Weekend Unthreaded

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205 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

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    Mark D.

    Weather report from north central USA: About normal precipitation snow cover about 18 inches deep. Milder winter than typical today is 39F. 25 years ago we brought our second son home from the hospital (his birth) and it was over 50F then.

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    Graeme No.3

    Check out the latest Josh cartoon at Bishop Hill; it is a ripper.

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    • #
      Another Ian

      Graeme and ROM

      This might be a useful figure for concrete in wind turbine bases (WRT “Renewables no threat” item) and repeated there.

      “But let’s have some fun. Let’s look at a large section of UK construction: wind turbines. According to wind industry figures, 1883 MW of wind turbines was installed in the UK in 2013. It isn’t easy to find info on amount of concrete in wind turbine bases from the wind industry itself, and I don’t trust the critics to give a straight up answer, but a search suggests a figure of 120 cubic metres per MW of installed turbine (bigger turbines require more concrete, in a roughly linear relationship).”

      From a comment by Spence-UK at

      http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2016/1/29/limited-integrity-josh-359.html#comments

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Another Ian:

        Thanks. That means a 2.5MW turbine should get 720 tons? And a 7 MW one as used off-shore would need just over 2000 tonnes. Except that the bases for offshore turbines going into the Baltic and North Seas are getting to 3,000 tonnes (although they use a concrete shell and fill the interior with sea water roughly 50:50 to save money].

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        ROM

        Another Ian @ 2.1

        Thanks for the link, Ian.

        Lets look at the cement used in an on shore typical large sized late generation wind turbine installation of say a plated 6 MW’s.

        The figure of 120 cubic metres  or around 290 tonnes of concrete per installed MW appears to be about right.

        Therefore a 6 MW plated capacity turbine will have around 720 cubic metres / 1700 tonnes of concrete in its base.

        It takes around 300 to 400 kg’s of Cement to make one cubic metre of concrete .

        From that and using the higher strength, more cement per cubic metre concrete , say 400 Kgs of Cement per cubic metre of concrete, a typical 6 MW turbine base will use about 290 tonnes of cement to make the base.

        Now to make the Cement clinker which is then ground to a fine powder in ball mills to produce the fine powder we call Cement,
        As the quote below, it takes about 200 kg of coal to produce one tonne of cement and about 300-400 kg of cement is needed to produce one cubic metre of concrete.

        Cement is made from a mixture of calcium carbonate (generally in the form of limestone), silica, iron oxide and alumina. A high-temperature kiln, often fuelled by coal, heats the raw materials to a partial melt at 1450°C, transforming them chemically and physically into a substance known as clinker. This grey pebble-like material comprises special compounds that give cement its binding properties. Clinker is mixed with gypsum and ground to a fine powder to make cement.

        Coal is used as an energy source in cement production. Large amounts of energy are required to produce cement.
        It takes about 200 kg of coal to produce one tonne of cement and about 300-400 kg of cement is needed to produce one cubic metre of concrete

        From this we can calculate that the tonnages of coal used to produce the cement used in a typical late model 6 MW wind turbine base is about 60 tonnes of coal or as a rule of thumb for coal use required to produce the Cement for the concrete in the base of wind turbine, a rough rule of thumb would seem to be that it takes roughly ten [ 10 ] tonnes of coal per installed and plated MW capacity of the turbine to produce the Cement for the base of the onshore turbines.

        Now to be very clear on this, I am ONLY counting the amount of coal used to produce the cement for the concrete in the base of a turbine.
        The energy costs of mining, processing, transporting, mixing the concrete, digging the hole, steel reinforcing energy costs, road building to the site, machinery to install all the systems and turbine energy use, cabling and its installation underground, production of transformers and etc plus Grid line extensions to the turbine farm, use of Grid energy used by the turbine in non generating standby mode about 8% to 12% of turbine capacity and etc and etc have NOT BEEN INCLUDED in this rough calculation of the energy used and the coal used to build the site systems for a turbine.

        Nor has the energy or coal burned to produce the energy to make the probable 90 tonnes of concrete base reinforcing steel rebar for this size of a large turbine been included.

        Also of course, no estimates are included above on the energy required to actually manufacture the Turbine and its systems of blades and mechanicals and electrical components nor to manufacture the tower.

        A bit of googling and there are a number of sites that are having a go at calculating this data on the energy costs of building and using wind turbines as civilisation’s prime energy source as promoted by the as usual completely irrational green cultist blob.

        The answers are always the same as in ; What the hell are we doing to be allowed to be conned first by some very inept or incompetent or dishonest or all of the above, self promoting climate alarmist scientists which has led to rise of a totally irrational cultist approach by the vacuum brained Green Blob who have then along with those same scientists, have convinced the politicals to try and use unpredictable, intermittent, unaffordably costly, very low efficiency wind turbines and solar panels to supposedly generate the world’s rapidly growing energy needs.
        When a few simple sums so clearly show the utter stupidity of this belief and that have clearly demonstrated the world hasn’t a hope in hell of ever even generating more than a few percent of its global energy requirements from wind and solar, energy requirements and needs that are the entire underlaying basis for our civilisation’s rise and its continuing existence into the future.

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          DirkV

          When you use the rule of thumb of 10 tonnes of coal per MW you can estimate how many production hours of the wind turbine is needed for this amount of energy.
          Burning 1 kg of high quality coal gives 34 MJ, 10 tonnes of coal gives 340.000 MJ. This is produced by the wind turbine in 340.000 seconds, about 100 hours.

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          • #
            Rod Stuart

            You seem to be confusing energy and power.
            One Mj is equivalent to 0.0002777778 Mw-hr.
            I think you will find that one Mw-hr of electrical energy is supplied by 0.40 tonnes of high quality thermal coal in even an old coal fired facility.

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            • #
              DirkV

              I wandered how may production hours of a wind turbine was needed to produce the cement for its construction. It is of course a waste to use electricity for that purpose.
              I intended to show that a wind turbine produces in its expected lifetime a lot more energy than is needed for its construction.

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      • #
        poitsplace

        The messed up part is when you compare the amount of materials, labor, and maintenance of renewables…to nuclear. The last time I gave serious “Let’s do this!” kinds of thought to renewables I started looking into solar-thermal (some ability to store power) and after only about 20 minutes I ran into the materials problem. Per megawatt, a solar-thermal plant takes 10X the concrete and labor of a nuclear plant. Instantly I realized there was no way in hell we were ever going to do that. Took a bit more searching to see if the problem wasn’t so bad with wind…and it turns out it’s not. It takes 5X the concrete per megawatt to build wind turbines.

        This is extremely simple math. If we wanted to go with renewables, it would take 10X the materials/labor to build it as it would to build nuclear. And that’s not even the newer, “can’t melt down”. Indeed, to meet current electrical demand alone would take the entire world production of concrete for a couple years. To meet total world energy demand would take about 6 years worth…and about 10 years the current production of concrete to meet what is likely to meet future demands. To suggest that we would consume this amount of resources chasing a shitty, intermittent power source that would require an equally impressive backup power system (built from immense quantities of god knows what) is simply absurd.

        If your goal is to lower CO2 emissions, literally the only available, reasonably practical solution is nuclear and gas from fracking for peaking. And even without gas from fracking, nuclear still wins not just because it only requires a tiny fraction of the amount of backup power that renewables do. Where renewables require WEEKS of power for good reliability, nuclear would require only hours…storage equal to only about 1/4 of the total daily energy consumption. Although, again…gas fixes the problem entirely for the short term.

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    James Bradley

    Just really frustrating. At work yesterday, on duty with an ex-science teacher. Subject turned to climate change ‘cos it bucketed down for the last 3 days. Ex-Science gets on about climate change. I explain about the divergence, weather balloons, RSS. He says but CO2 reflects all the heat back. I explain we just came out of a LIA, reminded him of the Roman and Medieval Warm periods, he didn’t know about them. I say the Ice Core data shows CO2 increases follow warming – nada. I say what about acid oceans? He says ‘yeah well the Barrier Reef will die because of the warming oceans and more carbonic acid’. I explain about warming oceans and outgassing and 8.0 PH and rainwater is acid at 5.0 and Arctic and Antarctic waters are less alkaline because they are colder. Some one else chopped in with the Hole in the Ozone Layer – Ex Science countered with ‘that’s when the planet pulled together to ban CFC’s and it cost all of us a, but it is better to be safe than sorry’ I say “but the hole is still there”. Quickly onto sea level rise where Ex Science says ‘so you think all these Pacific Nations like Tuvalu are just making it up’ I say ‘ look at NOAA data for sea level rise in the Pacific. Ex Science says ‘whats Noah?’ Brother, for F…. sake. Okay NOAA is where all sea level data comes from. “Look here” I say, “NOAA data is what the IPCC uses part of NASA etc etc” I continue “go home tonight and look it up and explain this NOAA data shows tip of Queensland sinking under the sea at 3.0mm per year” Ex Science says ‘yep’ I continue “NOAA data shows New Guinea rising out of the sea at 6.0 mm per year” Ex Science says ‘yeah’ I explain “well how the f… can the Torres straight Islands slap bang in the middle be sinking at a faster rate than Queensland?” Ex Science ‘I’ll have a look tonight’ This bloke taught science to some of the previous generation of children at high school. Just so frustrating trying to explain stuff to people that believe everything they are told. His final statement was ‘look, I don’t know whether climate change is harmful or not, but we have to do something’ I left him with “mate we dodged a bullet, better a warmin phase than a cooling phase, towards the end of the LIA only a few hundred years ago, humans were starving, what do you think started the potato famine in Ireland?” Now I’m not sure about the last bit because I can’t be bothered checking, but s..t, he’s an Ex Science Teacher – he’ll probably just take my word for it.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      Kudos for the effort James, he sounds a bit naïve ask him if he knew that the word ‘Gullible’ isn’t in the dictionary, that’s always a good test.

      Or better still if he thinks ‘all birds are mechanical’?

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      Howie from Indiana

      I know how frustrating it is trying to reason with these warmistas. They know everything or so they think. How many of them have delved deeply into the real science, including the geologic history of our planet? A few days ago one of the presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders, told a high school student that she was wrong about climate change. He is aure of it, he said, and added further that climate change is human caused. Statement like that make me wonder if Sanders ever studied science at all. It seems that every day the MSM has one or more articles touting how bad climate change is going to be. Our young peoples minds are being poisoned by teachers and the media, especially tv. I’m beginning to wonder if this nonsense will ever end.

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      • #
        Rod Stuart

        Ben Carson fielded a question from a student “If you are so smart, why don’t you believe in climate change?”
        Rather than explain that it is more imaginary than Santa Clause, he stick handles his way around an answer.

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      • #
        mc

        Howie from Indiana @ #3.2

        They know everything or so they think.

        From The Rise by Sarah Lewis:

        There is an inevitable incompletion that comes from mastery. It occurs because the greater our proficiency, the more smooth our current path, the more clearly we may spot the mountain that hovers in our gaze. “What would you say increases with knowledge?” Jordan Elgrably once asked James Baldwin. “You learn how little you know,” Baldwin said.

        The technical term for this, if you like, is the Dunning-Kruger effect, the greater our proficiency, the more clearly we recognize the possibilities of our limitations. The converse is also true, ignorance protects us from the knowledge required to perceive just how unskilled we may actually be.

        Albert Einstein, who left his desk with a splay of papers at his Princeton, New Jersey, office at the time of his death, still at work on the Theory Of Everything, summarised the effect in a quip to a young girl, Barbara, who wrote to him upset that she was a little below average in math. “Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics,” Einstein told her. “I can assure you that mine are still greater.”

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        • #
          ROM

          mc @ # 3.2.2

          Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics,” Einstein told her. “I can assure you that mine are still greater.”

          Strangely apparently somewhat true.
          A famous story about Einstein follows along these lines;

          Einstein and another very well known mathematical genius of the times were having lunch together.
          When the lunch was finished they called for the bill which was duly presented.
          After a long discussion and debate on the contents of the bill and who was to pay for what and much scribbling on some paper they finally admitted defeat and called the waitress across to add up what each was to pay.

          ———

          There are a number of ways or patterns to the ways in which people think, something most people are unaware of [ I was told I was an “unusual conceptual thinker” many years ago by a psychologist. The “unusual” is probably the only correct part of that analysis according to my family and friends!! ] it is somewhat of a puzzle to myself in trying to imagine the other ways in which other individuals mentally process thoughts and information, in short, the way they think.

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          • #
            mc

            ROM @ 3.2.2.1

            There are a number of ways or patterns to the ways in which people think

            The ways in which people think, big subject ROM, something I have spent a lifetime thinking about myself. There are a multitude of thought behaviours and cognitive phenomena. Have you ever had the experience of being, as it were, visited internally by a speck of light lasting just an instant in which is contained a vast body of knowledge? It’s all there in the mind, an entire books worth of information, somehow understood, even though it couldn’t rightfully be said to be understood or comprehended in the ordinary way, because what we think of as rational cognition is a process, by which I mean that the dimension in which it exists is the dimension of time; without time how can there be thought? Yet I used to have this experience quite a bit. A fully formed big idea, paradoxically understood even though it is all compressed into a miniscule instant in time and space; something other than the usual process of reason would seem to be going on in this case, not an irrational one but rather a non-rational or a-rational one.

            My thinking styles were certainly something at vast odds with my mother; “you know, your son asks too many questions,” she said to my father when I was about 7 years old. Questioning is anathema to my mother, in fact resistance to questioning is a character trait that runs strongly through my family in general. Authoritarianism is what it is. I had an expansive and curious mind, definitely a no-no where I come from. I had to become a thinker and struggle constantly to keep from having my capacity to reason destroyed under the constant assault of my mothers’ infinite irrationality.

            Some years ago at a pub with my then girlfriend, I said something to another girl we met there, can’t remember what, something of a revelatory nature. My girlfriend rolled her eyes contemptuously and said with disgust, “he has a truth policy.” Another person with a strong authoritarian streak; how the authoritarian loathes and despises the quest for truth!

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    • #
      PeterS

      Our education system is bringing up a mass of [snip]. I don’t necessarily blame the teachers as most are just doing what they are told by following the text books and the science curriculum, which contains some distortions and untruths. It’s really up to the parents to make sure their children have a well balanced, rounded and sensible view of the world (past and present) and not leave it all up to the so called “professionals”, which many are anything but.

      [If you avoid using what I snipped you can avoid getting caught in moderation.] AZ

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    • #
      Ron Cook

      James,

      I’ve through pretty much the same scenario with an ex science/chemistry teacher. We went through RMIT together some 50 odd years ago and I can’t believe that he has been so gullible to have been indoctrinated by the ‘hype’. Difference between us being he went in to teaching and I went into industry; he would have been in the teachers union, I have never been in a union. We both attended a 6 months class called “Clear Thinking” circa 1962 which was aimed at teaching us to evaluate data and carefully review papers checking and validating references etc. So what went wrong with him?

      R-COO- K+
      Ron

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      ianl8888

      Sorry James, but your work colleague will NOT “look anything up” and will avoid/wriggle from any future conversations on the various topics

      Sadly, been there, done that and the result is always the same – they remain in deep denial and in thrall to the MSM

      I’ve asked the question: “Why do so many people believe everything the meeja tell them to ?”. I’ve asked quite a few times. The answer (if there is one) is always along the lines of “too busy with living to check”, and, like a 50m thick concrete wall, why would they lie to us ?

      … hopeless

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        James Bradley

        I actually expect that he will – if only to prove me wrong. We worked in different sections yesterday, but he did say he couldn’t find the NOAA site I’d referred him to and could I e-mail the link – which I did. Now when we were finishing work I just let him know the few sea level rise readings from around the South Pacific – between 1.0 mm and about 3.0 mm is the average. That was his ‘gotcha’ moment – “yes, James but they are rising” I was prepared “For f..k’s sake, Jack, the margin of error is 3.0 mm, you taught science, you tell me what that means?” So he agreed to look at it last night. I have ‘Pevensey Castle’ waiting in the briefing room to ambush him this morning if he is on duty today.

