month cycle.

      Then the longer Solar cycles which are in decades, then the longer Milankovitch type cycles which are in periods of 20 thousand years.

      Consider also the 110,000 year cycles of massive glaciation.

      As you say: there is an equilibrium and this will vary depending on which cycle length you want to talk about.

      At present I like to spook warmers by telling them about the end of the current inter-glacial and the upcoming 90,000 year long deep freeze.

      Scary stuff but it is all about being very very COLD

      KK 🙂

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        King Geo

        Quotating KK

        “Consider also the 110,000 year cycles of massive glaciation”.

        This cycle has been with us since the Late Pleistocene but the glaciation started in the Early Pleistocene (Gelasian circa ~ 2.54Ma) with glacial cycles of briefer duration. Prior to the Pleistocene planet Earth was a lot warmer, ie Pliocene and before.

        What next? More 110k cycles?

        We don’t know nor when the next Ice Age [IA] will commence but more than likely the next IA will start within the next 3000 years from what I have read. Any sooner will be very bad for the inhabitants of planet Earth (humans, other animal life & plant life). As planet Earth cools CO2 will decline just like it has throughout the geological record.

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        • #
          KinkyKeith

          Hi King Geo

          Nobody is looking forward to the end of this inter-glacial.

          Last time, up to about thirty thousand years ago, so much ice was stored on the continents that sea levels
          were down 125 metres below present and the ice field in the New York Manhattan area was almost a mile deep.

          Hard to imagine such ice fields but when the next big freeze starts everyone will be heading for the tropics.

          KK .

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien

      Funny. I thought we knew that. Without so many words, too.

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      CC Reader

      Thanks for the reference. Parts 1 and 2 total 263 pages and since l live in a location without Internet or cable this should keep me busy for a week or so. (Colorado Coal Reader)

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  • #
    Ross Stacey

    On Foreign Correspondent ,ABC tonight a very compelling piece on global warming.. Scientists in Antartica claiming they have evidence that increased CO2 is definitely from burning fossil fuel. Graphic footage from Miami on rising sea level. Success stories from California of advances in solar power African villages. All in all a successful piece for the masses.

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      TdeF

      There is irrefutable evidence that increased CO2 is not from burning fossil fuel. Just measure the C14 level. Fossil fuel has none. How someone can call themselves a scientist and discover otherwise is beyond science.

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        TdeF

        You can check the Suess or industrial effect. 2% correction for industrial CO2, not 50%. Post the 1963 bombs, the tagged CO2 decay gives a half life of 14 years. This is the ‘silver lining’ that we are able to measure not only how old the CO2, industrial or not, but also at what rate CO2 exchanges with the atmosphere. Without the allegation that the extra CO2 is man generated, there is no AGW argument. There is no correlation between temperature and CO2 either. It is all about communism, money, windmills, wealth ‘transfer’, taxation, crippling western industrialization and ending the power of the ballot box, according to the UN’s would be dictator Christiana Figueres.

        One corollary of this is that the IPCC argues the deep ocean is 1800 years older than the surface and therefore does not take part in CO2 exchange. That is a false conclusion. We are in an equilibrium situation and the atmosphere is 1/400th of the weight of the huge ocean. Generally the deep ocean CO2 is older than the surface CO2 but every part of the ocean can take part in the CO2 exchange and there would be no difference in this incline. 98% of all gaseous CO2 is in the ocean from which all life came. We are made from CO2 and water. Water in all its forms is the real controller of temperature. It is a water planet. CO2 is tiny but the basis of all organic chemistry.

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  • #
    Andrew McRae

    Does anyone know of any model of microwave oven on the market at the moment that does NOT keep running a cooling fan after the magnetron stops?
    My previous microwave did not do that but it seems many models on the market today do, and I find the unnecessarily prolonged fan noise annoying and would like to avoid such behaviour in my next unit. I am hoping to crowdsource the answer as the retail sales assistants are not entirely helpful.

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    • #
      NeedleFactory

      I live with a GE model PEM31SF1SS manufactured in March 2015 with no prolonged fan noise.

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    • #
      Manfred

      Our Panasonic ‘The Genius’ 1100W doesn’t do it. If it did, it would find itself dissembled to unplug the fan. Empiricism at its best.

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      • #
        Andrew McRae

        That’s strange because an 1100W Panasonic Genius was the first new microwave I tried last week and it does leave the fan running after the magnetron stops. It seems there is more than one model of Panasonic ‘The Genius’ 1100W in existence.
        The model I bought and returned last week was the NN-ST671S.
        Manfred, which exact model number are you talking about?

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      I had an eye opener with microwaves recently. We were after one with a door that opened from left to right. May as well have been looking for one powered by a micro fusion reactor.

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      • #
        Andrew McRae

        I imagine you need a corner placement and want it to open towards the wall. Perhaps they assume most people install it diagonally on a bench or near the middle of a shelf.

        Plenty of clothes dryers can have their control panel labels reconfigured upside down so the unit can be installed upside down on a wall, controls on the bottom, for example to be situated above a washing machine. You can’t turn the oven upside down because the turntable has to be on the bottom. Can’t really mirror-reverse a microwave oven door since they need safety interlock switches on the non-hinge side. It just can’t be as easy to custom-configure a microwave oven door.
        Or can it? Solve that one, design a more flexible microwave, and follow in the footsteps of Flannery The Great by getting yourself a sinecure with Panasonic. The way is open!

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      Random Comment

      The cooling fan continues on my Panasonic, which is annoying, except if the door is open. So I just leave the door open after use.

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  • #

    If you haven’t done so already, get your nominations in for CPotY 2015. Unusually, Oz is not making a strong showing this year.

    https://thepointman.wordpress.com/2015/12/03/the-pratties-2015-the-race-is-on/

    Pointman

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  • #
    ROM

    The Mean Sea Level Trend for Tide Gauge station 8723170 Miami Beach, Florida is

    The mean sea level trend is 2.39 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.43 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1931 to 1981 which is equivalent to a change of 0.78 feet in 100 years.

    Reference ; NOAA; Tides & Currents

    A selection of Washington state and Alaska tide gauge data and sea Level trends from;

    [ USA] Linear Relative Mean Sea Level (MSL) trends and 95% Confidence Intervals (CI) in mm/year

    Station—-Location———-Years of operation– SL trends in mms/ Yr

    9449424 Cherry Point, WA —- 1973 2013…… -0.11
    9449880 Friday Harbor, WA— 1934 2013 ……. 1.02
    9450460 Ketchikan, AK —– – 1919 2013……. -0.28
    9451600 Sitka, AK ——- — — 1924 2013…… -2.26
    9452210 Juneau, AK —— — – 1936 2013….. -13.16
    9452400 Skagway, AK ———-1944 2013 …… -17.59
    9453220 Yakutat, AK——— –1988 2013….. -14.56
    9454050 Cordova, AK ———–1988 2013….. -0.53
    9454240 Valdez, AK ————1988 2013…….. -9.35
    9455090 Seward, AK ————1964 2013…… -2.74
    9455500 Seldovia, AK ———–1964 2013………-10.47
    9455760 Nikiski, AK ————1973 2013……… -10.65
    9455920 Anchorage, AK ———1972 2013…… -0.75
    9457292 Kodiak Island, AK ——-1975 2013 … -11.05
    9459450 Sand Point, AK ———-1972 2013…….. 0.38
    9461380 Adak Island, AK—- —–1957 2013 ……-3.07

    Did the ABC’s “Foreign Correspondent” give sea level trends from say Alaska as above

    NO! I thought not !

    Only from Miami where land subsidence is becoming a problem as they draw immense amounts of water from the Everglades aquifers underlying that whole region.

    Two of those Sea level trends in those Alaska stations are positive trends. The rest are negative ie; falling sea levels over the periods of years stated in that table.

    The ABC are just lying and deliberately twisting the data and the information as usual whilst they profess to serve truth up to the public as news, all done to help drive their increasingly radical leftist agenda.

    There are lies, damn lies and statistics and the ABC indulges itself to the maximum in all three.

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      Ross Stacey

      Thank you. I knew there would be facts available. However, the presentation was well done and had me squirming in my seat as the believers around me were looking shocked!

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      Graeme No.3

      ROM:

      O/T but this week I heard on the ABC someone, supposedly a farmer, claiming that autumns and springs had disappeared due to global warming and the wheat crop was in danger. He claimed that 3 or 4 days in spring above 28℃ were enough to wither the crop.
      My reflex action was to the off button, so I heard no more but being the ABC I assume that he wasn’t challenged on either claim. Would you care to comment?

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      • #
        ROM

        Graeme No3 @ #6.2

        As is my usual habit unfortunately; A very long answer to a short question.

        All of us once we have adopted a very firm view on some controversial subject will invariably, unless we are of an unusual skeptical mentality, find any number of happenings and circumstances to reinforce our beliefs.
        We will for the most part be quite blind to any circumstances that tend to throw doubt and the cold water of reality onto our firmly fixated belief and opinions on the subject.
        Been there!
        Done that far too many times during my life.

        Next is a comment I made a week or two back on how to nearly all of us, the local climate, the one we live in and the weather events and seasonal cycles that make up that local climate and the way it macro shifts and changes over decade long periods are far more important to each of us and to our pursuits in life than the global climate trends.

        Unfortunately or maybe fortunately as the local climate modeling from such as the CSIRO is worse than useless, almost f***dulent in its claims as it damn near cost me a lot of money or would have if I had listened to them and their modeled climate predictions in the mid 2000’s, it is the Global Climate research that is getting ALL the funding and all the attention.

