Fracturing in the ranks — Myles Allen, IPCC scientist, tosses renewables under the bus

Kudos to Myles Allen. He might think CO2 is a problem, but at least he is being honest and slightly practical about dealing with it. That’s a big step up from those who urge us to panic about CO2, but then choose the most useless and expensive options to reduce it. Allen effectively gives Abbott’s Direct Action plan a big tick. Finally (indirectly) Tony Abbott gets some credit for out-greening the EU, and offering a more effective and cheaper way to achieve what the Greens said they want. Like I said, Abbott got reductions for $14 a ton,  the Greens should have loved him.

Anyway, Myles Allen’s done a study, published in Nature Climate Change, suggesting that there is no point in a few western nations driving in their economies into the dust to reduce their emissions when the rest of the world isn’t. So here’s one of the IPCC team repeating an argument that skeptics have said so many times: if we make ourselves a third world nation, we won’t be able to afford to look after the environment.  Our children will have to burn the environment for breakfast.

In the end though Allen thinks the answer is to remove the CO2 from the sky. So we are still talking of stuffing a perfectly good fertilizer down a deep hole. As far as carbon capture at power plants goes, remember you can just throw away 40% of the electricity the plant makes… “like the GFC of Engineering”.

Despite the small sign of common sense, the cynic in me wonders if this is just Big-Renewables versus Big-Sequestration: a bun fight over the spoils.

But it’s a good sign. The litany is breaking up…

Wind farms blowing us off course, scientist says

Spending billions on new nuclear power stations and offshore wind farms could make it harder to prevent dangerous climate change, a study has claimed.

Such expensive ways of cutting emissions risk damaging economic growth and leaving future generations unable to pay for technology to capture and bury carbon dioxide, without which global warming will continue, the study from the University of Oxford says. It adds that the focus on cutting emissions in the short term is distracting attention and investment from carbon capture technologies.

Myles Allen, a climate physicist who has contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said that projects such as the £18bn Hinkley Point C nuclear power station could be counterproductive.

“If you spend stupidly now and reduce economic growth, you impair the ability of future generations to pay to get emissions to zero. They will they need to pay for carbon dioxide disposal,” Professor Allen said. “It is time to divert some of our less productive subsidies into CO2 disposal.”

Finally, a tiny bit of praise for the US, Canada and Australia

Professor Allen said that the United States, Canada and Australia, which are regularly criticised by green groups for failing to act on emissions, were in fact global leaders in tackling climate change because they were investing in CO2 disposal.

The Times, and The Australian

Some History: It appears Myles Allen has criticised the Greens for being unenvironmental, and talked about people wasting billions on global warming before. I sense honesty and consistency. I like that.

RELATED INFO:

Wait ’til you see these numbers on Carbon Capture and Storage

$22 billion wasted on carbon capture which increases cost of electricity by 70%

8.4 out of 10 based on 77 ratings

184 comments to Fracturing in the ranks — Myles Allen, IPCC scientist, tosses renewables under the bus

  • #
    Joe Lalonde

    Going outside for a smoke to think about it….
    Oh crap, my carbon print.

    91

  • #
    Peter Miller

    Green climate policies could damage economic growth?

    Please say it isn’t so!

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Well blow me down. I never expected an admission that renewables are a mistake of any kind. Wonders indeed never cease. 🙂

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      And from an IPCC scientist, a member of the inner circle as it were? Amazing!

      I hope he gains traction enough to have an influence in the direction of kissing renewables goodbye.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Of course his fallback position isn’t very smart either. 🙁

        173

      • #
        mike restin

        Are you kidding?
        They’ll have him in a rubber room for a couple of weeks then it’s off to re-education camp for him until he confesses his sins.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Maybe, but its worth pointing out that he has made ( and to be fair – credit where credit is due ) what seem to be reasonable comments, and from within the inner sanctum of the *ahem* infallible IPCC…..

          Do we have a climate martin luther?

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    • #
      Joe Lalonde

      Because they are going bankrupt…I guess that would be economically bad…

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Have evidently been going bankrupt for quite some time according to what I see being said right here on this very blog, not to mention a few articles elsewhere. But still, in the face of impending financial ruin, he wants to do more of the same but just in a different way. Go figure.

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  • #
    Leonard Lane

    I look at this as a good thing. A small leak in the big Green Blob. Sure, he is proposing CO2 capture, but at least there are some reasonable comments coming out about renewables. The No Tricks Zone has had some good articles on what Germany has done to itself through big wind farms, and the push back that is growing.

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    • #
      Tom O

      But wait. What better carbon capture can you think of than growing plants and trees! We can spend some of that wasted money on finding ways to get water from where it is and In the condition it is, to places where it can turn the land into green, carbon capturing format and maybe, just maybe, even contribute to lowering the number of people that are malnourished in the world without killing them off.

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        • #
          Unmentionable

          15MW solar PV facility, with tracking,

          How many slaves from Myanmar and Ethiopia will it take to sweep the wind-blown sand off the PVs?

          Maybe they’ll use desal water to hose it off?

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        • #
          Peter C

          Why don’t the saudis desalinate water with a solar still? It should be cheaper and more efficient than Photovoltaic cells (10% efficient). Perhaps I should try to sell them my idea.

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          • #
            Unmentionable

            It would also be cheaper than PVs, especially if it could also store heat underground for at night, i.e. the same way solar water heating a building’s foundation can keep an insulated building warm on a cold night. Plus you can encase it in glass to keep it warmer at night, keep the system heated so that it’ll work from earlier the next morning. Going to be seasonal though so would need a supplement production plant (i.e. a supplement, not a full plant, just enough to make up a production shortfall when it’s cloudy or cold) for when production falls below requirement. And some large storage tanks to limit evaporation, for supply when production level drops, or at night. But yeah, that would be cheaper. And if efficiency is good more sustainable and viably replaceable, as well as economic as it ages and needs basic maintenance.

            30

    • #
      Owen Morgan

      Tom O said it better, but I’m saying it again, anyway: humans haven’t a clue about “carbon capture”. I don’t even believe it’s a good idea. The one and only way to make CO2 dangerous is to concentrate it. Unlike Carbon monoxide, Carbon dioxide isn’t toxic, but it can still kill, as the Lake Nyos tragedy in Cameroon showed, nearly thirty years ago.

      Is concentrating CO2 impractical? Yes.
      Is concentrating CO2 completely pointless? Oh, yes.
      Is concentrating CO2 dangerous? Well, yes.

      On the other hand, is Carbon dioxide actually a dangerous gas?

      Ermm, no.

      Does it benefit plant growth?

      Ermm…, well, …YES.

      242

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      I have an idea. And it is cheap and practical, and only needs several billion dollars of Government funding to get off the ground.

      My idea, is to dispose of all of the expensive and unwanted CO2, by force feeding it to plants, in buildings made from glass and renewable timbers. Glass is made from natural elements, found in the soil, and renewable timber is, well, renewable.

      The by-product of this process (O2) can safely be disposed of, by pumping directly into the atmosphere. O2 has never been classified as at toxic substance, except when combined with twice the amount of Hydrogen, during a thunderstorm. And I ask you, what are the chances of that happening?

      Can somebody please send me a grant application form?

