JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
First here?!
62
I would say, “yes.”
30
Drawn to this thread by Aglaope with her intoxicating song of ‘First Here’ this mantic creature lures many towards the perils of knowledge.
Once he hears to his heart’s content, sails on, a wiser man.
60
That’s a bit poetic Yonnie!
BTW We have some mantises infecting our new house, they are intriguing and one is huge and sitting in the Christmas lights on the back verandah.
20
It is, but a little plagiarised and homogenised to suit, mentioning poetry we visited the Daylesford Sunday market today and I bought two old books of poetry for $2 each, both titled ‘Days With The Poets’ one is Wordsworth the other Tennyson, out of curiosity I searched the Publisher Hodder & Stoughton to get a date of publication and so far they appear to be from a series printed from 1910, the later editions don’t have the same artwork on the covers so I may have books over 100 years old!
Watch those mantises, prey they don’t turn on you.
30
We get the feeling that we are being watched.
Your poetry books sound like a good find.
30
A cool spell in the UK will put the salt trucks in demand.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/weather/12099586/Snow-expected-as-far-south-as-Kent-and-Cornwall-as-cold-snap-hits-Britain.html
Its also reckoned that Paris will get more than a dusting.
60
The Met Bureau seems to have no idea.
It’s been saying this for the last two weeks. Doom and gloom.
But as I type this from London, I look out my window and see bright blue sky with a smattering of cloud.
I was hoping for a white Christmas – but no.
I was across to Bath last week and Bristol. Same same. Cold but no snow and not much drizzle either. The M4 was clear and pretty dry. Traffic moved at 70 mph. No drama.
Perhaps the Bureau of Met needs a bigger computer?
Yes it’s cold it’s Winter.
92
The UK Met is toning down the alarmism, just some icy roads and a bit of snow, which I suspect is the relative calm before the storm.
If we are to get a repeat of January 1947 then a lot depends on the North Atlantic Oscillation staying in negative territory.
31
I had a link from a blog comment that showed the predicted movement of the jet-stream over Europe, unfortunately I’ve lost the link. However, IIRC, the blog from some 3 weeks ago forecast the current cold spell by watching the movement of the jet-stream to straight northerly over the UK and across Europe.
I just wish I keep a bookmark of the link as it would be most interesting to study how well the weather tracks the jet-stream.
If anyone knows of the website that has the animated map of the jet-stream movement (and its forecasting), I would be most interested in seeing it again.
30
Memory fade!
Reviewing my web surfing shows that it was only 10 days ago. I got there through https://reality348.wordpress.com/ and his answer to Stephen Wilde, this has a link to http://earth.nullschool.net/ . Click on ‘EARTH’ name (not the globe image) to get the menu. Click the globe to grab and rotate it for your particular view.
P.S. I’ve bookmarked it this time.
40
Also try this one https://www.windyty.com/?-27.000,133.000,2
40
Thanks JoKaH,
Nice site. Lighter on computer resources and faster.
30
That earth.nullschool wind map is very interesting to me. During the Christmas R5 solar/lunar period all the depressions intensified. The British Isles got hammered as did the Sydney-Hobart yacht race. I’m watching the wind map regularly as a relative is sailing around the world with Sir Robin Knox-Johnson’s Clipper Series.
50
Is it real?
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/191754-cold-fusion-reactor-verified-by-third-party-researchers-seems-to-have-1-million-times-the-energy-density-of-gasoline
30
Real like the tooth fairy.
41
LENR. Low Energy Nuclear Reaction? Ridiculous. It just shows that if you make up an acronym to save time, it must be real, like CAGW.
53
Tdef,
In all actuality I think the jury is out on this at the moment. There have been anomalies with plants for example that are deprived of potassium that nevertheless gain potassium content. There are high energy particles flying around us all the time so my view is that more than likely these can cause transmutation (Fusion or fission) to happen on a microscopic scale. I don’t subscribe necessarily to the view that low energy collisions can cause fusion or fission, rather I subscribe to the idea that natural particle energy distributions might include particles energetic enough to cause fusion or fission.
10
More likely bad arithmetic than astounding discoveries. Besides, what jury? Is that the same one which deals with CO2 induced Global Warming? Greens? Why not ask a scientist, a real one, not Tim Flannery.
We know a great deal about high energy particles and they do cause changes like N14 into C14, the source of radio carbon dating and my absolute proof that there is no fossil CO2 in the air. About seven cosmic rays pass though you every second. Rarely do they stop. This is a cause of mutations across a species and over vast time, mutations which are extremely rare and most fail. Unless you have a good source of cosmic rays and a laboratory the size of a planet, don’t think about this one.
Anyway, the idea that simply placing things together and mixing chemistry up with nuclear shows a lack of understanding of the difference. You cannot induce nuclear reactions by chemistry.
13
I am just making the (Correct) point that we do NOT know everything about the universe. For example it has been shown that (mathematically) it is plausible that there is a background energy flux (Zero point flux) and that it might be composed of electron/positron pairs spontaneously coming into existence and a equal amount combining and being destroyed. What happens if that happens in a nucleus?
I do not have the arrogance that we know enough about anything to preclude something else. There are places where 2+2=4 is indeed inadequate.
For example the apparent speed of light is different in different media, and the speed of light in free space is primarily set by the permittivity of free space, which may well be related to the zero point field. If the permittivity of free space could be lowered then light would travel faster. I for one do not presume that the permittivity of free space cant be locally changed and therefore I reserve judgement that the speed of light in free space is some sort of absolute boundary. For example it’s plausible that beyond the event horizon of a black hole the permittivity of free space might fall. Indeed one explanation for the red-shift phenomenon is that the permittivity of free space is NOT a constant everywhere and for all time.
30
Are you saying that the science isn’t settled????
40
No, I’m just saying keep an open mind to possibilities
10
Is that like zero point energy…?
10
Oops, sorry in all that I missed the point, our minds must be open to all possibilities no matter how remote. Spontaneous transmutation is plausible as you point out with your example of N14 into C14, we can’t rule out that some “Process” might potentiate these nuclear reactions as platinum potentiates the dissociation of water (in chemistry), and therefore should maintain an open mind on so-called cold nuclear reactions.
Useful cold nuclear reactions are plausible if improbable.
30
They are not plausible.
10
TdeF, There is more in heaven and earth than one can imagine, playing with an experiment at the moment, that confounds science in two ways.
We, us , are infants in knowledge of the possibilities that exist in science, just saying.
00
I’m sorry I posted this, wasting people’s time….
How is it that junk like this can have such a long life?
31
Mr. E.M. Smith (aka ChiefIO) has covered this a few times on his fine blog here , here , and here , (there are others). That last link is the latest and the comments are most interesting.
IMO it still looks like a scam. 🙂
21
Without looking at the link, I would say, “no,” based on the fact that the link originates on the Internerd.
31
I was interested to see various comments about Tasmania’s current electricity problems; not much water in the dams and a broken connection to Yallorn coal stations, and little hope of much rain until Winter. Even Lake Margaret, the old station for the Mt. Lyell mine, is down and this is one wettest parts of the state.
Last week the HEC gave figures of 3274 GWh of residual generation left and water levels at 22.4% of maximum capacity. Annual electricity use is around 11,000 GWh.
Looking at the more significant lake levels there appears to be a greater worry than the HEC, or their Minister, is admitting. Lake levels have been reduced from approx. 50% in 2012 to the current 22%.
Dam Level Power Station Capacity (MW)
Gordon -40m. Gordon 432
Gt. Lake -17m. Poatina 300
Lake Murchison -15m. Reece 231
Lake Burbury -8m. J. Butters 144
The two lakes at the head of the Derwent scheme, Lake Echo and Lake King William, are minus 7 m. below full capacity.
Currently, they are bringing the Tamar valley power station, which was up for sale, back on line. This station replaces the older Bell Bay power station which was installed as a back-up for the Aluminium smelter as a result of previous periods of low rainfall in the mid 1960’s.
There is no date set for the repair of the BassLink cable and estimates of 2-3 months are being discussed.
There are points coming from this issue:
a. Tasmania does not have a permament snowline and is reliant on rainfall, not a Spring melt to fill the dams.
b.The wisdom of selling so much of its electricity on the BassLink without a reasonable reserve is questionable.
c.The HEC and the politicians who influenced this sale of power are downplaying the drought as a minor issue.
I suspect with the low levels some of these dams there is a loss of water pressure and less electriicity is being produced than is normal. The Gordon River dam is 190m. with the power station underground, but there is now a 40m. loss of head. With the Poatina station it wouldn’t matter as there is a 3000ft.drop.
It is to hoped that it rains soon and the BassLink can be repaired quickly otherwise there is a real problem.
240
So Green states South Australia and Tasmania are now both in big trouble without Victorian coal? Welcome to the Green reality, total mismanagement and destruction of local economies and natural resources, all in the name of sustainability. The greater disaster is in the Australian Senate where any attempt at fiscal responsibility has long been stopped and faux PM Turnbull seems to love debt too. If the Greens are not trying deliberately to wreck Australia, that is their legacy.
411
Of course the socialists are deliberately wrecking the Australian economy, all part of the NWO/OWG plan, destroy capitalism, nothing to do with the environment.
As Christiana Figureres of the UN told a meeting in October 2015
100
Tasmania is relying on it raining in 3 months, just as the Basslink comes back on line.
I expect that it future there will be less enthusiasm to export electricity to Victoria which is fully supplied by brown coal, so that means a flow on effect (non intended pun) for SA.
At least Tasmania is bringing conventional power back on line. SA is getting rid of its reliable sources and will depend on wind, solar and the inter-connector from Victoria. And a few short term, expensive and CO2 emitting OCGTs.
No reserves, no forethought and every hiccup with the main inter-connector means blackouts, even if the wind is blowing. Any excess has to flow to Victoria (who don’t want it) to be sold at a loss.
And with the highest unemployment rate the State is trying to attract industry; should be an attractive pitch – set up in SA, highest electricity costs, highest water costs, highest state levies, highest amount of bureaucratic control! How could anyone resist?
240
Interesting to see if they get the submarine project, and if they do how will they supply industrial power to it?
130
Given its proximity to the Pelican Point gas-fired power station, maybe they could run a few extension leads up the road… if that power station was able to operate at full capacity, that is…
Or maybe, they could just wander across to the other side of Mersey Road and ask the submarine battery manufacturer to make them a Lead-acid version of the Tesla Powerwall. Not sure how they would charge it, but then, who needs to look at minor technicalities like that…
With the Tour Down Under coming up soon, maybe the SA government could put all the competitors to work generating electricity instead of riding on the streets?
70
James Murphy:
Close but no prize. They will have to put the unemployed onto pedalling.
Pelican Point has shut down some of its capacity. Torrens Power Station (gas) will start shutting down proressively in 2017. By election time (2018) SA will be relying on wind and sun, and if either fails….
New numberplate sticker, SA – the candlelit state.
110
I have to chuckle when it is stated quite emphatically, by politicians and the press, that the M701D and its associated HRSG and steam turbine will be back on line on Wednesday. This of course implies smooth functioning of all the control systems, switchgear, transformers, boiler feed pumps, condy pumps, etc. etc. which have also had an extended holiday.
The fact of the matter is that all of that equipment has been laid up in storage since essentially July of 2013. Granted, the storage process has been state of the art. Granted, the machine itself is one of the most reliable pieces of kit of its ilk. However, the core of the skilled experienced operations staff are currently earning a living somewhere else. The replacements are mostly out-of-State hire personnel. While a successful restart is likely, it is far from a sure thing. If she fails, either due to deterioration or to operations conundrums, Tassie will discover where the bear pooped in the woods.
90
Unfairly for the present Government as it was the previous Labor-Greens that were there for far too long.
60
They will need to build very expensive new submarines to get the economy back on track. Pity about the excessive cost for all taxpayers.
52
As with all our military projects, just think up a ridiculous price and triple it.
50
Time to start building the Franklin dam!! Its not too late is it??