        Primarily due to the researchers and the green blob promoters of catastrophic climate change generally live in closeted protected cities and in highly artificial man made environments where Nature in the raw is not allowed to intrude as it just makes for uncomfortable living for the scientific elite and the promoters of catastrophic climate change, those highly paid, remote from reality inner city green elites ie; ABC media elites or they think they are! but who pathologically promote and can’t let go of the “carbon”,[ in their ignorant terms,] created climate catastrophe cult .
        [ lots of coal burnt to make and keep those those man made artificial environments operating and running so the elites can reign in comfort. [ / sarc] ]

        Not sure if it was Richard Lindzen or Roger Pielke Sr who has categorically stated some time back that if you think the global climate models are bad to useless then you ain’t seen nothing when it comes down to the far more important to the average citizen, the attempted modeling of the local and regional climate changes.

        The next caveat is that regional / localised climates all change and shift over time or quite suddenly in ways that can be very different to one another.
        So any comment based on a person’s knowledge of their local / regional climate does not necessarily hold for even the climate a few hundred kilometres up the road.
        Examples would be the eastern coastal climate from south of Sydney going north.
        The SE Australian climate including southern SA..
        The Queensland tropical and sub tropical climate north of Brisbane.
        Western Queensland and the southern NT climate.
        NT and North Queensland tropical climate
        WA’s southern climate.
        WA’s central coastal climate
        WA’s north tropical climate

        [ WA of course if it were a separate nation of its own would in area, be the tenth largest nation on Earth, larger in fact than any nation on the African continent since the splitting of Sudan into North and South Sudan.
        So WA consequently due to its geographical size has a range of different regional climates which don’t necessarily change in lockstep in time or manner.]

        As for Spring and Autumn disappearing?

        Nope!

        Perceptions change;

        We used to only start to harvest barley and wheat from about mid December on here in west Vic back in the 1950’s through to the mid 1970’s when the Great Pacific Climate Shift took place in 1977-78 when the PDO went from the negative cool and wet for us phase that had been ongoing since about 1944 [ 1930’s and early 40’s was a time of heat and severe droughts ] to the positive hot dry and drought prone for us phase.

        In about 2006/7 the switch back of the PDO to the negative phase was about completed.
        So we can expect more and stronger LaNinas I would suggest and longer, cooler and wetter springs over the next two or three decades ahead.
        Of course such switches are never even so we will still get droughts and floods and etc but the type and frequency and intensity of these events will change a lot from the way they panned out over the past 30 years.

        Next is that our grain crop growing characteristics have changed dramatically since the mid 1970’s as has the technologies the farmers are now using with auto guidance systems in headers and tractors that can steer those machines and their cultivating or operating equipment for kilometres to an accuracy of a centimetre variation around the defined GPS line.
        So sowing between last seasons stubbles which retains moisture but has other drawbacks, its all a huge compromise in agriculture, in the 20 centimetre wide gap between the still standing last years stubble is now very common.

        This year in early December a lot of farmers in western Victoria who would normally be getting towards finishing harvest around Christmas compared to 60 years ago where they might only be starting harvest close to christmas, have already finished their severely drought affected harvest.

        In the mid 1970’s the world center for Corn and Grain research in Mexico , CYMMT as it is known in world grain circles introduced a Japanese dwarfing gene into our newest wheat varieties of the time that radically reduced the height and therefore the straw mass compared to our past wheat varieties .
        So more conserved soil moisture was available for the final grain fill instead of being used for straw growth fill and yields consequently went up quite dramatically.

        It also led to an earlier maturing of the grain plants and an earlier harvest as a consequence.
        A plant breeding trend that has been one of the major aims of plant breeders so as to avoid the heat of the early Australian summer at the critical grain forming and filling period.

        The plant breeders, those unsung heroes and scientists who I, knowing some of them, have the utmost respect for their work and dedication are totally ignored by the elites who feast very well every day,.
        Those plant breeders who number in little more than tens have ensured that the world’s burgeoning population is adequately fed.

        They are largely responsible for less and less hunger and the decreasing levels of hunger and naturally caused famine despite the growing global population.
        Thy have kept up a continuing stream of significant improvements in yield and quality and disease resistance through the genetic changes incorporated into the worlds major food crops.

        We now have food grain crops such as wheat , barley, canola, lentils peas, beans, vetch, oats and many etc crops that are ready to be harvested up to month to six weeks earlier than they were in the 1950’s 60’s and mid 70’s so avoiding the stress of the early summer heat here in SE Australia.
        And the yields have close to doubled on the same rainfall.

        So with all these changes to crop characteristics and the much earlier maturing of grain crops it becomes very easy to imagine that spring has disappeared. Autumn around here is till a time of low rainfall and warm days and the winter rains still turn up in mid April and into May.

        Again perceptions!

        A local agronomist some 20 or more years ago had a look at the long term dates for our opening winter rains in this region which we farmers always assumed and operated on the assumption that they happened in April / May.
        Well it seems from the agronomists research that the major opening rains only really turn up in early June and have done so for the past century of local recordings

        Finally, I have had the somewhat unique opportunity in my life time to have been a farmer who has had to live by the weather and nature in all its perverseness plus being glider pilot with close to three thousand hours gliding time over the last 50 years [ have ceased flying now due to age and etc ] and some 600 hours of power flying time.
        So weather and what drives weather and the long term changes in our local climate have always been central to my life.

        In the 1960’s and 70’s the PDO was as above negative and we enjoyed good rainfall and cooler temps leading a sustained period of good seasons and high yielding crops.
        Gliding wise the thermals were fast and smooth to climb in often topped by clouds with bases up around the 9000 to 11000 foot height.
        So gliding was good and I flew some long distances in what are now quite obsolete glider models.

        Then in the late 1970’s it all started to change.
        The thermals got lower and rougher and with far less cloud topping those thermals.
        The broad trough line that often forms over Victoria in summer shifted east to around central Victoria so the eastern Victorian glider pilots on the active side of the trough got excellent conditions.
        We in the west of the state got lousy soaring conditions plus hot dry conditions
        The PDO had gone positive.

        Now the PDO has gone negative again as a part of its roughly 60 year long cycle.

        When I watch the sky now I believe I am now starting to see somewhat similar conditions in cloud cover and types and heights as we often saw in the late 60’s and 70’s.

        We even have jet contrails back, a very unusual sight for the last 30 or 40 years years and this despite the nano sized particle emissions from the jet engines around which the super cooled water droplets form at height, having been almost eliminated in the newest, highly burn efficient jet engines of today.

        And when you see those contrails around here it often means rain within ten days as it indicates that moisture is moving into the region initially at height.
        For without a certain level of upper atmosphere moisture there are no super cooled water droplets to form the cloud droplets around the jet engine particle emmissions that we can see as contrails.

        The weather patterns change as they always have.
        The local climate, the accumulation of various and relatively consistent types of weather, changes as it always has.

        Spring has changed and continues to change over the years and decades but it is still Spring with its changeability and its unpredictable variations. 

        Autumn has changed and continues to change but it is still Autumn with its warm pleasant days and its dryness where the farmers and rural people look at the skies and hope and wait for the break of the season to be good one with copious rainfall to kick the winter growing season off.

        When it comes to climate and weather, people’s expectations and perceptions are usually fixated until their fixation is proven to be no longer tenable.
        Something I think is behind the claim as promoted by the ABC, that spring and autumn have disappeared, the clue being the fixated belief in global warming.

        Just some plain bad reporting on a well known and data heavy set of annual weather and climate events.

        Plus a complete lack of understanding of the motives and psychology that allows people to get fixated on some belief, a fixation that they will never let go of until that fixation is shown to be no longer tenable.

        Another example of the absence of any level of professionalism from a billion dollar subsidised media outlet, the ABC, that has almost totally failed the Australian tax paying public with its biased and bigoted reporting and its ignorance in this case on its reporting of natural weather and climate events.

        Or as it was put by somebody a long time ago;

        Climate is what you expect.
        Weather is what you get.

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        • #
          ROM

          PS to my post @ #6.2.1.

          From Graeme No3 ‘s question;

          He claimed that 3 or 4 days in spring above 28℃ were enough to wither the crop.

          My reaction; Total Crap.

          35C will see some wilting if water is limited.

          But it is all totally dependent on how much water the plant has access to at that stage of the year, in that temperature and at that stage of plant growth.

          At 28 C and adequate water either rain or irrigation or stored / soil conserved water the plant will grow like hell and give a good yield as a result..

          If the water is gone or not plant accessible as in drought / low rainfall, non irrigation conditions then wilting will set in and do so at temperatures quite a lot lower than 28C .

          Entire fields of hundreds of hectares of Grain crops / plants literally died, just turned brown in late winter under our drought conditions this year.
          And the temps were only in the teens when those plants died due to no water.

          If the heat stress occurs right on the critical grain fill stage of a few days and water is limited to the plant then it will affect the end yields quite substantially
          But if there is adequate moisture supplied for the rest of the life of the plant you can still get some very good yields.

          But even then give your plants a good rainfall event or a good irrigation ie lots of water which also cools the plants through transpiration of the water out of the leaf stomata then the plants will recover.

          Plants such as the 6000 year old human selected natural grass, a genetic hybrid of three very ancient grasses that somehow crossed quite naturally in the wild and then perhaps just the once only, that has been was developed into our wheat plants of today show an amazing ability to recover from adverse growing conditions and still give good yields

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        Ted O'Brien

        Graeme No3 @ #6.2. I can comment.

        Your farmer has worked too many Sundays for too little pay. His problems have weighed him down.

        It’s just one spring that disappeared. The most recent.

        As for the wilting, that depends on how much soil moisture there is. One day can do it, as happened to us on a late October Friday in 1988 with a westerly howler at 41 degrees. Next morning our beautiful wheat crop, which had been promising two and a half tonnes to the hectare, was brown on top, and yielded less than one tonne of shrivelled grain. Not enough to cover costs.

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      TdeF

      It does make you wonder how much the sea floor moves in the ring of fire around the Pacific with tectonic plates. We know Northern Europe, Scandinavia and Scotland are moving upwards at up to 10mm/year, springing back after the last ice age and the removal of kilometers thick ice. Seas are dropping around the world and you can see some substantial drops of this magnitude.