      242

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Now there’s a really unique idea, RW. Who would ever have thought of just letting plants recycle the CO2 that no one wants. Unfortunately there are no grants being made for unique ideas at this time. Now if you were proposing sequestration by less expensive and more technology intensive means… 😉

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      • #
        Unmentionable

        Why not feed the released O2 ‘waste’ into coal or nat-gas combustion to make electrons, thus releasing hydrogen dioxide also, and supplying radishes with more CO2 for food as they deplete it. A good plan, in principle, but what if the radishes and Brussels Sprouts became obese? We’d have to turn the fat corn and blimped-out rhubarb into methanol! Anthropogenic certain doom would follow! Not to mention the cruelty to caged plants!

        Alternatively we could let the plants go ‘free-range’, and just fill the atmosphere with CO2, and everyone’s heppy!

        OK, maybe not everyone, the Greenies would probably hate a greener world. full of free-ranging well-fed prospering forests, and oceans full of accumulating diatomaceously-oozing phytoplankton ‘snow’ detritus and its typical 30 to 40% carbonaceous sediment content.

        Have you considered their feelings?

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      • #
        Owen Morgan

        Somebody, a few years back, challenged greenoids, assembling at a greenoiduling, if they would ban Dihydrogen monoxide, on the basis that you can drown in the stuff. It wasn’t even an original stunt, but they fell for it, anyway.

        73

        • #
          sophocles

          Did he differentiate between that and it’s close relative Oxygen DiHydride? They’re equally dangerous!

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          • #
            Greg Cavanagh

            I’m pretty sure the monoxide version is more dangerous…

            32

          • #
            Owen Morgan

            You’re right. I can sometimes get my head around chemistry, but I am happier with Roman emperors.

            21

          • #
            bobl

            Or the equally dangerous Hydroxyl Acid, no wonder the oceans are acidifying with all this acid in there!

            32

            • #
              bobl

              Aww! a Humourless red thumb… minus a million for style (in the words of the great galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox) — yes yes, spelling but I can’t be bothered pulling out the guide…

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              • #
                AndyG55

                Thing is bobl, the little red self-thumper probably has absolutely ZERO idea what you are talking about !!

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            • #
              sophocles

              That’s a good point, bobl. Both compounds, the oxide and the hydride, are water soluble, so there will be dissociation when they’ve gone into solution.

              00

              • #
                bobl

                Of course then there is the highly alkaline salt Hydrogen Hydroxide, so bad it it known to be a universal solvent – IE dissolves just about anything!

                What is CO2 when we have all these nasty acids and caustic substances to worry about!

                00

              • #
                AndyG55

                bobl.. its not alkaline.. the correct word is CAUSTIC

                pH8 is actually quite caustic.

                You only have to see its affect on iron and the like…. highly corrosive.

                Look at what they have to go through to stop pylons and ships etc from corroding.

                A slightly lower ocean pH would save the world’s economies a HUGE amount money.

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  • #

    There is little doubt that renewable energy is costly and requires large subsidies, but the main point is that it doesn’t provide 24/7 electricity for needed our industry or cities.

    Looking at the AEMO site a few minutes ago, 3am the time of least demand for the grid, the following production figures were:
    Fossil fuel…….16,000 MW
    Hydro…………….300 MW
    Wind……………..800 MW

    So the wind farms are currently supplying 4.6% of the demand, but when it goes up to 23,000 MW both fossil and hydro production will go up and wind will drop back to approx. 3%. It’s been like this for March with a 23% capacity factor, and although it was up to 2000 MW some of yesterday, it will drop off shortly to 10% as the next “high” covers SE Aust.

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    • #

      At midday the figures were:

      Fossil Fuel……..21,000 MW
      Hydro…………….1700 MW
      Wind……………..1600 MW
      Solar…………….Not working

      Not a bad day for the wind turbines which are running at 43% capacity or 6.5% of the current demand.

      31

  • #

    Forgot its night-time, Solar 000 MW.

    91

  • #
    Yonniestone

    The only sensible point he makes is spending big on nuclear during a slow economy, the rest is the usual “CO2 is evil” crap we have grown to know and hate.

    Sorry people there’s nothing good here just names of fools driven by greed and ego that need to be stopped then prosecuted by their respected countries.

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    • #
      Analitik

      I disagree. The UK desperately needs Hinkley C or an equivalent to help replace the coal plants that have recently been shut down.

      Without this, they need to reopen at least one of Eggborough, Ferrybridge C, Fiddler’s Ferry and Longannet to ensure they have enough capacity for a still, cloudy period next winter. And if they want to impose CCS on all FF plants, then all of them will need to be reopened.

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      • #

        The UK desperately needs Hinkley C

        It’s vastly over-priced. Hugely expensive. UAE is getting FOUR nuclear power plants built, fueled and operated by KEPCO for 40 years, for a similar price.

        China’s construction of LWRs is probably costing them less than $5bn a piece, adjusted for “western” costs. Construction of Gen III+ reactors should cost of the order of $2bn/GWe. Modular, Gen IV is aimed at $1bn/GWe, with smaller reactors economically viable; but only if regulatory costs aren’t predominately “per reactor”.

        31

        • #
          Analitik

          C’mon – you left off the “or an equivalent” portion when quoting me. That’s normally practised by the CAGW/renewables lobbies.

          The point I was making is that “spending big on nuclear during a slow economy” is not necessarily a bad choice. Another reactor type that was more sensibly priced would obviously be preferable.

          I agree that the current EPR proposal for Hinkley C is too much but how much of the blow out is due to unnecessary regulations?

          51

  • #
    Blazing Saddle

    This guy has finally achieved a position of a secured financial retirement and no longer needs this [snip].
    The scientific profession is a disgrace and has tarnished it’s own reputation for many decades to come.

    41

  • #
    turnedoutnice

    Come off it. Myles Allen is a typical politician hiding under a Climate Alchemy title, another rat deserting the sinking ship.

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    • #
      turnedoutnice

      Is it true that MA has been singing this: CO2mbaya, Hallelujah, CO2mbaya, Hallelujah?

      Think about it!

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    • #

      Hello turnedoutnice

      I’ve been reading your comments regarding radiant transfer. Not being an AGW believer, I don’t blindly accept their party line. Yet my Physics for non-science majors class was 40 years ago, and I’ve slept since then. My question is would you recommend a book on radiant physics of gases that gets it right?

      Thank you in advance and best wishes for continued success.

      Robert Bumbalough (Dallas, Texas)

      00

  • #
    tom0mason

    So who is Professor Myles Allen?

    From http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/people/mallen.html

    Myles Allen is Professor of Geosystem Science in the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford and Head of the Climate Dynamics Group in the University’s Department of Physics. His research focuses on how human and natural influences on climate contribute to observed climate change and risks of extreme weather and in quantifying their implications for long-range climate forecasts.

    Myles has served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as Lead Author on Detection of Climate Change and Attribution of Causes for the 3rd Assessment in 2001 and as Review Editor on Global Climate Projections for the 4th Assessment in 2007.

    He proposed the use of Probabilistic Event Attribution to quantify the contribution of human and other external influences on climate to specific individual weather events and leads the http://www.climateprediction.net project, using distributed computing to run the world’s largest ensemble climate modelling experiments.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      Is this just a bit of self preservation by Professor Allen?
      Has he realized that with a continuing global trade slowdown and Western nations going rapidly into decline, there will be no one to refill the ‘research’ trough from which he, and all the others true believers, feed so richly?