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      PeterPetrum

      James, I went through a similar experience with the teacher of my youngest grandchild, at the end of his last year in primary school. At “grandparents day” I was disappointed, but not surprised, to see the wall covered in projects on “climate change”; the death of the Barrier Reef, wind turbines are our salvation, and so on. I went through a similar process to that which you experienced, to increasingly confused looks. At the end of it all he just shrugged and said “I just teach the curriculum”. And this was no Government school, but an up market, very expensive, private school in the Eastern Suburbs in Sydney. What hope has this generation of kids got to get hold of the facts at this stage in their lives.

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        bobl

        People,
        This is important, keep track of your childs/grandchilds work, when it comes to a climate-change moment write to the school principal, the teacher and the science department master and DEMAND that your children receive balanced information on the climate change – not yet to hypothesis standard hypothesis. Outline the very real problems with this hypothesis that has been disproven time and time again and demand that your children not be presented hypothesis as if it is fact.

        There are teachable things in CC, for example, you could cite the study that shows 300 Cu km of ice loss in 800,000 sq km of West Antarctica is melting P/A then ask the class to calculate the power required for the phase change from solid to liquid of 300Cu km of ice and contrast that to the 0.6W of available power to drive it. That’s a great chemistry assignment. Or say calculate the amount of CO2 necessary to make the oceans acidic.

        When dealing with teachers or academics, then deal with this phenomenon as an energy equation. Almost none of the effects attributed to CC are possible according to the law of conservation of energy, well none that I’ve ever checked anyway. You could ask then what size of brick Or height of a pile of dirt one would need to build a seawall defence for the next 1000 years of climate change. Perhaps have them calculate how much sand ( at eg 1/2 mm grain size ) needs to be deposited on a beach to stay ahead of climate change (Answer a layer 2-3 grains thick – in A YEAR!).

        Scale is what these people don’t get.

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        • #
          Rod Stuart

          I have an anecdote that underscores your point bobl.
          Some years ago I was PM on a river water restoration at a power station in NZ.
          Even though the original construction had the necessary environmental credentials, improvements to it required this all over again.
          The opposition came from the Iwi. (The Mauri elders in a regional community are a group of shared wisdom for the whole whanua.)
          Their arguments had to with the sacred aspects of the river, and objected to the idea of us being allowed to take any water at all from it.
          I talked to them on several occasions, formally and informally, and extensively.
          Finally I invited the entire Iwiw to come for a ride in a bus and to take a look at what we were doing and what we proposed to do differently.
          The problem became obvious immediately that they could simply not visualise a flow of 80 litres per second. So we went and had a look at the river intake, and the river flowing at a rate of about 3.5 cubic meters per second. Then we went to our reservoir inlet where the water entered at a flow rate of 80 litres per second.
          They were shocked. It was difficult to convince them that the pumps were indeed running and that the system was operating at its potential.
          When we got past that hurdle the response was “Is that all? We thought you were taking a lot of water out of the river. That is nothing”.
          It is often difficult for the general public to visualise things like flow rates and water intake flow relative to total river flow without actually witnessing and observing.

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        • #
          ROM

          bobl @ #3.6.1

          Scale is what these people don’t get.

          That very brief comment above really struck a chord for me.

          So to take that thought a little further;

          If you were in any doubt that Australia is a fundamentally urban country – here is the figure to remember. As of the 2011 Census, 88.9% of the population lived in urban Australia – the built up areas of towns and cities of more than 1,000 people. So that’s only about 1 in 10 rural and small town dwellers.

          Think about it!

          Everything in an urban environment is controlled by standards that control just about every physical aspect of urban living you can think of.

          So urban dwellers, the 89% of Australians that live in an urban environment are conditioned right from their earliest days to only see items that are all of a size and type that are relative to one another and will generally remained fixed in that size relatiuonship, ie; , window, door sizes, road dimensions and vehicles sizes, pill bottles and super market cartons, limits on building heights and street trees allowed to be planted, the list is almost endless of physical standards and often unwritten social standards that permanently hold and control so many of the urban items and intangibles that are held in close relativity’s to one another, are standardised through legislation and regulations, for the term of a urban dweller’s life span.

          Urban dwellers just don’t get to experience the immense variations in scale on a routine, regular basis so they simply are not conditioned mentally to think about the relativities of and the understanding of drastically different scales of other items of even identical items outside of their own urban standardised and conditioned experiences.

          [ A rather interesting item on the comprehension of urban dwellers to the scale of agriculture was from some years ago when we bought a new header, a grain harvesting machine.
          A city relative of a friend when told the price of the header totally refused to believe the friend.
          There was simply no way that the price of that machine could be more than the price of a house. ]

          This is no reflection at all on our urban dwellers.

          It is just a fact of life arising from living in a highly standardised urban environment, an all embracing standardisation which is little thought about but which is another essential underpinning that has ensured the continuing success and operation of our civilisation over the last couple of hundred years.

          Rural dwellers and engineers in particular of just about every possible type are constantly dealing with a whole range of quite natural and ever changing relativity’s in sizes such as water flows, wind, heat and just about any other natural happenings one can put a finger on.

          So they and rural dwellers, farmers and outdoor workers in particular rarely have problems in envisaging very large differences and the scale relationship of so many ever changing and ever varying natural and man made items as they experience huge differences in the scale of the same environmental factors themselves almost every day.

          Although looking at a bloody big hole in the ground planned by mining engineers and dug by mining corporations does do wonders to your personal understandings of the relativity’s of scale used in mining and major industrial projects compared to just about anything else.

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        Another Graeme

        “I don’t teach science, I teach the curriculum”

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      TdeF

      There are those in society with science training who automatically believe everything they are told. Doctors and science teachers. These people are usually followers of science fashion. What was good for your health one year is bad. In Australia we were supposed to slip, slop, slap to prevent the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. Then suddenly doctors advised getting more sun, not wearing suncream and building vitamin D to prevent bone loss. You cannot have it both ways. Science teachers are also suspect because learning science is not the same as being a scientist.

      Most importantly a real scientist is fundamentally a sceptic who is always looking for a simpler, more elegant explanation and one which can be verfied by the data or experiment. Albert Einstein was always looking for the one set of rules which bound everything, not just nuclear or electrical or gravitational. He did not break Newtonian mechanics but demonstrated that there are universal underlying principles which are simply not apparent at a certain scale.

      So in the 1960s the world was starving and India had 400million people. In the 1970s we were heading to a new ice age. Everybody knew it. In the 1990s Transfats were healthy and the world was heating rapidly and we were reaching a runaway tipping point. Now in the 2010s Climate Change is the biggest threat, except no one can tell you what it is and where it is happening and after thirty years of rapid warming and sea rises and climate change, Tuvalu is fine, like the Polar bears.

      Perhaps the biggest laugh is the popular promotion of ‘peer reviewed science’. Having close friends agree that you might be right is not the same as being right, especially if people are afraid they will lose their jobs if they dare disagree. In this new world, Al Gore, Tim Flannery and all the Climate Council are famous ‘Climate Scientists’. Most are not scientists at all and not one of them is a meteorologist. They are simply a publicity seeking peer group with an obvious self interest. It used to be mockingly known as popular science, fiction.

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        TdeF

        And the oceans are acidifying, even if they are alkali and will always be alkali.

        Acidifying is not a technically untrue statement as a verb but it is utterly deceitful sophistry. Adding a little bit of a weak acid is acidifying in a sense, just like paying a debt is reducing wealth, but it is not bankrupting, especially if that can never happen. When you consider 98% of all the world’s gaseous CO2 is already freely dissolved in the oceans, what difference can it make?

        Acid is something which does happen to rain and rivers and estuaries and the 2% of fresh water in the world, most entirely in Antarctica and the Great Lakes and Lake Baikal. Often sulphur SO2 becoming weak sulphuric and not CO2. The rest of the vast oceans are alkali buffered by limitless amounts of limestone and even coral. For any scientist to say publicly that the oceans are acidifying is proof of an intention to mislead. I am really surprised that any teacher of science or medical doctor accepts this, but as I said, they believe everything they read. It is their job.

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          TdeF

          I suppose this is the real import of the alleged 97% consensus.

          In the Cook review 97% of publishing climate scientists who express an opinion agree with the man made logic and only 3-4% disagree, but more than 60% of scientists do not and I would suggest dare not express any opinion at all.

          So the real figures are roughly 33% agree, 4% disagree and 63% do not say anything, which Cook generously interprets as tacit agreement.

          You have to wonder about the 4% and what happens to their grants? Universities are run by people seeking funding, not the truth. As the progressive historians argue, “what is truth?”. In the vision of Rene Descartes, it used to be science.

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            Thomas

            Well, the math sure does look wrong when you present it.
            That should help people to doubt this incredible number of 97%.

            But I am pretty convinced that as soon as numbers enter the picture, they throw off many people.
            Too many.

            Fortunately – or so I believe – we can just pinpoint that it is a bit of stretch to say this symbolic number represent a consensus.
            Simply because no scientist were actually asked what his/her opinion was!

            To seek opinion, you do a poll.
            And then you may establish there is a consensus.

            But what was done was actually an investigation of scientific papers from which opinions were derived.
            Why do such a massive effort? Why not just simply ask?

            Scientific papers are really not a proper material for such an investigation.
            Because they are all about research (thus filled with hypotheses and uncertainties), they are ill-fitted to the task of deriving an opinion.
            The breadth of interpretations is too wide and that means the end result will likely be heavy influenced by the biases of the people investigating.

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              TdeF

              Yes, but the author noted the overwhelming bias in opinions expressed. So he sought to make the argument that because so many people say the same thing, it was believed true by the majority. This is the deception. There is a very good reason some people support the argument and a very good reason no one dares question it. Neither have to do with truth or scientific method.

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                Thomas

                Wo-oh! I overlooked that. Thanks for pointing it out.
                Well. The “equation” is now for me:
                investigation of improper materials + poorly justified interpretation of opinions + biased attribution of opinions on “blank slate” people = intellectual insult to just everybody.

                Note the result is still unchanged though. 😉

                But this is rich.
                Just when you thought you understand the whole craft of warmists’ fact generation, they surprise you with an additional level of depth.
                Since how long did the abyss looked back at them? ^^

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            Richard

            The 97% figure from Cook included various definitions of AGW. The 97% figure included papers in Category 1, 2 and 3 in his study and only Category 1 (with 64 papers) agreed that humans were the “primary” cause of global warming (i.e. over 50%) and the papers in Category 2 and 3 (of which there were 4011) simply contained papers that agreed “greenhouse gas emissions cause warming” and that “anthropogenic global warming/climte change is a known fact”. Of course almost all skeptics would agree that greenhouse gas emissions cause some warming and that AGW is real. This is why his 97% consensus included papers from skeptics (such as Alan Carlin). The consensus that humans were the “primary” cause of global warming was only 1.6% because Category 1 contatined 64 papers and Catergory 2 and 3 contained 4011. However, as Monckton discovered, some of the papers in Category 1 were misallocated and the consensus that humans are the “primary” cause was reduced to 0.3%. I would argue that it should be even lower, because Category 1 included papers from the same scientists (for example, Hansen contributes to 3 of those 64 papers). Basically after searching through some 12,000 climate-related papers Cook only found 64 that supported the IPCC’s view. To think that warmists still cite his paper as proof that AGW is dangerous (as Obama did) is madness.

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            Raven

            So the real figures are roughly 33% agree, 4% disagree and 63% do not say anything, which Cook generously interprets as tacit agreement.

            More importantly, he drops the 63% altogether because they don’t answer the question posed so they don’t qualify to be counted as having an opinion. Isn’t that the case?

            If you use Cook’s data and his methodology and ask the question:

            How man climate scientists have NFI what’s going on with the climate?

            . . the consensus works out to be a 100%.
            When arguing, I then concede a 3% error factor and arrive at 97%.
            You’d be surprised how many people cant even work out what happened.

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        TdeF

        In this comment I did not mean to be critical of doctors and science teachers. Far from it. However consider that they spend their lives learning, then using and teaching what they know and not questioning what they are told. Why would anyone lie to them? Often such people make the transition directly from university . So they only slowly learn to question what they are told. It makes them particularly susceptible to science carpetbaggers, people who seek to make a living by spreading their interpretation of science as truth.

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        me@home

        TdeF, and yesterday (1/2) we were told again to stay out of the sun because it is harmful and won’t help with Vit D.

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        • #
          TdeF

          Yes, but I don’t blame the doctors. Their job is to pass on what they are told, not to question or perform research. I remember when my elderly inlaws who did not drink were told by their GP to have one or two glasses of red wine a day, because it was good for them. Frankly, it would have knocked them over. This is often just marketing from the wine people or the broccoli people or the coffee people but presented as peer reviewed science. In the 1950s doctors were supposed to be recommending smoking.

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            Manfred

            Their job is to pass on what they are told, not to question or perform research.

            For some perhaps. For others critical thinking is firmly inculcated as are the tenets of ‘evidence based practice’ and ‘in time learning’. Anyone spouting “97% of scientists agree…” is waving a red flag, inviting a closer look at the methodology of the research. It starts to unravel pretty quickly at that point. The seminal pivot however, is the wanton betrayal by an ideologically owned Fourth Estate with their multiple connections to ‘civil society‘.

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        Kratoklastes

        By ‘doctors’ I am pretty sure you mean GP’s; that is to say, the middle 7 deciles of the graduating class. Anyone outside the top decile of the graduating class in their discipline, has no real grasp of their discipline – let alone any complex material outside of their discipline.

        Anyone whose high school or undergraduate marks leave them a best-case scenario of becoming a school-teacher, has no idea about anything.

        The days of vocationally-inspired high-school teachers (such as I was lucky to have right through my schooling) ended in the mid-1980s as we moved into a new paradigm that included the ‘right’ of the bottom-quintile students to pass every year despite having literally learnt nothing.

        FWIW, when it turned out that high-schools-as-day-care had a limited capacity to hide youth unemployment, .gov decided that every kiddie should go to Uni… so the days of the best and brightest being retained as uni tutors is diminishing: I was a tutor in the 90s for a course that required top 5th percentile to get in, and a B or better in a math subject that included calculus – and I was appalled at the lack of numeracy in my students, and it’s worse now.

        And at the end of the day, the actual expertise in any discipline remains confined to a tiny sliver of elite students. As has always been the case, only about 0.4% of each age cohort leaves university with a genuine mastery of any discipline whatsoever.

        That 0.4% also leaves uni with no debt (because they win scholarships and prizes), and works in their discipline at the highest levels.

        Anyone outside that 0.4% is not worth listening to, even on matters within their discipline; anyone inside that 0.4% whose degree is in journalism, is also not worth listening to (to see why: familiarise yourself with the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect).

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      Dave in the states

      look, I don’t know whether climate change is harmful or not, but we have to do something’

      This kind of thinking is why people are so easily lead by the climate change charlatans into all kinds of expensive and useless green schemes. For some reason they don’t realize it is much the same as Aztecs laying captives across alters and cutting their hearts out to prevent the world from coming to an end 500 years ago.

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      Thomas

      Well, I have been (briefly) a math teacher.
      I presented once skeptical views on the climate to my students, among some other things.

      I don’t know if I have shed enough light on the matter.
      But I can tell you that I moved some students, one in particular.
      And she clearly held dear the hypothesis global warming is caused by human activities.

      Reading about “your” ex-science teacher, it makes me wonder.
      If you see authority figures just abiding by the word when it is a scientific one, then you will probably think it is okay to do that yourself.

      This student, she was clearly engaging me on the climate matter on these grounds.
      On our last conversation, she told me about her uncle who were an oceanographer convinced too of global warming caused by human activities.
      She said there were proofs and scientists were witnessing them.
      I replied back it was great.
      Skeptics only ask to be convinced so just show the proofs and the reasoning.