50
That was for 180 MW, but was stopped by PM Hawke using external treaty obligations. The damsite is still there and come Winter there will be water as well. Only needs a change of heart by various governments!
60
Correct by a damnsight!
20
Robert O,
I hope they do suffer and suffer really badly.
Only then will people realise that this whole power rubbish of the last 15 years is just that – rubbish.
They need similar real problems to come to fruition in Germany, UK and USA also.
The more suffering we have sooner, the better.
Rational argument is just not working on the “decision makers”.
92
Unfortunately you are right. It is a race between SA and Scotland to be the first blacked out by political incompetence. England will follow shortly after. I put them separately as there are different loonies in charge.
Germany probably not. They are connected to 9 other countries and through them to the rest of Europe. Those other countries add up to 8 times the German capacity so will cushion the blow. German pride will be hurt though. Where the germans could come unlit is if both Poland and the Czech Republic shut off access to them, through the phase shifting transformers both are building, or if one of the major conventional generators goes bankrupt.
I note that Spain no longer subsidises wind. The next lot built will have to make do with the wholesale price, and one that isn’t inflated by ‘secret’ subsidies like in the UK. (Secret in that they carry the costs of varying supply plus charges to pay extra to the wind & solar money troughs).
60
I posted about this in the previous thread
http://joannenova.com.au/2016/01/fake-fixed-carbon-markets-feed-five-billion-to-financial-sharks-in-eu-fraud/#comment-1777907
It just goes to show that distorting the market with things like the carbon tax can do serious damage.
And they’re still saying they intend to sell the power plant that is being brought back online…
30
Note the byline:
Note also the total lack of productive results since then.
From: http://ecatnews.com/?p=2683
Not even as much as the sound of crickets chirping.
Something as revolutionary as the early descriptions of the “eCat” would have moved at light speed into commercial production and well on its way to eliminated the need for fossil fuels, windmills, solar cells or any other “alternate” source of energy. It is no closer to being commercialized than it was when first described.
If it is real, were are the results? They don’t exist beyond words, articles, blog entries, web sites, and countless other things that can be generated without having any reality behind them.
100
Yep, was going to say a similar thing as Lionell has said. This test was 15 months ago and still no groundbreaking news on LENRNews.eu or lenr-forum.com, let alone the broader world. They claimed to be getting the report published in Journal of Nuclear Physics, but that is hardly credible when Journal of Nuclear Physics is a front group set up by Rossi himself!
One of the more recent replications of the e-cat method concluded it output more power than electrical input power… but the fact the reactor tubes melted during testing would have to be complicating any attempts at commercialisation.
Then there’s other technical reports that confirm the net output… which are only available under NDA…
Still smells fishy after all these years.
70
I agree it sounds fishy but there would also be monumental opposition to any new technology.
Take the inventions of Drs Kaali and Lyman (1993) which inactivated HIV using A/C electricity (12V 100mA). They were told to shut up by the pharmaceutical controlled medical establishment but went ahead and got a US Patent. Others took their gangly in-hospital apparatus and made battery operated adaptations (Dr Bob Beck -medical technologist and also Dr Hulda Clark -Parasitologist). I built a Clark device back in ’95 and have used it to counter various pathogens in my children and horses but it’s impossible to be objective without path lab testing. With a nurse in the house and hospital being 45mins drive away, we tend to deal with illness at home and on a few occasions the pulsed DC unit I built, appears to have had remarkable effect. I know numerous doctors who support the idea yet over the years I’ve seen very little information in the popular press, either for or against it.
The crux is that the US FDA and Au TGA would not dare approve these items for use on humans and the advertising standards people nail anyone who advertises this type of product for use on humans. Can you imagine the repercussions of a $100 unit replacing most antibiotics and being used against HIV ?
No oil corporation is going to allow a viable alternative to their business model to flourish.
31
Even the eCat description doesn’t sound very convincing, nor does a “reactor” setup on Dexion shelving frames. It looks like something someone has done in their shed.
40
Argument ad humdrum. The first successful fusion power reactor will look exactly like something born in a shed.
30
Like the large Hadron collider?
80
Several sheds, connected by tunnels.
50
So named cold fusion breaks the laws of nature as we have observed. Also it certainly does not occur in nature.
We understood how energy worked in the early 20th century. E=Mc2 etc. Also the energy which could be released at both ends of the periodic table though fusion and fission, changing the bonding energy per hadron by making middle sized elements and so releasing energy.
Nuclei though are positively charged and repel each other. Even in near suns, massive gas giants like Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune with gravitational forces so great Hydrogen is metallic, fusion does not start. It was close though. We could have lived in a binary system.
As in the planet Earth, with every element near every other element somewhere no nuclear reaction happens. All we knew at the start was that natural radiation existed and this produced neutrons and neutrons were neutral and they in turn could hit another nucleus and produce more. So a chain reaction was possible. We refined Uranium to extract unstable U235 at 2% and we had our bomb and later controlled power. It is possible with stable Thorium too if we have a neutron source, a small U235 reactor. Plutonium too, created in the first reaction and the most lethal atom which exists.
Modern fusion attempts to push charged Hydrogen/Tritium atoms together are based around a huge Russian electromagnetic version of the Klein bottle, to contain what is incredibly hot gas and they have succeeded for tiny fractions of a second. Billions are being spent currently on this.
To suggest you can just push atoms together on a desk top in your house and the nuclei will interact spontaneously is in denial of everything we know except that people like to dream. So we can tell them they’re dreamin’. General Xenu probably used this to bomb his Thetans.
80
Billions spent on fusion. We could have resolved fusion a long time ago if we did not spend trillions on medieval windmills and inefficient solar.
Cold fusion is still a possibility and enjoying revival after the witch hunt in the 80-ties. I will be more than glad to loose my petroleum job to fusion but not windmills and other GW crap.
100
TdeF, In the early part of the twentieth century Tesla could power the world for nothing, check it out for yourself. We are but babes in the woods.
00
It’s purportedly not his first attempt.
30
Have you looked at the info on E-Cat world? A 1 year test of a 1 MW E-Cat plant was initiated last February so we should have a better idea of the viability of this technology in a few months. Rossi was awarded a US patent on the process late last year. He now claims to have discovered a way to transform the output directly to electricity. There are other players with similar results (Brillion, Nanortech Inc.) and credible reproductions of Rossi’s work by a Russian scientist. There are now hundreds of papers discussing LENR and several world wide conferences each year.
I am cautiously optimistic that we will see a new power source introduced soon that will allow the removal of windmills and solar farms.
Check out Brilliant Light Power as well. They have an demonstration of their technology scheduled for later this month.
61
DMA
You bought shares, didn’t you?
00
What do you expect, Lionell. It’s always easier to say I have an Earth shaking idea than it is to actually have an Earth shaking idea.
I have given up chasing these revolutionary ideas, technologies and whatever. When you can show me one doing its job continuously and producing enough to be commercially viable then I’ll pay attention. Otherwise the whole thing has become a total bore.
50
I expect the laws of nature to apply to human action and enforce themselves. I expect this to be true even for the laws that we don’t know or understand all that well. I also expect that ANY attempt to have a thing both be and not be the same way at the same time will fail.
I also expect that there are countless ways to make use of those laws to make things that do work. Most of which have yet to be thought of or attempted. Hence, it is possible that and individual can, has, and will discover such a way that the so called experts discount as impossible or highly improbable. I know this to be true from personal experience for at least one fundamental technology.
However, extraordinary claims REQUIRE extraordinary proof. By that I don’t mean press releases, papers, meetings, conferences, blogs, web pages, reports of demonstrations, or even patents. The least level of proof would be an actually available, reproducible, and functional demonstration that can be inspected, on demand, and that the claimed device does what it is said that it does. The best proof is a commercially available version that can be purchased and used. Short of these things it is nothing more than bar room bravado reinforced by ingesting several too many drinks or by living too long in the land of fantasy.
The bottom line is that theory and practice are two aspects of the same thing. Theory without practice is mysticism. Practice without theory, is magic. Without a solid integration of the two, you don’t have much that is worth having and you won’t have it for very long if at all.
80
I thought that’s what I said ?!?! 🙂
30
You did and it is the correct position to take. I simply provided the theory behind your position. Thereby integrating theory and practice.
40
Lionel
Reminding you of the slogan that I’ve stolen off a blogger that I haven’t found back to credit
“What is the difference between theory and practice?
In theory there is no difference”
30
If there is no practice following the theory, it is not a theory. It is nothing but a mystical incantation.
40
When it comes to policy making there may be big differences between theory and practice. Policy makers seem able to bend, twist and otherwise torture an otherwise sound enough policy into something its own mother couldn’t recognize.
20
If the policy does not work in practice, it is not theory. It is simply a pile of random words disconnected from action and consequences. Simply because someone calls something “theory” does not make it an actual theory. Especially when a politician does it.
Theory must be based upon fact, must be well tested, and the results of the tests must be coherent with the theory. A theory may predict behavior not yet observed but when tested the behavior must be as predicted. Otherwise the theory must be amended my by restricting the context to which it applies.
Consider Newton’s theory of motion and gravity vs Einstein’s theories of motion and gravity vs what motion and gravity theory will actually turn out to be.
Newton’s theory has a more limited scope of applicability than Einstein’s. Einstein’s theory has a more limited scope of applicability than the theory of everything. A tested and validated theory of everything has yet to be produced.
Newton’s theory is quite applicable to most human scale activities. Einstein’s theory applies to the very large, very massive, and very fast. Quantum Mechanics is the best we have for the very very small.
This is a reflection of the fact that human knowledge is contextual. Go outside that context and all bets are off. Hence, we have a matrix of theories, each of which fit their own contexts. What doesn’t fit is getting closer and closer to the background noise and doesn’t matter so much except in extreme corner cases.
Between contexts, things can get a bit fuzzy. What we don’t need is to increase the fuzziness by over loading the word “theory” with stabs in the dark, guesses, conjectures, political pandering, and hypothesis. At the very least, let’s keep our categories of thought distinct and clearly differentiated.
20
Sometimes we need to find a theory, that explains an observation, regarding the practice.
I was told, as a young student, that the most important words in science are, “Hmm that is interesting … I wonder why …?”
60
Theory and practice are developed together. Sometimes it is an idea that passes a test. Other times it is an observation that triggers an idea. Without a tight coupling between theory and practice, you don’t have much of anything.
The practice might work, sometimes, but not at other times. You don’t know why until it is well integrated with theory. If all you have is theory, it is a pile of words without a connection to anything real. It might be a “good story” but that would be all it is.
10
Just noticed this set of pictures to make geologists drool. http://imgur.com/gallery/KA9tZ
Some here may be interested.
60
And I was. Some rocks have been treasured for their beauty since the dawn of human kind.
50
Thanks Andrew,
This reminds me of the time I spent at a spot somewhere West of Broken Hill where it’s possible to find all 3 polymorphs of Al2SiO5 – Andalusite, Kyanite, and Sillimanite in the one relatively small area, which, when observed, certainly did wonders to transform what was a relatively dry and slightly abstract textbook phase diagram into something real. Geological nerd nirvana!!
As far as mineral names, Brucite, Cummingtonite, and Sillimanite still remain humorous to me – in a slightly childish way. Ahh… Geology – where it is still possible to talk of dykes, cleavage, and dropping acid in polite company.
Have a gneiss day
200
I’m not going to indulge you in your flysch of fantasy because I’ve got a sinking feeling.
40
Alas, it is true that my comments are sometimes little more than a pile of schist.
40
🙂 A fair exchange is no robbery.
20
They are beautiful. Thanks for the link.
20
The sun’s set here in the UK so from solar panels there’s just 0.0GW
From aero generators nameplate cap of 13GW we are getting abt. 2.0GW
Boats still crossing Atlantic with bits of wood, bio fuel give us 2.0GW
Thank goodness that we have coal, nuclear, and gas as “backup” for our
“green” power providing 10, 7.5, and 20GW respectively plus a couple GW
from the French nuclear power stations and a bit from the Dutch and our
own hydro electric dams as demand is creeping up to the day peak of 50GW.