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      • #
        Robk

        Looks like he has a respectable size carbon footprint running all those large climate models which are yielding dubious results.

        41

    • #
      Greg Cavanagh

      It looks to me the man has no “skill set” other than analysis.

      53

      • #
        tom0mason

        Greg Cavanagh
        And maybe he should apply his analysis skill to this and the quoted report, to realize that his beliefs about CO2 and any warming may well be faulty too.

        52

        • #
          Roy Hogue

          So our very own EPA turned out a recommendation like this?

          Dyson wrote a memo at the time, arguing that CO2’s positive aspects were also important.

          How can it be both bad and good at the same time? Or how times change when you aren’t looking (and even when you are).

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    • #
      KinkyKeith

      Thanks for exposing this fellow, he has obviously sold out real science and became a politician long ago.

      So many troughs to feed from.

      A person occupying the position he does within Oxford university would have been held in high regard given it’s reputation but he has only highlighted the fact that ALL universities must pay political homage as required.

      Is Christopher Monkton the only Briton who can think straight.

      The Elites of climate change feeding at the tax trough.

      Never has so much been taken by so few from so many.

      KK

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      • #
        Greg Cavanagh

        “Is Christopher Monkton the only Briton who can think straight?”

        Perhaps Chris and the Queen equally, I wouldn’t give the rest any credit.

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    • #
      toorightmate

      He develops models of models of models.

      20

  • #
    diogenese2

    I’m afraid this is nothing new from the Professor;

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2331057/Why-I-think-wasting-billions-global-warming-British-climate-scientist.html

    He, probably correctly, has worked out that only CCS can arrest the increase in CO2 emissions, but has yet to perceive that it does not work. The UK has (miraculously)and pulled the funding. The HoC Energy and Climate Change Select Committee is currently inquiring into the “Future of CCS”. I don’t think they have asked Prof. Allen to give evidence.
    Perhaps the recall his evidence to their inquiry ( Jan 2014) into IPCC AR5.
    His evidence contained (amongst other gems);

    , “I find the predictions that humanity might be somehow rendered extinct by climate change somewhat implausible, but the point is that you do not need humanity to be rendered extinct by a process for that process to be undesirable or for it to make economic sense to curtail it.”

    This is somewhat at odds with what he said in 2013 and repeated in his recent article —

    “Do I think we’re doomed to disastrous warming? Absolutely not. But do I think we are doomed if we persist in our current approach to climate policy?
    I’m afraid the answer is yes. Subsidising wind turbines and cutting down on your own carbon footprint might mean we burn through the vast quantity of carbon contained in the planet’s fossil fuels a little slower. But it won’t make any difference if we burn it in the end.”

    My favourite bit from the HoC evidence though is –

    “many of my more environmentalist colleagues feel that I am close to a dyed-in-the-wool sceptic as regards current climate policy and that does not make any difference to my ability to contribute to IPCC reports on the science.”

    My god – this climate jihadist thinks he is one of us!

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    • #
      Peter C

      Diogenese2

      Love your considered comments.

      However I cannot let this pass;

      He, probably correctly, has worked out that only CCS can arrest the increase in CO2 emissions

      CCS=Carbon Capture and Storage.

      The supposition is that human emissions are responsible for increasing CO2. That might be so but there are good arguments against the proposition.

      30

      • #
        diogenese2

        Peter. from Prof. Myles perspective, only the direct removal of actual emissions (from whatever source!) will control the atmospheric CO2. Even assuming that all the increase is anthropological, the magnitude of the task is beyond even fantasy technology. He is trying to temper the obvious limitations of “renewables” with another fix which is, however, even less plausible.

        10

  • #
    Manfred

    This financial hemorrhage of a centrist driven delusion (Leading the way to a new kind of city) with its “solar-powered community energy banks” is in no small part, the cause of this nightmare of industrial and social destruction (Closing Port Talbot makes economic sense – but the heart says no).

    The ideas expressed by Myles Allen further institutionalise CO2 as a taxable commodity and further drive the eco-globalist ‘double benefit’ principle – tax a pollutant and win twice. Only CO2 is and never was a ‘pollutant’ except by edict as the putative cause of a non-problem with the breathtakingly [snip] suggestion of ‘sequestration’.

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  • #
    Robk

    I think for many greenies subverting the economy is a feature rather than a fault. To them renewables are a symbol, a measure, of how far their influence has permeated the fabric of modern society and a sure sign of catastrophic failure to follow.
    As the head of UN climate panel said words to the effect”we are trying to disrupt 150 years of industrial progress”.

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  • #

    The effects of the moves by the CSIRO are apparently being felt far and wide.

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    • #
      ROM

      bemused @ #12

      The effects of the moves by the CSIRO are apparently being felt far and wide.

      My first reaction as well.

      Since the CSIRO defrocking of climate alarmist troughers maybe much looking over the shoulder by a lot of climate science troughers is getting underway in the monolithic rock [ crock ! ] of consensus climate science
      .

      [ Defrock; deprive (a person in holy orders) of ecclesiastical status.
      • [usu. as adj. ] ( defrocked) deprive (someone) of professional status or membership in a prestigious group. ]

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  • #
    TdeF

    Now with 250,000 windmills doing nothing much at immense cost, someone thinks they might be on the wrong track? Genius.

    No matter how much sense appears from anyone at the IPCC or the Climate Warming industry in general, they still hold the fundamental believe that CO2 is the sole and major source of warming, that man is the sole is the major cause of CO2 increase and that warming is very dangerous and CO2 output must be reduced. It is as if the Rapture did not happen and they are just moving the date. Myles Allen is not questioning his belief that CO2 is the one and only problem. He is only questioning the solution.

    By definition stopping Climate Change is still the sole purpose of the IPCC and despite all the research, all the people and papers and thirty years, CO2 is the only reason for Climate Change. Amazing.

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  • #
    doubtingdave

    Carbon Capture , one of the dumbest idea’s the greenaholics have ever come up with , take Oxygen from the atmosphere to burn coal , then take the resulting two atoms of Oxygen combined with one atom of carbon and trap it under ground , depleting the atmosphere of Oxygen , what could go wrong ?

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    • #
      TdeF

      Photosynthesis is the combination of sunlight, water and CO2 to make carbohydrates. It is free carbon capture. With these three essential and zero cost things you can grow plants anywhere. In the oceans, phytoplankton.

      As Australia has huge area and few people, the best form of medium term carbon capture would be trees and shrubs in areas which are currently near desert. The fossil fuel will run out soon enough and as long as the lifetime of the plant is longer than this, we will meet our (silly) promises. This is Direct Action.

      The only element missing in Australia is water, so if we husbanded it better, we would have a greener wetter country and even the temperature would drop as the rainfall increased. Of course the people against water storage and reticulation are the same Greens, simply because they are against change of any sort. Greens are an unintended consequence of the scientific revolution, an indulged and indulgent intellectual leisure class. The PAE, people against everything.

      Apparently and amazingly 50,000 years ago the Australian continent had twice the rainfall. This was a puzzle but it coincided exactly with the arrival of stone age humans with the gift of fire, so nothing is said. The IPCC say nothing. The megafauna also died out in the same very short time after tens of millions of years. The myth that new people cared for the sacred land has to be preserved. In America, the horse was wiped out too, so when the Conquistadors brought horses, they were the first horses in tens of thousands of years to a land which once teemed with horses. All these things impact the landscape and so the climate. At least we can bring back the plants and so the landscape and potentially even the wet climate of so long ago. The Greens are about doing nothing at all.