      And this is where I believe things are blocked.
      When you have internalized to abide by the science as soon as it is presented, the people presenting it are relieved of the task to actually convince you.
      I believe this dynamic is now quite widespread.

      So not only showing skepticism can come across as being too inflexible.
      Now it can also come across as being unfair!

      This is one more reason convincing me we can’t promote skepticism all alone.
      It’s still very tempting considering the amount of contradictions and loopholes there are in the warmist discourse.
      But we know it’s false hope to think warmists will mend this situation.

      I still think though it’s the appropriate direction.
      We should let warmists face their contradictions with the scientific method.
      They have so properly dug their grave that I’m confident they can finish the job and bury themselves.

      But for that to happen we can’t take a pure skeptical stance.
      As I pointed out, it can go against a perception of fairness.
      We should set a framework about what is fair and what is not.

      One climate skeptic here in France said it best.
      It’s Serge Galam, a CNRS director (CNRS stands for National Center of Scientific Research).
      He said he was not really a climate skeptic. That did not matter.

      He was climate demanding, science demanding really.
      When someone brings forward a theory and deem it to be scientifically valid, it is just fair to ask of this person to provide proofs on the same level of strengh that the theory presents.

      This is the message that is important to get across.
      It’s obvious to everybody we will never have pure exact proofs of anything.
      There’s always room for error and doubt.
      We can always quibble over details.
      It really does not help scientists are prone to do it and known for indulging in it.

      But on climate matters, details are unimportant.
      The real problem is that the strength of the proofs is off by a factor of 97% batshit crazy. 😉

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    I found this interesting: http://scitechdaily.com/new-research-may-solve-longstanding-fusion-reactor-mystery/

    One of the biggest obstacles to making fusion power practical — and realizing its promise of virtually limitless and relatively clean energy — has been that computer models have been unable to predict how the hot, electrically charged gas inside a fusion reactor behaves under the intense heat and pressure required to make atoms stick together.

    A long-standing discrepancy between predictions and observed results in test reactors has been called “the great unsolved problem” in understanding the turbulence that leads to a loss of heat in fusion reactors.

    That bolded parts remind me of something, but I just can’t put my finger on it.

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      Manfred

      When the models aid and abet Green propaganda, unlimited funding and global governance they boldly go…
      When on the other hand, there’s a chance of failing to model the unknown unknowns leading to a bang…

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        Raven

        Green propaganda . .

        Speaking of Green propaganda . .

        I made a couple of comments on a Facebook page the other day. The OP was written by Greg Barber, MP (Greens) In Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Oz and he pointed out that a coal mining exploration permit in his urbanised rural electorate was due to expire in the next couple of months. He couched the headline as:

        “Food bowl or coal mine?”

        At time of writing his post has garnered 1211 ‘likes’, 648 ’shares’ and 594 comments, all but two or three of those assumed a mine was actually going ahead . . . which was, unfortunately, entirely predictable and at the same time disturbing.

        There was no media coverage of this and no links included in the OP. It looks like it was just thought up by Greg Barber.
        Interestingly, out of that 594 comments, no one asked for extra information and Greg Barber only made one other post. But did that stop anyone? Nope . . they dutifully commented “No new coal” or “we can’t eat coal” and called for government heads to roll etc.

        Of course, when the permit lapses, he’ll ride in on his white charger and thank everyone for supporting his fight against the evil fossil fuel giants. Classic dog-whistle politics.

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      poitsplace

      The thing I find strange is that we have technologies to not only use fission resources more efficiently but to consume much of the high level waste we’ve already made. Older fission designs were inherently unstable…riding a knife edge and keeping them there through massive, forced cooling systems (in case of emergency anyway). Newer designs are inherently stable…they just won’t melt down. Given the fact that there’s enough nuclear material to provide US per capita energy output (including energy, transportation, etc) to 8 billion people for thousands of years…there’s no real hurry in making fusion and no practical reasons to wait to deploy fission. Fission plants would be cheaper anyway.

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        Konrad

        Older designs were inherently stable as well. Remember LFTR from the 70’s? Remember Australia has 40% of the world’s known Thorium reserves.

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        • #
          poitsplace

          Well, the problems with those ‘older’ disigns is that we’re not using them…we’re usually using EVEN OLDER designs…although it is true, quite a few of the existing reactors can manage to cool themselves sufficiently without any sort of backup system.

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  • #

    There have been many large fires in Tasmania, particularly in the NW and Central Plateau areas, caused by dry conditions and started by lightning. Actually this is fairly infrequent as most lightning storms are usually wet, not dry. The fires have been difficult to control due to limited access. Such events are not frequent but occur from time to time every 20 to 30 years or so.

    The fires on the central plateau are not very intense as fuel loads are light, but they destroy most of the vegetation and the soil itself which is peaty in nature and can smoulder underground.

    The ABC coverage last night showed the aftermath of these fires, probably near Lake Mackenzie, with some burnt Pencil pines (Athrotaxis cupressoides) and a lot of damage to the cushion
    plants. The damage was fairly severe and disturbing, but also there was commentry by ecologists Jamie Kirpatrick, David Bowman and the green politician Nick McKim saying, without any qualification, that this was entirely due to climate change and it portends of things to come. This is unfortunate, but why does the ABC give such commentry to an occasional event which happens as a result of dry Summer conditions and atypical thunderstorm activity?

    Any alpine fire is severe and recovery is very slow due to very low temperatures and a harsh environment. One only has to look at the damage that occurred on Mt. Wellington behind Hobart due to the 1967 fire. The pencil pines will probably die, and there are many examples of dead pines due to past fires. This species seeds rarely, perhaps one in ten years, and seedling growth is very slow, a couple of mm. annually. However, it is extremely easy to grow by cuttings, as are the other native pines, and I would have thought a small programme to propagate and plant some would be a better response to this event rather than climate change rhetoric on the part of non-practical folk.

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      MJD

      It’s very disappointing to see so many articles about the the fires down here in Tasmania mentioning climate change. Afterall, what exactly what does this catchall phrase mean anyway? We have had an unusually dry spring: BOM online records indicate the lowest spring rainfall in 115 years, and 1911 is the only year close to 2015. A lot of the ground vegetation and potential fuel load was very dry. Lightning strikes without rain then started lots of fires, many in remote areas, that just kept going. I haven’t checked the wind speeds but we have almost certainly been lucky that this isn’t much worse.

      Unfortunately it seems that somewhere in the chain of command there has been a failure to realise how dry everything was and what the potential risks were. The large number of separate fires that started should have been a good hint that proactive action was needed. I know it’s easy to criticize with hindsight but, as the article on this site about the WA fires (2016 v 1961) pointed out, the usual result is an inquiry of some sort and in twenty or so years time we forget what we had learned.

      One problem the people linking climate change to these these fires don’t seem to grasp is it puts offside a large number of people who might otherwise think and support the notion that more proactive action should have been taken earlier.

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      Dennis

      I happened to watch that segment and the deceptive comments from the three true deceivers.

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      Dennis

      By the way, Greens with the same mentality claimed after the first major bush fire in the Royal National Park near Sydney a couple of decades ago that the Park would never recover. After partial recovery there was a second major fire and the extreme Greens repeated that the Park was destroyed.

      Take a drive through now and there are very little signs of bush fire.

      It was reported that when the NSW Water Board managed the bush with controlled seasonal burning there had been no major fires.

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    • #

      Thinking about the greens legacy of world heritage areas in SW Tasmania, I wonder what Dr. Bowman et Co. would say if they have had the same weather conditions that prevailed in NW and central Tasmania, as they do from time to time. Essentially these areas are a tinderbox accumulating high fuel loads annually, and if the fires are a product of climate change, then it is only a matter of time before they explode with devasting consequences on par with the Victorian fires of 1997. The years of very large fires in S. Tasmania were 1934 and 1967 among others. Dunnalley recently was a
      preview of what’s in store.

      It really is a dilemma for Dr. Bowman as he knowns full well the consequences of these catastrophic fires, and at the same time seems to support the green philosophy of locking everything up as per World Heritage and throwing the key away.

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    • #
      mc

      Robert O @ #5

      saying, without any qualification, that this was entirely due to climate change and it portends of things to come.

      Man, am I having a bad hair day today, can’t do a damned thing with it, and I blame climate change! How do you know it was climate change wot done it I here you ask; because THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED, that’s how I know, now get out of my face you right wing, denialist nut-job! Sarc.

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    Rod Stuart

    The red thumb of the hairy lurker is up early this morning.
    Too timid or too stupid to mention why it is disagreeable.

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    handjive

    ‘This is what climate change looks like’, fire ecologist says (ABC)

    Fire ecologist David Bowman said the fires burning in Tasmania were a sign of climate change.

    “This is bigger than us.

    This is what climate change looks like, this is what scientists have been telling people, this is system collapse.”

    “We need for people to understand that this is not a natural event.”

    Many fires continue to burn around the state, ignited by lightning strikes.
    ~ ~ ~
    Wind and solar the solution for Tassie farmers
    . . .
    Yeah, that’ll stop lightning strikes.

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    • #

      I was just reading the article and it’s always ‘climate change’, never anything to do with natural events, aided an abetted by environmentalists and timid governments that refuse to undertake appropriate mitigating strategies, such as preventative burning. We will continue to see the effects of these scorched earth policies until such a time arises when sanity returns.

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      • #
        clive

        And the only way there will be change is if we stop voting these”Career Politicians”back in.There is little difference between the Libs,Lab or the Greens anymore.ALA in the Senate and Nats or Independent or Pauline Hanson in the house of Reps,is the only way to go.

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    • #
      Manfred

      David Bowman is right on the mark. Indeed that is ‘what climate change looks like’. The political construct for the bureaucratic totalitarian rape of civilised society that led to the implementation of ‘Environmental Policies’ instigating the cessation of rational forest management in favour of Green environmental policies. These allow huge fuel loads to build up on forest floors, permitting the risk of the unchecked ravage of life and property through for example, poor clearance and lack of fire breaks.

      See: Greens NSW Bush Fire Risk Management Policy and the Victorian County Fire Environment Strategy.

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    • #
      bobl

      Actually windmills will stop the fires. Since all the trees have to be removed (Clear felled) for wind turbines to work, then removing the vegetation to install windmills would in fact control the fires.

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    handjive

    Flashback 2002: CO2 allegedly made the Harbin ice sculptures “sweaty”

    Jan 8, 2008

    “Average annual temperatures in the city perched on the edge of Siberia hit 6.6 degrees Celsius (44 Fahrenheit) last year, the highest average since records began, and the ice sculptures are feeling the heat.

    “In the beginning of December 2002, ice lanterns in Harbin melted right after they were sculpted.

    What came out of the work was sweaty ice sculptures,” Yin Xuemian, senior meteorologist at the Heilongjiang Observatory, told Reuters.

    Problems got worse in 2006.”
    ✈ ✈ ✈
    2016 & Not a word about Doomsday Global Warming this year:

    PHOTOS: Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival expected to draw over 1,000,000 visitors.

    (h/t: tomnelson@twitter)

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      James Murphy

      I have a couple of friends living in Tyumen. They seem quite confident that they will not see the positive side of 0 degrees (celsius) for quite some time to come.

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    • #
      Andrew

      I was in China last week. My client wanted to go to Harbin. I said “Bugger off, it’s -24C – I’ll see you in Shenzhen.”

      Shows how much I knew. It was actually -35C last Sunday, just 3C from a record.

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  • #
    Peter C

    Gamblers Anonymous – Betting on Climate Change

    James Delingpole alerted’ me about the formation of a New Hedge Fund that will invest against the delusion of Climate Change.
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/28/2882423/

    The Fund seems to be Australian based and takes some advice from Dr David Evans.

    I wish I had been able to short sell Shares in Geodynamics and Ceramic Fuel Cells instead of investing in them and loosing my money.

    I will be taking a closer look.

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      Analitik

      Some familiar names are behind it – http://coolfuturesfundsmanagement.com/about

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      James Murphy

      Having worked on on part of one of their wells (and hearing all the stories about the others), I realised Geodynamics and their ilk were not deserving of my money (nothing wrong with the general concept, quite a lot wrong with the reality).

      Ceramic Fuel Cells, on the other hand, seemed to have much more going for it (unless I was just accepting the hype). What went wrong?

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      • #
        Peter C

        Two things went wrong with Ceramic Fuel Cells:
        Firstly the cells had a short life of about a year and the manufacturing costs were far too high ,
        Secondly they did not get any Goverment rebates because their electricity was not recognized as renewable.

        Their failure was all very predictable, in retrospect. Unfortunately I took too much notice of all the positive predictions being made by management. It all sounded very good with elctricity conversion factors of 60% mad combined efficiencies ( using the wate heat for hot water) of more than 80 %.

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          Peter C:

          Denmark has a coal fired power station with a claimed efficiency of 91%. Of course more than half this is achieved with hot water circulation to homes, business and even sub-surface heating for roads and sports grounds. With an average annual temperature of 7.5℃ heating is welcome most of the year. (Australia is 21.6 for comparison, which is meaningless. Try getting the average for main cities from BoM, I’ve just wasted 40 minutes on Google, but Hobart is much warmer that Copenhagen).

          80-85% efficiency has been available from diesel generators and hot water heated by the waste heat since 1975, when examples were installed in skyscrapers in Boston and Toronto.

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      el gordo

      ‘…to bet against the ‘climate consensus’: instead of global warming, they’re expecting the planet to cool.’

      James Delingpole

      ——-

      Sounds like a safe bet.

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  • #
    Manfred

    Over at UN HQ, you know, the wannabe Masters of All and Deacons of Civil Society, they appear to be having a spot of bother, widely and tearfully reported here and here and likely to continue to be until Secretary General Ban Ki-moon apparently gets around to his own statement next month. In keeping with the former IPCC Chairman, Rajendra Pachauri’s fall from grace and resignation for sexual indiscretions the UN it seems struggles with this stuff.

    I’m wondering how long it will take the UN Ministry of Truth to come up with their own definition of an equivalent synonym for ‘sexual abuse’? They’ve done a magnificent job on ‘climate change‘ and ‘civil society‘. Perhaps they’ll consider ‘civil consent’ or ‘civil relations’ and add that to the UN lexicon of terms?

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    TedM

    Yes David Bowman appears to have lost the plot, he was, and maybe still is in some respects, a good scientist. I heard him present at a fire symposium and found him to be comprehensive and objective. I have one or two of his papers where he demonstrates that European influence in fire regimes in the NT has resulted in the reduction in the area of distribution of “Callitris intratropica”. This was because of reduced fire frequency. His research demonstrated that stable, well structured stands of this species were only achieved by introduction of mild fire at 2 to 4 year intervals.

    He was more recently reported as suggested that we could reduce fuel loads in NSW forests by introducing elephants. Perhaps he knew he was talking to a journalist.

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    TedM

    In last sentence delete “suggested” insert “suggesting”.

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    Gary Masding

    The quote below comes from a bloke called Makiguchi. It was written around 1925 so obviously he wasn’t writing about the climate change debate (he was writing about educational methodology) but it struck me how aptly it applies:

    The most typical hazards are associated, as we have noted elsewhere, with confusions between cognition and evaluation, with putting the latter before the former. There are times when emotion prevents people from noticing the irrationality of their response, or their confusion between cognition and evaluation. Yet, even irrationality has a generalizable regularity to it.

    One common pattern is that we stand by our allegiances in spite of counter indications. We do not move to verify the facts, or else we ignore them. Or even worse, we distort and obliterate facts to forge a counterproof. This attitude is a hindrance to learning. Thinking and learning necessarily include listening to the views and ideas of other persons and relating those views and ideas to our own experience. When we shut our minds to what others can offer to us, we limit our own growth.

    Another common error follows the exact opposite pattern. Instead of machinations to falsify what we are told, we swallow just any piece of information as readily as an addict. This becomes particularly problematic when we accept reportage of news from places beyond our personal acquaintance or an official line without critical examination.