I’ve seen a lot of stupid thing in my 75 years of bouncing around this world
but “green” electricity has got “to take the cake”.
281
Coal and gas have the ability to provide electricity 24/7/365, which is what any developed or developing country needs..
Its massive side-benefit, is that it is the GREENEST fuel in existence.
I am not going to call CO2 a waste product, because none of it is wasted.
No other type of fuel provides SO MUCH for the plant life of this world.
335
Shouldn’t that be 24/7/52 ?
40
DOH !! of course. !
20
but look when that was posted 😉
20
Does any of the flaccid red thumbs have a counter to my points…
… or will you remain DUMB, as usual.
40
Stop talking so much sense.
51
sorry I forgot to list my source in my last post which is:
http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
60
To test the seas of Earth and oceans ’round,
No threat of acidification would be found.
The Greens in droves take fright and leave Green Power,
Being loath to pay much more per KW hour.
Creatures can adapt through quite a range,
Of temperatures we find with climate-change.
A row of solar panels may look nice,
But the current they produce costs twice the price.
A little global warming here and there,
Does not with world catastrophes compare.
Bush-fires raged since records first began,
From nature’s heat,that wasn’t caused by man.
Our taxes spent as money down the drain,
To fund the warmists on the gravy train.
The warmists in their folly had no right,
To want to ban the incandescent light.
The warmist silly global climate scare,
Has led to trade in molecules of air.
300
I have noticed since the turn of the new year that Ruairi has been trying to avoid being stereotyped as “the Limerick guy” and has been breaking into other formats more frequently.
One might even detect a faint Shakespearian whiff in the new material. This certainly adds some more variety to the atmosphere of the place. I support this broadening of our poetic horizons.
Does that make sense? Maybe if I reword that in a more familiar structure.
A fellow named Ruairi did not want
to be typecast the Limerick savant.
He said “Sod this format!”
“There’s more I’m good at.”
“I’m the pentameter commandant!”
200
I was down Tarwin Lower Vic way yesterday and got a good view of the forest of windmills standing mute as they gazed over the landscape. What am eyesore. If these things were set up to pump oil/gas out of the ground, every Green in the world would be protesting and chaining themselves to the landscape to stop their use.
202
An interesting example of Green Energy is the King Island Renewable Energy Integtrated Project, KIREIP, which gives a continual display of electricity production and use on the island. Essentially, it uses wind turbines, solar panels, diesel generators and batteries.
Demand for electricity goes from 1000KWh after midnight to about 1600 KWh during the peak periods in the morning, midday and evening.
It is a windy location in the middle of Bass Strait and when the wind speed reaches 15m/s (40 kph) the turbines produce about 2200KWh. There doesn’t seem to be much contribution by the solar panels, but the combination of the diesel and wind turbines keeps the island in power.
I guess it was a costly venture to set-up, but it is a good example of the use of green power, backup for diesel generation in isolated communities and not mainstream generation as in S. Aust. or the ACT.
60
Green power summed up IMO
“The only renewable that matters: the Taxpayer.”
More at
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2016/01/we-dont-need-1.html
81
Does anyone know if anywhere in the world we have non-subsidised wind or solar farm?
50
Yes, Spain. The latest auction of supply by “renewables’ requires them to get the (subsidy free) wholesale price for electricity.
I think this might have been won by a group planning on wind farms in Galicia in conjunction with small scale hydro plants. Galicia in the NW is the wettest and windiest part of Spain.
40
Graeme no. 3
Thanks for that. My next equation: if this is the case what is the cost to the customers and can this compete against coal and oil in a free market?
20
Dariusz:
Sorry, missed your question yesterday. Not important as I cannot answer it. The situation in Spain is that there is one price set nationally, even for the Canary islands, so every cost is covered. Last year they brought in hourly rates coupled with ‘smart’ meters although installation of same won’t be completed until 2018. This also brought in lower prices – down by 25-30% because the ‘extras’ were reduced. Previously only 37% of the bill was payment for electricity used.
The old system was a daily auction with the lowest rates accepted first. These lowest were always from the ‘renewables’ sector as they were re-imbursed separately – the wind industry got either $102 or 130 a MWh depending on time of dispatch (higher obviously during peak demand) as a guaranteed payment, regardless of what they sold at. Note figures are approximate because of exchange conversion but compare with the $30-32 from coal fired in Australia.
Solar projects were given higher rates, up to $320 per MWh in at least one case. Figures were supposedly confidential but when the Government cut the guaranteed rate to $272 ALL new solar heat projects were abandoned. The electricity authorities racked up the deficits until they became unsustainable.
Solar PV was ‘a license to print money, until the rates were cut and followed by demands for compensation (from the electricity board) for ‘disruption of the grid’.
All that has been modified since the change of government, but the cumulative deficits still have to be paid off. The most recent figures I have are that Denmark is the most expensive in Europe ($410) followed by Germany ($350) and Spain ($300). Australia is next ($290) then the UK ($200). These figures are from 2011 and you can assume that Denmark, Germany and the UK have all gone up, while Australia has, from exchange rate going down, dropped slightly. Our rate is too high because we aren’t paying purely for the electricity as was/is the case in Spain. Nor Denmark where they sell wind electricity at a loss, mostly to Norway, and buy back at higher prices. Germany also puts all the charges onto the householder as large industries are charged a much lower rate ($70-80).
I hope this helps, but I think your immediate thought will be that letting politicians ‘play’ with things they don’t understand turns out to be expensive for the ordinary citizen.
30
King Island has a population of 1723.
How much should the taxpayer fork out to provide more wind turbines?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-10-27/hydro-tasmania-ditches-242-king-island-wind-farm-project/5844484
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King Island is a very windy place being located in the roaring 40’s; one has to only look at the Ti-tree windbreaks around the paddocks for evidence. Although the use of wind turbines for local consumption makes sense to save some diesel fuel, which is costly, a large scale windfarm to export power to Melbourne is not an economically viable option. And if this isn’t viable here how could be viable in S.Aust. or the ACT?
80
A quick calculation or two shows some interesting figures. (Assuming that the figures given are correct).
Firstly, the output per home supplied works out at 10MWh per house p.a. or 27kWh per day. This is about 50% higher than the average household use BUT is about 20 times the usual figure used for “home supplied”. Either realism is starting to creep into greenery propaganda or the ABC made an error with the arithmetic.
The second is at that output for a six year payback (capital only, no running cost) the electricity would need $138 per MWh. Even with RET certificate – currently ~ $75 – they would want $63 per MWh to break even. From a market that pays $30 a MWh for coal fired????? No wonder they worked out that it wasn’t commercially viable. Adding in a lowest estimate for running costs means they would be trying to sell at $85 when the market is $30.
Wind energy is cheap sarc off/
80
Yes, but you need to know the ratio of wind:diesel before blowharding
King Island uses far more diesel than wind because the puffery is so intermittent. The peole who live there, the actual inhabitants, know this to the nth degree
100
I think they are projecting a 65% saving in diesel, but most of the time you look at the flowchart the diesels are going.
40
A couple of minutes ago: solar 35KW, Wind 1500 KW, diesel 0, and the island using 870 KW.
40
An hour a half later it is 700KW Wind, 34KW Solar, 130KW Battery and diesel 0, with usage of 880 KW, the balance going into the flywheel and the capacitor.
20
An hour later it is Wind 500 KW, Solar 30 KW, Diesel 500 KW, charging the battery, and using about 810 KW
30
People here may be interested in Erl Happ’s new blog ( here) and his theories of how solar controlled (paramagnetic) ozone production in our atmosphere governs when and how our climate changes.
Worth a look…
71
Thanks for the mention Tom. The post you refer to is grounded in observation of the manner in which temperature changes according to latitude and according to the month of the year. Change is date stamped as being of Arctic or Antarctic origin always in the dead of winter. Its greatest in the highest latitudes and least at 30-60° south. That change in high latitudes has little to do with flux in the energy coming in and a lot to do with the direction of the wind. When cold winds of Arctic origin blow across the northern landmasses in the depths of winter it is because surface pressure is higher in high than in the mid latitudes. So, I set out to explain what causes the differential in surface pressure to flip to give rise to either cold and warm winds. Others talk in terms of the ‘annular modes’ of inter-annual climate change. Those modes of change are supposedly rooted in a sort of ‘coupling between the troposphere and the stratosphere’. Bullshit. There is no troposphere in high latitudes. Its all stratosphere.The failure to understand the natural modes of climate change that are actually the only modes of climate change is rooted in a failure to observe. Its rooted in ignorance, superstition and adherence to doctrinal modes of conceptualization that, while these modes of thinking dominate climate science, invites exploitation by quacks and carpetbaggers.
The diamagnetic properties of ozone is a small part, and perhaps an unnecessary part of the story.
I noticed you mentioned the nullschool site. Its brilliant. If I want to know what is happening worldwide that’s where I go. If I want to understand what’s happening locally that’s where I go. Its a live feed of satellite data and a much easier way to try and work out what’s going on than the invaluable but clunky http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/ where the same data is presented in an old school fashion. Spend an hour to work out how it covers the entire atmosphere and the surface with lots of very interesting parameters. Learn to click on ‘Earth’ at bottom left to open up this Pandora’s box of learning opportunities. Check out the misery index for the northern hemsiphere currently. Toggle the dates back and forward to observe the change that is due to where the wind is coming from.
So, this site tells you what is happening today and provides an accurate historical record of the past. Any day you are interested in comparing with today just toggle back and find it.
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Thanks Erl, you have put together a fine blog that I’m still attempting to digest all the information. I have a question though, how different is your latest ideas now from what you wrote on your old blog at http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/ ? A refinement of the basics, or a change to the basic theory?
50
Tom,
By the time I finished writing the old blog I could see how the system hang together in terms of modes of causation but, not until I got to examining monthly data about six months ago did I realize that embedded in the surface surface temperature record was the signal that very clearly identified atmospheric processes at the winter pole as responsible. What took me back to this study was the realization that people who document the ‘annular modes’ of inter-annual climate variation had no idea of what was causing that change. Its ozone that changes atmospheric density that is the modus operandi. I would occasionally Google ‘Annular Modes’to see if they were getting closer to realizing the importance of ozone or discovering the relationship between surface pressure and surface temperature inn the mid latitudes. Yes, by mid last year I gained the impression that progress was being made so I decided to visit the field afresh.
So, there is much greater clarity in my mind today than when I wrote the first blog which was really a documentation of my own progress in working out the way the climate system works internally.
Now I see that there are three modes of heating of the atmosphere 1 Contact with a warm surface 2 release of latent heat. 3 Ozone. Of these the last is infinitely more powerful. It determines the planetary wind regime and the distribution of cloud.
Practically speaking, today I can go straight for the jugular and the explanation is shorter and sweeter.
Oh, and the other thing that helped was looking at the evolution of monthly surface temperature by the decade and seeing the cooling signal manifesting over the last two decades. Description to come. Must go, my wife wants to exercise me and the dog.
71
Good work Erl, Stephen Wilde is also taking an interest in this ground breaking theory.
‘In October 2014 a paper by Andersson et al suggests another layer of action, again on ozone. Described as the missing driver in the Sun-Earth connection, energetic electron precipitation (EEP) dramatically affects ozone – but above the poles, not the equator.
‘The EEP in the mesosphere is directed preferentially towards the poles along the magnetic field lines because the electrons are charged particles, which explains why the effect is strongest at the poles. When the Sun is active the energetic electron rain decreases ozone preferentially above the poles and in the mesosphere.’
80
El Gordo. Exactly. The composition and the density of mesospheric air is an important variable affecting the issue of how the stratosphere is affected as mesospheric air escapes across the jet stream, also known as the polar vortex.
The international space station is travelling closer to the Earth than ever before. Satellites designed for two years of activity are maintaining their orbits and still transmitting data after 10 years. The deflation of the atmosphere under a regime of reduced ionising radiation associated with low sunspot activity is changing the dynamics of the interaction between the mesosphere and the stratosphere.
90
Been holidaying on the sunshine coast of Qld and can report the environment is doing great.