      It’s all relative as the sea rises from melting ice, the land rises too but no one mentions it. Coastlines move, in Eastern England at up to a metre a year. This is part of the fantasy pushed by Greens that the perfect coast line, the perfect sea level, the perfect climate, the perfect weather, the perfect temperature is now and any change should be stopped! Why would that be? Surely it is 50/50 that Climate change, even Global Warming is good for some people, that increased CO2 is great for crops, the increased rainfall is wonderful? Why do the people against everything want their childhood back or at least frozen in time? Why are we being asked to pay for this fantasy?

      If our only tool for stopping sea changes is to stop our way of life, stop our cars, electricity, computers and even sewage pumps, the Greens can go and live in their own world where they can be happy. Africa for example.

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        TdeF

        Of course the seas rise from thermal expansion too, but that will take a lot longer because of the mass involved and the small heating distributed through the 4km deep oceans will be tiny. Ice can melt but deep oceans cannot change temperature quickly on human time scales.

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        ianl8888

        … the land rises too but no one mentions it …

        Err, the number of times I’ve recommended that people google isostasy and eustacy ?

        It’s fairly evident that almost nobody does. Much easier to opine, I think

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    Peredur

    Imperative reading:

    http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/obama_will_use_tpp_to_enforce_his_climate_agreement.html

    “In retrospect, Obama’s strategy was obvious. It first appeared in a January 2014 press release from the U.S. Trade Representative’s office which stated:

    “The United States’ position on the environment in the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations is this: environmental stewardship is a core American value, and we will insist on a robust, fully enforceable environment chapter in the TPP or we will not come to agreement. [emphasis added]

    Our proposals in the TPP are centered around the enforcement of environmental laws, including those implementing multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) in TPP partner countries…”

    It was explained more fully in a 2014 paper by Joshua P. Meltzer, Fellow in Global Economy and Development at the Brookings Institution. Meltzer wrote:

    “As a twenty-first-century trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) presents an important opportunity to address a range of environmental issues, from illegal logging to climate change and to craft rules that strike an appropriate balance between supporting open trade and ensuring governments can respond to pressing environmental issues.”

    It became obvious when the text of TPP was revealed at the beginning of November. Article 20.4 specifies that TPP will implement relevant multilateral environment agreements:

    “1. The Parties recognise that multilateral environmental agreements to which they are party play an important role, globally and domestically, in protecting the environment and that their respective implementation of these agreements is critical to achieving the environmental objectives of these agreements. Accordingly, each Party affirms its commitment to implement the multilateral environmental agreements to which it is a party.

    2. The Parties emphasise the need to enhance the mutual supportiveness between trade and environmental law and policies, through dialogue between the Parties on trade and environmental issues of mutual interest, particularly with respect to the negotiation and implementation of relevant multilateral environmental agreements and trade agreements.”

    There are already two such multilateral environmental agreements that have been incorporated into TPP’s Chapter 20. Article 20.5 implements the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer while Article 20.6 implements the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships.

    Article 20.5 provides the template for how the Paris climate agreement would be implemented. It begins:

    “The Parties recognise that emissions of certain substances can significantly deplete and otherwise modify the ozone layer in a manner that is likely to result in adverse effects on human health and the environment. Accordingly, each Party shall take measures to control the production and consumption of, and trade in, such substances.”

    But the key provisions are specified in two footnotes. Footnote 3 on page 20-4 refers specifically to the Montreal Protocol. It reads:

    “For greater certainty, for each Party, this provision pertains to substances controlled by the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, done at Montreal, 16 September 1987 (Montreal Protocol), including any future amendments thereto, as applicable to it.”

    And Footnote 4 on page 20-4 specifies that each party is bound to the specific provisions that it committed to in Montreal:

    “A Party shall be deemed in compliance with this provision if it maintains the measure or measures listed in Annex 20-A implementing its obligations under the Montreal Protocol or any subsequent measure or measures that provide an equivalent or higher level of environmental protection as the measure or measures listed.”

    When Will the Climate Agreement be Added to TPP?

    The Paris climate agreement has not yet been negotiated, so it couldn’t be added to TPP ahead of time. But TPP is a “living agreement” which means that its terms can be changed simply by votes of its governing body. The Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission has been given almost unlimited powers. Article 27.2, Functions of the Commission, states:

    “The Commission shall:… (c) consider any proposal to amend or modify this Agreement… (h) take such other action as the Parties may agree….”

    Most likely, the terms of the climate agreement will be added to TPP at the first meeting of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission. According to Article 27.4, Rules of Procedure of the Commission, that meeting will take place within a year after TPP goes into effect, most likely while Obama is still president. Specifically:

    “The Commission shall meet within one year of entry into force of this Agreement and thereafter as the Parties may decide, including as necessary to fulfil its functions.”

    But first the House and the Senate would have to vote to approve TPP by the required up-or-down votes, and TPP is so unpopular with voters that the dates of those votes keep getting put off. According to DTN Washington Insider, Republican supporters of TPP are planning to postpone the House vote at least until after the primaries, and possibly until after the general election:

    “The timing of a vote on the TPP deal is ultimately up to House leadership, which may be reluctant to bring such a hot-button issue to a floor vote in an election year. A vote is not expected until after the ITC report is released on May 18, and is likely to occur much later than that.”

    If both the House and Senate approve TPP, neither body will have any say over how the U.S. votes when the climate agreement comes up before the Commission. Article 27.1 specifies:

    “The Parties hereby establish a Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission (Commission) which shall meet at the level of Ministers or senior officials, as mutually determined by the Parties. Each Party shall be responsible for the composition of its delegation….”

    How Would the Climate Agreement Be Enforced?

    Once the Commission incorporates the climate agreement into TPP, its terms would be enforced by TPP’s arbitration panels. Any country that is party of the agreement could charge any other country with violating the agreement. After evidence is presented to the panel and after due deliberations, the panel would issue a final report which would determine whether the charged country was out of compliance. Article 28.18 specifies:

    “If in its final report the panel determines that: (a) a measure at issue is inconsistent with a Party’s obligations under this Agreement; (b) a Party has otherwise failed to carry out its obligations under this Agreement; or (c) a Party’s measure is causing nullification or impairment in the sense of Article 28.3(c) (Scope); the responding Party shall, whenever possible, eliminate the non-conformity or the nullification or impairment.”

    If the charged party fails to come into compliance with TPP, Article 28.19 specifies that the panel can levy fines. Specifically:

    “If a monetary assessment is to be paid to the complaining Party, then it shall be paid in U.S. currency, or in an equivalent amount of the currency of the responding Party or in another currency agreed to by the disputing Parties in equal, quarterly installments…”

    We know from other agreements that fines levied by arbitration panels can be multi-billions of dollars. For example, Ecuador was ordered by a panel to pay a fine of $2.3 billion to Occidental Petroleum and Venezuela was ordered by a panel to pay a $1.6 billion fine to Exxon Mobil.

    The agreements that assessed those fines only let businesses sue governments. In contrast, TPP lets governments sue each other. The U.S. would not have the option of ignoring the fines, as it is one of the 140 countries that have agreed to abide by the terms of the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards of 1958.

    TPP adds a whole new supra-national level of regulation to the American economy. American businesses already must comply with the rules of their state EPAs and those of the federal EPA. TPP adds a third level. Under the threat of massive fines, Congress would have no choice but to subject American businesses to the rules of the new international EPA, known as TPP.

    Fortunately, even if Congress passes TPP, there would still be an out for the United States. TPP contains one excellent provision. A country can pull out of TPP, simply by giving six months notice.”

    Of course our own illustrious leaders have been honest with us about all the managed free trade and trade-offs the Trans Pacific Partnership means for us.

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    toorightmate

    Isn’t the Paris Climate Carnival exciting.
    Plenty of rides (for the kids) and plenty of all day suckers (as delegates).

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    RB

    Only roughly relevant to climate change, for those who can’t cope with the science discussion and don’t know who to trust.

    The ABC in Australia gets over $1B per annum from the taxpayer to provide a better service that is not tainted by commercial interests (almost half a percent of federal government revenue). This is a reply by Andrew Bolt to what was a partial attack on him in a program that puts its self forward as trustworthy.

    Writer and commentator Clementine Ford has been bombarded with abuse online after she called out one of the haters. His company subsequently sacked him. Today a Twitter campaign was launched to support all women exposed to attacks on social media and it went off….

    TRACY BOWDEN, REPORTER: Clementine Ford speaks her mind and she is often provocative

    The problem is that the poor bugger was sacked for calling Ford a slut. This is what Ford is allowed to do without getting the sack from her employer, Fairfax, a media organisation.

    Fairfax columnist Clementine Ford has printed and sold “F… Abbott” T-shirts. (reference to the former Prime Minister)

    Fairfax columnist Clementine Ford has jeered that a female journalist of Iranian background [Rita Panahi] “will never be a white man”.

    Fairfax columnist Clementine Ford has called former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman a “c..t”.

    Fairfax columnist Clementine Ford has called conservative columnist Miranda Devine a “f…ing c..t”.

    None of it mentioned in the exposé on abuse of women in the media.