    A third type of error is well illustrated by the following amusing anecdote I once read in the writings of Charles De Garno, an American Herbartian. It seems a German newspaper reporter once found himself seated across from an American in a small compartment aboard a France-bound train. The American scrutinized the German and proceeded to write something down in his journal, at which the German felt compelled to respond by jotting a comment in his. That night when they lodged in the same inn and came to be on better terms, they compared notes. What the American had originally written was, “Germans continue to wear their overcoats even when they’re sweating from the heat,” while the German had secretly responded with “Americans put their pencils to their lips as they examine the subject they’re writing about.” Both had a good laugh and erased the offending passages. This is a good example of the dangers of generalizing from irrelevant specifics without complete data.

    A fourth pattern, a corollary of the above, is that of drawing conclusions from one case and then extending them to another when there is no essential parallel between the circumstances. This is aptly expressed in the Japanese proverb “Once scalded by hot food, some persons will even blow at a vinaigrette to cool it off.” Or country folk may come to the big city, have an unfortunate experience with one con artist, and then refuse to trust any city dweller thereafter.

    Yet a fifth pattern is our tendency to write off actual occurrences when they are far removed from our common experience or everyday norms. We tend to stand by our preconceptions, disallowing proofs to the contrary, and going so far as to doubt even the persons who would present such proofs. Contradictions of this kind are rife in sectarian disputes and must be dealt with on objective grounds before real thinking can take place.

    Finally, when things veer too far from what we want to believe, we simply fall back on the oldest scheme of self-justification —that of “Might makes right” —for fear that even discussing an issue on equal grounds with an opposing view lends it legitimacy.

    Whatever the avowed reasons, the underlying patterns all amount to emotional defences of mistaken hypotheses based on one’s limited knowledge up to that point that prevent us from looking at realities outside those limits. Our eyes are coloured by attachments to personal loss and gain. Either we avoid all recognition of the facts, or else we pick up only data we consider favourable while discarding the rest.

    But no matter how extensively we extrapolate beyond the narrow confines of previous experience and present mental schemata, there is no sure way of predicting the unlimited expanse of unknowns that lie ahead. Although it is a simple matter to dismiss the shallow preconceptions of the undisciplined, it is, paradoxically, none too easy to accept the realization that predictions based on a solid body of scientific evidence may not be fool proof either. We often hear great scholars warn that the sum total of human knowledge is but a drop in the vast ocean of unknowns. Yet, short of the minute incremental expansion of knowledge achieved through cognition, tempered by a hard and true scientific attitude, we would be forever condemned to leaping into petty emotional evaluations from the fixed, minuscule bounds of our own imaginings. We would never be free from self-aggrandizement without the humbling realization of just how little we do know.

    What matters is that we establish measures and scales of evaluation. And then, with the true humility associated with the scientific method, we must take care not to get ahead of ourselves. There is no weighing kilograms on a gram scale. Everything must be done in minute particulars. It is not easy to throw away our preconceived scales of generalization. The human leaning toward laziness and self-vindication would just as soon cover up the issues, I am sure, though nothing could be so damaging to a scholar’s reputation. There can be no excuses. We must earnestly wipe the slate clean of preconceptions.

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    • #

      This reflects the climate debate precisely:

      Finally, when things veer too far from what we want to believe, we simply fall back on the oldest scheme of self-justification —that of “Might makes right” —for fear that even discussing an issue on equal grounds with an opposing view lends it legitimacy.

      That is the main tool of warmenistas and their supporters (MSM etc).

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    Rod Stuart

    Robert O
    You previous prediction of the diesel alternative is certainly coming to fruition.
    One thing that never ceases to amaze me is that Fairfax and the ABC have never bothered to discover which facility is the TVPS.
    They insist on taking pictures of the old Bell Bay Power facility liability in all their stories.
    I guess it is probably because it has quite a tall stack. I suppose it is even more amazing that they haven’t photo shopped some billowing black smoke coming out of it.
    Journalism in this State is a joke. At least in this one the green circulating water pumps belong to TVPS.

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    • #

      I wasn’t going to make any comment about the Tasmanian lake levels this week but the reserves were

      Dec. 16 3274 GWh or 22.4%
      Jan 18 2884 Gwh or 20%
      Jan 25 2727 Gwh or 18.9%

      So that’s 40 days and the use of 547 GWh of electricity, or 13.7 Gwh per day. So that’s about 200 days left if usage and production stay the same. The TVPS is now running so all things being equal they will probably make it to Winter just. However, the longterm effect will be considerable as the HEC must build-up its storages to something more than 50%, and the only way is to buy Latrobe Valley coal fired power overnight and not sell any Hydro power for a while.

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        Rod Stuart

        I noticed in the press that it had finally dawned on Bryan Green that if the combined cycle machine had been in operation for the entire period that it was in storage, the resulting 3,000 Gwh of production would have resulted in reservoir levels 20% higher, all else being equal.

        “He said the move to fast-track the gas unit’s return shows the Tamar Valley Power Station should not have been shut down more than 18 months ago.
        “We were saying that they should have been operating the machines at the Tamar Valley power station to conserve water in Tasmania,” he said.”

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      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      G’day Rod,
      Has any of the recent rain reached the catchment(s) feeding the dams? Sounds like a lot of water is around, but is it too far east?
      Cheers,
      Dave B

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      • #

        Some of the rain on the East coast will end up at the Trevallyn Dam which is minus 6 m. Takes about 3-4 days to get there and will be helpful. Most of the power stations, except Poatina, rely on the west coast catchments and dam levels are low. Lake Gordon minus 40 m. which is the most important.

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  • #
    Ruairi

    More politicians now, will not be seen.
    To blindly lend support to all things Green.

    Pretentious clever scientists abound,
    But character beneath is rarely found.

    When foxes run the coop,it’s one sure bet,
    That each year will be then the warmest yet.

    More CO2 from man can’t be the cause,
    That ends the warming and gives us the Pause.

    From data sets the warmists always pick,
    Whichever one best fits their hockey stick.

    Renewables worldwide can not replace,
    How fossil fuels help the human race.

    For eons hence,the Reef will still be Great,
    So for those who haven’t been,it’s not too late.

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    Rod Stuart

    In a replay of 1982, [snip] good-for-nothing Bob Brown was arrested the other day.
    It was extremely short sighted of the authorities to hold the old reprobate for only 19 days then.
    We can always hope that this time the sentence will be a more respectable thirty five or forty years.
    Here again this ‘useful idiot’ illustrates no respect whatever for the rule of law. It is because of his ilk that the greenies seem to think the ‘right to protest’ includes interfering with the property of others, willful disobedience and trampling on the right of others. It is time for this indiscriminate criminal to do some real time in the crowbar hotel.

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      ianl8888

      It is very unlikely any Green will actually be jailed for deliberate damage to other people’s property

      Fines, paid by Greenpeace, yes …
      Suspended sentences, accompanied by grimacing from the magistrate, yes …

      But actual jail time ? The MSM headline: “Green Hero Jailed for Saving the Planet”

      …. ho hum …

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      • #
        James Murphy

        indeed, look at the way the Greenpeace people were treated by the media (especially the ABC) when the Russians didn’t put up with their trespassing onto Gazprom’s Prirazlomnoye platform. You’d think they had just freed slaves, given women the vote, and cured cancer, instead of endangering lives and potentially causing the very thing they want to avoid (had their been any oil on the platform to spill – and had their been any active drilling).

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      clive

      He’d probably like it in the”Crowbar Hotel”as long as he has plenty of”Soap”He always looks a bit Ill,don’t you think?

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    Another Ian

    A different version of re-centreing

    ” jclarke341
    January 30, 2016 at 11:04 am

    Thank you, thank you, thank you! A wonderful blend of science and sociology! I especially loved: “After centuries of scientific progress, Trenberth and his ilk have devolved climate science to the pre-Copernican days so that humans are once again at the center of the universe…” This statement sums up the whole paradigm of modern environmentalism. which sees ‘nature’ as a perfectly balanced, static equilibrium, that is only disrupted by the presence of humans and their ‘unnatural’ behaviors. ANY change, therefore, must be the fault of humanity.”

    From comments at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/30/pacifica-californias-natural-coastal-erosion-and-the-lust-for-climate-catastrophes/

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    el gordo

    On another thread we recently discussed the demise of Neanderthals and the main theory to date appears to be that a large volcanic eruption was to blame.

    It was the final straw for the bulk of them, but ultimately after 300,000 years the steroid effect (cold adaptation) may have been their undoing. This is only a shallow theory and requires beefing up.

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    • #
      ianl8888

      … the main theory to date appears to be that a large volcanic eruption was to blame

      Actually, only an hypothesis. It’s really difficult to envisage an actual theory for this extinction; more likely to be a combination of many factors

      I mean, if Neanderthalensis was wiped out by volcanic eruptions, why not the contemporaneous homo sapiens ?

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      TdeF

      There is a show on Neanderthals and their DNA from bone samples which is now available in parts shows a considerable overlap with what we consider humans, so whatever happened to them, they are still with us. Most of modern humans came out of Africa in two waves, one at 70,000 years ago and a second at only 50,000. There were three waves into the Americas. In fact much of the Pacific was settled only in the last 1,000 years including New Zealand. When you look at all the racial diversity, that has all happened in a very short time. The older Neanderthals are still with us apparently.

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    pat

    woke up to this today.

    listen from just before 6mins for Mary followed by Jason:

    AUDIO: 25mins37secs: 30 Jan: ABC Blueprint for Living: In Season: Summer
    Do you reckon our summers are getting longer? Mary Voice would say it’s not your imagination. She knows the culprit, and it’s going to mean more heatwaves, more extreme weather and more bushfires.
    Big fires are getting more frequent — but by how much? Jason Sharples has coordinated a new paper which shows extreme bushfires are hitting Australia three times more often than a century ago…
    Guests:
    Mary Voice, Vice-President
    Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society…
    Dr Jason Sharples, Associate Professor, School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences University of New South Wales…
    ETC
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/blueprintforliving/in-season-summer-2016/7101756

    article on the program:

    29 Jan: ABC Blueprint for Living: Matthew Crawford: Extreme bushfires and why they’re becoming more frequent in Australia
    While summer has always been fire season in Australia, extreme bushfires are happening three times more often than they did a century ago, and experts say the reasons why are worrying. Matthew Crawford reports…
    It doesn’t help that new research points to ‘extreme’ blazes—fires that burn more than 100,000 hectares over the course of a week or so—becoming more frequent…
    While the best data comes from Victoria, there’s good evidence that shows New South Wales and Tasmania are also experiencing an increased incidence of extreme fire, says Jason Sharples, an associate professor in applied mathematics at the University of New South Wales in Canberra…
    Sharples and his colleagues have looked at fire danger ratings, which amalgamate surface weather conditions to give a single number that grades the likelihood of fires occurring and the difficulty of suppressing them, for a new paper entitled Natural Hazards in Australia: Extreme Bushfire.
    Over the last century, there have been measurable increases in those ratings…
    According to the professor, several factors contribute to extreme fires, but atmospheric stability plays a large role. In a stable atmosphere, we might see weather conditions such as fog or drizzle. On the same day in an unstable atmosphere we might instead experience thunderstorms and turbulence.
    Unstable atmospheric conditions mean fire plumes are able to develop higher than they otherwise would, leading to more severe fires at ground level.
    ***Unfortunately, climate change means Australia will experience more days of atmospheric instability…
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/blueprintforliving/extreme-bushfires-and-why-theyre-getting-more-frequent/7121452

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      Dave

      Pat

      Amazing the ABC is sprouting this junk

      According to the professor Jason Sharples:

      “several factors contribute to extreme fires, but atmospheric stability plays a large role”

      Fire intensity depends solely on 3 factors fuel, oxygen and heat.

      The only successful methods for prevention is:
      A – Prescribed burning
      B – Grazing by livestock

      So many inquiries & reports have been done, yet these two methods get totally ignored evry single time.

      This Professor is away with the fairies, claims at the end:

      Unstable atmospheric conditions mean fire plumes are able to develop higher than they otherwise would, leading to more severe fires at ground level.
      ***Unfortunately, climate change means Australia will experience more days of atmospheric instability…

      Seems that research in this area always gets back to the Gravy Train of Climate Change $

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        pat

        Dave – never mind…the ABC presenters lapped it all up…and no doubt their listeners too!

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        Chris in Hervey Bay

        How does one define “Unstable atmospheric conditions” ?
        Surely, in the scientific world, those “conditions” would be defined by a set of numbers and when those numbers are reached, then we have “instability”.
        What are the numbers ? Or is this a lot of babble trying to seem like “scientific” mumbo jumbo to try to fool the plebs.
        Recently here in Queensland, with all the thunder storms about, we are being fed all sorts of stories about the “unstable atmosphere” on the TV weather, every night.

        I just want to know what the numbers are.

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          Chris in Hervey Bay

          Well, 4 RED thumbs and no numbers. Looks like the experts don’t know either !

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          Peter C

          Unstable atmospheric conditions occur when the atmospheric temperature gradient ( lapse rate) is conducive to thermal formation.

          The BOM gives the results of its balloon flights as a Skew T log P diagram. Understanding the diagrams takes a bit of work but the BOM does have a tutorial on its website. These diagrams help to predict when unstable atmospheric conditions will occur later in the day.

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    • #
      ianl8888

      … new research …

      No details, such as the name of the paper, publisher, authors etc where one can check the “3x” meme

      Fighting this propaganda is impossible without the detail, as the ABC well knows. Nic Lewis should have a go at the statistics here

      A good example of why I think the Age of Stupid is irreversible even in the medium term

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    el gordo

    The other revelation (for me at least) was uncovering the Klimatariat’s battle strategy.

    ——–

    January 5, 2009: email 1231190304

    Phil Jones writes to Tim Johns, Chris Folland, and Doug Smith, regarding temperature
    predictions:

    “I hope you’re not right about the lack of warming lasting till about 2020. I’d rather hoped to see the earlier Met Office press release with Doug’s paper that said something like—“half the years to 2014 would exceed the warmest year currently on record, 1998”!

    “Still a way to go before 2014.

    “I seem to be getting an email a week from skeptics saying “where’s the warming gone”? I know the warming is on the decades scale, but it would be nice to wear their smug grins away.”

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    handjive

    Hasta la vista El Niño – but don’t hold out for ‘normal’ weather just yet (theconversation)

    Observations from the Pacific show that El Niño has likely peaked, with models predicting its demise over the coming months.
    So does this mean the weather will return to “normal”?

    ~ ~ ~
    Normal?

    La Nina caused global sea level drop (phys.org)

    “The 2011 La Niña was so strong that it caused global mean sea level to drop by 5 millimeters (0.2 inches), a new study shows.
    Since the early 1990s, sea level has been rising by about 3 millimeters (0.1 inches) per year, satellite data show.
    But between the beginning of 2010 and the middle of 2011, sea level fell by 5 millimeters (0.2 inches).”

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      handjive

      Note how satellites are good for measuring sea levels, but can’t be used for measuring surface air temperatures.

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        handjive

        Kevin Trenbeth on the 2011 Sea level Bump and Australia’s wettest two year period

        “Kevin Trenbeth visited Australia last year and spoke at the University of NSW under the auspices of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.
        The lecture was delivered on October 15, 2012.

        He highlighted that asking whether a particular extreme weather event was caused by climate change is the wrong question.

        All weather events now have a climate change component.

        Trenbeth elaborated that climate scientists can’t tell whether climate change is impacting the operation of El Nino (ENSO) as climate models are at present unable to sufficiently model the phenomenon. “It may well be that it is changing, but we can’t really tell.

        Queue the video to start at 57 minutes 7 seconds at the section on Flooding in Queensland in early 2011 and the sea level rise pothole and bump.
        Worth watching is the intro by ABC science guru Robin Williams.
        . . .
        Any 97% Climate Scientists prepared to “walk the plank” and make a prediction on the next La Niña and how much sea levels
        should reduce because of Global Warming?