We based ourselves at Boreen Point,which is on the top lake of the Noosa River. Packed a lot in and what struck me was the lack of water bird life. Guess they’ve headed inland to Lake Eyre.
Back to work tomorrow…unfortunately. Got to clean my 4WD now. It is covered in mud, dust, sand and salt. A job for the pressure cleaner!
80
The Chinese are fishing for a VFT startup, but this coastal route has already been hit on the head even though agreed to pay for the lot. They imagine acquiring the land will give them carte blanche (sic) to build skyscrapers along the route for their countrymen.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/nsw/a/30585189/high-speed-sydney-newcastle-rail-plan-would-cost-25bn/
A bullet train under the Blue Mountains seems the more likely option, terminating at Parkes where passengers could change over to the Melbourne-Brisbane line.
There is a lot of dirt cheap land beyond the mountains and the Chinese want to own the corridor.
40
To achieve the western route would require running through national parks. Good luck with that!
I see that the Mt Isa to Tennant Creek rail proposal, put forward by Genesee & Wyoming is getting traction. A northern development proposal that runs though the ‘Ville’. Funny that.
50
Scaper, is that line part of this idea?
http://www.eastwestlineparks.com.au/
40
No Andy, Shane Condon’s vision is a separate project. I backed his project in my submission to the Senate Committee for Northern Development. Except my version was to bring both commodities to a central point, manufacture and transport to Darwin. The Darwin line is owned by G&W.
The section of line from my proposed location to Darwin would need upgrading to carry heavy freight.
I believe the first stage of the rail from both directions involves Gina’s projects. I put the idea to both a few years ago and would like to elaborate but I can’t any further, at this point.
50
Scaper I also think those borers aught to dig a couple of tunnels (rail/road) through the great divide between Brisbane and the Brisbane valley.
40
‘To achieve the western route would require running through national parks.’
The borers on Sydney’s north-west rail link say tunneling through Sydney sandstone is a piece of cake, so the Blue Mountains should be easy because its made of the same stuff. A quick calculation, commuters could travel to the Central Tablelands within 15 minutes.
The Chinese have a land hunger and I think its time to open up the continent peacefully to avoid any misunderstanding.
30
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for projects of this multitude. It’s just the green tape involved to get projects up and running.
Knowing the area and established rail…the new line would have to be constructed well past Lithgow before being above ground.
31
Nah, leave to old line how it is.. 3 hours to Sydney. ( A nice scenic trip, too 🙂 )
Keeps house prices down and the Sydney riff-raff away. 🙂
70
Methinks the first station could nestle in between Bathurst and Orange (Whitlam’s white elephant) and second stop Parkes to join up with the north-south link.
These are big picture items.
30
AS you see above…I concur.
30
Coincidentally there are a couple of borers ready to go.
http://nwrail.transport.nsw.gov.au/News/Latest-news/Mega-borer-Elizabeth-resurfaces
30
…and if they widened the Brisbane – Melbourne corridor to accommodate a VFT it should pass muster.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fS19D-vEHM&feature=youtu.be
30
During the 80s a mining engineer explained his plan to me that involved boring a number of tunnels under the Blue Mountains for road and rail transport and another for sewage to be pumped to sewage farms for treatment and the water extracted made available for irrigation purposes.
As I recall it, in the 90s the Carr Labor Government of New South Wales decided to construct a treatment works and pipeline to dump sewage way out to sea.
40
Yeah, Carr is like Rudd…everything he touched turned to sh–t!
30
So it should.
They both consist of sh*t and nothing much else.
30
scaper
The “Reverse Midas Touch” if you have to be polite
30
Polite? Nah, still in ‘glamping’ mode.
31
scaper
It is going to have to rain a lot and the ALP is going to have to pay up for the financial damage of the Native Vegetation Act and – –
Or I’m looking forward to reincarnation.
50
And, scaper, I haven’t been vindictive in this life yet, but given that chance, I’ve got a list
40
Yes, pumping the treated sewage out to sea is a huge waste of potential irrigation water. It should have been pumped West and I vaguely recall it would have been cheaper too.
50
IIRC, the sewage from the Windsor-Richmond area is treated to A, A+, and used to maintain flows in the Hawkesbury River.
Probably cleaner than any releases from Warragamba. 😉
40
Is it my imagination (or maybe wishful thinking) but the Paris talkfest results/discussion fell off the MSM agenda extremely quickly ?
100
http://carbon-sense.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/paris-propaganda-victory.pdf
30
What they were really there for was probably not up for public grabs. The behind-closed-doors business would likely be economic policy and how to structure a world trading currency etc.
If they were really discussing climate they could do it using Skype and conference calls over a period of several weeks without leaving home.
30
Ari Halperin has an answer to your question that is worth investigating.
31
Thanks for linking that Rod.
It is a MUST READ for EVERYONE.
01
16 Jan: UK Spectator: Tony Thomas: Stranded monster
An unusual creature has landed at Oahu
Now and then giant ocean creatures wash up on beaches in a horrible mess. At Kalaeloa Airport on Oahu (Hawaii) a similar but aerial creature has washed up in an airport hangar. It’s the Solar Impulse 2, a solar-powered plane with a wingspan nearly as long as an Airbus A380’s. But it weighs rather less than a Toyota Land Cruiser and has so far cost its sponsors about $US250 million.
It was meant to fly around the world – without using a drop of fossil fuel – from March to August last year. Cheering it on were bigwigs Prince Albert 11 of Monaco, ex-UN czar Kofi Annan, Virgin’s Richard Branson, the ubiquitous Mikhail Gorbachev and the IPCC’s figurehead Christiana Figueres…READ ALL
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/01/stranded-monster/
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That is quite funny.
I hope it has all been paid for by private sponsors. Richard Branson should be good for $250 million.
His other project, the SpaceShip Two isn’t going so well either. Bad luck for those that have paid their deposit for the trip of a life time to sub orbital space.
60
All credit to these blokes for trying. Aero engineering is demanding and to try and couple it with photo-voltaics and electric motors is no small project.
During the next decade we will see vastly lighter batteries, superior magnets (better motors) and PV cells in a paintable surface form which out-perform the standard 15% efficiency panels.
The industry needs a few failed brave attempts to stimulate thinking. We need people with vision and attitude to break new ground.
Robin Knox-Johnston was described by a psychiatrist as “distressingly normal” prior to his round-the-world solo yacht journey but he had confidence and resolve. In light weather he’d dive over-board from the bow and swim along with “Suhaili” over-taking him before grabbing a trailing rope and climbing back on board. Anyone who’s sailed away from land will know that this takes remarkable courage and faith in one’s abilities, even if there are other on board to rescue you. He’s not your average bloke.
I met Sir Robin on the CYC wharf in Sydney before Christmas and found him to be remarkably normal to chat with yet he’s clearly made of the right stuff inside because he succeeded.
Piccard and Borschberg must be a rare breed and perhaps a little deluded but I’d shout them a beer if I met them down the pub and I wish them every success.
20
I’m going to be the first to purchase a commercial ticket on the “fool-less” airplane for a flight between Denver, Colorado and San Francisco, California. Unfortunately, since the plane can’t carry passengers, I’ll have to get my pilot’s license first. Then since the “plane cruises at about the top speed of a postie’s bike,” the flight must be in the direction of the prevailing winds. This means the plane will leave Denver and fly East around the world. I anticipate the flight will take at least 1,000 hour–not counting for (a) land-based stopover to rest, replenish the food supply and empty the potty, and (b) ocean stopovers to hoist the plane aboard the required maintenance vessel for similar provisioning. Take-offs from the maintenance vessel are no problem as the maintenance vessel’s cruise speed is greater than the plane’s cruise speed. Come to think of it, ocean stopovers may shorten the trip by a few hours.
If Bertrand Piccard actually believes: “What we have here is the future,” then I wish him a short stay in the asylum.
30
two must-reads from Booker:
16 Jan: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: ‘Mad’ Swansea tidal lagoon scheme heading for the rocks
A case brought on behalf of local protesters argued that the planning permission rushed through Cornwall Council last April had broken the law
The publication last week of a trenchant High Court ruling against Cornwall Council has given a further twist to the murky story of what I described last year as “the most insane ‘green’ project” the Government had ever given its backing to…READ ALL
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/12103688/Mad-Swansea-tidal-lagoon-scheme-heading-for-the-rocks.html
16 Jan: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Amber Rudd’s ‘leading role’ in the EU is energy suicide
Ms Rudd is hell-bent on staying in Europe and eliminating what remains of by far our cheapest source of electricity
It may not be surprising that Amber Rudd, as the sister of Roland Rudd – one of the leading lobbyists for Britain to stay in the EU – is a keen Europhile. But when our Energy and Climate Change Secretary claims, in a Daily Telegraph interview, that it would be bad for Britain’s energy security and costs to be excluded from our leading role in the EU’s “energy market”, we have to ask what game she is playing…READ ALL
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/12103686/Amber-Rudds-leading-role-in-the-EU-is-energy-suicide.html
60
From the second article
Now if Britian was to vote to leave the EU that could put quite a different complexion on it.
130
Get out while you still can …Farewell, adieu, auf wiedersehen,
good riddance.
60
Any relation to Kevin 07!
00
in search of global warming:
16 Jan: SavannahNow: Sarita Chourey: 275 sea turtles take a road trip through Georgia in search of warm water
Nearly 300 sea turtles recently took a road trip through four states, including Georgia, in search of warmer water. They ended up in Florida, just south of St. Augustine, with the help of dozens of volunteers and natural resources officials…
Every year, a couple hundred sea turtles may get stuck on the beaches of North Carolina, stunned by sudden cold temperatures. But this year, more than five times the usual number struggled to swim with hypothermia-like symptoms.
Boating conditions were too rough to take the turtles to warmer waters. So the cold-blooded animals hitched a ride.
“We drove the turtles to the border with South Carolina, and their team picked them up,” said Matthew Godfrey, a North Carolina sea turtle biologist.
“They drove to the border with Georgia, and the Georgia team picked them up and drove them across the border into the northern part of Florida.”…
Hundreds more sea turtles remain in North Carolina aquariums, said Erin Weeks, spokesman for the S.C. DNR.
“So it’s likely this team effort is not over yet,” she said…
Godfrey said about 135 more were expected to be released shortly off the coast of North Carolina near the gulf stream, where temperatures might be 68-70 degrees…
http://savannahnow.com/news/2016-01-16/275-sea-turtles-take-road-trip-through-georgia-search-warm-water
60
Grisly find suggests humans inhabited Arctic 45,000 years ago
In August of 2012, an 11-year-old boy made a gruesome discovery in a frozen bluff overlooking the Arctic Ocean.
While exploring the foggy coast of Yenisei Bay, about 2000 kilometers south of the North Pole, he came upon the leg bones of a woolly mammoth eroding out of frozen sediments.
Scientists excavating the well-preserved creature determined that it had been killed by humans: Its eye sockets, ribs, and jaw had been battered, apparently by spears, and one spear-point had left a dent in its cheekbone—perhaps a missed blow aimed at the base of its trunk.
When they dated the remains, the researchers got another surprise: The mammoth died 45,000 years ago.
That means that humans lived in the Arctic more than 10,000 years earlier than scientists believed, according to a new study.
The find suggests that even at this early stage, humans were traversing the most frigid parts of the globe and had the adaptive ability to migrate almost everywhere.
“Surviving at those latitudes requires highly specialized technology and extreme cooperation,” Marean agrees.
That implies that these were modern humans, rather than Neandertals or other early members of the human family.
“If these hunters could survive in the Arctic Circle 45,000 years ago, they could have lived virtually anywhere on Earth,” says Ted Goebel, an archaeologist at Texas A&M University, College Station
40
That was Father Christmas’s dad.
40
Ancient gold mines in Africa;
http://www.viewzone2.com/adamscalendar33.html
30
Genetic Adam & Eve ….. source of modern humans including the Y-Chromosome
http://www.nature.com/news/genetic-adam-and-eve-did-not-live-too-far-apart-in-time-1.13478
30
Adam and Eve were created around 200,000 years ago, created in the image of those mining gold on our planet. Slaves so to speak smart enough to do the job but not smart enough to usurp.