      That is because political correctness is a big part of science these days, which is why only Western democracies are evil and have to pay carbon taxes and build windmills, as only they are silly enough to indulge the Greens.

      Will someone please ask Malcolm Turnbull about his ETS? Let’s not go to an election without at least asking his position? Otherwise, he will bring one in and it cannot be removed and useless windmills instead of trees will cover the landscape.

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      • #
        Analitik

        Do you realise that you have just extended the CAGW issue from CO2 to the human use of fire? 😉

        40

        • #
          TdeF

          Yes, humans can change the climate by changing the vegetation and that can change the rainfall. Amazing. That is what the IPCC were supposed to do, like the awful fires in Indonesia which blanket Singapore in suffocating smog but no one does anything. There is no scientific basis for this CO2 scare. Just a vague and very stretched piece of logic. Everyone knows. Then a very non science assumption that mankind actually controls CO2 levels, which a priori is most unlikely.

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  • #
    Ruairi

    That wind-farms don’t work, is too bad,
    And it shows how the warmists were had,
    Having failed to renew,
    They’d lock up CO2,
    Which they’ll never achieve,’cause it’s mad.

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  • #
    handjive

    You’ve heard of global warming? Get ready for “global stilling.”

    “Wind is created thanks to differences in temperature.
    And since the poles are warming faster than the equator, there is a smaller global temperature differential, reducing the speed of wind.”

    The Forgotten Part of [Global Warming]: Slower Winds

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    • #
      Robk

      Some of these boffins really should be doing something meaningful instead.

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    • #
      ghl

      Another emergent green industry. Retro-fitting blade extensions to wind turbines.

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    • #
      Unmentionable

      Apparently Antarctica didn’t get the memo, the slower than average winds are not due to a lack of temperature differentials in the southern hemisphere’s context. So they’re barking up the wrong tree there … once again.

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      • #
        Another Ian

        So what is new about that?

        IIRC Southern Cross had a kit to turn a 25 foot mill into a 30 foot mill.

        Both pumped useful water.

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    • #
      Manfred

      “global stilling.”

      Exactly, but it’s old hat isn’t it? … well, at least until it can be cycled into a catastrophe meme.

      Alexander LV et al. (2010). Significant decline in storminess over southeast Australia since the late 19th century. Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Journal 61:23-30.

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  • #
    Dave in the States

    He doesn’t want to kill the Golden Goose….

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  • #
    ROM

    Maybe Myles Allen is too busy writing papers to do a bit of real research;

    MIT; Carbon capture and Sequestration Technologies

    Cancelled and Inactive Projects

    These are projects which have been Cancelled, Postponed (On Hold), or have had no news or any activity for an extended amount of time (Dormant).

    Click on the Project Name to go to its Fact Sheet;

    Click on Country Name to go to Regional Financial Summary
    ——————
    Following the above heading is a listing in the link above of each the CCS projects plus details, that have been “cancelled”,”dormant” or are “on hold” world wide.

    USA ; 15 projects

    Canada; 4 projects

    EU; 17 projects

    Norway ; 4 projects

    UAE ; 1 project.

    Australia ; 2 projects

    ——————

    Maybe somebody will take an hour or so on the financial summaries in the links as above to add up the mind boggling sums of tax payers money these projects were going to cost, and thats without any cost over runs.
    Fortunately it seems that all of these cancelled and failed and on hold CCS projects had the pin pulled by the governments involved before they had burnt through more than a few billion dollars of tax payers hard earned.

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      ROM

      I will now go to the next step and that is to have a look at the CCS projects that ARE currently underway, in operation or being evaluated.

      Source is a pro CCS site; Global CCS Institute, a no doubt very heavy lobbying organisation created to extract monstrous sums from governments to both finance CCS project at no financial risk to the promoters and to ensure there is enough left over to ensure a salubrious life style till the end of their days of the promoters and executives of various CCS projects.

      There are 43 CCS projects listed here ;

      Projects Overview

      Globally, there are 15 large-scale CCS projects in operation, with a further seven under construction.
      The 22 projects in operation or under construction represents a doubling since the start of this decade.
      The total CO2 capture capacity of these 22 projects is around 40 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa).

      There are another nine large-scale CCS projects at the most advanced stage of development planning, the Concept Definition (or Define) stage, with a total CO2 capture capacity of around 12 Mtpa.
      A further 12 large-scale CCS projects are in earlier stages of development planning (the Evaluate and Identify stages) and have a total CO2 capture capacity of around 25 Mtpa.

      So out of those listed 43 CCS projects only a third are operational or barely operational and another seven are still to come into operation .

      The rest! Pie in the sky particularly if the government runs out of money first.

      Out of that same list of both operational and projected CCS projects, 23 of them are using or proposing to use the captured CO2 for enhanced oil recovery in oil fields
      A very legitimate use for captured CO2 which is a CO2 based technology used by the oil companies to enhance oil recovery in conventional oil fields for quite a number of years past.

      The rest are proposing to sequester the CO2 they extract from coal burning plus a couple of industrial processes in dedicated geological storage formations including from other sources, highly saline aquifers.

      The whole tonnage of this CCS’s collective’s proposed and operational multi billion dollar and euro project’s CO2 sequestered tonnages is absolutely pitiful compared to the production of CO2 tonnages produced from a fossil fuel burning generating plant.

      I quote our Tony from Oz in the link to a previous JoNova posting, the one that Jo has linked to in her headline post above.

      A new USC plant will burn 5.5 million tons of coal a year.
      At the average multiplier of 2.86 tons of CO2 for every ton of coal burned, that means CO2 emission of 15.75 million tons.

      Note well: the weight of the CO2 emissions is almost three times greater than the coal it came from, due to the weight of the oxygen from the air that it combines with.
      Furthermore, because CO2 is a gas, its volume is vastly greater than the volume of the coal it came from.

      So with all the hoopla boasting about how many CCS projects are operational or planned, the Global CCS Institute has given its own game away!

      The total CO2 capture capacity of these 22 projects is around 40 million tonnes per annum (Mtpa)

      .

      The whole of the annual tonnage of the sequestered CO2 from those 22 major CCS projects is a bit over what two of the new USC coal burning generating plants will emmit in one year.

      China which is always quotable has issued permits in late 2015 to build 155 coal fired generating plants.
      And that comes from Greenpeace so it must be right [ sarc/ ]

      In reality roughly one plant per week is being completed in China and no doubt each of those coal fired generating plants will be emmitting very roughly, somewhere around Tony’s 15.75 million tonnes of CO2 each year.

      And the Global CCS Institute’s 22 major CCS projects will be sequestering their 40 million tonnes per year or about twice what a good sized and new coal burning generator will emmit annually.

      And the CCS projects will therefore be well on the way to Saving the Planet all over again, using tax payers hard earned at the rate of  many tens or hundreds of billions of Dollars and Euros to do so.

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  • #
    handjive

    Got a problem with gas?