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    pat

    5 Dec: 3news New Zealand: 1.5degC goal dealt blow in Paris
    By Elise Scott
    A push by vulnerable nations to limit global warming to 1.5degC has been dealt a blow with key scientific research blocked at major climate talks in Paris.
    Tensions between developing nations escalated on Thursday (local time) when Saudi Arabia played a key role in blocking the conclusions of a two-year review into the adequacy of the agreed two-degree goal…
    The block means crucial research won’t be submitted to the United Nations climate change summit and can’t be used as evidence to back the call for 1.5degC.
    Pascal Girot, a member of the Costa Rica delegation, says the review is a critical link between science and policy and believes the negotiating process has politicised the science.
    “Now we don’t have the scientific arguments to push forward an ambitious agreement,” he told AAP in Paris.
    “It doesn’t bode well for substantiating the need for more investment in adaptation or even worse, for loss and damage.
    “Because some will ask ‘where’s the evidence?’ and now the science has been blocked out of the negotiations.”…
    ***The United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change also highlights the review’s importance on its website, saying the 1.5 degree goal would be discussed in Paris “based on the outcome of the review”…
    http://www.3news.co.nz/world/15degc-goal-dealt-blow-in-paris-2015120512#axzz3tRwUgSYf

    5 Dec: Bangkok Post: AFP: Climate pact ready, now comes the hard part
    Despite being riddled with conflicting proposals on most key points, the draft drawn up over four years of tough talks is the skeleton of what has been described as the most complex and consequential global accord ever attempted…
    “In the words of Nelson Mandela, it always seems impossible until it is done,” South African negotiator Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko said after the 48-page draft accord was adopted to loud applause at the event known as COP21…
    More than 50 personalities committed to combating climate change, from actor Sean Penn to US billionaire Michael Bloomberg and Chinese internet tycoon Jack Ma, gathered to inspire the UN conference at Le Bourget on the northern outskirts of Paris.
    “Perhaps this is the most exciting time in human history,” Penn told a special event at the conference.
    “Those illusions of having too many difficult choices have always created chaos. Now we live in a time where there are no choices. We have certainty. The days of dreams have given way to the days of doing.”….
    Any deal emerging from Paris is likely to fall far short of what is needed to cap global warming at 2.0 degrees Celsius or below.
    The key, analysts say, will be agreement on a review every five years at which nations’ commitments may be strengthened, a so-called ratcheting-up mechanism.
    There is still no agreement on fundamental issues: how fast and how far to slash greenhouse gas emissions; who shoulders most of the burden and, critically, who should pay…
    http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/785821/draft-climate-deal-co

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    Offshore wind power’s economic follies are being demonstrated off Sweden’s coast:

    Vattenfall has started to decommission its 14-year old Yttre Stengrund 10MW offshore project.

    The 14-year old Swedish offshore project uses five 2MW Neg Micon turbines although only one turbine was in operation when the decision to dismantle the project was taken in September 2014.

    A useful life of much less than 13 years.

    An earlier report indicated decommissioning costs:

    A 2006 study by Climate Change Capital for the UK government suggested around £40,000/MW (EUR55,000 at today’s exchange rate). Renewable energy and technical advisory DNV GL now estimates it will cost EUR200,000-500,000/MW to decommission offshore turbines, equal to 60-70% of recently quoted installation costs. The lower figure represents earlier projects with smaller turbines in shallower waters needing less sophisticated vessels, and the upper end bigger installations in more challenging conditions.

    Isn’t is marvellous how reality outpaced earlier estimates?

    Now it costs up to a million Euros per 2MW wind turbine to decommission at the end of its short life. That’s some very expensive electrical power being generated sprodically; just based on construction and dexommissioning costs over a realistic estimate of life (8 years operational) with a 20 capacity factor; and not other maintenance and operating costs.

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    pat

    Reuters says its now 42-page draft text:

    5 Dec: Reuters: U.N. climate talks approve draft text, many disputes remain
    (Reporting by Alister Doyle, Bate Felix, Barbara Lewis; Editing by Toby Chopra)
    The senior government officials signed off on the draft text, running to 42 pages, minutes before a midday (1100 GMT) deadline after working through the night.
    The idea is that the text lays out options, ranging from a long-term goal for slowing climate change to rising climate finance for developing nations, that can be resolved by ministers next week at talks lasting until Friday.
    Many nations said the draft, the result of four years of work since the process was launched in Durban in 2011, left too many issues unresolved.
    “We had hoped that our work would be further advanced,” said Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko of South Africa, who speaks on behalf of more than 130 developing nations.
    “We call on our partners to listen to our concerns as we work together to find solutions.”…
    https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/30285185/u-n-climate-talks-approve-draft-text-many-disputes-remain/

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    Richard

    YouTube censoring climate documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhyOFAyDJVM

    This sort of censorship has been going on YouTube for quite some time now. Shame.

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      Andrew McRae

      You could have warned us that was a link to the channel run by the cult of Alex Jones. Only 7 seconds wasted before I closed the tab. I’d suggest your next stop should be here.

      Still, it is amusing to see the Streisand Effect working on climate dissident matters; If the video hadn’t been censored once already you may not have bothered to spread the link more widely.

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        Richard

        You could have warned us that that was a link to the channel run by the cult of Alex Jones

        Monckton appears on the Alex Jones show all the time. I suppose if I linked a video of him you would deem it a waste of time too?

        Personally, I’d rather get my news from the AJ channel than, say, FOX, CNN or the BBC. In my opinion, his content is closer to the truth.

        But hey, each to their own.

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      Good video, nice and clear.

      The references to theology are detrimental.

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    Peter Crawford

    The big problem with the “130 developing nations” is that they aren’t developing. They’ve been given every chance to develop away to their heart’s content but seem resolute to remain S***holes. Why is this so?

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      Why some nations develop and others don’t is a difficult and highly complex question. There are the extremes that can give some light on why they develop.
      After WW2 both West Germany and Japan were economic disaster areas. In 1948 a civil Government took over under Konrad Adenauer & Ludwig Erhard in West Germany. They swept away many of the economic restrictions imposed by the 1933-45 Administration, and the German Economic Miracle began. Similar things happened after 1955 in Japan.
      In China in 1979, Deng Xiaoping opened to the West and allowed small businesses. Through the 1980s the economy was liberalized economically. More recently similar things have been happening in India.
      In the last 20 years countries that have collapsed economically include North Korea and Zimbabwe.
      In all cases less Government was better.

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        TdeF

        Good question. A lot of countries are simply too small. The island nations are often as small as 8,000 to 10,000 people. This is a street, not a country. Left to themselves, laptops and the internet and aircraft and penicillin would never have existed.

        I was amazed with Estonia when I was in Talin. They say they have been under foreign rule for 1,000 years, except the last 20. That means it has never been a country before and now it is. However with a total population of 1.35 million, most in Talin (400,000), this Finnish speaking country is part of Finland, not a country in its own right.

        1/4 of the world’s countries at the UN are in fact under 2 million people and only 1/3 are over 20 million people. Which is why there is a G7 and a G20, why some countries have nuclear missiles and others have sharp sticks.

        The exceptions are places like Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan and even Egypt which defy any attempt to modernise with roads, hospitals, toilets and beyond near subsistence agriculture. Especially Nigeria which is a very large and oil rich country of 173 million. You wonder if the lack of progress is cultural or even religious or political or all of these. With Zimbabwe, you see what can happen to a very rich, self sufficient country in the hands of a greedy administration as they head backwards to violent tribalism. Wealth for some is not a guarantee of liberty or equality.

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          TdeF

          I wondered how much of the world’s population is in the top 10 countries, 5% of the world’s countries at the UN. Then answer.. 60%. No wonder there is a security council. Who would their laws set by Kiribati?

          4.2billion in the top ten with only 3billion in the rest of the world. Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh are there which I suppose answer the arguments about critical mass. The real development has been in the United States and Western Europe and was driven largely by the Industrial Revolution, something which is allegedly the cause of so much misery with Climate Change. The evidence is the complete reverse. It was the industrial revolution which improved the quality of life.

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          When I was still in the RAAF, I was posted back to Forest Hill near Wagga Wagga to teach the electrical trade, and one of the first things they give you is a crash course in teaching, or instructing really, as real teachers got antsy when we referred to ourselves as teachers, even though we put in more hours per week face to face than they did, and did all the same things, just minus that Uni qualification.

          That course lasted seven to eight weeks back then in 1986, and the course I was on had ten prospective instructors.

          In the first few days we were given time at the front of class to basically see how it felt, mainly just an introduction to trade etc.

          Week two we were given a full hour on any subject we wanted to talk about.

          Ever one to think outside the square, as I wanted to extend myself into somewhere I was not familiar to see if I could do it, I did what turned into 15 minutes overtime on top of the full hour on the makeup of the USSR. After it, the Education Officer (what they call actual real Uni degree teachers in the RAAF) who was our teacher for this course commented that it was really interesting.

          The USSR was made up of 15 separate Countries, (Republics) (by population largest to smallest) Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Kazhakstan, Byelorussia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldavia, Tadjikistan, Kirghizstan, Lithuania, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Latvia, and Estonia.

          (This is just the USSR as there were also aligned Countries, the Eastern Bloc, Countries like East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia etc)

          Those last three USSR Republics had a combined population less than Australia, and the smallest had a total population less than Melbourne.

          You always think of Countries (per se) as being big, by population, and it was odd that something as huge as the USSR had tiny little Countries in its makeup.

          So, here we have the UN made up of 190 or so Countries. The main target for Paris, as always is those already Developed Countries, those 22 or so (rich) Countries.

          So we have tiny little Countries virtually dictating what those big ones should have to do. I know that they should all get a voice and have a say, but it seems odd to me that a Country (any of them) with such a minute population should have virtual control over what those big Countries decide.

          Tony.

          PostScript – Oddly, on that teaching course, the single most fascinating of those one hour talks was from someone who should never have been posted back to Wagga Wagga to teach his trade. He was an MTFitt, (Motor Transport Fitter) what the RAAF called motor mechanics. He knew his trade all right, but was paralysed in front of the class, could barely get a word out.

          Anyway, the EdO finally coaxed him out of it, well, sort of, and he gave us all a talk, with him mainly talking to the white board, still petrified speaking to the class. That was half way through week four. He gave us a talk basically, still not confident with a lesson plan, on how crude oil is converted to the products we use, and I was unaware that there were so many of them. It was basically a still, and they cooked the crude, and at different levels going up this huge tower (the still) they took off each separate product. He explained it all in intricate detail, and we all just sat there, rapt. He finally got through the course, although we’re not sure how, and evidently, he turned into a very capable Instructor. Sort of like all of us at the start of the course, none of us, as just tradesmen, thinking we had it in us to actually teach that trade.