Genetic problems and diseases we suffer, for our genetics are hybrid, 10% of our brain we use, occasionally we have a genius, they are suppressed. Sumerian tablets buried in the great flood, a library of 1.5 million tablets in cuniform, tell our real history. The Bs history taught to us is so sad.
00
Wayne
I read through that viewzone series as well. I don’t find it convincing, but it is certainly thought provoking.
That concept of the origin of the species melds with things I have imagined for many years. Curiosity about that idea has often caused me to be amazed that the species consists of so many races. Different but nevertheless the same. Progeny of different experiments?
It becomes quite startling when confronted with headlines like this.
Are we attempting to emulate out own beginnings?
00
“If these hunters could survive in the Arctic Circle 45,000 years ago, they could have lived virtually anywhere on Earth,”
It may have been the mob who moved to Bosnia just before the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and built pyramids.
30
Ancient stone tools from an archaeological site on Sulawesi have pushed back the date of the earliest human occupation of the Indonesian island to at least 118,000 years ago.
The discovery, published today in Nature, overturns the view that humans first entered the island between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago as Homo sapiens dispersed out of Africa on the way to Australia.
“Most artefacts occur in an interval bracketed by dates of 85,000 to 118,000 years, but three metres below the dated level of 118,000 years we still find stone artefacts,” he said, adding that the animal fossils from the site that were dated at a minimum 200,000 years old were just 20 centimetres below these lowest artefacts.
“That tells us [the undated lower stone artefacts] are probably older than 200,000 years.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-14/stone-tools-date-earliest-occupations-of-humans-on-sulawesi/7086308
30
(CNN) ‘Scientists in southern China have discovered human teeth dating back at least 80,000 years — 20,000 years earlier than modern humans were previously believed to have left Africa to migrate around the world.
‘The 47 teeth were found in a cave in Daoxian, in China’s Hunan province, and are the strongest proof yet that modern humans first migrated from Africa to Asia 80,000 to 120,000 years ago, according to a study published in the journal, Nature.’
40
Either that or proof that dentistry wasn’t that advanced.
40
About a year ago I took a screenshot of some of the Nasa’s Key Indicators of climate change from this site:
http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/land-ice/
The present charts for land ice provide an interesting comparison with the ones from last year. I have them side-by-side here:
http://www.rickwill.bigpondhosting.com/Land_Ice_Comparison.png
As can be seen the rate of loss of Antarctic ice has slowed but note how drastically the whole data set has changed. It appears there has been an effort to increase the ice mass pre 2008 to keep the trend higher now that the rate of loss is reducing. In fact other data sources say the ice mass is increasing.
The Greenland data is more consistent between charts although one notable difference is where the level passes through zero at 2009. The early graph had ice falling soon after 2008 whereas the later chart has it still rising after 2009.
Really this data is all nonsense, as this comparison indicates, because the ability of instruments to measure such small variations is highly doubtful. This linked study, also from NASA, indicates Antarctic ice is increasing:
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
111
More Tampering with historical data!
Great work Will.
Is anyone keeping track of all this?
51
the show goes on:
12 Jan: TradeArabia: 33,000 to attend Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week
A total of 33,000 delegates, including more than 80 ministers, and visitors from over 170 countries are expected to attend the upcoming Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, the biggest ever sustainability event in the Middle East.
Taking place every January, ADSW comprises the World Future Energy Summit, International Water Summit and EcoWaste, as well as the general assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency.
Hosted by Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, ADSW, running from January 16 to 23, will gather heads of state, ministers and international delegations to address critical sustainability issues, including growing energy and water needs, the challenges of urbanisation, and the priorities of climate change mitigation…
The week will launch with the core activity of the policy pillar – the sixth assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) on January 16-17…
In addition, the Young Future Energy Leaders – a program led by Masdar Institute – will convene local and international representatives on the sidelines of the World Future Energy Summit for conferences and other programmes…
http://tradearabia.com/news/OGN_298428.html
World Future Energy Summit (WFES)
Diamond Sponsor: EXXONMOBIL
Gold Sponsor: SHELL
Official Carbon Offset Sponsor: BP
Official TV News Partners: Sky News, CNBC
Organised by Reed (Elsevier) Exhibitions
http://www.worldfutureenergysummit.com/
30
Joanne Nova asked on her climate blog for this one-sentence summary of my hypothesis on core and surface temperatures:
THE HYPOTHESIS TURNS PLANETS AND MOONS INSIDE OUT, PROVING THAT THEY ARE NOT COOLING FROM THE CORE OUTWARDS, BUT WARMING FROM THE UPPER ATMOSPHERE INWARDS, SO THAT WE FIND THAT THE SUN IS IN FACT MAINTAINING ALL TEMPERATURES FROM THE UPPER ATMOSPHERE TO THE CORE.
05
There is more detail in this comment and in comments starting here on the previous Weekend Unthreaded.
05
THEY are calling it the Godzilla.
The current El Niño is likely to rival those from 1997-1998, 1982-83 and 1972-73 and the NOAA, on a blog, has labelled it the “Bruce Lee” of El Ninos.
This current pattern is now being blamed for drought conditions in parts of the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia, just like in 1997-98.
~ ~ ~
So, how did the 97% climate scientists go?
A month of consistent rainfall has transformed the usually arid environment of the Red Centre into a carpet of green. (ABC)
“We’ve only had a couple of days in the high 30s; normally we’re over 40 every day,” Mr Klein said.
The weather has had a stunning impact on the Central Australian landscape.
“It’s absolutely fantastic to see how the country responds, the grass is just leaping out of the ground and we’ve still got a couple more rainy months to go yet,” Mr Klein said.
“It’s the first time that I can remember that we’ve got low interest, low fuel prices, really good cattle prices and now a good season to go with it,” he said.
“It’s very rare that you get everything to happen for you at once.”
Mr Klein said he could not believe all his “ducks [were] lining up in a row”.
. . .
The only ducks being lined up now is the CSIRO/BoM’s failure to predict climate, or weather, now, in six months, or 60 years.
121
Careful lining ducks up in a row in agriculture – that is inviting some politician to attack with an unlicensed weapon
60
You have to love El Nino and La Nina. After spending countless billions on modelling the weather with theories and computers, meteorologists admit they cannot predict these major observational events and others nor how they play out. How then can they predict anything long term?
However when predictions fail massively, Climate Scientists blame the unpredictable El Nino, as if it is different to the weather or the climate or any well known other oscillation. Then there is the hand waving that these events either are Climate Change or they are hiding Climate Change and Global Warming with ‘natural variation’. So we enter the Twilight Zone with the creepy music as the world steadfastly refuses to cool or heat at all, despite all the high cost accurate models, which are all wrong.
The question is how the UN can still keep pushing Climate Change and Global Warming and wrong computer models and demanding carbon taxes without anyone having the foggiest idea what they are talking about or what it has to do with Carbon dioxide.
121
ABC National Radio advertisement a week ago called for listeners to send their experiences of Spring and now the “scorching Summer”.
70
1998 was a huge blip on the UAH temperature graph, often labelled,the Great El Niño. But 1982/3 and 1972/3 were not associated with similar temperature spikes and it looks like 2015/6 will not be either.
Therefore it seems to me unreasonable infer that the Great El Niño of 1998 was the cause of the temperature spike.
If 2015/6 is associated with a large temperature blip it will wipe out the “Pause”. But if history repeats the temperature will drop back again within a few months and the “Pause” may return, longer than ever.
31
A “Believe it or not” for the day
http://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/98990-milk-scare-meme/
50
Thank goodness. My Walnut Milk has saved me.
I have had it daily for the past 88 years.
And the cow still jumps over the moon every night.
41
Sounds good- what age were you when you a started with a daily walnut milk? Is it too early for those of us who haven’t yet reached three figures?
30
Never too early…………………..
20
more detail on suspension of solar/wind capacity…in Xinjiang:
19 Dec 2015: Xinhuanet: China Focus: Xinjiang’s new energy plants struggle to survive winter
Many wind farms and solar plants in far west China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region may not survive this year’s harsh winter as they have been suspended due to overcapacity.
Electricity demand drops during the colder months of the year as people turn off their air conditioning units in favor of the government managed, and coal-powered winter heating. Having a large number of alternate energy plants, Xinjiang lacks sufficient infrastructure to transfer power out of the region. As a result, the regional State Grid has ordered that all, bar a few, cease operation and hibernate for the winter.
“The whole year’s investment almost down the drain,” said Cui Wei, a sales manager of a wind farm affiliated to Beijing-based Goldwind Science and Technology Co., one of China’s wind turbine manufacturing giants.
The company built a 7.5 billion yuan (1.15 billion U.S. dollars) wind farm with power capacity of 1.5 million kilowatt-hours in Xinjiang, however, 40 percent of the plant has been temporarily shut and the whole plant will suspend business by the month end, Cui said…
The unstable nature of solar and wind power generation means, at the current time, it is not an appropriate power source for the winter heating. As such, when the winter winds blow into the westerly region, many thermal power stations begin to warm up, bringing with them air pollution, the State Grid said…
A new trading system, which is unique to Xinjiang, is being tested by the region’s electricity authority as a way to shift power generation from thermal plants to new energy.
Instead of transmitting electricity to the overloaded state grid, new energy stations supply power directly to factories that have been ordered to shut down their own power plants. The authority pays a subsidy of 0.2 yuan for every kilowatt-hour those factories buy from new energy plants.
So far 55 wind farms and 36 solar plants with a total capacity of 5.35 million kilowatt-hours have joined the deal, and another 8.43 million kilowatt-hours have begun to be added to the trading list starting from late November, said Gong Wenjun of the regional power exchange center.
Yet, a lot of new energy companies are still waiting to be included in the scheme, with many citing the lack of infrastructure as the largest obstacle…
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-12/19/c_134932773.htm
50
Commenting in the Weekend Unthreaded a fortnight ago Robert O questioned the annual output (233,000MWh) (with a capacity factor that he calculated as 26%) of the 102MW AGL Solar Farm at Nyngan NSW. I had wondered about this as well and had noticed that the output of the Nyngan facility would rapidly climb to its designated power and remain there until later in the afternoon, an output curve much different from that of rooftop solar.
A graph of the output of the second AGL facility, at Broken Hill, that was commissioned after the Nyngan plant indicates that both facilities differ from rooftop solar.
Firstly the peak output of both AGL facilities is the AC current after it has been transformed and ready to enter the high voltage grid. In Australia a rooftop solar array’s wattage is given as the sum of each of it’s panel’s peak DC power (as determined by a standardised test) but not that of the array after the panels have been wired together and passed through an inverter and be working with a resistive load determined by the grid and at a temperature that is usually much higher than the test’s 25 degrees celsius. Even at irradiance higher than that used in the standardised test, maximum AC power may be lower than the DC one even for well positioned, well designed and well maintained arrays, that is a small minority of those on Australian roofs.
Secondly these AGL facilities contain a greater number of panels than would be needed to reach the designated maximum power. When designing these power plants, engineers and accountants would calculate the cost efficient number of panels for the location. While this would mean curtailing the plant’s potential output for part of the day during part of the year, the capacity factor of the other components such as the inverters and transformers would be increased. Panels are becoming an increasingly smaller proportion of the total cost of a solar facility and the next additional megawatt would be cheaper than the preceding one. Often the maximum allowable power output of a plant will be limited by the transmission network it is to be connected to. This is probably why AGL built its 155MW solar project as two solar farms.
The company First Solar designed and built both AGL plants. Talking about Plant Design and Engineering they say
The AGL plants are not cheap. Half the cost was contributed by the Australian and NSW governments.
AGL is not only placing power into the National Electricity Market, it is farming Large Scale Generation Certificates (LGC) for its retail arm to surrender to the government as it is required to do to pay for the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target scheme. Then AGL retail recovers the value of these from its customers.
70
.