    Southern California braces for summer blackouts due to Porter Ranch gas leak
    ~ ~ ~
    14,000 abandoned wind turbines litter the United States

    “The towering symbols of a fading religion, over 14,000 wind turbines, abandoned, rusting, slowly decaying.
    When it is time to clean up after a failed idea, no green environmentalists are to be found.”
    ~ ~ ~
    Origin is among the prospectors, applying to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency for funding to support a 106 MW solar farm of its own to be built on the Darling Downs next to its existing gas-fired plant.

    [This was inadvertently caught by the spam filter.] ED

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    AndyG55

    So, Myles Allen wants heaps of government funds pumped into CCS.

    It would be very interesting to see what he holds investments in.

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    OriginalSteve

    Reading the article, the thought that went through my head was one of watching someone ( The CAGW crowd ) who’d had a very big drinkig session getting up for the first time to go to the loo and taking that first step and realising that they were rather drunk and then crashing sans-balance, into a table….

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  • #
    David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

    Isn’t “IPCC Scientist” a misnomer?
    The IPCC itself is a set of over 100 government appointees, without any mandatory level of scientific knowledge, as I undertand it. And then there are “Lead Authors”, who are somehow selected . But I have no knowledge of how, or what financial arrangement exists between the lead authors and the IPCC? Has any work been done on this money trail?
    Cheers,
    Dave B

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    • #
      PeterPetrum

      Donna Lamframboise has done an incredible amount of work on the structure and operation of the IPCC. Visit her site and purchase one of her books on the subject, such as “the Delinquent Teenager.” It’s an eye opener. http://nofrakkingconsensus.com

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      • #
        David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

        Thanks PeterP,
        I’ll go back and re-read Donna’s book. It was her “Teenager” which awoke me to the IPCC’s manipulations, but I don’t remember any specifics of money flow. E.g. How much does a lead author get? For what? Is it classed as income? Or a tax free grant?
        Cheers,
        Dave B

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        • #
          PeterPetrum

          Mm mm, DoC, not sure if there are such specifics. I think that in most cases the “lead author” is funded by his/her own institution, ie taxpayer money just flows for this task as part of the “research”. Whatever it is, it is a travesty!

          10

  • #
    ianl8888

    We’ve been here before. Way too many times. Even Cassandra is bored by the repitition.

    Windmills are too intermittent in operation to scale up to base load without a carbon-based fuel as reliable backup – even Myles can now see that. They’re simply inadequate and virulently uneconomic.

    So he trumpets up the oldie and useless CCS. As many times noted, CC carbon capture (in the use we are talking about, CO2) has been around for many years, with the filtration/capture technology ranging from barely useable to pretty damned efficient. But the S (storage) part – there’s the rub. WHERE can we store increasing volumes of CO2 without leakage or geochemical interaction; HOW do we transport enormous and increasing volumes of the gas (or in liquefied form) to the storage wells without bankrupting ourselves ?

    He knows that small, modular nuclear power plants strategically placed can supply base load without releasing his bete noir, the evil gas. Yet he avoids discussing it. One may make an accurate suggestion as to why this is so.

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    • #
      • #
        ianl8888

        No problem with the boutique use here, but it goes nowhere near the scale needed for base load production.

        TonyOz has posted many times on the scale numbers. Put simply, 10Mtpa of reasonable quality thermal coal (about what the Upper Hunter power stations consume) releases about 36.6Mtpa of CO2. And this figure is repeated for each power station consuming that amount of raw fuel. Then add-in world-wide consumption simply for base load. CCS has a tiny use here, but it has no way of scaling up sufficiently for long-term utility.

        Scale is the operative concept here, not technical configurations. That’s why these projects continue to fall over.

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        • #
          el gordo

          Okay I accept that.

          We are going to an election with Direct Action, the Carbon Farming Initiative and the Emission Reduction Fund plowing money into the farmers and graziers pockets.

          As you are aware land clearing, tillage and pasture management release CO2 from the soil, so this is an attempt to return the environment to its natural state.

          Of course its a complete waste to the public purse, but I don’t have the heart to tell them the money will soon dry up.

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      • #
        AndyG55

        The totally and absolutely best and most economical place for storing CO2 for agricultural use is …..

        IN THE ATMPOSPHERE !!

        It costs nothing!

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  • #

    This person is supposed to be one of the World’s leading ….. Academics?????

    I’m an absolute nobody, and even I can see some of the Maths involved here.

    Let’s just look at power generation alone.

    Total CO2 emissions 36 BILLION TONNES ….. each and every year, and that’s if it doesn’t increase, umm, which it is.

    42% of all that CO2 comes from electrical power generation alone, so that’s 15 Billion tonnes of CO2 a year.

    Now, that has to be captured and then sequestered, underground, never to be released back into the Atmosphere.

    15 Billion tonnes ….. each year.

    These power plants have a lifespan of 50 years, so now we are looking at 756 billion tonnes of CO2 buried forever.

    That’s just power generation alone.

    How are you going to capture and then sequester the emissions from the transportation sector, all cars, trucks, trains, boats, planes etc, because that sector makes up around 35% of all CO2 emissions, and then to do that forever.

    Then every steel plant, concrete plant, and the list goes on.

    If you just take the whole total, that 36 billion tonnes a year, then across just those 50 years, that’s 1.8 TRILLION tonnes of CO2 to be be buried forever, and that’s just 50 years worth if it doesn’t increase from what it is now, and then somehow, miraculously stops back to zero.

    And if the process consumes 40% of the power the actual power plant generates, just for the power plant process alone, then where do they get the electrical power from for the other sectors?

    Sometimes I despair that the people who are supposed to be telling us how to do all this have absolutely no idea whatsoever.

    This is a process that requires electrical power for 24 hours of every day, so that cancels out any renewable from doing it.

    It seems that the Loonies have indeed taken over the asylum.

    But hey, watch as the greenies just lap all this up.

    Tony.

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    • #
      ROM

      Tony
      I have said this before.
      I will say it again.
      These academics, these climate scientists overall ARE NO SMARTER nor any more intelligent than the average of the commenters here on Jo’s blog or those who are in the offices, industry or on the street any other sector of our society.

      They, we all come from the exact same gene pool as we all do with all the connotations on intelligence and all the other faults and strengths of humanity that implies.

      What those climate scientists and academics have done is ride to the maximum the wave of respect for science amongst the populace which has existed until the present, that was created by those truly great scientists of the later 19th century and the first half of the 20th century who laid the scientifically based foundations upon which most of our present civilisation rests on.

      Like those in any industry or profession who learn the art of self promotion using the percieved respect for somebody with an alphabet soup after his / her name, the most prominent academics and scientists have learned to use the public’s past respect for science to promote themselves at every opportunity.

      We have seen this feature ad nauseam in climate science for some two decades now and the public is slowly but surely waking up to the great climate con job and the lack of basic scientific methods that is such a feature of climate science and of the promoters of this climate science debacle.

      Myles Allen is proving as you have just pointed out, that he is just another mediocre scientific product who doesn’t even do his homework or is incapable of doing some decent homework, a common feature of just about every spurious claim ever made by the global climate catastrophe promoters.

      He is just another one who has learned to use the system to the maximum for his own completely undeserved elevation of his public profile.

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        What gets me is that these people, those Scientists now feeding at the public trough, all of them have K-12 then 4 years for a Bachelor, then 3 more years for a Masters, then 3 more years for a PhD, so 22 years of learning all up, probably more even.