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    Neville

    Steve McIntyre shows how the dendro climate scientists sometimes cherry pick the samples they want to use to fool everyone about earlier temps.
    They even admit that they do this and Steve provides some examples in his latest post.

    http://climateaudit.org/2016/01/29/cherry-picking-by-darrigo/

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    pat

    30 Jan: WaPo: Abigail Higgins: Climate change could devastate Africa. It’s already hurting this Kenyan town
    Temperatures have risen by at least 0.5 degrees Celsius — that’s nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit — in the past 50 to 100 years in most parts of Africa, and they are projected to rise faster than the global average in the 21st century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading international authority on the subject…
    Scientists think the warming will probably continue even if the world makes good on the commitments reached last month in Paris in a landmark treaty to lower greenhouse-gas emissions…
    By mid-century, climate change will probably reduce the yields of major cereal crops in sub-Saharan Africa by over 20 percent, according to the IPCC…
    “I don’t know what climate change is, but I know from all the changes — the constant droughts, the seasons are gone — these are changes happening in our land. Our life is becoming hard, and we can’t do anything,” said Tioko’s father-in-law, Joseph Ekimomor, who is 60…
    “We always used to have droughts, but they didn’t finish everything. I’d remain with at least five goats, and then I could start over again, but then there was the drought that finished everything,” Tioko said.
    He does not remember exactly when that occurred, but it was probably the drought in 1991-1992 that affected 1.5 million Kenyans…
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/africa/climate-change-could-devastate-africa-its-
    already-hurting-this-kenyan-town/2016/01/29/f77c8e5a-9f58-11e5-9ad2-
    568d814bbf3b_story.html?tid=sm_tw

    WaPo’s Abigail surely cherry-picked her town!

    30 Jan: ReliefWeb: Kenya Food Security Outlook Update, January 2016
    Food security improves following above-average short rains
    Key Messages
    •Most households in western areas and Rift Valley are maintaining Minimal (IPC Phase 1)acute food insecurity following the October to January long rains harvest, which has increased market supplies and household food stocks and helped stabilize market prices.
    The harvest is estimated to be approximately 10 percent above the five-year average.
    •In pastoral areas, above-average short rains, driven in part by the ongoing El Nino, led to the seasonal recovery of rangeland resources, increasing livestock productivity…
    •In the southeastern and coastal marginal agricultural areas, the above-average short rains is likely to result in an average to above-average February/March harvest, further supporting household food security…
    http://reliefweb.int/report/kenya/kenya-food-security-outlook-update-january-2016

    to be continued…

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      TdeF

      Wonderful.

      “We always used to have droughts, but they didn’t finish everything. I’d remain with at least five goats, and then I could start over again, but then there was the drought that finished everything,” Tioko said.
      He does not remember exactly when that occurred.

      With information like this, who needs satellites? Goat based measurement. Infallible.

      Remember when India’s glaciers were melting and 400 million will die of thirst by 2035? Offical IPCC peer reviewed science based ultimately on a single throw away comment by a tour guide, maybe. Plus an unfortunate typographical error. You could not write this stuff, but the IPCC can.

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      Andrew

      Good news – temps rising more than the global average in Africa means even less warming everywhere else. And since its rising MASSIVELY faster in the poles, that suggests Asia, Europe, Americas and AUS will be almost untouched.

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    pat

    26 Jan: MoneyWebSouthAfrica: Sungula Nkabinde: Kenya to lead African growth story in 2016
    While growth prospects in SA continue to dwindle, the East African country is a rising star within the continent.
    You would expect South Africa, as the continent’s most advanced economy, to feature heavily in a discussion on Africa’s growth. But it was sparsely mentioned at the 2016 Africa Outlook seminar hosted by Frontier Advisory Deloitte on Thursday…
    Instead, it was East Africa, and Kenya in particular, that emerged as the protagonists in the Africa growth story…
    Unlike South Africa and many commodity-driven economies on the continent that, not long ago, were the champions of the Africa and emerging markets growth story, Kenya’s growth is driven by 14 sectors. They each contribute 10-12% of GDP, with the exception of
    agriculture, which contributes 25%.
    M’Mbijjewe said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had revised its forecasts on Kenya’s GDP growth upwards, from 3.8 to 4.3%…
    http://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/africa/kenya-to-lead-african-growth-story-in-2016/

    29 Jan: AllAfrica: Brian Ngugi: Kenya: Diversify Economy to Grow, IMF Advises Kenya
    IMF Kenya representative Armando Morales cited the need to enhance productivity in the country’s agricultural sector, saying it holds great fortunes for development.
    “Kenya is less affected by the slump in (global) commodity prices compared to other African countries…
    “Eventually this should translate into deeper insertion of Kenyan products in global markets, especially when the ongoing investment in infrastructure upgrades start to pay off.”
    For years, the Kenyan economy has largely been backed by agriculture, with the country being a key exporter of tea, horticultural produce, coffee and pyrethrum…
    According to latest government data, the country’s economy expanded by 5.8 per cent during the third quarter of 2015, compared to 5.2 per cent recorded during a similar period in 2014…
    http://allafrica.com/stories/201601290113.html

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  • #
    pat

    followup links re Kenya are in moderation.

    30 Jan: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: The wind gap that will put our lights out
    The more wind turbines we have, the more we need reliable back-up from fossil fuels
    Last week, I reported how output from our 2,237 wind farms was producing a mere 0.1 per cent of our power, with 75 per cent of it coming from the coal and gas the Government is hellbent on phasing out. The greenies gleefully riposted by recalling the day wind had generated 25 per cent of our power (even though it was for half an hour at 5.30 one October morning when demand was minimal).
    In fact, the greenies fell right into the trap here, because what they never want to tell us is that the more wind turbines we have, the more we need reliable back-up from fossil fuels to cover the gap between windmill output when they are generating at full power, and when the wind drops and they contribute almost nothing…
    ***Vicious groupthink rejoicing at death of climate ‘heretic’
    The other day, when a genial ex‑professor of geology was suddenly struck down by cancer in Australia at the age of 74, a very odd thing happened. Across the blogs and the Twittersphere, people rushed to rejoice at his death as if it were some great victory. Using startlingly vile language, one exulted in the hope that this good-humoured and lovable man would be feeling “the warmth now you’re in hell”. Bob Carter’s crime, in the eyes of that frenzied mob, was that he was an outspoken “climate denier”…READ ALL
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/12131760/The-wind-gap-that-will-put-our-lights-out.html

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      Graeme No.3

      Don’t worry pat, the UK is installing more diesel generators to cover for the failings of wind. The combination will RAISE emissions AND the cost of electricity.

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      • #
        Another Ian

        Graeme

        And remember that that once world class British industrial diesel industry is now mostly foreign owned e.g.

        Perkins by Caterpillar

        Most of the remainder by MAN (including Deltics)

        Not sure if Lister-Petter are still waving that flag

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    pat

    27 Jan: CBC Punchline (Not the News): Increasingly desperate David Suzuki staples left nostril shut to cut carbon emissions by 50%
    Environmentalist and national treasure David Suzuki says he’s growing impatient waiting for Canadians to take climate change seriously, and that he’s been forced to take a drastic step to compensate for his country’s ambivalence. This morning at 8 AM PST, Suzuki firmly stapled his left nostril shut in order to cut his personal carbon emissions by roughly 50%.
    “It’s come to this,” he says as he casually rescues 14 endangered whales with his bare hands.
    Suzuki says he hopes all Canadians will follow his example in the weeks to come…
    http://www.cbc.ca/punchline/m_not-the-news/david-suzuki-staples-left-nostril-shut-to-cut-carbon

    29 Jan: Salt Lake Tribune: Benjamin Wood: Utah students get lesson on climate change from Sundance documentary
    Documentary filmmaker Josh Fox made a special stop Friday to screen his latest film for a group of students who were visiting the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center.
    And in “How to Let Go of the World (and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change),” those students from Salt Lake and Utah counties saw families displaced by Hurricane Sandy, shorelines shrinking against rising sea levels, and residents of Beijing hesitant to go outside and breathe polluted air.
    After the Sundance Film Festival screening, his signature banjo in hand, Fox explained to the young Utahns that just the night before, air quality in Salt Lake City had reached Beijing levels of particulate matter…
    “It hit really close to home how polluted we really are,” said Evan Pappis, a senior at Juan Diego Catholic High School.
    His classmate Paola Pedroza put a finer point on her feelings.
    “I’m scared,” she said. “It’s so scary.”…
    “We’ve made it a different planet,” (Bill) McKibben says in the film. “We’re doing it really fast, and it’s really dangerous.”…
    He (Fox) encouraged students to research climate change and get involved, and he ended the presentation by performing a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his banjo.
    http://www.sltrib.com/home/3477421-155/utah-students-get-lesson-on-climate

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    pat

    PICS/VIDEOS: 28 Jan: MiddleEastEye: Snow falls in Kuwait for ‘first time ever’
    Snow fell on Kuwait on Thursday morning for the first time in the country’s history, pictures sent to Middle East Eye show. Footage sent to MEE showed snow flakes falling in the Gulf state, where temperatures have plummeted in recent days…
    While snow is unheard of in Kuwait, in neighbouring Saudi Arabia the north of the country regularly sees snowfall.In the city of Rafha on Thursday temperatures fell to -2C. Photos and footage sent to MEE showed the ground covered in snow…
    http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/snow-falls-kuwait-first-time-ever-1565913282

    PICS/VIDEO: 29 Jan: MalaysiaDigest: Heavy Snowfall Catches Saudis By Surprise, Shutting Schools
    Snow and Saudi Arabia are two words we rarely see together but for the past few days, an unusual cold spell sweeping into the Gulf has seen the northern regions blanketed in snow even in the normally sun-scorched Kuwait.
    Pictures of snow-covered camels and sand dunes started appearing in social media a few days ago and initially many netizens brushed them off as doctored images.
    However, the snow and freezing temperatures are real with Saudi Arabia announcing it was suspending classes in the Northern border areas as temperatures plunged below 0°C as snowfall thickened, Al Arabiya English reports…
    According to media reports, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries are set to enter a 13-day cold spell that started yesterday, emirates247.com reports…
    http://www.malaysiandigest.com/frontpage/29-4-tile/592412-heavy-snowfall-catches-saudis-by-surprise-shutting-schools.html

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    pat

    he’s got it:

    2 pages: 30 Jan: Town Hall: Ken Blackwell: Big Oil’s Effort To Tax Carbon and Your Family’s Finances
    As world leaders gathered in Paris last month for the United Nations climate summit, many seemed surprised that several large oil companies, including BP and Shell, endorsed a carbon tax as a “key element” of any international climate deal.
    Less surprising was the preference of those in the renewable energy sector to see a tax on carbon…
    But is support for a carbon tax among oil companies a sign that even they have seen the light on climate, or might there be something else going on?
    Bank on the latter…
    For renewable energy companies, it’s self-evident what they desire: a tax on their competitors—namely, fossil fuels…
    But what about these oil companies – have they finally had a climate epiphany?
    Hardly: their motivations are no different from renewable energy companies. Today, big oil companies are not just big oil companies anymore – they are big oil and natural gas companies. For them, a carbon tax gives them an edge over their primary competitor: coal…
    The industry isn’t especially concerned about the higher prices a carbon tax would impose because they won’t be paying it. Once a carbon tax is levied, it will be baked into every company’s production cost and passed along to consumers…READ ON
    http://townhall.com/columnists/kenblackwell/2016/01/30/big-oils-effort-to-tax-carbon–and-your-familys-finances-n2112135

    (About the writer: Ken Blackwell, a contributing editor at Townhall.com, is a senior fellow at the Family Research Council and the American Civil Rights Union and is on the board of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He is the co-author of the bestseller The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, on sale in bookstores everywhere)

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    At first, you might not understand the significance of this, but this is indicative of what is happening in China.

    I’m keeping an eye on what happens in China with respect to power generation, and also consumption, and I have a good regular data base to do just that.

    I noticed this article on power consumption in Beijing, and this is the translation of the article at this link:

    Beijing winter electricity load record highs (and this is recent, November of 2015)

    It seems to read innocuously enough.

    That total load there of just under 17GW is just over half of the total for the whole of Australia at its maximum consumption. Now, the population of Beijing is around half the population of the whole of Australia, so what this effectively means is that Beijing is getting close to the average power consumption that Australia has, and what the Australian public takes for granted as what is required to actually keep everything operating as it is now.

    So let’s say here that Beijing is around one for one (1:1) parity with Australia. (where the first number is power consumption and the second number is population)

    However, when you look at the whole of China, the total population is 1.4 Billion and when you take the total power consumption for all of China then that ratio looks like this.

    1:2.25

    So, in effect, China is not even half way towards what we take as being the requirement for power availability to keep our Country running.

    In reality then, this means that China still has a very long way to go before they achieve a similar situation with respect to the availability of electrical power for everyone, and keep in mind here that when it comes to power consumption, Australia is about the same as for every already Developed Country.

    No matter what anyone in the media tries to say, power plant construction in China will still be going ahead at a similar rate to what it has been for the last ten years or so.

    In some of the major cities in China, power consumption will be close to that 1:1 ratio, so all that tells me is that there are still many hundreds of millions of people ins China who have no access to power or an extremely limited access to very little power.

    Tony.

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    • #

      And just some quick calculations on some of the other major areas.

      India – 1:9.8

      Indonesia – 1:10.4

      Africa – 1:13.5

      Tony.

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      ianl8888

      Tony

      As you may know, I spent 4 years working on Chinese raw coal fuel supplies, especially on the more efficient mining potentials. (I actually spent a considerable time mapping in underground mines for improved engineering design – the quid pro quo from the Chinese was that I taught their younger geologists how to). Obviously, the overall tonnages, production and consumption, were a constant neon light for us

      Despite the MSM dislike of China (fearful, racist xenophobia), in the last quarter-century the Chinese have lifted over 300 million people out of abject poverty (I have seen that first hand, heartbreaking) into what we would term lower-middle class. This has never been done before in recorded human history

      Yes, there’s still 1 billion to go. But another 30-40 years should see another 600 million lifted out of poverty. So the vast majority of 1.4 billion people are given improvements in living standards beyond imagination in less than one century

      Coal, nuclear, hydro … the engines of all this. This is why the Green dipst!cks hate them so

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    Stephan Lewandowsky is at it again, arguing in favor of Phil Jonesist obscurantism in science (“Why should I make my data available to you when your aim is to find something wrong with it?”*), not an event that would normally rise to the level of our contempt except that it’s Nature who’s given him a platform for this toxic drivel.

    Paul Matthews is all over it here.

    *Solution to today’s Question For Idiots, By Idiots:

    Because my aim is to find something wrong with it.

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    Another Ian

    “REDBACK.

    Undiscovered Riches: The economists at the Canberra-based Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) have been tucking into some funny mushrooms judging by item 1003 on their 1994-95 research program. Project 1003 aims to “Develop a method of assessing the value of undiscovered mineral resources in a broadly defined mineral province as a basis of quantitative resource assessment”.

    Listen fellas, how can you assess the value of something that is “undiscovered”? Redback is eagerly awaiting an explanation from ABARE’s executive director, Brian Fisher.”

    Australian Farm Journal November 1994.

    Some comments a few threads back reminded me of this but it took a bit of finding.

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  • #
    ianl8888

    “Develop a method of assessing the value of undiscovered mineral resources in a broadly defined mineral province as a basis of quantitative resource assessment”

    At first, second and third blush, it’s hoplessly moron!c

    After walking around the block 8 times while trying to get my head straight, the notion of quantifying undiscovered resources reamins as impenetrably dense as ever

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    • #

      Are you saying it’s a bit like Mike Mann’s email threatening to hire an investigative reporter to “expose [Steve McIntyre’s] thusfar-unexplored links to Big Oil”?