This is in the Newmatilda
Unbelievably it explains to CAGW GREEN Alarmists how useless Wind Mils are:
By using lattes & coffee shop analogies
This is NOT normally a rag that likes coal or nuclear
Amazing really
“A Beginner’s Guide for GREENS To Understand The Challenges Facing Wind Farms”
Amazingly written by Geoff Russell
Qualified in mathematics & has written software
A three decade vegan
Bet the Guardian won’t post anything like this!
80
He doesn’t seem to have penetrated the thick skulls of so many of the commentators. Sad that so many “know about coffee” but think they are qualified to dictate our electricity supply.
90
Chris Graham became the owner/editor 18 months ago and its been a struggle to remain solvent, anyway I’ll keep an eye on New Matilda to gauge if Mr Graham has had a change of heart on climate change.
50
Another first-in-the-world explanation based on my hypothesis:
A more likely reason for the Enceladus paradox (about why there is water in the core of this moon of Saturn)
We need to understand that there is a gravitationally induced temperature gradient* that forms at the molecular level and is based on the quotient of the acceleration due to gravity and the weighted mean specific heat of the solids, liquids or gases involved. We see this in all planets and satellite moons. We can indeed explain the small temperature increase of about 30 degrees between the surface and core in Mimas using the specific heat of ice. But Enceladus (diameter 500Km) has just over twice the volume of Mimas (diameter 390Km) and greater density due to the rock. This means that the force of gravity may well be three or four times as great. Also, because of the lower specific heat of most rocks, that also makes the temperature gradient steeper. It is not out of the question that the temperature of the core might get above 273K (not the estimated 180K to 200K) because of these factors and the fact that there is a greater distance between surface and core, thus not even requiring the supposed heating by tidal forces.
The gravitationally induced temperature gradient results directly from the maximum entropy production as per the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Maximum entropy is attained when all unbalanced energy potentials have dissipated. Since changes in molecular gravitational potential energy obviously affect entropy, there must be a homogeneous sum of gravitational potential energy (PE) and kinetic energy (KE). Since PE varies with height, so too does KE vary equally. We equate PE gain and KE loss to compute the temperature gradient from Kinetic Theory. This information has been available since the 19th century.
05
D C
” there must be a homogeneous sum of gravitational potential energy (PE) and kinetic energy (KE). Since PE varies with height, so too does KE vary equally. We equate PE gain and KE loss to compute the temperature gradient from Kinetic Theory.”
True for an object in free fall.
02
ghl
The object does not have to be falling directly downwards. It is the component of motion up or down (the variation along the z-axis if you like) which is relevant.
The assumptions of kinetic theory include that …
(1) because they have mass, the molecules are affected by gravity and
(2) the motion of the molecules (between collisions) may be treated classically.
See the WIki article on Kinetic Theory for the other assumptions.
05
Statistically the hiatus is real, Tony Thomas takes a swipe at Climate Change journal.
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2016/01/pause-warmist-pseudo-science/
40
4.3.1 moderated???
Sorry, just realised must be your mealtime.
30
***“As our record makes clear, the ABC covers all issues of public importance thoroughly and independently” – LOL!
15 Jan: news.com.au: Nick Whigham: Former ABC journalist claims the public broadcaster gagged him to not to upset Malcolm Turnbull
FORMER ABC journalist has revealed details about how he was allegedly gagged by the public broadcaster and told not to report on the political fallout over the National Broadband Network because the ABC “didn’t want to upset” Malcolm Turnbull…
Today, he answered questions from the public in an anticipated Q&A forum on reddit.
“In early March 2013 I was told by a senior ABC manager that ABC management was expecting the Liberals to win the next election and that Malcolm Turnbull would be in charge of the ABC and that they didn’t want to upset him,” he wrote…
But the public broadcaster denied gagging Ross.
***“As our record makes clear, the ABC covers all issues of public importance thoroughly and independently,” it said in a statement published by The Australian before the reddit Q&A.
***“The only ‘restrictions’ on the issues the ABC covers and the way we cover them are our Editorial Policies, which set standards for things like accuracy, impartiality and fair dealing. All of our journalism is required to adhere to these standards at all times,” the statement said…ETC ETC
http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/nbn/former-abc-journalist-claims-the-public-broadcaster-gagged-him-to-not-to-upset-malcolm-turnbull/news-story/199375243b7f530ef12dbea7c3a41d2c
more media “independence”?
15 Jan: Financial Times: Henry Mance: Guardian braced for job cuts after burning through £70m in cash
The left-leaning publisher, which runs one of the world’s most popular news websites, is preparing to embrace austerity as it cuts costs across the business.
It follows a year of torrid trading — marked by a sharp fall in print advertising sales, a rise in online adblocking, and a difficulty in making money from mobile devices…
The Guardian has been lossmaking for more than a decade, but is nonetheless among the most financially secure publishers on Fleet Street. Its parent company, Guardian Media Group, has an investment fund of more than £800m, ***mainly compiled through the sale of its car classifieds business Auto Trader. That fund would need to make an annual return of 9 per cent in order to sustain the Guardian’s current cash outflow indefinitely…
Online upstarts such as BuzzFeed have aggressively adopted sponsored content — also known as native advertising. That approach has been harder for the Guardian, which prides itself for its editorial independence and its critical view of corporations…
As they prepare to cut costs, the Guardian’s management do have one factor in their favour. Seumas Milne, until recently a fiery columnist and leader of its in-house trade union, has taken a one-year leave of absence to work as chief of communications for Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0%2Fa5ded58e-bbab-11e5-b151-8e15c9a029fb.html#axzz3xQppIsnc
30
I wonder if this concept of a UN-imposed tax is a case of ‘run it up the flagpole and see who salutes” with respect to accepting the UN as a much more direct tax imposer/collector…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-17/un-eyes-tax-on-football-tickets-uber-to-plug-aid-gap/7093986
I notice there is no mention of the percentage which is taken off the top by the UN for ‘running costs’.
50
So the rapidly expanding and unelected communist and opportunist run rich bureaucracy representing mainly military dictatorships and formerly known as the United Nations now wants to control world charities? Why is this not surprising? It is the world’s biggest QUANGO and on the hunt for more cash, the surest sign that Global Warming is winding down.
40
Perhaps COP FLOP 21 was really Last Tango in Paris?
40
misleading headline…as becomes clear immediately in the article, he’s only referring to British pollies:
17 Jan: UK Telegraph: Hannah Furness: Climate change scepticism is ‘political suicide’, David Attenborough argues
It would be “political suicide” for a British political leader to admit they do not believe in global warming, Sir David Attenborough has argued.
In an interview with the Sunday Times magazine this weekend, Sir David said much progress had already been made in bringing public opinion round to confronting the problems…
“When I look back to some of the programmes I’ve made, I ended up saying, ‘Look, we’re wrecking the world.’,” he said.
???“Now people believe it and understand it. The Americans have come round and this country has come round, and it didn’t start that way”…
“People say to me, ‘Why do people still say it’s not happening?’
“And I say, hasn’t it occurred to you that it’s rather nicer to say that it’s not happening? You don’t have to worry or spend money and your business isn’t going to be in peril.”…
“For example, I often get asked if I’ve actually seen climate change and I have to say, look, I could find you examples of dramatic climate change, and I could find the converse, but it’s very dangerous to just pick one particular circumstance
“You have to take the bigger view; you have to respect the findings of people who spend their lives surveying this sort of thing, and make a responsible, scientific summary of where we are.”…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/12104127/Climate-change-scepticism-is-political-suicide-David-Attenborough-argues.html
people are “coming round” – sounds a little creepy, not to mention innacurate. most comments are scathing.
50
Sadly, yet another version of: “We don’t need empirical evidence”
The degradation of the scientific method is despicable
30
Oh dear !!! (Of special interest to Tony)
Obama thought he had great deal with China but as we all know most countries will do what is best for their citizens ( as governments should do !). Since Obama signed his “climate”deal with China they have approved building of 155 new coal fired power stations –or nearly one every second day since signing.
Well done China !!
http://realclimatescience.com/2016/01/barack-obamas-climate-deal-with-china/
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16 Jan: UK Telegraph: Jeremy Warner: Davos must confront a world at a tipping point
“I can show you the letter if you like”, says Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, with evident satisfaction. The letter is from Christiana Figueres, the UN climate change chief, and it’s quite a prize for Professor Schwab because in it she recognises the contribution made by the World Economic Forum to the success of the Paris climate change talks.
“For me this is a great source of pride, because for the first time the non-political stakeholders in business and elsewhere were integrated into the process, and this helped secure a successful outcome. But now we have to go from declaration to implementation, and this is where Davos can serve as a platform”. The “Davos” he refers to is of course
the setting for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, which takes place this week…
Represented at this year’s meeting will be heads of state from more than 50 countries, including David Cameron, President Francois Hollande of France and Justin Trudeau, newly-elected prime minister of Canada. Such has been the demand, that many CEOs have been turned away.
“We have had to be selective because Davos is limited in its capacity”, says Professor Schwab with perhaps a flicker of disappointment – or is that satisfaction? – at the thought of having to turn away so many of the world’s richest and most powerful…
For a touch of star dust, there will be an appearance from Leonardo DiCaprio and will.i.am, both active in the voluntary sector.
And for those keener on spiritual guidance, the Archbishop of Canterbury will be co-mingling with representative leaders from all the other major faiths…
The North Korean foreign minister, whose attendance was judged to be quite a coup, had to be disinvited at the last minute after news of the latest nuclear bomb test. Understandably, this was judged to be against the co-operative spirit of the event.
Embarrassingly, it also emerged that the Brazilian banker who co-chaired last year’s meeting, together with one of the WEF’s carefully selected “young global leaders”, are now serving time behind bars on corruption charges. Such are the hazards of international inclusiveness…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/davos/12103375/Davos-must-confront-a-world-at-a-tipping-point.html
17 Jan: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: From Abu Dhabi to Davos, climate change tops agenda
Skiing to revolution
The global elite – some 2,900 business leaders, politicians and experts – descends on Swiss ski resort Davos for the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.
The conference theme is “mastering the fourth industrial revolution”…
The gendered term – “mastering” – is about right; just 18% of delegates are women, up from 17% last year. At this rate, we’ll see parity… in 2048, just as your correspondent approaches retirement. First thing on Wednesday, a man panel will discuss the future of energy. Then come the men who piloted a solar plane around the world. Christiana Figueres – UN climate diplomat and all-round bad-ass – was the one female they mustered on the business implications of last month’s Paris deal. If you want to catch some XX chromosomes in Davos, there’s a round-up on the WEF blog…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/01/17/crib-notes/
20
VENUS DATA PROVES THE RADIATIVE GREENHOUSE HYPOTHESIS WRONG
The Sun delivers to Venus (through the cross-sectional circle) about 2600 joules of energy per second per square meter of that circle. That energy has to be spread over four times the area. So it is on average about 650 joules of energy per in each second that would be delivered to each square meter of the surface if there were no reflection or absorption. But, to explain the surface temperature of about 735K with radiation calculations, you would need over 16,000 joules each second for each square meter of the surface. (In fact, variable flux would have to be over 20,000W/m^2.)
Energy cannot be created with the atmosphere delivering more out of its base each second than it received at its top. So the temperature of the Venus surface is not determined by radiation reaching it, and so the Greenhouse conjecture is wrong.
77
You have lost me a bit there Doug,
Venus is hotter than it should be by S-B calculation. Is that not an argument in favoutr of Greenhouse?
30
The solar constant of 2600 W/m2 for Venus is calculated without the Stefan-Boltzmann law by just applying the Inverse-Square law to the Sun’s radiation, isn’t it?
00
Yes, Richard, and I mentioned the 2,600 figure. Is there anything else I can help you with? Do you want to know what really happens on all planets and moons?
15
Well I wouldn’t know for sure what happens to them, but I do agree with the comment from Bob below of the gravitational pressure of the gases being the main mechanism that increases the temperature of planets (with sufficiently large atmospheres) above their effective temperature (an idea that a lot of skeptics seem to scoff at). It’s the same mechanism that allows stars to reach 10 million Kelvin necessary for nuclear fusion.