        Given that, then surely, surely, they have the CDF to be able to actually do some checking before they open their mouths, leading to possible embarrassment.

        It seems that they just think that the public will believe them no matter how out there the statement is.

        Tony.

        Source for CDF – Digger Slang. (read under the heading Modern Operations)

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        • #
          sophocles

          Which just goes to show how successful all the political meddling with the education systems in the West, the whole pyramid to the Universities at the top has been. We now have highly educated idiots.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      Oh no all that CO2 going into the atmosphere!
      “36 BILLION TONNES ….. each and every year,…”
      Eek!
      ¯
      How does that compare to the seasonal variation in CO2 caused by the greening and die back of the NH? This seasonal change in carbon dioxide is shown by the ‘wavey’ sawtooth shape of the line of the Keeling CO2 curve.
      It is estimated* the peak to peak variation of the amplitude is about 5 ppm as the range.
      As 127 ppm of atmospheric CO2 approximates to 1,000 gigatons,
      then for this 5 ppm —
      (5 ppm/127 ppm) x 1,000 gigatons = 39 gigatons.

      So the annual seasonal variation amounts to 39Gtons of the approximately 3,000 Gtons of total atmospheric CO2, and has been increasing at a rate of about 11Gtons/year since 1960.

      So Tony, your 36 billion tonnes may be a big number but from a global perspective, it is lost in the noise of natural variation.

      *From calculations based on info from http://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/earth/Energy16.pdf

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    • #
      Ceetee

      I love the way you cut through the crap Tony. Every now and again we really need someone to do that, with basic maths. I guess for some drone sitting in an office somewhere in downtown Braindead City this is just a rubber stamp process, no thought required. As a teenager I read a book called ‘Atlas Shrugged’. It instilled in me the importance of questioning motives because motives often betray people. We never ask why often enough. It also instilled in me the indomitable nature of the human spirit. It’s too easy to coalesce into the mob where we don’t have to think and question why. RW’s very clever post further above is metaphor of how absurd this entire circus has become. It’s such a farce. They seem to be arguing that to save ourselves we need to diminish ourselves. No one anywhere has achieved anything by doing that. I like CO2, we need more of it in circulation. Especially now when there are so many more to feed than ever before.

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    pat

    6 Apr: Times of India: IANS: West has double standards on climate change, says Goyal
    Charging the Western nations with adopting double standards in their approach to climate change, Indian Power Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday urged them to “show some magnanimity” and keep renewable energy out of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) framework.
    “My concern is that there is a lot of gap in what is being said by the West and what is being delivered. There is no denying for the fact that for last 150 years, the West has enjoyed low-cost fossil fuels and developed their economies,” Goyal, who also holds the renewable energy portfolio, said at an International Finance Corporation (IFC) event here.
    “I appealed to the US, when negotiations were going on, that we can keep renewable energy out of the WTO framework. After all we decided in Singapore that no country will put import duties on renewable energy, on solar products…
    Noting that most of the western world survived on coal, Goyal said coal consumption in the US, in per capita terms, is as much as India consumes in 2016.
    “So, I think the reality is that West waited till it found cheaper sources of energy. Till shale gas become affordable, it kept talking about the inconvenient truth…
    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/West-has-double-standards-on-climate-change-says-Goyal/articleshow/51705540.cms

    5 Apr: NDTV India: PTI: Piyush Goyal Attacks West For Its ‘Double Standards’ On Climate Change
    Most of the western world survived on coal. The coal consumption in the US, in per capita terms, is as much as India consumes in 2016. Today, in absolute numbers also, with one-fourth of population of India, the US consumes over 2-2.5 times more coal than the world’s largest democracy, he added.
    “So, it is not as if the inconvenient truth came out very late. We knew this truth 50 years ago also. New South Wales University started developing solar technologies 45 years ago.
    “So, I think the reality is that West waited till it found cheaper sources of energy. Till shale gas become affordable, it kept talking about the inconvenient truth,” he said at an event jointly organised by World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, Exim Bank, NSE and Institute of International Finance in New Delhi…
    Today, there are 16 state-run programmes in the US where the domestic industry is protected in solar equipment procurement and this “double standard” has to stop someday, the minister said.
    http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/piyush-goyal-attacks-west-for-its-double-standards-on-climate-change-1339109

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    pat

    multiple links…what’s not to like? Brad will tell you:

    5 Apr: Vox: Brad Plumer: Hundreds of coal plants are still being planned worldwide — enough to cook the planet
    I’ve written before about the global coal renaissance — the single biggest energy and climate story of the last 15 years. Since 2000, countries like China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam have been building coal-fired power plants at a torrid pace…
    This coal boom has had real benefits, helping poor countries climb out of poverty. But it also has serious downsides…
    So the biggest, most important climate question for the next 15 years is: How long will this global coal boom last?…
    One invaluable data source here is an annual report from three environmental groups: CoalSwarm, the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace…
    In their 2016 “Boom and Bust” report (LINK), they find the equivalent of 1,500 new coal plants in the pipeline worldwide. That’s a staggering number…
    Ultimately, most developing countries are building coal plants because they need access to low-cost electricity to light up their homes, provide an alternative to indoor wood burning, support industry, and lift people out of poverty. For all its downsides, coal has proven capable of doing just that…
    http://www.vox.com/2016/4/5/11361390/coal-plant-pipeline-china-india

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    pat

    with link to the approval of 25 March, only made public Tuesday:

    5 Apr: KCET: Chris Clarke: Feds OK Huge, Controversial Solar Project Near Mojave Preserve
    A solar project that has spurred intense controversy for its likely effect on the Mojave National Preserve’s desert bighorn sheep has won approval from the federal government.
    The Soda Mountain Solar Project, slated for more than four square miles of public lands along the north boundary of the Preserve, was formally approved Tuesday by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The project, owned by the engineering firm Bechtel, has been a flashpoint for opposition from environmental groups, who say the project would block a crucial bighorn migration route between the Preserve and the Soda Mountains to the north.
    Unusually for a solar project on public lands, the Interior Department approved Soda Mountain without the project’s having secured a willing buyer for the 350 megawatts of energy the plant would produce at its maximum output. The project site, a few miles southwest of Baker along Interstate 15, also lacks available transmission lines to connect the project with energy users in California’s cities…READ ALL
    https://www.kcet.org/redefine/feds-ok-huge-controversial-solar-project-near-mojave-preserve

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    Rik

    I wonder if Carbon capture where to be proven and implemented, just what financial and other burdens would it leave for future generations?

    Thinking of the liabilities of protecting the storage and expanding as each site is filled to capacity,

    [This was inadvertently caught by the spam filter.] ED

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    Egor TheOne

    co2 , being the driver of climate , is a farce.
    it’s just modern day medievalism propagated by nuts and criminals .

    come on 1000 ppmv co2 for a greener planet .

    To deliberately attempt to reduce co2 from the atmosphere is akin to witch burning and omen hunting ……so many sick minds at work !

    a round up of these kookoos is what is needed , not plants burying co2 at enormous costs to satisfy climate lunatics , presstitute driven hysteria and Marxist agendas.