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        Andrew McRae

        That is hardly a fair comparison.
        I’d say that Mike’s plan was even more dunderheadedly futile than ABARE’s plan.
        If ABARE were able to do their impossible task, at least in theory it would allow better use of mining investment.
        If Mike were able to uncover secret cash flows from Big Oil to the big Mac, it still wouldn’t change the truth of the statistical analysis and findings that McIntyre has published over the years.
        That’s because no fact conflicts with any other fact.

        10

    • #
      Another Ian

      But think of the exercise you got!

      It did seem questionable at the time

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    • #
      C.J.Richards

      Same may be said of efforts to quantify future warming of the atmosphere with models, only there it’s easier to fake the results as they come in.

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    • #
      jorgekafkazar

      Simply write up a grant request for walking the area with a dowsing rod, but call it something else, a “mobile, surface-mounted, subterranean mineral locator device,” or something sciency. Figure out what would be a reasonable cost and multiply it times 20. With a computer and a little effort, you can have the results charted, including the phony statistics, before the check arrives to do the work.

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    pat

    plenty of criticism of this analyis in the comments, but I love how these pieces are ignored by the CAGW crowd, who like to make out Obama is the green President, saving the planet:

    28 Jan: Financial Times: Ed Morse: Welcome to the new oil order
    Forget Opec, it is time to get a grip of permanent realities of the market
    (Ed Morse is the global head of commodities research at Citi)
    The airwaves and Twitter are full of commentary about how Saudi Arabia, the rest of Opec and Russia can balance the market by cutting production and raising prices…
    The unconventional oil revolution has rendered such thoughts obsolete.
    That is because the new energy world order is one in which the US, whose production was once half that of the other two producer giants, is now on a par with them. And that turns out to make a big difference…
    The shale revolution in the US has made a huge difference. The US is now arguably the world’s largest oil liquids producer in the world, if you take into account crude oil production and other supply like liquefied petroleum gases (LPGs), biofuels output and the incremental volumetric gains from having the largest refining system in the world…
    On paper the US might produce 9.3m barrels a day against Russia’s 11.1m b/d and Saudi Arabia’s 10.3m b/d. Add everything that looks and smells and is used as oil and the US is the biggest of the lot, producing 14.8m b/d versus the kingdom’s 11.7m b/d, versus. Russia’s 11.5m b/d…
    http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/63790fdc-c5ad-11e5-b3b1-7b2481276e45.html#axzz3yfstiWfq

    meanwhile, keep those coal-fired plants running folks:

    28 Jan: Reuters: French, Finnish reactor problems cast shadow over UK nuclear plan
    By Geert De Clercq and Benjamin Mallet
    A potentially even bigger problem for EDF’s British plans are the weak spots found in the reactor vessel of the second EPR, under construction in Flamanville, on France’s west coast.
    Flamanville is years behind schedule and its budget has swollen from 3 billion to 10.5 billion euros. In April 2015 French nuclear regulator ASN said “very serious anomalies” had been found in its reactor vessel…
    A source familiar with the situation told Reuters that before finalising Areva’s reactor arm takeover, EDF wants guarantees not only for OL3, but also for Flamanville.
    “EDF’s offer depends on total immunisation against the OL3 case and the Flamanville vessel,” the source said.
    Experts say the Flamanville risk is bigger than OL3 because if the spots cannot be fixed, EDF would have to break the vessel out of the nearly finished reactor building…
    But industry experts say that while Hinkley Point will stretch EDF to the limit, it is unthinkable it would abandon the project, as it is essential for keeping France’s nuclear industry alive in the coming decade before EDF starts renewing its ageing French nuclear fleet…
    http://www.reuters.com/article/edf-britain-idUSL8N15C22S

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    I’m just going to put this ….. out there, even though it probably has no scientific basis, and when it comes to Science, I know very little, but having said that, I would guess I do know more about science than perhaps 90% of the general public, and that’s only because I come to Joanne’s site here.

    You all know I served in the RAAF for 25+ years. During that time, I had two major Postings to RAAF Base Amberley, and that is where I will reference this amateur theory to.

    That first posting to Amberley was in early 1969 for just less than a year. We had ordered, but still not received the F111, and we also were waiting for the Chinook Helicopters which were going to 12 Squadron. This was the time when the RAAF still operated helicopters, before the Labor Government gave them all to the Army.

    Now, Amberley just operated some Iroquois choppers and a Squadron of Canberra Bombers. The Amberley base, while still quite large, was still quite a small one, if you can see that point.

    In the build up to receiving the F111, the main runway was lengthened, and widened. Huge new tarmac areas were also put in for the 2 Squadrons of F111, on top of what existed for the Canberras, and a huge new tarmac was added for the Chinooks. Then the pads at the end of the main strip were also made considerably larger, and extra taxiways were also added.

    All of this added considerably to the area of very hot tarmac and concrete. Vast swathes of trees were also removed. New maintenance facilities were also added as were new roads for access etcetera.

    Now, as an airman actually living on the base, you don’t pay all that much attention to this at all, as it’s, well, just happening.

    I was then Posted away from Amberley, but all through the 70’s I was on detachments to that Base at least two three times a year, so I still knew the Base well. Each time, there was always something new, as the area under hot tarmac and concrete grew considerably.

    I was again Posted back to Amberley in mid 1980. By this time, the monster new Maintenance facility went in. There were again vast new tarmac areas the strip again lengthened and widened, new taxiways etc.

    Now I also played cricket, and I always played for a civilian team, because the RAAF teams were of a lesser standard than I was playing at, so I always wanted to challenge myself. Because of that, I was more often than not the only RAAF person on either team playing on those Saturdays.

    One game, I was talking with an old farmer, whose Son was playing on the opposition team. We were batting so I was just waiting my turn to bat, usually at Number 10 or 11, so I was waiting for most of the Innings.

    I was talking with this farmer, and he mentioned that he had been in the District for two generations, so he had been there since the Base at Amberley was in its early days, prior to all the work being done.

    This time around at Amberley, I was living on the Base, just awaiting my forthcoming marriage in January of 1981. What I noticed in that last Summer on the Base was the plethora of really violent storms, nothing like what I saw from the earlier Posting in 1969/70.

    The storms were lightning right on top of us, hail, and sometimes large hail, and these storms were all directly overhead, accompanied with sheets of rain, if not the hail itself. We would all sit out on our balconies outside our living quarter rooms with stubbies in hand just marvelling at them, something nearly all of us had never seen before, not just the odd occasion, but actually quite often. You could see them rolling over at around 4 PM, so usually they happened before during or after Mess time at 5.15PM.

    The farmer mentioned this and how it was only a recent thing since all that extra tarmac, concrete, roof area, etcetera had all gone in, as it had NEVER happened before in this area. These violent storms were still only localised around the Base at Amberley, and he put it down to what is now referred to as the Heat Island Effect, although he didn’t call it that at the time, just relating these violent storms to that vast area which was by now many many square miles of rising heat, and lots of it.

    So now, scroll forward to the times we live in now, and the plethora of violent storms hitting SE Queensland at an ever increasing rate, nowhere near as many as in earlier years.

    My (amateur) guessing here is this. Could not all of these storms be put down to that urban heat island effect, only on a much huger scale than for what was the same thing at the RAAF Base at Amberley.

    The general public has been conditioned to believe that all this extreme weather is the ….. SOLE result of global warming/climate change.

    Could not this actually be what this farmer explained to me in his own amateur way, based upon his own many years of observations. The Urban Heat Island Effect, only on a much larger scale.

    I understand this is not science, but just an observation really. I wouldn’t dare mention anywhere else, but here, I feel safer to actually bring it up in the first place.

    Any thoughts here?

    Tony.

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      TdeF

      Ancient Australia lacks mountains, all worn down. Mountains shape the weather, as around Townsville which is relatively dry with rain from 0.24metres to 2.4 metres and brown where Innisfail 260 km away can get 3.5 metres of rain a year. It is all about directing the hot moist air from the Pacific and this can happen in a short area. Then you get variability.

      A quote on Townsville rainfall “The year 2000 was the wettest on record with 2400mm then in 2001 the total rainfall for the year was 467mm – the second driest on record. Even across the city the amount of rain can vary considerably. ” Yes, the rain can vary x5:1

      This is not climate change. This is the climate.

      Anyway, logically winds do not actually hit mountains. Most flows around the mountains following the backpressure and updrafts and you could achieve the same effect with any updraft. My idea is to create a micro climate with a black strip 100km long and say 10km wide on the SA border, to create such an updraft, especially east of Lake Eyre. Instead of the Townsville rain shadow, you may achieve rain in Western NSW. Flooding Lake Eyre from the sea could produce a permanent rain system for the Murray Darling basin.

      What may have happened at Amberly is a huge concrete heat sink in weight and area which does exactly the same, triggering rain from the uplift of passing moisture or even just turbulence which is self propagating. Tree removal would help greatly in increasing the temperature.

      So we could change the climate, as may already have been done at Amberly, which is your point.

      This is what the IPCC should be investigating, not finding ways to stop economic development in democratic countries or raise carbon taxes for their friends. What was the banned Robert Mugabe doing in Paris? Just interested in the weather?

      Why aren’t climate sciences doing more to help us understand and control the climate? Why is it all about scaring people for cash and stopping development? Is the UN really there for world peace or to act as a proxy for all the tinpot military dictatorships of the world? The UN is a political body. So is the IPCC.

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        It made me think where this was mentioned:

        Anyway, logically winds do not actually hit mountains. Most flows around the mountains…..

        Look closely at this weather radar.

        Stapylton Weather Radar

        This is from the Doppler Radar at Stapylton, just South of Brisbane. This was my goto weather radar when we lived at Coomera, prior to moving here to Rockhampton.

        Now, look closely at the map after you find Coomera just down a little and right from centre.

        Note now a little to the left and down a bit from Coomera is Tamborine Mt. barely 12 Km from where we lived, and the darker brown area indicating higher ground.

        All the worst of those storms in South East Queensland would come in from the South West, bottom left of the map.

        I used to keep an eye on them because they became more fearsome over the years, considering we first moved to The Gold Coast in 1960.

        My brother was visiting one time, and I was watching this radar on my computer as the latest storm approached, and he was looking over my shoulder. He was a co-ordinator for the SES, so he more often than not always got a call after the worst of the storms.

        I queried him on a couple of points I had noticed over the last couple of years I had been using the radar as an indicator. We would often hear of horrendous hail damage, mainly in the two shopping centre car parks at Helensvale, barely five Km down the Highway, and also damage reported at Ormeau, around the same distance up the highway as Helensvale was down the highway. I wondered why they would get hit, and all we ever got at Coomera was just the rain, never any hail or huge winds like what was a fairly regular occurrence at those other two places.

        My brother pointed to that brown area with Mount Tamborine, and said that we were directly in the shadow of the direction the storms were coming from, and the worst of those severe storms just folded around Tamborine and rolled down into those areas.

        He mentioned that the ones we had to watch out were the ones coming in off the Ocean, from the South East, but they seldom, if ever had any hail in them, just lots of rain, and were not as prevalent as those others coming from the SW.

        The worst storms always came in from the South West, and in all the time we lived at Coomera, we never had hail or severe winds.

        I was a little doubtful at first when he told me that, not really believing that it was seemingly as simple as what he made it sound, but it proved to be absolutely accurate.

        Tony.

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      ROM

      When I started gliding back in 1963 there were still a lot of the “high performance” post WW2 wood built European gliders around.
      These aircraft were slow with very thick, high lift aerofoils , could turn on sixpence [ five cent coin equivalent ] and stay up and soar on the smell of an oily rag.
      They were built for the weaker soaring conditions, ie; lower and slower rates of lift generally found across Europe.

      There were a few occassions at a couple of regional gliding competitions where a couple of former European based glider pilots soared in the cooling evening air for literally miles along a sealed rural road utilising the heat and the very slow lift at around two hundred or three hundred feet up from the heat being given off the seal in the cooling evening air.
      All done at about two or three hundred feet above ground, a height that you should be normally be about to turn onto your final to your landing strip,

      We certainly often got thermals triggered off the 1300 metre long by 30 metre wide sealed runway at Horsham.
      And that runway is a flea bite of seal compared to the likes of Amberley.
      I have also regularly seen small thermals triggered off the seal at Horsham which often led to loud shouts of “thermal”, the signal to grab that glider wing tip and hold it down to stop the parked glider from starting a short cross country of its own accord in the thermal, a usually very expensive proposition.

      That heat is given off of large sealed areas and can be used to thermal in as well as heat released from under a tree canopy in a cooling evening air is widely known in gliding circles across the world.

      With a very large expanse of seal and concrete and lots of heat absorbing and heat releasing buildings and jet and big propeller aircraft stirring up the bottom layers of the atmosphere with their engines plus a high humidity and a close to unstable air mass with a sympathetic lapse rate , common in tropical conditions for a few ten of thousands of feet up, there is a high probability of triggering off some pretty solid instability with the very least some damn good sized cumulous grading to full scale CuNims and some decent thunderstorms as a result.

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      Len

      Years ago I was umpiring a game of Australian football in Ipswich, Queensland. There were quite a few RAAF people who played for the Ipswich Football Club. I knew the captain.(He was RAAF) After a goal was scored, a women in the crowd was shouting out aloud. I asked the captain “Who is that stupid bitch?” He calmly replied “That’s my wife”.

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      • #
        jorgekafkazar

        But was it really his wife? A friend of mine kept a photo of a rather odd-looking man on his desk at college. A fellow student finally asked, “Who is that tooly-looking geek?” “That’s Dad,” my friend replied proudly. It was actually a photo cut from the discarded dust jacket of his first year physics textbook.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      Tony I believe you mentioned this a while back (years maybe) when the subject of UHI effects were being discussed, it’s a very good question considering urban sprawls with large concrete/paved areas, I recall an idea of micro climates being suggested, it’s not that outlandish considering how deforestation can effect localised conditions.

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        TdeF

        My point is that the alleged scientists of the IPCC should be investigating such effects, not universally trying to prove CO2 proves Global Warming? Isn’t there something more important, given that this is patently not true? What effect is man having on the local environment. To claim we are heating the planet is far fetched, but to observe local and significant and even useful effects would be valuable research.

        Then when has the UN/IPCC made a stand against the massive Indonesian burnoff of rain forest in Sumartra which makes the air in Singpore unbreathable each year? Not even a whimper for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The climate in Singapore has changed. No one says anything.

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        • #
          Manfred

          Isn’t there something more important, given that this is patently not true?

          Global governance.