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            ROM

            I got mixed up in an oil refinery industry versus farmers situation in 1982 when the oil refining industry figured it could make more profits from leaving the waxes that are in all unrefined well head oils , in the diesel fuels of the time.
            The 1982 drought had a few quite horrendous frosts where the waxes, which burn quite OK in diesel engines, literally froze out and whole 1000 gallon diesel fuel tanks became solid from the frozen out wax.

            Fuel lines on tractors and trucks also froze so when the engines were started in the morning and some used blow lamps to heat the fuel lines to get fuel through to the diesel fuel injector pump, the frozen fuel in the injector pump scraped off and with no lubrication inside of these very finely machined and polished injector pump systems,the bare metal to metal contact either grabbed the sliding metal parts inside and locked them up destroying the pump in the process or just scored the same very finely machined parts with the same result.

            The wax is the same wax that some housewives used to use to melt into the top of the jars of preserved home made Jam.

            It cost us about $3000 in 1982 currency to replace the tractor injector pump and we were on the low side of those costs across most of western Vic and NSW on into Queensland.

            So I started to round up info by phone and fax, no internet in those 1980’s period, and people started to ring me and give all sorts of information.
            Some of this wax from frost frozen fuel tanks was still laying on the ground around diesel fuel tanks where it had been stripped out from the pipes , some three or four months later.
            And thats months , not hours, days or weeks.

            Some information also came from within the fuel industry itself where some individuals knew they had a bloody serious problem on their hands but they had been told to shut up as there were profits to be made by including all that wax which nobody knew what to do with at the time.
            Later the wax was cracked along with everything else in the crude other than sulphur which is taken out of the crude before it goes into the cat cracker as it can clog everything up from cat crackers to cars.

            Basically the refineries take off the various hydrocarbon compounds with the lightest hydrocarbons as the crude is cracked taken from the top of the cat cracker and as the klong chain crude molecules are progressively cracked into shorter chain and more volatile hydro carbon molecules proceeds to descends down through the tall vertical, very hot “cat cracker” [ “catalytic cracker” using a catalyst and high temperatures to crack the long chain hydro carbons of crude oil into shorter lighter hydrocarbons that we use in everything from heating oil through to plastics through to petroleum and down on through to diesel with heavy crude for ship bunkers and right down the bottom, the bituminous products that are used on road surfaces.. ] that Tony refers to.

            There were and still are at least two changes in petrol and diesel through the year with a heavier summer grade of fuel that still flows ok in the heat of summer introduced , I think from memory in about October here in southern Australia.
            Then in about April the lighter winter grade of diesel and petroleum is put into the service stations tanks.
            Sometimes in diesels case they merely add some light grade heating oil to the heavier summer diesel grade to get the required winter API numbers.
            There are also intermediate grades or specialist grades such as Alpine grade for very cold climates which in diesel fuel is mostly akin to light grade heating oil

            Anyway I was tapped by the equivalent of the National Farmers Federation to go to Melbourne with my information on the severe and very damaging problems that there much higher percentage of wax inclusion in diesel fuel was creating and the huge costs the refineries had created in fixing damaged and destroyed injector diesel fuel systems.

            There were just three of us and I had all the info, the others were just for support, and 27 oil companies represented at that meeting in Shell House in Melbourne in 1982 and some of those representatives were quite hostile towards my submission so it got pretty willing in there at times.

            The reps were all the oil company engineering marketing managers, the interface between the refineries s and the sales force so they were responsible for making sure that the problems that their consumers had found got back to the refinery operators to be sorted out.

            Come lunch time and I was guided to a small 4 seat table and somewhat to this little old country boys discomfort there was almost an argument over who got to sit at my table.
            When it had all been sorted, one of the senior reps on the other side of the table leaned over towards me and demanded “Where the hell did you get all that information. You have told us about things in the oil industry today that we only thought were only own to those of us in the room ”

            Which sort of stopped me in my tracks somewhat!

            I told him the truth, I had just rung and written to a very great number of people right through out the oil and petroleum refining industry plus various regulatory organisations each of which often supplied a bit more of the oil refining industry jig saw puzzle over the last couple of months and had gathered and digested as much information on oil refining as I could.

            Anyway it was much more amicable following that very nice lunch and I got my message across after shooting down a number of proposals such as covering you tractor at night, “Yeh, I’m sowing seed and its midnight and I’m knocking off to get some sleep and its 3 degrees and blowing like hell out in the middle of a three hundred acre paddock and I’m supposed to cover my tractor because you guys aren’t prepared to provide fuel that suits the winter temperatures and circumstances”.
            Subsequently the wax in diesel fuel problem has disappeared as the refineries changed their refining somewhat.

            In all a very interesting interlude in my ten years as farmer rep on our Victorian grains industry organisation.

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              I remember it now.

              This MTFitt kept using that term ….. cat cracker, throughout the whole talk, and as fascinated as we all were, none of us really knew what he was referring to.

              When he finished, the first question came from the EdO, when she asked him what a cat cracker was. At the time, I just loved the term but mainly in reference to the real felines.

              Our EdO mentioned to us that this was the ideal time to mention that the use of trade specific terminology was something actual students might not understand.

              As little as I know about the refining process, that one talk is something I remember to this day.

              Tony.

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    In Paris, they are currently discussing policies to curb global emissions. In the EU, emissions are being cut (at least on paper), but in India they are growing massively. I will attempt to put the numbers for India and EU28 in relative perspective. The UNFCCC has country briefs that enable comparisons to be made.
    http://newsroom.unfccc.int/media/420472/country-brief-india.pdf
    http://newsroom.unfccc.int/media/262718/profile-eu.pdf
    The emissions figures I will express in Gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent (GtCO2e), and will round to one decimal place.
    There are two measures of emissions.
    There is the narrower measure – CO2 emissions from fuel combustion. In 2010 this was 1.8 for India and 4.8 for the EU. The projected tripling for India is likely on this narrower measure (they do not make clear) giving 5.4 for 2030.
    The broader measure is total GHG emissions, including methane emissions and net effects of land use. In 2010 this was 2.8 for India and 4.4 for the EU. Assuming the other emissions for India stay the same (the INDC is even vaguer) projected GHG emissions for 2030 are 6.4. The EU says it will cut total GHG emissions by at least 40% on 1990 levels when they were. That is emissions of 3.2 GtCO2e or lower in 2030, compared to 4.4 in 2010.
    On the broader measure there will be a relative change from 2010 to 2030. Providing the estimates and projections are correct, India will go from two-thirds to twice the EUs emissions in twenty years. However, India has 2.5 times the population of the EU, and with a faster growing population, the ratio will increase. A better measure is emissions per capita, in tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Between 2010 and 2030, India will go from 2.23 to 4.27tCO2e per capita and the EU from 8.68 to 6.00tCO2e per capita. Even on this estimate, India in 2030 will still have half the emissions per capita of the EU in 2010.
    As a final note, the comparable figures for 2010 for USA and China were 19.4 and 8.0tCO2e per capita. China’s emissions per capita could peak at up to 50% above that level. If people had a proper sense of proportion they would soon realise that all the expense and waste on renewables in the EU has virtually zero impact on global emissions. What is more global emissions will rise whatever happens in the OECD countries.

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    Bob Malloy

    A few days ago I posted about a ABC presenters ignorance of the little ice age.

    Tony Delroy on OUR ABC? Talking point overnight was on Paris and Climate Change. One of the callers, Joe, although he rambled a bit correctly mentioned the Medieval Warming period and that we are still coming out of the Mini Ice Age Tony was totally non plused, edited part of transcript below.

    Joe, was the temperature in the Roman times warmer than today, it was and in the medieval warm period, then we had a mini ice age that ended about 1800 and we have just come out of that, you know ….

    TONY! JUST COME OUT OF AN ICE AGE????

    Joe, That’s right, we’ve come out of the mini ice age

    TONY! IN THE 1800s!!!!!!

    Joe, That’s right it started…..

    TONY! I MUST HAVE MISSED THAT ONE

    JOE, it’s well known Tony

    TONY, IS IT????? Blah blah blah

    The conversation starts at 3hours and 28 minutes.

    UPDATE:

    Towards the end of his quiz the following morning a contestant suggested he check out the mini ice age,it’s interesting said the contestant. listen to his quick move along moment at the 2 hour 52 minute mark, how embarrassment!!

    The links in this post will disappear in coming days, they are only available for a week after posting at the ABC.

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    James Murphy

    I’ve seen the latest green blob puff-piece is about Uruguay and their ‘amazing transformation to “nearly 95% renewable energy”. Earth Hour Australia (via Facebook) claim that this has decreased electricity prices (or at least has not caused prices to rise), and was all achieved without any government subsidies. The electricity provider is more than half owned by the government.

    The pricing aspect, I am unable to verify either way, as everything I have seen was converted to US dollars, so is liable to be affected by exchange rates, but the subsidies bit is just an out-and-out lie. there are feed-in tariffs, there are tax breaks, tax rebates, and subsidised (reduced interest rate) loans to buy the requisite hardware…
    Here’s a link to an article at The Guardian (you’ve been warned!)
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/uruguay-makes-dramatic-shift-to-nearly-95-clean-energy

    Here’s some info about electricity use in Uruguay from a 2013 report:
    http://www.miem.gub.uy/documents/15386/5631903/1.6%20Folleto%20ingl%C3%A9s.pdf

    Here’s the Uruguayan government begging-letter from 2014 (also contains interesting data, aside from rattling begging bowl)
    http://www.uruguayxxi.gub.uy/invest/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2014/07/Renewable-energy-August-2014.pdf

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    James Murphy

    In this article about South Australian electricity, it’s interesting to see the ABC headlining the price rise, not the price decrease. What happened? Maybe an editor was asleep?
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-04/aemc-predicts-future-electricity-price-jump-in-sa/7003470?section=sa

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      Graeme No.3

      Price rises? Just softening up the victims for the inevitable. The State is going to rely on wind and solar by shutting down coal and gas fired power stations. The only good to come from that is that the resulting blackouts will make it impossible for Labor to get re-elected. (They got back in with 47% of the vote last time).