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    AndyG55

    Say a prayer (if you are religious) for the people in the NE of US who are being hit by the kick-back of the warm peak in February..

    quote from farmerFrank

    I have dozens of Tulips, hundreds of daffodils, a dozen different colors of crocuses, all gloriously blooming, my Mirabelle plum tree is blossoming for the first time in five years My peach tree has huge pink and maroon blossoms, my Queen Ann s Cherry is fully blossoming for the first time EVER 

    And it is SNOWING F____ING SIDEWAYS!!!!!

    Winds out of the NW at 40-50 mph, gusts to 60 mph, near white-out blizzard conditions. Temp has dropped from 47 to 32, just while we ate dinner . Now they have dropped the weather forecasted-low temp for tonight, from saying 29 yesterday, to 27 this morning, to now they are saying 25 degrees .

    UPDATE: The day after… the blossoms and buds are all blown away or brown, there will be no honey or pollen for the bees, and no plums or cherries for Frank

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    • #
      AndyG55

      somehow missed his last line…..

      “Repeat after me:
      Warming is GOOD!!! Freezing SUCKS!!! Freezing KILLS!!! Warming (and CO2) gives LIFE!”

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    pat

    3 Apr: AllAfrica: ECA Launches 2016 Economic Report On Africa With Emphasis On Green, Inclusive Industrialization
    Addis Ababa — The Economic Commission for Africa on Sunday launched its flagship Economic Report on Africa 2016 with the ECA’s Deputy Executive Secretary, Mr. Abdalla Hamdok, saying as a latecomer to industrialization, Africa should adopt the green pathway towards sustainable and inclusive development to avoid pitfalls and mistakes made by some developed nations.
    Addressing close to 200 delegates gathered to witness the launch of the report titled ‘Greening Africa’s Industrialization’, Mr. Hamdok said the continent can define and design its own pathway to industrialization based on its own realities and learning from history and experiences of other regions to leapfrog traditional, carbon-intensive methods of growth, while championing a low-carbon development trajectory…
    The 2016 ERA, Mr. Hamdock said, heralds an era for Africa to pursue an alternative and sustainable path through green industrialization…
    It, however, notes a lack of or inadequate infrastructure conducive for greening Africa’s industrialization process but adds there’s willingness on the part of governments to transition from coal to greener pathways of development…
    http://allafrica.com/stories/201604050897.html

    5 Apr: BizNisAfrica: Green Industrialisation – the only way for Africa
    The report says Africa can leapfrog traditional carbon-intensive growth methods and champion low-carbon development…
    Russell Bishop, a senior economist from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate Change said Africa’s future must include a focus on climate change issues. “Africa has the opportunity that has never been achieved in any other economy in the world, which is to grow in a clean way,” he said.
    Dr Celestin Monga, Managing Director of the UN Industrial Development Organisation, however, said the goals are noble but questioned whether they’re realistic.
    “I think we all agree that going green is a wonderful goal but we also need to be realistic and honest about the trade-offs that it involves. What are we going to do with the fossil fuels that we currently have?” he asked. “I think some of these excellent goals need to be presented in a very realistic way so that we can see the trade-offs.”…
    While funding such measures will be difficult, it is important to start now, the Report says.
    http://www.biznisafrica.co.za/green-industrialisation-the-only-way-for-africa/

    should Africans be listening to these people & their sponsors & their recommendations (including kill coal & spend at least $1 trillion a year in clean energy)?

    PDF: 17 pages: 2015: IEA: The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate: New Climate Economy
    Russell Bishop, Senior Economist, New Climate Economy
    21st Century Energy Efficiency Standards and Labelling Programs
    15th December 2015, IEA Headquarters, Paris
    https://www.iea.org/media/workshops/2015/productsdec15-16/0.3RusselBishop.pdf

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    • #

      It seems to me that there is no one at all in a position of power (anywhere) who has even the slightest idea about renewables, and how they just cannot supply the power that is needed.

      The odd thing is that they only need look as far as China.

      China did not start to (really) industrialise until around ten years ago, well after the dawn of this renewable power rush started. They could have led the whole World and showed that renewables could power a whole Country ….. that’s if it actually worked.

      But no, China proceeded with modern coal fired power ….. on a monumentally huge scale.

      Surely that of itself is an indicator. Even then, with the rush to renewables gathering even more and more steam, China would have been in on the ground floor to rapidly convert, but again, all they have done is to ramp up their coal fired power generation.

      There’s a lot of things that we might think of as being suspect in China, but surely they of all people would have wanted to lead the World, which is their stated ambition.

      What they have done should act as a huge blinding beacon to everyone else that if renewables really worked, then China, where it seems that money is no object, would have quite literally powered ahead with renewables.

      And now we have this guy pat mentions, Mr. Abdalla Hamdok, an economist (again) and from the UN (you might have guessed it) telling Africa they can lead by going down the path of renewables.

      I might continually mention what China is doing with its electrical power generation, but to me, that actually is that glowing beacon.

      If renewables really did work, China would be doing that, not perfecting coal fired power generation as they are doing.

      Tony.

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      • #
        sophocles

        We hear nothing about China’s research into Nuclear. They picked up all the MSR work in the US from the 1950s and 1980s recently, after MiT’s nuclear researchers published a few years ago. If they crack it, they will be sitting very pretty indeed. Until then, burn everyone else’s coal. Why not?

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        • #
          ianl8888

          … burn everyone else’s coal …

          Well, China has very large thermal coal resources of its’ own, which they’ve been mining for over 3000 years.

          What they do NOT have is large deposits of good quality coking coal. So yes, they burn everyone else’s, but it costs them to buy it.

          The poor quality coking coal that they do have is reputed to have materially aided in bringing down Mao’s Great Leap Forward. He had admonished the populace to “make steel in your own backyard” to overcome perpetual steel shortages. The low steel quality produced by these backyard smelters running poor quality coking coal failed so many times in construction projects, killing and maiming large numbers of people, that Mao was forced to rescind without a backup plan … construction descended into nothing.

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      • #
        Analitik

        .
        Actually, China is installing masses of wind turbines up in its windy north (over 70GW!!) but due to inadequate transmission infrastructure, most of the power generated is wasted
        http://insideclimatenews.org/news/28032016/china-wind-energy-projects-suspends-clean-energy-climate-change

        The main driver for this idiocy is Liu Zhenya, the head of State Grid Corporation of China, who also is behind the proposal to build world wide UHV interconnectors to shunt power renewable generators around to globe.
        http://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/china-unveils-proposal-50-trillion-global-electricity-network-n548376
        Amazingly, he has an engineering background

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        • #
          el gordo

          Even more astonishing is that only last June they were investigating Liu for corruption and he’s been off the radar. Resurrections happen in a dictatorship.

          10

  • #
    David Havyatt

    Try

    “Prof Allen said that reducing greenhouse gas emissions by other means, such as renewable energy generation, was important but would not get the world to its target of releasing no excess greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That goal of ‘net zero emissions’ was enshrined in last December’s Paris climate deal.” http://phys.org/news/2016-04-renewables-nuclear-substitute-carbon-dioxide.html

    The good professor isn’t backing direct action at all.

    01

  • #
    pat

    the ECA Report:

    UN Economic Commission for Africa: Economic Report on Africa 2016: Greening Africa’s Industrialization
    DOWNLOAD full report
    http://www.uneca.org/publications/economic-report-africa-2016

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    sophocles

    … the focus on cutting emissions in the short term is distracting attention and investment from carbon capture technologies.