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          Graeme No.3

          TdeF:

          It is alright. Tropical forests burning DON’T release CO2, so destroying them to plant oil palm plantations is good.
          sarc off/

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    pat

    29 Jan: UK Mirror: Jack Blanchard: Nearly half the steel in Britain’s new nuclear power plant will come from abroad
    In yet another slap in the face for the country’s sacked steelworkers, bungling ministers are letting French firm EDF import 40% of the parts for the project
    EDF claims the forged steel components cannot be produced in Britain.
    But furious bosses at steel giant Sheffield Forgemasters have told the Mirror, which is campaigning to Save Our Steel, they could produce the vast majority of the parts at their plant in South Yorkshire…
    The decision to block UK firms from even bidding for the huge forged-steel contracts comes at a disastrous time for Forgemasters, which has been badly hit by the UK steel crisis…
    It comes after the Mirror revealed how a series of major Government projects are to use imported rather than British steel, despite David Cameron ’s pledge to support our struggling industry.
    They include a fleet of new warships for the Ministry of Defence and hundreds of new trains for the north of England .
    There was more grim news for the industry yesterday with the European Union proposing only limited tariffs on the cheap imported steel from China which is flooding UK markets and causing the current crisis.
    Gareth Stace, director of UK Steel, said: “This is a slap in the face for UK manufacturers. Unless these provisional duties are increased we will see further job losses.”…
    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nearly-half-steel-britains-new-7272831

    30 Jan: Scotsman: Jack Montgomery: Steel crisis made in Brussels
    THE steel industry has been dealt another dreadful blow in recent weeks, with Tata announcing the loss of over 1,000 jobs in Wales, the country’s last independent steel-maker under pressure in Sheffield, and all 270 remaining jobs at the Scottish Clydebridge and Dalzell plants under threat unless an eleventh-hour buy-out can salvage something…
    The first is a product of an energy policy the EU’s own Industry Commissioner warned was creating “a systemic industrial massacre”, with Brussels “sacrificing” jobs “for climate goals that are not realistic, and are not being enforced worldwide”. EU policies had already seen 11 out of 24 aluminium smelters in Europe shut down since 2007 with the industry all but wiped out in the UK. Owners laid the blame for closures firmly at Brussels’ door but little has been done, so we are now seeing the same policy work its destructive way through the steel industry…
    http://www.scotsman.com/news/jack-montgomery-steel-crisis-made-in-brussels-1-4016323

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    pat

    don’t shut down the coal plants:

    30 Jan: UK Telegraph: Szu Ping Chan: Hinkley Point nuclear fiasco spooks Hitachi boss
    The head of Hitachi has warned that the debacle surrounding the construction of Hinkley Point nuclear plant throws up “very serious concerns” about its own investment in the UK.
    Hiroaki Nakanishi, chairman and chief executive of the Japanese industrial giant, said the setbacks experienced by Hinkley’s developer EDF raised questions about how future plants including its Wylfa Newydd project are funded.
    Hitachi’s subsidiary Horizon is planning to build a nuclear plant on Anglesey that is expected to start generating power by the mid-2020s.
    In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Nakanishi revealed that he had expressed concerns about the expected costs of the project with Philip Hammond during the Foreign Secretary’s visit to Japan this month.
    Horizon is in talks with the Government to ensure the Wylfa deal presents value for money for both sides…
    “Nuclear power construction requires huge money … we need to arrange a financial plan for which the kind of money needed can be introduced.
    “Some part is government endorsement, some is more preferable investment conditions from the part of the finance industry.”…
    Horizon is in negotiations with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on issues such as the strike price, or the amount the Government will guarantee per unit of electricity produced, which will be key to attracting additional finance…
    Amber Rudd, the Energy Secretary, has described Wylfa as one of a “new fleet of nuclear power stations” that the government wants to back, but added that low carbon technologies also had to be “low cost”.
    “The challenge, as with other low carbon technologies, is to deliver nuclear power which is low cost as well. Green energy must be cheap energy,” she said in November.
    https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/hinkley-point-nuclear-fiasco-spooks-201042142.html

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    MJD

    How Climate Made History: show on SBS, missed the very start and was wondering how it passed the censors until the last two minutes or so. Amazing that they could talk about the climate being effected by earth’s orbit, earth’s tilt, sun activity (sun spots), volcano eruptions, ice melting for virtually virtually all of the show and then wrap it up by saying the industrial revolution has caused man made climate change and we can now choose to control the climate. Have I missed some recent scientific or engineering discoveries pertaining to volcanic eruptions, planetary orbits and tilt etc?

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    • #

      I saw it as well, but all the natural events were mentioned, particularly the volcanoes, but at the end of the Little Ice Age the climate settled down until recently when the AGW theory was promoted. Bizzare.

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      • #
        el gordo

        It was all going quite nicely until the AGW mantra came out, so I swore very loudly and turned it off.

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        • #
          MJD

          At least a new ending won’t take much effort nor impact what went before. @RobertO “Bizarre” sums it up quite well.

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          el gordo:
          I only made it to the 30 minute mark. They jumbled up the timing of events to suit their play script.
          They never mentioned that Neanderthals and H. sapiens interbred in Europe, and lived side by side in Israel.
          Their storyline about the collapse of Lake Agassiz was out by 8,000 years, as was their claim of colder conditions around 6200 y.a. There certainly was a cooing associated with the Younger Dryas which normally is associated with th disruption of the Gulf Stream (if it actually happened) and there was a disruption to human occupation of the Sahara albeit usually placed by archaeologists about 2.5-3 thousand years earlier.
          The talk of the great flood in the Gilgamesh epic may well have inspired the Noah story in the Bible, although some relate it to the flooding in the Arabian Gulf and the Black Sea rather than collapse in the Middle East agriculture. Any connection with it appearing in the Koran is undoubted secondary.
          The claim that early humans made it to Australia across land bridges is crap. The Wallace line is based on far deeper waters so they would had to have floated across. Check also that there were human at Lake Mungo long before their claim that H. sapiens migrated out of Africa (doesn’t mean that Mungo men were H. sapiens).
          The Sahara might be the largest sand desert in the world (is it?), but it is largely rocky.
          Yes, the Dogger slowly sank under rising sea levels, but so what? The latest suggestions are that neolithic farmers existed in the UK and Ireland long before people migrated out of the Middle East and “brought agriculture” with them.
          All they ‘proved’ is that humans are inventive and adaptable.

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    It seems to me that there were a lot of red thumbs given to factual items on the blog this weekend. Objective criticism is appreciated, but a covert red thumb is totally meaningless, and as a hypothesis probably represents the percentage of Neanderthals amongst us.

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    Catalyst just reran this episode on the weekend (or was it Friday?)

    Setting up for the new year of denial on ABC.

    http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4107264.htm

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    The Backslider

    Wow…..Google is down worldwide!

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    el gordo

    BoM doesn’t mention AGW in their forward estimates, nice presentation.

    http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/outlooks/#/overview/video

    My main criticism is their failure to mention the jet stream.

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    Another Ian

    For something different

    “Flower Shell Lets You Plant Seeds Using a 12-Gauge Shotgun”

    More in the link at

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2016/01/cold-green-hand.html

    A step towards unifying NRA and WWF?

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    • #
      ROM

      Short reply is; It don’t work!

      I played with a number of ideas over the years to try and plant crops into the heavy crop stubble from the previous crop and only disturbing the soil under the stubble in the minimum possible way.

      The ideas ran from a rolling hedge hog type arrangement where tubes penetrated the ground as the roller rolled over the land and seeds and fertilizer were introduced into the soil down through the tubes of the hedge hog roller while it rolled over the country at 8 or 10 KPH.
      That all turned out to be a bit complicated and a nightmare to try and design so that it would work without clogging up in a mixture of straw and mud.

      Another idea was to blast the seed into the ground.
      So the old air rifle was resurrected from somewhere and it was used to attempt to shoot some grains of wheat into the soil to see what would happen as the high velocity of the seed hit the ground and hopefully penetrated a centimetre or so into the soil and if the idea subsequently had some merit.

      The result was a miniature version of a meteor impact crater with the solitary seed that was blasted into the soil from the air gun and which made the crater, sitting all exposed in the bottom of the very small crater.

      Definitely not a good set up to get any sort of reasonable germination level for a new crop from which you expected to make an income from next year.

      And that I think would be the outcome if a shotgun load of seeds were blasted into the soil.
      Lots of small pits each with its own lonely little seed just sitting in the bottom of the pit, fully exposed to whichever hungry critter came along first.
      Or a bit of water, the start of the germination process then a few days of dry and maybe warm sun and the exposed germinating seed just shrivels up and that is that.
      No plant.
      No crop.
      No income.
      Been there and done that too many times in my farming life when Nature steps in and does her thing all over again.

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        Another Ian

        ROM

        If ever I’ve seen a gravy train retirement project in the making!

        You’ve got a pretty good start, just needs a bit of progressive greenery need dressing up

        Then you’ll have to do projectile research – looks like you need bigger/smaller seed at bigger/lower velocity.

        And you’ll have to research stationary weaponprojector vs moving

        For bigger/smaller seed you’ll have to experiment with projectile size so you can simulate.

        So

        For experimental projector a suitably high class 12 bore

        For projectile size somewhere between #6 and #9

        For velocity you’ll have to hand load at different powder levels to test that, so you need a reloading set-up

        For moving the projector you’ll have to have access to a moving target

        And you’ll have to have records (as in score sheets).

        Welcome to clay target shooting for a retirement project!

        PS I’ll be bloody jealous if you pull it off!

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          ROM

          My retirement project[s] are getting to be a bit of an embarrassment as I have to keep building the treadle type Chook feeders [ feed access door does NOT open at the top which frightens chooks fairly badly for the first few days / weeks ] as I have built and sold 125 of 10 kgs and 20 kgs Chook feeders since end of Sept 2014.

          Then just prior to Christmas I resurrected some wire mesh sparrow traps I had designed and built a couple of years ago.
          The bloody sprogs use to hop into them through the entrance tunnel and then hop back out again so the few I sold I was a bit embarrassed about as they hardly caught any sprogs.
          I bought back a couple to ease my conscience.

          So I gave a couple of the remnants of these traps away just before Christmas and then got another idea on how to stop the sprogs from just leaving again through the entrance tunnel whenever they had had enough feed from the bait heap of feed inside of the trap.

          Well it worked!

          First entrance modified trap was placed outside in the patio where the local wild Crimson and Eastern Rosellas come into feed on the seed brick I put out for them, on the 24th Dec 2015 last.

          With the eight sparrows I had in the trap an hour or so ago I have now trapped 272 [ Two hundred and seventy two ] sparrows and “relocated” them in the 40 days since I first put the new trap out.

          Best catches were 28 and 26 for a couple of days, mostly dumb, stupid, very hungry juveniles .
          Getting rid of them reduces the breeding cohort for next breeding season.

          One small wire mesh trap about 20 x 45 x 32 centimetres in size and just one trap location.

          Of course being in Horsham [ 13,000 pop, ] I have an almost unlimited supply of sparrows to draw on and they flew in reinforcements and replacements every morning and every evening from my observations.

          So I started to build a few traps, tested them out catching wise in the same spot and have now sold seven traps in the last 10 days or so mostly from the back door and the local Jung market .

          So much for a full on retirement.
          Ah well at near 78 years old, it keeps me out of the kitchen.

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            Graeme No.3

            ROM:

            Remember Victor mowers was a ‘retirement project’.

            Have you considered something more useful for australia? I suggest a trap for budding politicians.

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            • #
              ROM

              Putin probably still has a few of the KGB “swallows” around that the Soviets used to honey trap and then blackmail various visiting westerners including western and Asian and east Asia politicians.

              The “Swallows” of the old Soviet KGB might be getting a bit long in the tooth today but the same culture rules in Putin’s  FSU so no doubt a generation or so later of FSU Swallows are plying their training today in and around Moscow and St Petersburg’s western diplomatic and business watering holes.

              Ahmed Sukarno the first president of an independent Indonesian nation was somewhat renown for his bed room activities whether at home or abroad.

              Whilst visiting in Canberra Sukarno asked for a bed mate for the night from the Foreign Affairs Department officials.

              Considerable embarrassment became evident as none of the senior staff could provide any information on where to source such a bed mate or wouldn’t admit to it as Canberra was then still just a large village lacking a lot of the big city amenities.

              A junior employee came up with the neccessary information thus saving considerable face amongst the Foreign Affairs Department senior staff.

              While visiting the Soviets in the mid 1960’s, [ Indonesia in the 1960’s and at the time of the Malayan Konfrontasi had Russian built bombers with the range to make a one way trip as far as Melbourne which is why there are a ring of 1960’s built aerodromes with some high standard long single runways suitable for the Australian modified and built, USA designed and Rolls Royce powered Sabre jet fighters a few hundred kilometres radius out from Australia’s major SE cities cum industrial centres. ] Sukarno was set up with a high class KGB Swallow and a whole number of episodes of Sukarno enjoying himself immensely was filmed secretly by the KGB operatives.

              A nice bit of blackmail was now available to completely compromise the President of one of the largest of the newly emerging nations on the planet.
              The Russians had an in and a control over a President of a rising nation unlike just about any other blackmail stunt they had pulled off over the years.

              So Sukarno was informed that his bedroom indiscretions with the “Swallow” had been filmed and that to avoid any consequences back home he would now be required to implement the Soviet’s agenda for the region.

              Sukarno was delighted and demanded a copy of the film so that he could show all his compatriots back home just how good he was in the bedroom.

              The Russians, not to put a to gentle aspect on it, were utterly mortified.

              Even more so when Sukarno boastfully told everybody within earshot how good he was and that the Russian KGB had even filmed him in action.

              So that is a short bit of history on how to and how not too try and trap a politician, budding or otherwise.

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      Yonniestone

      Mixing very different grains to achieve a positive result has the stench of Lysenko all over it.

      At least ROM gave it a shot…… 🙁

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    pat

    for the record, as I can’t recall anyone posting this previously.

    ten CAGW sceptic columnists in the British MSM??? lol.

    1 Dec: PressGazetteUK: Dominic Ponsford: Telegraph’s Geoffrey Lean says he has been ‘pushed out’ amid rise of newspaper climate change rejectionists
    Lean has written about his departure in a blog warning that rejection of the seriousness of climate change is growing on the comment pages of newspapers while retreating elsewhere…
    ???He estimated that there are ten columnists in the British press “who reject or underplay the dangers of global warming, with precious few columnar voices on the other side”.
    He said: “Until recently I was perhaps one of such voice but in the summer I lost my half page column in the Daily Telegraph, while rejectionist columnists across a whole range of newspapers have retained theirs, and I am now being pushed out altogether.”…
    Lean said he has launched his blog because he is determined not to be silenced and he has covered the Paris COP21 climate conference at his own expense. He also hopes to write for other newspapers.
    Sunday Times columnist Charles Clover paid tribute to Lean…
    “This is all quite apart from the amazing things he has done and changed and written about: from BLAH BLAH to writing about climate change from the beginning. Geoffrey Lean has written about what matters and is the doyen of our fast-dwindling group of environment correspondents.”…ETC
    http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/telegraphs-geoffrey-lean-says-he-has-been-pushed-out-amid-rise-newspaper-climate-change
    (note the comments)

    the following says more about the groupthink of the CAGW media than it does about any perceived wrong done to Lean:

    3 Dec 2015: OpenDemocracyUK: Adam Ramsay: Why did the Telegraph “push out” Britain’s most experienced environmental journalist on the eve of the climate talks?
    Geoffrey Lean, the world’s longest serving specialist environmental journalist, master of the trade for over 40 years, declared this week that the Telegraph had pushed him out…
    “In the British press… there, in my estimation, some ten columnists who reject or underplay the dangers of global warming, with precious few columnar voices on the other side. I write with feeling, and declare an interest. Until recently I was perhaps one of such voice but in the summer I lost my half page column in the Daily Telegraph, – while rejectionist columnists across a whole range of newspapers have retained theirs – and I am now being pushed out altogether.”…
    I don’t know exactly which ten columnists he was referring to, but what is certainly the case is that a disproportionate number of them (Charles Moore, Christopher Booker, James Delingpole) wrote for the Telegraph alongside him. He was a counterbalance, taking the arguments for the scientific consensus to the readership of Britain’s biggest broadsheet…
    Among British journalists I’ve spoken to at COP, the news of his departure came as a shock: almost like the captain of the team had been sacked with no explanation, the day before the world cup final. A regular feature at the events (and he’s said to be covering this one at his own expense), lots of people have stories about him.
    Kyla Mandel, deputy editor of the climate website DesmogUK, for example, talks about his rumoured role in the final negotiations of the climate treaty in New York, in 1992. After many hours of fraught back-and-forth, there was a proposal from the chair that the negotiations, which were about to reach agreement, should be stopped so that delegates could refer back to their capitals: a delay which could knock the whole process off the rails. From the press gallery, Lean let forth an involuntary “NO”. The poor chair caved in, and the agreement was accepted without delay.
    I hear that this year, at a briefing with the British delegation, Lean asked a question about the ongoing process. The diplomat responded “you’d know better than me”. Another journalist leant over to their neighbour and said “Geoffrey should really be doing these briefings”. Such rumours may or may not be 100% true, but they do show the esteem in which he is held by his peers…
    https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/adam-ramsay/why-did-telegraph-push-out-britains-most-experienced-environmental-journalist-on-eve-

    btw Lean was no sooner back from COP21 than he was back writing for his old newspaper, the UK Independent. always a place in the MSM for the CAGW pushers.