Quote from my brilliant AS physics textbook:
It then goes on…
I see no reason why this gravitational pressure heat from gases that form stars should not apply to other planets with gaseous atmospheres too (and Venus is a good example). It is interesting to note that NASA’s ‘Mars Fact Sheet’ shows that the mean temperature of the planet is 210K and its efective temperature is… 210K. Opps. This is obviously a problem for the CO2-greenhouse theory since Mars has 28 times the concentration of CO2 in its atmosphere than Earth. It’s atmosphere is essentially pure CO2, although Mars of course has a very thin atmosphere.
11
There is nothing in standard physics which says that increasing the pressure will necessarily increase the temperature. The Ideal Gas Law tells us that pressure is proportional to the product of density and temperature – nothing more and nothing less. High pressure does not maintain high temperature. Read my hypothesis if you want to learn what is really happening to maintain all temperatures. Clue: we need input of thermal energy.
05
Contraction does not cause unending “heating” however. If you understand Kinetic Theory, what happens is that the same number of molecules now have less mean gravitational potential energy – because some PE was converted to KE which then causes radiative imbalance, so that Jupiter radiates more out than it receives. It is not continually “heating” ad infinitum. It maintains near constant temperature based on solar intensity. The contraction just causes more radiation out.
05
No, Peter, the top of the Venus atmosphere receives barely an eighth of what would be required to come out of the base of the atmosphere if radiation were what is raising the surface temperature from 732K to 737K over the course of each 4-month-long Venus day, compensating for the 5 degrees of cooling the previous night for any location on the equator. What happens is in a totally different ball park – a different paradigm altogether which was never conceived by James Hansen because of his lack of understanding of entropy maximization.
If you feel you have a good understanding of entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, what I have written will explain what really happens. It will take about 15 years before this correct physics is widely known and partly accepted I would estimate, as there is obviously a lot of momentum behind the incorrect concept that surface temperatures are determined by radiative balance. That is not the case. All that all the radiation between a planet’s surface and its atmosphere does is transfer thermal energy out of the surface, night and day. What supplies the required thermal energy to the surface is not radiative in nature at all.
05
No Peter – all planets and satellite moons with significant atmospheres have surfaces that are hotter than the Sun’s direct radiation could have made them because of the effect achieved when maximum entropy is approached.
15
They are that way because there is a free exchange between gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy. If the total energy is the same then the kinetic energy (temperature) must fall with height) as the potential energy rises so that the sum is a constant. The gradient is caused by gravity, however heat can flow where potential energy cant, so the earth is always trying to shift heat from surface to space, somewhat reducing that gradient. Nevertheless it’s pretty clear that the temperature gradient is caused by gravity modified by the behaviour of certain gasses (primarily water vapour).
10
bobl
consider a packet of gas circulating up and down freely and adiabatically in the atmosphere. As it rises it cools by expansion. As it falls it warms by compression. This is the adiabatic lapse rate. Other than the fact that the piston of your bike pump is replaced by a column of gas above, the action is the same, PV=NRT in action.
00
bobl: If you some day read what I have explained about the restoration of maximum entropy in my hypothesis, then you will see that you only have half the story.
How does the surface get sufficient energy to explain its temperature? See THE QUESTIONS THAT STUMP LUKES AND WARMISTS on the previous Unthreaded and also on a recent thread at Roy Spencer’s, he being another Luke who is stumped and has never answered the key question about how the Earth’s surface (let alone that of Venus) gets the required energy to rise in temperature each morning, even under thick cloud cover where the clouds are colder than the surface. Think on that! Then read the only correct answer based on physics and empirical evidence.
05
You are being simplistic, Venus is hotter than SB says it should be BUT the temperature of the surface requires MORE energy than delivered by the sun. Since CO2 scattering merely recycles the suns energy it’s not possible for GHGs to deliver sufficient heating to the surface to do what is claimed. That’s is the idea that GHGs cause the Venus furnace violates the law of conservation of energy. At least I think that’s what Doug is saying. And he’s right because it’s gravitational compression that heats Venus atmosphere (mostly)
11
bobl it ain,t gravity, it is the missing part of the universe called dark matter and dark energy, it is neither it is an energy field that cycles from the sun to all bodies in the system and back to the sun. It is also cycled throughout the entire universe. This energy field keeps the middle of our little planet molten after 4.5 billion years and keeps us warm. The sun gives us warmth also but controls how much heat leaves our planet, it’s moods give us our LIA,s and warm periods. The other energy keeps our planet alive. Venus is heated also from the inside that is why it is so hot, not the BS greenhouse stuff.
03
Mr Job
Eureka! Dark logic.
00
Neither Venus nor Earth is “heated” sufficiently from the inside, nor are they heated by back radiation or any greenhouse effect based on radiation. Nor is the core of our Moon kept at 1600 to 1700K with sufficient “heating” from the inside. What really happens is explained here.
04
bobl – you’re nearly there, but it’s not gravitational compression because gravity is a force that cannot create the required energy. What happens is in my hypothesis.
05
bobl –
A clue: Gravity does not know if it’s night or day. Nor do sub-surface regions.
But a location on the equator of any rotating planet warms a little by day, compensating for the inevitable cooling at night. Venus warms from 732K to 737K then cools back on the dark side. The additional thermal energy cannot be supplied by direct solar radiation, and nor can it be supplied by any radiation from the less-hot atmosphere. When you understand my hypothesis it will blow your mind what actually happens, and the evidence I have shown in support of the hypothesis.
05
***”radical” is putting it mildly. pay twice to be ripped off by Wall St…again?
17 Jan: Fortune: Martin L. Lagod: Why Pay Wall Street to Fight Global Warming
It’s a ***radical idea…
Exactly where and how will this capital be invested? How will the carbon reductions be achieved and measured?
One important answer to these questions is that pension funds, insurance companies, college endowments and other big institutional investors should start to think differently about how to motivate the portfolio managers who run their money. How? By pricing carbon risk into the investment and asset management process and rewarding those
who manage their assets for reducing carbon risk. Don’t wait for governmental or regulatory action, just set your own price and reduce your risk—now…
So what might you compensate your investment managers to do? Pay them to reduce your carbon risk by increasing your exposure to the following three types of investment:
1) Companies that have strong programs to reduce their own carbon exposure…READ ON
(Martin L. Lagod is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at Firelake Capital. He serves on the board of the Advanced Energy Economy etc)
http://fortune.com/2016/01/17/cop21-paris-wall-street/
17 Jan: Financial Times: Ed Crooks: Energy revolution needed to power the future
For all the rising enthusiasm, though, investing in innovation remains a hazardous and uncertain business in energy, as in other industries. There are many potentially significant technologies out there, a few of them described in this report. Some of them may have a huge impact on the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, many more are likely to fizzle out and fail…
Mark Jacobson of Stanford University and Mark Delucchi of the University of California Davis have published papers arguing that it would be possible to derive all the world’s energy, for all uses, from only wind, solar and hydro power, by 2050.
Their analysis used only existing technologies that had already been deployed, at least in pilot projects, by 2010. But that would mean a huge transition and would require vast investment. Mr Jacobson and Mr Delucchi suggested the world would need 3.8m new large wind turbines, for example…
Renewable energy is still subsidised in much of the world, meaning that if the policy regime changes, the pay-offs for innovation can change, too. It creates an additional element of political risk in any investment appraisal. Mr Wagner (lead senior economist at the Environmental Defense Fund) argues that innovation cannot be a substitute for other policies to tackle climate change, in particular a tax or other price imposed on carbon, to incentivise everyone to emit less of it.
“It’s often presented as a choice between one and the other, but it’s a false choice,” he says. “It’s not either/or: it’s a price on carbon and induced innovation that we need.”…
“I don’t think anyone should reassure themselves and say we should be confident we’re going to limit warming to 2 degrees,” he (Alex Trembath, Breakthrough Institute) says. “But investing in clean energy innovation, as uncertain as it is, is basically the best that we’ve got — because I haven’t seen any other strategies working so far.”
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/1d43cb22-a3ef-11e5-873f-68411a84f346.html#axzz3xXmuMev3
10
Been busy the last couple of days here.
This is a little ironic, if I can say that, with a sense of humourous intent.
Yesterday was our wedding anniversary, the 35th, and we had a day out.
I know that most ladies think of wedding anniversary commemorative occasions in terms of precious stones, so I searched around on the 3W for those commemorative dates over the years and found this at the Wiki site. (at this link)
Scanning the list, and as I would classify myself as more English oriented than US oriented, I noticed that the 35th Anniversary was ….. Coral!!!!!
Now, I’m not sure about the rest of you, but I just could not imagine the, umm, feedback had I given my good lady wife a lump of coral for an Anniversary memento.
I mentioned it to her, and naturally, she mentioned the precious stone thing, and was astonished that the 35th Anniversary was ….. Coral, so, as you would, she asked me to actually show her where I got the information from. So I did. Again, she was suitably dumbfounded, but, noticing that the U.S. equivalent was Jade, she mentioned that a gift in something of Jade would be nice. I jokingly mentioned the, umm, lump of coral idea, and got a gently reproving frown in response.
So, we had our day out. We drove down to Yeppoon and had a wander around. Has that place gone ahead, sort of like becoming a smaller version of Noosa. We also drove around some of the other small places in the area, along the Coastline, Rosslyn Bay, The Causeway, Emu Park, etc. There’s a lot of beaches in the area, and that surprised me a little. It was surprisingly windy, especially at Emu Park, so the Singing Ship was doing its thing on the hill.
We went back to Yeppoon for a late coffee, and then home, all up, around 5 or so hours, so it was a good day out.
So, as we were driving out of Yeppoon, my good lady mentioned the (now closed) little knick knack shop she had seen, (funny, I missed it) and said that they might have had some ….. coral gift thingies in there. (You know, close proximity to the bottom end of the GBR and all that)
All I could do was smile.
A good day was had by all, followed by some Chinese from probably the best Chinese Restaurant I have ever eaten at, our little secret here in North Rockhampton, The Dragon Gallery, not half a mile from our front door.
Tony.
100
Congratulations Tony, a fine record in this day and age! We celebrated our 50th last April, and my wife suggested that a trip to Provence would be a fitting way for us both to celebrate. No argument from me! Thank goodness I married a fellow Scot!
30
Peter,
Thanks, and speaking of Scots, back in the late 80’s I was forcing myself to expand my reading habits as I had got into a groove of reading the same formulaic fiction from a group of authors I was comfortable with. (John O’Hara, Irving Wallace, Calder Willingham, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein to name just a few of them.)
I cruised the bookstores, (and aren’t they a fading thing now) and would just pick up the occasional novel outside my comfort zone. I found the Jean Auel novels and some others, most good, but the odd turkey.
I picked up the Diana Gabaldon novel, her first, Cross Stitch, and perhaps thinking it was maybe a chick book, I at first discarded it, but intrigued, came back to it a couple of weeks later. As it turned out, I really enjoyed it, and the second and right through to the sixth of them before I lost track, waiting for each new part in the Series. I loved the close weaving of Scottish history, Culloden etcetera and the way she (seemingly) got pat the life of those Scots at the time.
Anyway, last year our daughter and her husband were raving over a new TV Series they were watching. As they detailed the basic plot line, it sounded familiar, but it was not at first recognised by me as they had changed the name of the Series to Outlander. The original novel sold in the UK and here in Oz as Cross Stitch, but for American readers, they changed the name to Outlander.
Anyway, they got me the Series on DVD as a Christmas present. We’re part way through Volume One at the moment, and I’m reasonably surprised that they have stuck fairly close to the novel, not surprising as they got Diana Gabaldon in as a consultant for the Series.
For anyone interested, I recommend it.
Man, you Scots got it tough.
Incidentally, Culloden was the last actual land battle fough on English soil, albeit in Scotland.
Tony.
40
Arctic Oscillation goes seriously negative and the NAO is bound to follow.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index.html
20
el gordo
The AO index going negative represents increased surface pressure over the Antarctic and reduced surface pressure in the mid latitudes.