      I see from your link that our beloved Premier has linked up with Dale Vince of Ecotricity in the UK. Talk about being judged by the people you associate with.
      Weatherall was on his way to the Climatefest in Paris. What he could contribute, except money to the Paris hospitality economy, is a mystery.

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    Doug Proctor

    The hack of BOM has disappeared from the news after being said to be an expensive and damaging attack. Why?

    Nothing of concern or too much concern?

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      James Bradley

      They are probably hoping China will use the BoM algorithms to calculate ICBM targets.

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        Ross

        Or they have been called out ( perhaps behind the scenes) about their claims of it being a Chinese hack. Reality was probably something different.

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    HOLIDAY READING

    : Short summaries of several Karl Popper books. Bear in mind that the climate caper could not have come about if Popper’s approach to science was the norm in the profession.
    : a 50 page summary of Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies, one of the great classical liberal books of the 20th century.
    : Australiana, a collection with five pieces on the history of various sports, some on special people, three on Australian science, reviews of books on intellectual movements, a personal report of second thoughts after the Vietnam War etc.
    : Jac Barzun and Others, reminders of under-rated or forgotten people including the polymathic Jacques Barzun, the Australian poet and public intellectual James McAuley, Liam Hudson (humanistic psychologist), the outstanding literary scholar Rene Wellek, the partners in psychology and linguistics, Karl & Charlotte Buhler and the economists Peter Bauer and Bill Hutt.
    : Making Science Pay, a collection of papers on aspects of scientific productivity, both the production of knowledge and the delivery of economic returns from scientific research. The main theme is to challenge some widespread views about science and scientists, especially the effectiveness of Big Science driven by government funding.
    A collection of Hayek-related papers and more…

    http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=rafe+champion

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    James Bradley

    This is odd, NOAA had a link to its sea level trends only a month ago, you know follow the link, type in Kiribata or Tuvalu or some other drowning island nation only to discover NOAA data shows -3.0 mm/year, New Guinea +4.0 mm/year etc etc now when I try to follow the link:

    http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_global.shtml

    I get:

    Not Found

    The requested URL /sltrends/sltrends_global.htm was not found on this server.

    Isn’t that just spooky…

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    Robber

    Can anyone explain how the determination was made that more than 2 degrees C of warming since pre industrial times would be catastrophic (with some now claiming the rise should be limited to 1.5 degrees)?
    As I understand it the world has warmed by about 1 degree over the last 100 years or so.
    We must be standing on the edge of a temperature precipice, because it seems that since 1950 we have taken enormous strides forward in improving food production, health, life expectancy, and supporting a growing population as the temperature has increased.
    Yet somehow we are just 1 degree away from catastrophe?
    Meanwhile around the world people, plants and animals live in temperatures from minus 40 degrees to 50 degrees C. But somewhere in there is an optimum temperature.

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      handjive

      The 2° Target

      Spiegel Online International ∗ April 01, 2010

      Part 8: The Invention of the Two-Degree Target

      “A group of German scientists, yielding to political pressure, invented an easily digestible message in the mid-1990s: the two-degree target.

      But this is scientific nonsense.

      “Two degrees is not a magical limit — it’s clearly a political goal,” says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

      “The world will not come to an end right away in the event of stronger warming, nor are we definitely saved if warming is not as significant.

      The reality, of course, is much more complicated.”

      Schellnhuber ought to know.

      He is the father of the two-degree target.
      ~ ~ ~
      From the Climategate 2.0 collection, to a European Peoples Party officials who is trying to eliminate skepticism from the EPP’s position paper on climate, Phil Jones describes the origin of the 2º limit:

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    handjive

    Malcolm Turnbull’s Paris Diplomatic Win!

    We’re Saved!

    or, A Fool and someone else’s money is easily parted.

    Obama Returns From Paris Climate Talks With Couple Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs

    Triumphantly displaying the fruits of his diplomatic talks with 150 fellow world leaders at the COP21 climate change summit in Paris, President Obama returned to the U.S. this week with a couple energy-efficient light bulbs.

    “The international community came together with a common agenda to limit the devastating effects of global warming, and after much negotiation, we were able to secure several energy-saving light bulbs for every nation in attendance, which will ensure a more sustainable future for our children and grandchildren,” said Obama, holding up the two-pack of 60-watt equivalent bulbs and adding that, while they were initially more expensive than traditional incandescent bulbs, the cost would be recouped over time, as LED bulbs last 40 to 50 times longer.”

    Malcolm Turnbull, the PM for light globes.

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    Cookster

    That the “limit” has been reduced by some from 2.0 to 1.5C is a tacit admission of the lowering estimates for climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2. At the current rate we will achieve the 2.0C “limit” by 2100 with no action. To keep the gravy train safe they needed to lower the estimate for climate catastrophe. Who knows we might see a 0.5C limit at current trends! 🙂

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    Dennis

    The AGW debate is finished!

    Please read what Piers Akerman of the Daily Telegraph has written for his Sunday column, and note the posts in response.

    http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/warmists_are_holding_us_to_mad_greenmail/

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    scaper...

    Is the world on the cusp of war? I believe so.

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      Dennis

      Are you aware that France recently used what was described as a not widely known section of the EU Agreement that requires the member countries to provide support and aid to a member country in times of emergency, including when it declares war on its enemies, to gain support? And the support call was answered.

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      el gordo

      The world is finally united and determined to obliterate the free radicals, but small cells are already at large in civilised society and need rooting out.

      A world war is unlikely on this auspicious occasion, hunting desert rats while at the same time trying to avoid collateral damage. The Ruskies don’t worry too much about the humane aspect.

      [You’ve skirted all around the real subject you intended to mention. But those answering you might not do what you did. So let’s let the subject of war drop at this point. Thanks.] AZ

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      bobl

      Ok AZ, I just forget that free speech is dead in OZ

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      Is a cusp of war, similar to a climate tipping point?

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    Dennis

    In Australia, but in other countries too, what will voters’ reactions be as they learn about the global warming climate change fraud and hidden until recent times read agenda to collapse the capitalist system and replace it with one world government (the UN) and a Communist China controlled system of capitalism? A system that allows it’s favoured supporters to become business related wealth creators and keeps other or most other citizens under authoritarian rule.

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    An Article of interest to some.
    How a rebellious scientist uncovered the surprising truth about stereotypes

    The article begins

    At the back of a small room at Coogee Beach, Sydney, I sat watching as a psychologist I had never heard of paced the room gesticulating. His voice was loud. Over six feet tall, his presence was imposing. It was Lee Jussim. He had come to the Sydney Symposium of Social Psychology to talk about left-wing bias in social psychology.

    Left-wing bias, he said, was undermining his field. Graduate students were entering the field in order to change the world rather than discover truths. Because of this, he said, the field was riddled with flaky research and questionable theories.

    Jussim’s talk began with one of the most egregious examples of bias in recent years. He drew the audience’s attention to the paper: “NASA faked the moon landing – therefore (climate) science is a hoax.” The study was lead by Stephan Lewandowsky, and published in Psychological Science in 2013.

    As background, both Jo and I have each had the odd post or two on Prof Lew in the last few years. Three years ago Jo said:-

    This could be the worst paper I have seen — an ad hom argument taken to its absurd extreme, rebadged as “science”.

    Now a leading Social Psychologist agrees.

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    Some new original research from the University of East Anglia, home of the World famous Climate Research Unit

    To pee or not to pee? UEA students call for people to wee while showering to help save water

    Hattip notalotofpeopleknowthat

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      ianl8888

      Heavens, who needs expensive sewage systems then ? We could just dump the contents of full chamber pots out of the window into the gutter …

      Oh, I remember now, this has been tried before

      The two biggest steps of progress for the populace in the 20th century were the advent of the sewage system and widespread, reliable, affordable electrical power

      These d!ckheads are actually trying to destroy both of these advantages. And the MSM think they’re heroes …

      Every time I think I’ve seen the very bottom of human stupidity, someone comes along to show me I’m wrong

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    Martin

    Beaucoup $$ and familiar names. No doubt they benefit the local mob.

    http://leftexposed.org/2015/12/the-rico-epidemic-and-the-attack-on-exxon-mobil/

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    Truthseeker

    North Sydney by-election results to date.

    Swing against Liberals -13.5%, Green vote did not change and there was no Labor candidate.

    Speaks volumes.

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    pat

    James Murphy –

    the interesting thing about The Guardian Uruguay article is the URL which shows the original headline: “Uruguay makes dramatic shift to nearly 95% clean energy”. NOTE: no mention of “electricity”.

    Uruguay makes dramatic shift to nearly 95% clean energy
    by The Guardian
    Thursday 03, 2015
    http://dispute.press/news/226961

    also note near the end of the article: “The transport sector still depends on oil (which accounts for 45% of the total energy mix).”

    of course, it was just another puff piece.