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      Graeme No.3

      pat:

      The claim was that Geoffrey Lean was employed by the Telegraph to placate advertisers. He gave a sense of balance to the paper so they couldn’t be classified as “deniers”. It appears that advertisers aren’t so worried these days or possibly the popularity of Delingpole and Brooker may have told.

      It must be said that Lean was an environmentalist’s environmentalist in that he was gullible and illogical, but with excellent grammar. He never missed a fad and some of his articles were quite amusing.

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    pat

    Bowman gets another go on “their ABC”:

    1 Feb: ABC Breakfast: Environmental change expert says Tasmanian fires can be attributed to climate change
    David Bowman, Professor of Environmental Change Biology at the University of Tasmania, has likened the disaster to the annual peat fires that, each year, blanket South East Asia in acrid smoke at great economic and health costs.
    He says the case is strong these fires are climate change related, and that there will be more in the future threatening the existence of some of the nations most valuable forests.
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/environmental-change-expert-says/7128722

    Fran’s Brekkie can always find room for another CAGW segment:

    1 Feb: ABC Breakfast: Australia’s new Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel
    Australia’s new Chief Scientist has a vision for what he calls ‘the electric planet’—without coal or even natural gas to generate electricity.
    While we’re familiar with the growth in solar panels and wind turbines, is Dr Alan Finkel ready to advance the cause for nuclear power stations dotted amongst other alternatives?…
    Now, with his feet officially under the desk, Australia’s new Chief Scientist joins Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast.
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/australia's-new-chief-scientist-dr-alan-finkel/7128932

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      Oh dear, Dr. Bowman has only to look southwards from the University to Mt. Wellington to see the effects of the 1967 Bushfires which burnt much of S. Tasmania. These started from a farmer’s smouldering log-heap due to high temperatures, low humidity, very strong northerly winds and high fuel loads on an exceptional day, Feb. the 7th. A similar story in 1934, and in Victoria in 1939 and now 1997.

      The fires in NW Tas. were again caused by a dry Spring, high fuel loads and in this case atypical lightning strikes. Rarely does a weather system go from East to West in Tasmania, but it did in this case. Dr. Bowman well understands the effect of fire and the ecology of the Tasmanian forests and wilderness; why is he backing the climate change horse is more to the point.

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      Andrew McRae

      More from Finkel:

      Australia’s new chief scientist says there are merits to the Federal Government’s Direct Action plan to tackle carbon emissions.

      Doctor Finkel said the major difference between carbon pricing and Direct Action was where the funding came from.

      Sure, Doc.
      In Carbon Pricing it forces money out of every consumer’s back pocket and into government coffers and questionable overseas sequestration projects with investment bankers taking a sales commission along the way, then having the government pick winners in the energy generation section by ivory tower central planning.
      In Direct Action it forces money out of every tax-payers back pocket and into government coffers, while cutting the bankers and the overseas money pits out of the loop, keeping the money within Australia, and then having the government pick winners in Australian company emission reduction projects by ivory tower central planning.
      The main difference seems to be how many fewer parasites can feed off Direct Action than Carbon Pricing.
      It all comes out of the public’s back pocket one way or another. The difference is not in where the money comes from.
      The difference is where it goes to.

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    pat

    will preface this by saying BoM’s ten-day forecast on Fox Weather Channel (for my postcode south of Brisbane) forecast 40 degrees for Feb 4, when Feb 4 was the tenth day on the list. within 2 days, it was forecast to be 32 degrees and today it is forecast to be 30 degrees! go figure.

    I have found these extreme predictions ten days in advance quite often when I’ve checked the Weather Channel, & commented about it on jo’s website, as they are always revised down and I found the above nonsense the first time I’d checked the Channel in many months:

    1 Feb: Australian: Maurice Newman: Bureau of Meteorology needs to open records to audit
    Weather bureaus have changed. They are no longer invisible organisations where avuncular bureaucrats use basic computers to deliver dodgy forecasts. Today’s weather bureaucrats are visible, sophisticated and ideological. But, despite a huge investment in supercomputers, their record for accurate forecasts remains dismal.
    Their mission has expanded to include climate change advocacy, where agnostics are left in no doubt that significant weather abnormalities are evidence of global warming. They tinker with raw data but give inadequate explanation as to why. Their terrestrial records diverge increasingly with satellite and radiosonde datasets. Confidence in their integrity has been called into question.
    Today’s bureaus have become climate change citadels. Their records are the repository of the Holy Grail. Regardless of doubts about their accuracy, they are protected. Hundreds of billions of dollars annually, including huge international transfer payments and tens of thousands of highly paid jobs, may depend on keeping records away from prying eyes.
    Last August, a BBC Radio 4 program called What’s the Point of the Met Office? detailed the British agency’s history of dud predictions and its role as a parliamentary lobbyist. Rather than wait for an official complaint, the BBC issued a full-blown apology for “giving voice to climate-change sceptics” and “for failing to make it clear that they are a minority voice out of step with the scientific consensus”. According to program host Quentin Letts, Roger Harrabin, the BBC’s environment analyst, “went nuts” that the program was aired. Later, several BBC officials were required to undertake online training with a “substantial scenario on reporting climate-change science”…READ ALL
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/australian-bureau-of-meteorology-needs-to-open-records-to-audit/news-story/64dee9b2edb78bd8477c620775ad3eb7

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      el gordo

      ‘Their terrestrial records diverge increasingly with satellite and radiosonde datasets. Confidence in their integrity has been called into question.’

      Indeed it has, three cheers for Maurice Newman and the beeb officials being reeducated, they are the heroes of the revolution against groupthink.

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    pat

    should have said Sky News Weather Channel, not Fox.

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    pat

    also should have said Maurice Newman gives credit to Jo in the article.

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    DavidH

    I’ve just seen that NSW is planning to set up a “CDS” (container deposit scheme) to “tackle litter across the state and improve recycling”. There is a discussion paper available – something I think Sir Humphrey would say is there to inform people of a decision already made – and I’ve had a quick skim of it. It all sounds like a lot of government required to make it all work, just what we need more of. Myself, I don’t litter and everything (at least at home) that is recyclable is already going into the yellow bin. I can’t see myself taking the trouble to collect containers somewhere and remember to take them with me when shopping, they would all continue ending up in the kerbside collection. So if (when) the scheme starts, I’ll just be paying more. Besides all that, when I googled for information I saw that Clover Moore is an enthusiastic supporter of the scheme – that certainly tends to tip the scales against it!

    Maybe I’m being too cynical. What do other Jonovians think about it all?

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      Roy Hogue

      I can’t resist saying that litter is a worldwide problem. A few years ago we were at Morrow Bay, a tourist attraction on the California coast, and parked where you can see the surf rolling in, quite scenic. There were bright red trash cans about every 30 or 40 feet along the entire parking area yet the ground was littered with the remains of people’s fast food lunch. I got so angry about the failure to put the trash where it belonged that I got out of my car and picked up everything in sight, making a rather big show of putting it all in the trash cans. When I couldn’t see anything more that was obvious I went looking for hidden trash in the bushes and a run down nearby wooden structure, which led to beer bottles and other assorted stuff being put in the trash cans, even (if you’ll excuse the term) a used condom, which I had to devise a way to pick up.

      I don’t know what anyone thought of what I was doing but I hope it sent a message that at least one citizen didn’t like all the trash blowing around when trash cans were so close and so obvious. But I’m willing to bet that soon after we left, more trash found its way onto the ground.

      Litter is a national disease here in America. I’ve been the neighborhood trash collector for years. Stuff blows around in the constant breeze like a plague of locusts. It’s something I can’t understand. No one would toss trash on the floor in their living room or bedroom — at least no one having a reasonably sound mind. So why such a cavalier attitude about public spaces. I don’t get it. Maybe I was just a Boy Scout for too long. But it bothers me.

      Anything that can give people an incentive to not trash every square foot of the planet is a good idea.

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        Annie

        Roy, I feel exactly the same way as you do about litter. I hate it. I cannot understand why people bring things into the countryside to eat and drink and can’t see that they should take their containers away to dispose of them properly. I was always collecting it from the sides of the road but am just getting too tired to do it any more. I could walk along the road frontages of our little farm and fill two or three large bags in about 300 yards. There are glass bottles, plastic bottles, aluminium drinks cans, ruddy McDonalds wrappers although the nearest M’s is 1 and 1/2 hours away in the outer Melbourne suburbs, etc. etc. I’ve seen mattresses dumped over the edge of the road over the Black Spur, picnic stuff left in every space that can be parked on. Why do people come to beautiful places and then just trash them?

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          Rod Stuart

          Annie
          You might well find an answer to the question “Why” in the book “The Death of the Grown-up” …….Diana West ISBN-10:0-312-34049.4

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    Roy Hogue

    A bit late for the weekend but I found this article about a suit being used to silence an outspoken critic and opponent of renewable projects in the state of Vermont.

    How do we fight when the legal system can be so easily abused to bring pressure against dissent over large scale renewable energy projects? The suit has no legitimate basis nor has it any real chance of succeeding but the woman being sued will be tied up for years and forced to spend a lot of money defending herself. Money seems to win every time.

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      Roy Hogue

      And then there’s this about how you terrible Aussies made some bird go extinct 50,000 years ago. The eggs were too tasty to pass up according to the experts. But I do wonder how they can know what a 50,000 year extinct bird’s eggs tasted like. One wonders, no, is confused about how retroactive science is conducted.

      I expect you better hire a time traveling lawyer the way things are going these days.

      There’s apparently supposed to be some video attached to this article but it doesn’t work, perhaps because 50,000 year old video isn’t compatible with modern browser plugins. But I thought you’d like to know how much trouble you’re in. 😉

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    pat

    ***carbon trading is of interest to “kids”! read the review to know more about this bizarre CAGW book:

    31 Jan: Roanoke Times: Climate change book offers content to interest kids
    (Reviewed by Carolyn J. Kroehler. She lives in Blacksburg and is interested in how science is communicated to non-science audiences)
    Climate Change: A Hot Topic! By Dan Green. Created by Simon Basher. Kingfisher, 2014.
    Population growth, fossil fuel use, deforestation, and urbanization all are addressed, and in the final chapter, on taking action, readers can find information about ***carbon trading, recycling, renewable energy, biofuels, nuclear power, carbon capture, and more…
    http://www.roanoke.com/arts_and_entertainment/books/climate-change-book-offers-content-to-interest-kids/article_0ea008f9-c461-5666-93ce-c6b29517e645.html

    “A Hot Topic” author Dan Green:

    LinkedIn: Dan Green
    I’ve written 20 or so titles in the Basher Science and Basher Basics series of character-based books for kids. The books have gone on to sell over 3 million copies worldwide.
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-green-a1b95017

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    pat

    30 Jan: TheCollegeFix: Dave Huber: ‘Cli-fi’ and the incorporation of climate change/global warming into college curricula
    It’s not mandatory –yet — but the University of California-Irvine is offering faculty up to $1,200 in “incentives” to attend a workshop (and follow-up) on how to incorporate “climate change and/or sustainability concepts into their courses.”…
    Naturally, I was left wondering: Would it be acceptable to utilize vocabulary and readings (and writing assignments) that are skeptical of the conventional climate wisdom? Skeptical of current methods of sustainability?…
    Blogger Daniel Bloom reports (LINK) on a Vanderbilt professor who’s teaching two courses on cli-fi this coming spring semester.
    ***Edward Rubin teaches law and political science at Vandy, and is offering a freshman course titled “Visions of the Future in Cli-Fi,” as well as one for the school’s lifelong learning program called “Climate Change Literature: A New Fictional Genre about a Real Problem.”…
    Cli-fi disaster scenarios have been popular for decades, but the global warming aspect of the genre has taken precedence over the last 25 years or so…
    If you’re interested in reading a climate apocalypse story with a 180-degree twist on global warming, get a copy of 1991’s Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn.
    The novel envisions a world in which technology-averse “green” parties have assumed power, and have established strict environmental standards. These measures serve to accelerate the next ice age in which runaway glaciers are rapidly advancing southward.
    I wonder if UC-Irvine would approve of this book …
    http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/26054/

    ***30 Jan: Professor Edward L. Rubin responds to recent COLLEGE FIX article on teaching cli-fi at Vanderbilt and other colleges
    Climate change, according to the overwhelming majority of scientists on our own university campuses and throughout the world, is a problem of potentially greater consequence. Their prediction is that it will generate killer heat waves, inundate coastal cities throughout the world and send millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of desperate people seeking refuge on our shrunken shores. It’s not as immediate a problem as terrorism, to be sure, but if we continue to sink our heads into the sands, those sands will be overheated or waterlogged by the end of the century…READ ON
    http://northwardho.blogspot.tw/2016/01/professor-edward-l-rubin-responds-to.html

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    pat

    worth reading the only comment at the bottom of Rubin’s post at northwardho blog link:

    COMMENTS:
    A former book reviewer on the East Coast replies with his response to Prof Rubin’s letter:
    Posted by DANIELBLOOM:
    RUBIN is spouting Newspeak. Nobody denies that climate changes…READ ON

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    David Maddison

    Tens of millions of people have died unnecessarily due to the banning of DDT in the early 70’s based upon false information presented in the book “Silent Spring”. No doubt those same people responsible for its banning would believe in lies such that vaccinations are (overall) harmful and various other [snip] such as global warming. Now the world is facing a new round of suffering from a mosquito-borne disease caused by the zika virus. No doubt the green/left types that disallow DDT would continue to be happy to see a new round of death, birth defects and suffering rather than allow responsible use of DDT. Some information at http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/DDT.html

    [Generally, what I snipped will be allowed only in certain contexts. When it was the subject of discussion that’s one thing. But please avoid the word otherwise.] AZ

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    Thinker

    Carbon dioxide is not the cause. All the IPCC, Trenberth and NASA energy budget diagrams (and the computer models) clearly imply that back radiation can be added to solar radiation and the total (after deducting non-radiative losses) used in Stefan Boltzmann calculations to obtain the surface temperature.

    We can see that this conjecture is false just by considering a location like Singapore which is close to the Equator and has a tropical rain forest climate with more than twice the average concentration of the greenhouse gas water vapor.

    On a clear day around noon in April or September the solar radiation reaching the surface could be easily two-thirds of the Solar constant – let’s say at least 800W/m^2. We’ll deduct about twice the average loss by non-radiative processes, reducing the net to about 600W/m^2 for which the black body temperature is 52°C. This could easily on its own explain the maximum temperature (which is virtually always less than 34°C) because the average solar radiation during daylight hours is a little less. But, if we add the backradiation (which could easily be another 600W/m^2 because of the high humidity) we get temperatures above 100°C. Hence it’s totally wrong to do so, and physicists have explained why such back radiation is mostly just pseudo scattered.

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    THE STATE OF 20th CENTURY SCIENCE!!!

    I have proclaimed my two beliefs; I will; (1. have another beer, or, 2. sleep in today)! I disbelieve only one God, but not much else! The Greek group of Gods, now called ‘bankers’, is but expensive, fine, decadent party time!
    “Whom the God would destroy such first makes mad!” WOW!
    True evidence of ‘madness’ is any self proclaimed ‘knowledge’ of anything!
    Belief, as in ‘religious belief’, is acceptable in folk as an alternate to madness. I do not ‘know’ when/where I was born, I was not there, but I also ‘believe’ that what mommy says, did happen, long ago is true! I still do not ‘know’ when/where/if I was born!
    Can we not paste a bright blue star on the forehead of all that proclaim ‘knowledge’, then in ‘pity’ allow such to rummage about, in peace, without the further destruction of society?

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