The AO index doesn’t fully represent this architecture: http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=misery_index/orthographic=-94.83,89.57,410/loc=170.722,82.542
At 10hPa the winds are responding to the distribution of ozone that results in uplift over the oceans:http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/10hPa/overlay=mean_sea_level_pressure/orthographic=-94.83,89.57,410/loc=170.722,82.542
Surface temperature in Chicago and in the region of Beijing is close to -30° C.
atmosphere at 500hPa or 5 km in elevation shows the general circulation: http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/overlay=mean_sea_level_pressure/orthographic=-94.83,89.57,410/loc=89.722,72.102
The northern landmasses are experiencing temperatures that while not quite as cool as the extreme frigidity of space are indicative of the origin of the air in the very cold upper atmosphere.
30
This is a week old but still looks good to go.
‘Longer term we continue to expect that variability in the polar vortex to strongly influence Northern Hemisphere (NH) weather patterns. We are more confident that a troposphere-stratosphere-troposphere coupling event (T-S-T) is underway (Cohen et al. 2007) that will result in a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW).
‘Details of which are given below but based on a correct anticipation of a T-S-T we expect the following AO trends long-term. The AO will trend negative this week as geopotential heights continue to build across the Arctic. However next week the predicted strong pulse of vertical energy will force a positive trend in the tropospheric AO but a negative trend in the stratospheric AO.
‘Once the SSW peaks the tropospheric AO will once again trend negative and the overall negative AO should persist longer than the initial negative AO event that is currently ongoing and is predicted to initiate the SSW.’
Arctic Oscillation Analysis and Forecasts (AER)
20
Stratosphere warmer -> tropopause pushed lower -> surface temps decline.
31
We might expect an anti-cyclone to sit over Scandinavia (as a blocking high) forcing low pressure to the south of the UK, allowing strong easterly winds to bombard Europe and Britain.
Salt trucks to the ready, its going to be a long grueling winter the likes of which they said would become very rare in a warmer world.
20
Historically the effects of such Scandinavian blocking highs were noted by someone called H.H. Lamb (Hubert Horace Lamb) but all that, apparently, wasn’t very good ‘climate science™’.
Maybe the next generation will rediscover the wisdom of that great man.
10
Your taxes at work.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/01/13/indigenous-dance-troupe-tackles-climate-change
40
There are some good comments over at Blair on this matter!
31
13 Jan: Australian: Jared Owens: One-third boost to climate aid to meet Malcolm Turnbull pledge
Malcolm Turnbull’s pledge of $1 billion over five years to help developing nations combat global warming will require federal spending on climate-specific aid to be boosted by at least a third.
However, the Prime Minister’s commitment, which was applauded when he announced it during climate negotiations in Paris late last year, is still likely to be less generous than if the Coalition had maintained Labor’s record levels of spending…
The government’s task will be alleviated somewhat by its promise last year to give $200m to a UN-backed development bank, the Green Climate Fund, over the next four years. However, that will also be funded from savings elsewhere in the aid budget.
Labor frontbencher Mark Dreyfus said the figures provided to the UN proved Mr Turnbull’s announcement was a “complete con” and demanded the government identify the projects that would lose funding…
Climate-specific aid is designed to help developing countries lower emissions and increase resilience to natural disasters linked to climate change such as wildfires, droughts and floods…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/onethird-boost-to-climate-aid-to-meet-malcolm-turnbull-pledge/news-story/cfea063e6a85ce44467ff26fb91dd84c
18 Jan: UK Daily Mail: Jason Groves: Half of EU aid wasted, stolen or lost in red tape: £11.5bn handed out by Brussels each year fails to achieve its aims
Study by MEPs found £11.5bn of the £23bn doled out fails to achieve aims
Ingeborg Graessle, chairman of the European Parliament’s committee on budget control, said the EU was ‘effectively throwing money down the toilet’…
She told the Sunday Times: ‘Hundreds of thousands of people flee to Europe from countries where we are spending billions without any apparent effect…
She warned that her findings may be the ‘tip of the iceberg’, as some embassies are suspected of ‘sugar-coating’ reports to make the projects appear more successful.
The European Parliament’s committee on budget control is due to report this week on the EU’s £23billion aid budget…
This week’s report is expected to highlight a number of failed projects bankrolled by the EU.
These include a £1.8million EU scheme for a solar panel installation that is not working, as well as £26.8million earmarked to combat corruption in Nigeria, which cannot be handed over because of fears it will be siphoned off by corrupt Nigerian officials…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3404175/Half-EU-aid-wasted-stolen-lost-red-tape.html
40
Trump ban to be debated
The British Parliament are scheduled to debate if they should ban Donald Trump from entering the country.
A petition only requires 100,000 signatures for it to be considered.
where has the British sense of humour gone you may ask ?
Britain has become ome of those countries who are afraid of mere speech.
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I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at that rather extreme and childish point of view. But on the other hand, maybe they do have much to fear from Donald Trump. He’s the only candidate so far who has been completely unafraid to speak his mind. And in a government such as the British government has evidently become, I would probably fear Trump myself, lest he stir up the people to the point where they vote me out and someone else in.
I would expect this kind of behavior of 10 to 15 year olds but not from adults. We have sunk a long way into the morass of political correctness and just plain foolishness.
That same fear of speech is now making the rounds here in the U.S. Universities have had speech codes for years and they’re getting more extreme. And there have been calls for stifling free speech as far back as when James Hansen was still at NASA and testified before the senate calling for certain oil company executives to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity for their outspoken position in opposition to Hansen’s preferred position. He was an outage then and still is.
I wish I’d been on that committee. I would have just two questions for Mr. Hansen, which he could answer in whatever order he chose.
Then watch him squirm. But no one had the nerve. His words are on the Internet somewhere but I’ve been unable to find them with a reasonable effort. Sorry.
But it’s coming soon in one form or another unless we can vote out those who want to subvert our freedoms.
30
As far as Trump is concerned, I’m not at all certain he’s presidential material. He’s angry and so am I. But he’s playing to that anger any way he can to stay out in front of the voters. So the question needs to be asked, what will he be if elected? Anger isn’t a very good decision maker and Trump seems just enough undisciplined to let his anger rule his better judgment.
I do not like him and will only vote for him if he becomes the Republican nominee for president.
20
…anger isn’t a very good decision maker…
Proofread, Roy!
[saw it and fixed it for you.] AZ
10
How will Britain deal with Trump once he’s elected POTUS?
10
Assuming he will be nominated and then elected is counting your chickens before they hatch.
I fear that Trump will not be electable and Hillary will become POTUS.
00
I agree, Roy. Yes, I am counting my chickens before Trump has been nominated. However, I don’t fear that Trump is unelectable. The Australian media said that about Tony Abbott and he won with a landslide 90 seats. I do fear that the GOP won’t nominate him. However, if nominated, he’ll wipe the floor with Hillary, have a brawl with Sanders and then assume the presidency.
30
It is interesting to see the British Left trying to have a say in the US election. I do not remember the British protests about Robert Mugabe coming to Paris? No, the British left want to pull down the statue of Cecil Rhodes! Rhodesia now Zimbabwe is finally at peace and prosperous and Mugabe is a better man than Rhodes? Are they blind?
In Australia we do not have a PM. We have a banker who conspired with a few mates to get the job and quite unsurprisingly thinks debt is just great, the country is fine, agrees with his own media image, smiles that sickly smile and wants to bring a carbon tax to save the merchant banks.
Now on holidays from doing nothing at all, he is posing for selfies on a world tour like Rudd. Everything at home is fine as we borrow $1Bn a month, partly to pay the debt on the last borrowings. Now that we have an allegedly popular Liberal leader, will anything get through the senate except more tax rises? No. We are a country run by Sarah Hansen Young, Jaqui Lambie, Clive Palmer and the Greens while Bill Shorten has proven it is impossible to drink coffee and text and drive. We have ‘Wayne’ Morrison as Treasurer. Debt and taxes are good is the new theme and the Americans can ask all they want for help.
Malcolm, having made history by the first refusal in history for help from the US is taking bows in the Middle East. Internationally we doing nothing overseas except donating borrowed money to the UN to stop Climate Change, without even know what it is. Trump is looking better and better and definitely not trying to please everyone, especially the Left of politics. Reagan was a cowboy actor and made a great President. Trump’s great asset is that he is beholden to no one and he is not a lawyer like Clinton or Obama or Turnbull. He employs them.
The only question is when banker Malcolm will bring in his favorite ETS for Goldman Sachs? So we will have a choice between a Liberal/National Party ETS and a Labor/Green ETS. What’s not to like? Can we have our real PM back? Please? The one with real policies which were so popular he won with a landslide? Soon? That smarmy smile is really grating.
40
Sorry, we are borrowing $1Bn a week, which is what a $55Bn deficit means! Interest repayments are $1.5Billion a month and that is just Federal debt as the Labor states ramp up borrowing too and demand more GST. In Victoria after paying $1Bn to cancel a government road contract the same government is planning to put the railway lines in the air to ease congestion and beautify our city and save money? Meanwhile we pay $1Bn a year for a new and totally unused desalination plant. All on credit. Does anyone get the impression that no one cares?
51
We are bankrupt by any standard I know and yes, no one cares.
If only I could be assured that the culprits (Obama, etc.) would go down and be hurting along with me I would feel a little better. But the big fish can protect themselves a lot better than the small ones.
40
There is apparently some sort of invisible hand that will not allow them to stop waste.
This article is in reference to an op ed by Grace Collier in the OZ.
If you have a sub to the Oz, it is well worth the read.
It should be a surprise to no one that the Commonwealth is running a deficit.
They just throw it away.
30
I confess to not having such a certain view of the future as you do. I can only hope you’re right because so far Trump appears to have the necessary votes to get himself nominated.
30
Yes. For years I have disliked Trump but he is making great sense and defining himself as someone not afraid to speak out. He is not afraid of the media. The British attempt to ridicule him will be resented in the US. They want a strong leader. Everyone does, not our wimp Malcolm.
30
Molyneux makes the case for abandoning fiat currency to fix “climate change”. Governments would shred such advice, to be sure. Interesting perspective.
10
Joanne and David Evans
If you note the discussion with bobl starting here you may deduce it’s just not that simple. And that’s probably why I’ve been first to “hit” on it in a Eureka moment.
Correct physics obeys the laws and is supported by evidence, and never refuted by any. You know where to find such.
05
Prog Will Steffen just spoke on ABC News with the usual claims of excessive warming – 1 degree in the last 100 years etc (whereas in fact it has been 200 years) so I have sent this email to him, copied to about 100 politicians
Dear Sir
I have studied the physics of thermodynamics far more extensively than you have with your Chemistry.
I am confident in offering $10,000 reward for the first to prove me wrong at https://itsnotco2.wordpress.com and you will not be able to do so.
Probably by late 2017 I may have been able to arrange a court hearing where we can come face to face, so I suggest you endeavour to understand the correct physics.
Please read my peer-reviewed papers and my book on the subject and consider the “Questions which Stump Lukes and Warmists” in my blog linked above, because one day you will be called to answer for misleading the government and the public.
Copies are being sent to over 100 politicians.
05
Jo
Why is it that you continue to suppress the truth and do not allow links to such?
The greenhouse conjecture has been proven wrong because solar radiation and back radiation cannot be added and make the surface warmer than either could on its own.
This can be proven by the fact that 16 bar radiators around an object do not make it twice as hot as does one such radiator at the same distance.
There has never been an experiment that has proved wrong the brilliant 19th century physicist, Josef Loschmidt regarding his explanation of the gravito-thermal effect.
Being a reality (also proven by correct physics) the gravito-thermal effect disproves the greenhouse a second way.
So that’s double disproof, Jo, and not a single experiment that proves otherwise.
06
One day, sites that talk about CO2 and climate related will actually have at least one article that looks at the slump in the energy sector and the fact that more than half of the worlds oil rigs shut down and so on.
This is a strange, but true prediction.
Mike
00