    Max Keiser with former Greens candidate Tina Rothery on Keiser Report during the week was raving about TEXAS TOWNS plural that have turned their back on fossil fuels, getting all their energy from solar in the day and wind at night.

    in reality, it is a single Texas town, Georgetown, population about 50,000, and Max was no doubt further exaggerating the following Guardian puff piece, which talks about a future plan to provide 100% ELECTRICITY from renewables. with SunEdison in the mix, who knows if any of this will even pan out:

    29 March: Guardian: Tom Dart: Texas city opts for 100% renewable energy – to save cash, not the planet
    When its staff examined their options last year, they discovered something that seemed remarkable, especially in Texas: renewable energy was cheaper than non-renewable. And so last month city officials finalised a deal with SunEdison, a giant multinational solar energy company. It means that by January 2017, all electricity within the city’s service area will come from wind and solar power.
    In 2014, the city signed a 20-year agreement with EDF for wind power from a forthcoming project near Amarillo. Taking the renewable elements up to 100%, SunEdison will build plants in west Texas that will provide Georgetown with 150 megawatts of solar power in a deal running from 2016 or 2017 to 2041. With consistent and reliable production the goal, the combination takes into account that wind farms generate most of their energy in the evenings, after the sun has set…
    Yet amid the rhetoric, denial and promotion of corporate interests and economic prosperity ahead of environmental concerns, over the past decade Texas lawmakers authorised the spending of $7bn of taxpayers’ money on the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone, a vast infrastructure project to connect west Texas wind power to major urban areas.
    So Texas has the weather, the infrastructure and – certainly in small places such as Georgetown – the current market conditions to be greener…
    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/28/georgetown-texas-renewable-green-energy

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    pat

    5 Dec: BusinessStandardIndia: Nitin Sethi: We are told that the unity of the G77 and China group is impeding progress at Paris: Nozipho Joyce Mxakato-Diseko
    MXAKATO-DISEKO: …So the biggest issue we are fighting about is an attempt to rewrite the convention and write away key principles of the convention – common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) and respective capabilities, which is really important, especially when it comes to finance…
    As I said the second biggest issue is finance. We are impressed by the way we have maintained our unity, which not only has necessitated a change in the strategy of our partners – either to bully us or to appear as if they are doing something. We noticed when we came here that announcements started being made about the Least Development Countries Fund. We welcome that but these pledges are 10 years late. We hope they will be cashed in to monies that are utilisable. But, the world needs to know that does not mean you have actually addressed the issue of finance in the legally binding instrument. You still have to come back and address finance in the legally binding instrument…
    ***SETHI: If I read between your words, are you suggesting you have seen attempts from developed countries to break the G77?
    MXAKATO-DISEKO: Yes, by dangling carrots. I don’t know how many phone calls my government has received saying this camp called the G77 is problematic. So we know. We have shared notes. We have heard of demands being made to remove particular negotiators – saying they are problematic?…
    But we are also seeing attempts to build in divisive language in to the text by introducing phrases we don’t understand and is not in the convention…
    SETHI: Such as?
    MXAKATO-DISEKO: Such as, ‘countries in a position to do so’, ‘countries willing to do so’ or ‘evolving circumstances’. We don’t know what these terms are within a legally agreement in the context of the Convention that has an objective of what we are bound together to do under the UNFCCC to reduce greenhouse gases. As opposed to that we find new language about ‘zero net carbon’, ‘decarbonisation’ and all of that. And, you have to understand the implications for developing countries. When we look at the economies of our partners they are fully formed. They don’t have to make major adjustments. On the other hand, we have hardly even begun to develop so what does decarbonisation mean?…
    ***We have been assured by the French that there will be no text flown in and that they will allow the process to unfold.
    http://wap.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/we-are-told-that-the-unity-of-the-g77-and-china-group-is-impeding-progress-at-paris-nozipho-joyce-mxakato-diseko-115120500885_1.html

    5 Dec: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: Politicians face ‘difficult issues’ as UN releases draft climate deal
    The 48-page document is larger than ***one considered for approval on Friday night…
    ***France’s chief climate diplomat Laurence Tubiana assured delegates there were no plans afoot to produce a secret text.
    “No one will be left behind… there is no plan B and we do not need a plan B,” she said. The one in circulation will likely be the last printed copy until a new agreement emerges next week, said another source.
    All difficult issues are as yet unresolved, said Canete…
    In the centre of Paris, best-selling author Naomi Klein and campaigner Bill McKibben led a mock trial of oil giant Exxon Mobil.
    The pair said they would analyse the “greatest climate crime of the century”: allegations Exxon scientists knew about the potential consequences of man made global warming but distorted the evidence…
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2015/12/05/politicians-face-difficult-issues-as-un-releases-draft-climate-deal/

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    pat

    for the record: there is now a 48-page text, with a 21-page core agreement, though Matt McGrath on BBC radio today said China objcted to the draft text being called an “agreement”, and insisted it be called an “accord”. much reporting now calls it an “accord”.

    also for the record, the number of brackets ballooned during the week from 1,617 to 1,718, but has now been reduced to 939, according to Reuters (not bothering to supply all the links, but they can be found online):

    5 Dec: NYT: Coral Davenport: A Leaner Climate Proposal Emerges, Complete With Big Questions
    The new draft text of the United Nations climate accord was released Saturday, whittled from 50 pages to a surprisingly readable 21…
    In international legal documents like this, little words and phrases can have big consequences. In the case of the climate accord, perhaps the most crucial word is “shall.” In this forum, “shall” equals legally binding. So a great deal of the next week will be a showdown over “shalls.”
    Developing economies want lots of “shalls” in the money section. In particular, they would like to see a clause saying that developed countries “shall” provide money for the developing world to adapt to climate change and transition to clean energy. That “shall” is a red alert for the United States, because it would legally commit developed countries, in an international legal forum, to writing checks to poor countries.
    In the money section, the United States prefers the much softer “should.” This would lay out an expectation that rich countries will pay, but it would not come with legal teeth if they don’t…
    While the United States objects to “shalls” in the money section, it wants lots of “shalls” in the section on outside verification. It wants full legal force requiring countries to open up their industrial sectors to an outside review of how they record emissions. That’s where many developing economies would like to see the softer “should.”…
    Despite the differences on the table, negotiators said they saw common ground in sight. The Chinese negotiator Su Wei offered a metaphor for the process ahead. “When you cook a meal, you need all the materials and ingredients in the kitchen,” he said at a news briefing Saturday. “Everything must be there before you can make your meal. It’s the elements of Parisian cuisine. We have many ingredients, and we will emerge with a good meal.”
    http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/climate/2015-paris-climate-talks

    5 Dec: PDF: 48 pages: UNFCCC: Draft Text
    http://unfccc.int/files/bodies/awg/application/pdf/draft_paris_agreement_5dec15.pdf

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    Egor TheOne

    The IPCC = the fact free zone ….where science and fact is replaced with Marxist propaganda and CAGW BS .

    https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-3_TyvMrLIH8/VmJExbNbNBI/AAAAAAAA4v0/dvdoRGUJFGQ/w506-h675/DrHapper.png

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    pat

    5 Dec: Financial Times: Pilita Clark: COP21: Paris talks agree draft accord to limit carbon emissions
    ​​“​​We’re talking about life itself,” said Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister, who is also serving as president of the conference, due to end on Friday. ​
    ​​“I intend to muster the experience of my entire life to the service of success for next Friday,” Mr Fabius said…
    US actor Sean Penn said he believed the Paris meeting was taking place in “the most exciting time in human history” because “the days of dreams have given way to the days of doing”…
    Delegates from wealthy countries have hinted they will accept a demand for the agreement to include a requirement for them to deliver $100bn a year after 2020 to help poorer countries deal with climate change — as long as developing countries agree to do their best to limit emissions and back tougher rules on the way pollution is counted and reduced.
    Some rich countries have also said they are willing to increase this $100bn figure in future years, but only if the so-called “donor base” of climate finance is enlarged to include big emerging economies such as China.
    India and other countries are firmly opposed to this…
    Still, divisions remain over a host of other elements of a potential agreement, including many that helped sink the last effort to seal a new climate deal, in Copenhagen in 2009…
    http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3c62df02-9b7a-11e5-b45d-4812f209f861.html

    so what did “their ABC” choose as the only COP21 piece I can find from them for the past 24 hours?

    6 Dec: ABC: AFP: Paris climate talks: UN adopts climate-saving draft as stars add voices to call for change
    Arnold Schwarzenegger has recalled a childhood of milking cows in the rain and drawing water from a well as he called for the world to turn to clean energy and protect the world’s environment from global warming.
    The former California governor and action movie star harked back to his Austrian upbringing…
    “One of my chores was every morning at six o’clock to go to the farm next door and to milk the cow and to bring home the milk,” he said.
    “It did not matter what the weather was — whether it was cold, it was hot, raining, thunder, shower, whatever.
    “My brother and I walked 200 metres to the well to get our family’s source of water for drinking and for bathing every day.
    “We played in the fields, we swam in the streams and the lake — the environment was absolutely everything to us,” he added…
    He pressed decision-makers at every level to turn to smart, clean energy sources.
    “This is the challenge of our time and this is the real world,” he said.
    “This is not the movie world which is the other world that I come from.
    “There are no visual effects here, no special effects, there is no script writing that we can change for a better ending — nothing like that.”…
    Schwarzenegger was one of more than 50 celebrities committed to fighting climate change, from US actor Sean Penn to Chinese internet tycoon Jack Ma, who gathered at the conference on Saturday to help build momentum.
    “Perhaps this is the most exciting time in human history,” Mr Penn told a special event at the conference.
    “Those illusions of having too many difficult choices have always created chaos. Now we live in a time where there are no choices. We have certainty.”…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-06/hopes-rise-as-un-adopts-climate-saving-blueprint/7004920

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    el gordo

    ‘Provisional statistics* show that for the UK, November has been the dullest on record with figures going back to 1929, and the dullest month since January 2013. Only 36.6 hours of sunshine were recorded, which is 64% of the long term average (1981-2010).’

    UK Met

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    Egor TheOne

    It’s Malcom the TurnTrueB’lverBull with his Billion dollar rabbit out of the hat trick at the Paris CON21 CAGW Hand your Money over Hajj !

    >> http://rickwells.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/289-australian-pm-turnbull-2-940.png

    And yet this is still less insane than Carbon Bill’s 45% renew Target(Twas 50% just recently), not to mention the Greens 90% renew pledge !

    The Greens don’t walk of the cliff ….they sprint !

    https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-WrUy_tR1UVo/U4BR5E5NjZI/AAAAAAAAUOc/g3uXVFty5Jc/w426-h320/obamavoters.gif Just like our money !

    https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-i3p8Gpmk8wY/Vl5fBguXBzI/AAAAAAAA4q4/uCEwc5IS0-o/w506-h675/COP21U2.png

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    Hmm! So Adelaide is to become the first, umm, Carbon neutral city in the, well, whatever.

    Say, how lucky is it that the Heywood Interconnector has been upgraded and the MurrayLink Interconnector is also in operation.

    I wonder if Carbon neutral entails taking an axe to those two interconnectors.

    South Australia consumes around 1900 to 2000MW (equivalent Nameplate) each day and luckily those two interconnectors can supply 870MW. (Heywood 650MW and Murraylink 220MW)

    Of course, all the talk is about supplying all that lovely wind power surplus into Victoria, and hey, don’t mention that it also supplies all that wonderfully yummy renewable brown coal fired power from Victoria into South Australia when the wind is on the blink.

    Still, I suppose it does go the other way. Imagine from midnight till 6AM when wind power in SthOz is typically at its best, but, umm, not really needed in that State because, well, everyone’s asleep, and the State is not really consuming all that much. So they look around for a buyer for their power, and hey, that’ll be at giveaway prices, so they find, say, there’s one. Tumut Three Pumped Storage needs power to pump all their water back up to the top to run down through the turbines again when it’s needed.

    Carbon neutral. Give me strength. Note the timing of this announcement, specifically ….. AFTER that multi million dollar Heywood Interconnector Upgrade is finished.

    Blah blah blah!

    By the way, the introduction of an ETS/Carbon Tax won’t be good for South Australia. They have littlies, (small gas fired mainly) plants which are scheduled to supply for just a few hours a day when needed. So they budget their costs for their CO2 emissions around those hours. A few wind less days and their budget gets smashed, and it happened a few times during the Gillard CO2 Tax era.

    Who really cares though, for a pi$$ant little State which consumes barely 4% of Australia’s total power consumption.
    Tony.

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      PeterK

      Tony, love reading your posts. Please don’t stop.

      I guess to resolve the excess wind at night, our masters need to legislate ‘night day’ into law.

      Our days would then start at 6 or 7 pm, lunch will be at midnight and we get off work about 4 am and we all will eat supper around 5 or 6 am.

      Another green quick fix.

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    Another Ian

    Some trivia for the day

    “SALT in the salt shaker has a Best if used by date”

    http://www.yesterdaystractors.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=ttalk&th=1643564

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    el gordo

    “According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.”

    “Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,”

    – NASA

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      King Geo

      El Gordo based on that Antarctic Ice Sheet data, unless the Greenland Ice Sheet shows a different trend, then expect more of the same, ie 2-3mm/year of eustatic SL rise on planet Earth. Mind you when the next LIA kicks in during SC26 expect SL to drop slightly unless it is of long duration like the Maunder Minimum (~ 70 years) – then expect a reasonable fall in eustatic SL – how much? any ideas folks?

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    pat

    India not confident solar is the answer:

    6 Dec: EconomicTimesIndia: PTI: Pallava Bagla: Is solar power the real solution to India’s energy crisis?
    Now an impression has been created that solar power could be the panacea for solving all issues related to climate change and energy independence for India. This is far from the truth. Since despite the aggressive international marketing even for India during the next 4-5 decades ‘coal will still be the king’! Today about 60 per cent of India’s power is generated using hydrocarbons.
    There is no doubt that India loves the sun god and the country as a whole is bestowed with more than 300 sunny days which makes it a very attractive option to generate electricity. However, there is still a huge catch: the sun is available only for half a day and hence excessive over reliance on solar power can be very hazardous during darkness.
    Today the country plans to ramp up its solar power generating capacity to 100,000 MW by 2022, an almost 25-fold increase from 4000 MW of installed capacity in 2015. This means every year India will have to install about 14,000 MW of solar power continuously for the next 7 years if this ambitious 100 gigawatt target has to be achieved. What is the past record of accomplishment, in the last 5 years India put up only about 2000 MW of installed solar power…
    Today’s batteries are really very expensive, and life span is relatively short and trying to deploy them on gigawatt capacities is no joke. For solar power to make a big inroad, a huge breakthrough needs to be made in battery technology…
    Some experts even suggest that having a huge mix of intermittent renewable energy in the grid could actually lead to its collapse…
    http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/science/is-solar-power-the-real-solution-to-indias-energy-crisis/articleshow/50061581.cms

    6 Dec: 7News: AFP: Abengoa struggle casts cloud on jobs, banks in Spain and abroad
    As Spain’s flagship renewable energy giant Abengoa teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, concerns are mounting over the fate of thousands of employees and its numerous projects around the world, just weeks ahead of crux general elections…
    “They are very indebted… their total liabilities could be more than 25 billion (euros),” Industry Minister Jose Manuel Soria estimated Friday.
    As the December 20 general elections approach, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has yet to comment on the possibility of a Spanish company that employs 28,700 people globally — including nearly 7,000 in his own country — going down…
    “Investors have been burnt by other bankruptcies in Spain, when debt was found hidden away,” said ISM Capital analyst Antoine Bourgault…
    Already in Brazil, unions are concerned, with the Sintepav grouping that represents workers in the country’s construction sector saying it is expecting 5,000 jobs to be cut…
    “Banks’ bottom-line profits this year will likely fall short of our forecasts, as they start provisioning for the potential losses they could face,” said the Standard & Poors ratings agency…
    Small-scale shareholders fear they will get burnt again.
    “After having overcome the financial crisis, with the hard costs that implied for individual savers, and having witnessed fraud directly linked to bad business practices, it seemed that the wind was changing,” said Javier Cremades, head of Aemec, an association representing minority shareholders.
    “But unfortunately that has not been the case,” he wrote in the El Pais daily.
    https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/30288052/abengoa-struggle-casts-cloud-on-jobs-banks-in-spain-and-abroad/

    good to see the Abengoa story on 7News website. a well-informed friend told me yesterday he hadn’t heard a word about it until I mentioned it. same goes for SunEdison’s woes. it’s the last thing the CAGW crowd want in the news during COP21.

    sceptics in Paris should be informing as many people as possible that the big renewable companies are in trouble.

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    pat

    jo, I have a comment about solar in moderation.

    6 Dec: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Farewell to the man who invented ‘climate change’
    To this day, global climate policy is still shaped by the agenda of Maurice Strong, a Canadian multimillionaire
    A very odd thing happened last weekend. The death was announced of the man who, in the past 40 years, has arguably been more influential on global politics than any other single individual. Yet the world scarcely noticed…READ ON
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/paris-climate-change-conference/12035401/Farewell-to-the-man-who-invented-climate-change.html

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    pat

    5 Dec: ReutersCarbonPulse: Stian Reklev: UN text opens door for fresh talks on targets, carbon market for shipping, but obstacles remain
    Text on how to deal with carbon emissions from international shipping has made it through to ministerial discussions at UNFCCC talks for the first time, creating hope that the Paris meeting could provide a signal that would revitalise high-level discussions about CO2 targets and market-based mechanisms for the sector…
    However, in the text handed over to the French presidency at the ongoing Paris talks on Saturday, one paragraph – although heavily bracketed – was left in…ETC
    Meanwhile, Argentina, with the backing of nearly 90 developing nations, added that “it should be taken into account that international maritime transport is only a modest contributor to climate change, while it is fundamental for trade and economic and social development.”
    “We would also like to express our support for multilateral discussions, in opposition to unilateral measures. In this sense, we reiterate our concern about the approval by the EU of a unilateral measure on [MRV] of shipping emissions that undermines the spirit of multilateral cooperation and that is inconsistent with the principles and provisions of the Convention, in particular the principles of equity and CBDR,” it said…
    Around 70% of the world’s roughly 50,000 ships ships sail under the flags of nations defined in the UNFCCC as developing countries that have no obligations to cut emissions in the current UN framework…
    http://carbon-pulse.com/12943/

    5 Dec: ReutersCarbonPulse: Mike Szabo: World Bank opens up second PAF auction to voluntary market, eyes Q2-16 date
    The second auction will target methane emissions from the same sectors as the first one held last June – landfills, agriculture and wastewater sites – but this time it will be a forward auction rather than a reverse one…
    The World Bank is also considering whether to extend the PAF to other sectors and greenhouse gas types.
    Earlier this year, it commissioned an analysis to examine methane and CO2 abatement opportunities in the oil and gas sector, for example those relating to gas flaring.
    “We found that small- to medium-scale projects in gas flaring, as well as those involving [gas] leak detection are very amenable to [the scheme],” Widge said.
    “We’re not going to go there with the PAF itself, but as a financial mechanism and an allocation method, we think it has a lot of potential.”…
    “It’s not applicable to anything and everything, but it has a wide scope … Now that we’ve demonstrated it, it’s very replicable. It doesn’t have to be limited to the key sectors,” Widge said…
    http://carbon-pulse.com/12933/

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    Ross

    Enlightening comments from a former USA UN Ambassador ( exactly the sort of person who should know what’s going on)

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

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    OMG Storm Desmond knocked over a Christmas tree in Hedon http://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/Storm-Desmond-fells-Hedon-Christmas-tree-causes/story-28307668-detail/story.html

    it is Tracey all over again, only worse because of climate change.

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    Greg Cavanagh

    For shipping traffic around the world:

    http://www.marinevesseltraffic.com/2013/06/coral-sea-marine-traffic.html

    Just in case anyone is curious about the shipping routes and coverage.

    I was thinking about the ocean temperature readings.

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