    How sad. Too bad. Never mind. Levels of CO2 will have fallen so much, C4 photosynthesis will shut down in another 4 Galactic Years (GalYrs), plus or minus a spiral arm or two. That’s when all multi-cellular life dies out, to create the Mother of All Extinctions, an extinction to beat all extinctions so far. And the cretinous coprocephalics want to keep pumping it into the ground as carbon capture? Turning the blue marble into the brown marble?

    Obviously, it can’t come soon enough for some people. To ask “What planet are they on?” is, alas, not even rhetorical. We know what planet they’re on. From bacteria we have risen, back to bacteria we will go.

    In another 18 GalYrs from then, plus or minus a spiral arm or three, the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way begin to collide … and there will be no-one left to see it. B*$$@r.

    After that, it really goes downhill. I’m not planning on staying around to see it all.

    One Galactic Year (GalYr) = the time taken for the Solar System to orbit the Galactic Centre. It’s somewhere around 230-250 MYrs.

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    • #
      ROM

      Ah! At last!
      Somebody with a long term view!

      I’ve got a second cousin who has a mate whose uncle who has some very good contacts in Sicily that I am sure will provide you with insurance cover for those Collisions.
      At a negotiated fee of course!
      .

      [ Green thumb awarded :-)]

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      • #
        sophocles

        Ah, but as I said above, I don’t plan on staying around to watch. Darn, it would be pretty magnificent, wouldn’t it? Imagine the colours, the largest and longest fireworks show in history., I will be somewhere else by then.

        Thanks for the offer of the insurance, but I don’t think Mt Etna’s long term stability would make that a reliable insurer. One `burp; and they;re gone. 🙂

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      el gordo

      After a 19 year plateau the temperatures on earth began to gradually fall and there was a lot of laughter and embarrassment, but eventually they got over it.

      Within a couple of decades the geoengineering freaks came up with the idea of recreating the Central American Seaway, all the modellers hypothesized it would bring an end to ice ages.

      00

  • #
    pat

    a little background on Russell Bishop who is telling Africans they must go straight to green – i’ve posted the info but linked to the “knowledge partners” page, so you can see the usual suspects popping up over and over again!
    btw Bishop is much younger than his history would suggest:

    Green Growth Knowledge Platform: Russell Bishop is a Senior Economic Advisor for the Global Green Growth Institutes Ethiopia country program. His work experience prior to GGGI was in the UK’s Government Economic Service first working on UK fiscal policy and subsequently for the UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC). At the CCC he was involved in the formulation of the UK’s legally binding greenhouse gas emission targets and the assessment of climate change policy.
    The GGKP was established by the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the World Bank to identify and address knowledge gaps in green growth theory and practice.
    http://www.greengrowthknowledge.org/partners

    also came across the following, which acknowledges Bishop.
    the report is yet another example of the eco-colonialism CAGW mindset, so am posting it:

    PDF: 88 pages: Oct 2015: (ODI) Overseas Development Institute London: German Development Institute: Low-carbon development in sub-Saharan Africa
    20 cross-sector transitions
    by James Ryan Hogarth, Caroline Haywood and Shelagh Whitley
    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The authors would like to specially thank … Russell Bishop of the New Climate
    Economy…
    This report is an integral component of the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP), which is a
    key element of the research agenda of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) of the United
    Nations…
    With generous funding from the German Government (specifically from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety – BMUB)…
    In a competitive bidding process, ODI was selected to undertake this study specifically for the countries of sub-Saharan Africa (excluding the Republic of South Africa).
    http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/9878.pdf

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    el gordo

    In the western urbs it was the ‘hottest April day evah’.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-06/hottest-april-day-recorded-in-sydney/7304630

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  • #
    Andrew McRae

    In this green zeitgeist one cannot throw the word bus around casually as though any old bus will do.
    Is this metaphorical bus an electric battery bus? The lesser energy density of the batteries will mean less people can fit on it.
    Is this bus a natural gas powered bus with onboard carbon capture and compression? The 40% overhead of CCS will require 66% more fuel to travel the same distance.
    I’m just not convinced a “green” bus has the power to finish off renewables. 🙂 Dr Allen may need to recharge the bus and have another go before renewables can call a waaaambulance.

    20

  • #
    pat

    6 Apr: SMH: Peter Hannam: CSIRO cuts: Union claims jobs cut swells to 450 as formal complaints lodged
    Dissent within the ranks of CSIRO is mounting, with the staff union claiming the planned job cuts are deeper than formally announced while dozens of scientists have lodged a formal complaint against alleged bullying behaviour by chief executive Dr Larry Marshall…
    http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/csiro-cuts-union-claims-jobs-cut-swells-to-450-as-formal-complaints-lodged-20160406-gnzq0s.html

    countdown to zero:

    5 Apr: CarbonPulse: Carbon Markets: Stian Reklev: Shanghai CO2 price free fall continues as prices hit record lows for 5th straight day
    The price collapse in Shanghai’s emissions trading scheme continued Tuesday as allowances fell 10% to 5.40 yuan ($0.83), a fifth consecutive session ending in record lows…
    The 2015 SHEA contract tumbled another 10% – ***the maximum allowed daily price movement – to 5.40 yuan, with 25,813 allowances changing hands.
    The contract has now lost 50% of its value since Mar. 25…
    http://carbon-pulse.com/17957/

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  • #
    ScotsmaninUtah

    He might think CO2 is a problem, but at least he is being honest and slightly practical about dealing with it

    It is unfortunate that he still belives that CO2 is a problem.

    In the end though Allen thinks the answer is to remove the CO2 from the sky.

    and the idea of removing CO2 from the sky is beyond comprehension, as even today technology is unable to combat the toxic air that occurs over cities like LA and Salt Lake City.

    We are living in a world where some Scientists think human beings can change their environment on scales that defy reality.

    If we knew exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial moment, we could predict exactly the situation of the same universe at a succeeding moment.
    Henri Poincare

    11

    • #
      ROM

      ScotsmaninUtah A #39

      We are living in a world where some Scientists think human beings can change their environment on scales that defy reality.

      A belief that appears over and over and over again and again in climate alarmist science.
      A belief that is absolutely fundamental to the whole catastrophic global climate warming ideology.

      So why this complete divorce between the hard realities and the under laying belief that mankind has changed the global climate and can deliberately change the entire global all over again, a belief that is a fundamental behind all of the climate catastrophe beliefs.

      Of course what criteria as in temperature, rainfall, seasonal variations and etc the proposed changed global climate should conform to is never ever spelt out. Nor have I ever had a reply when I have asked that question of a couple of green catastrophe believers on this forum, what temperature have you arrived that should we be aiming for to achieve the perfect climate here on earth?
      And have you asked the Inuits and the Somalis whether that temperature will be perfect for them as well?.

      Questions that should be thrown at the believers every time they start on about rising global temperatures and how we must decarbonise, a term that is based on nothing other than a complete and abject ignorance of the very basics of the atmosphere they are apparently so concerned about.
      .

      When I and my wife moved off our farm in 1998 which was located on the wide open almost dead flat plains that are extensive north of Horsham in Victoria’s west, the item I missed most of all was to walk outside the house and not see the far horizons many kilometres distant.

      Just a few metres at the most to the next wall and the next fence and the next sign post and the sheets of sealed road and slabs of concrete with a few square metres of struggling grass bravely trying to act as though it was a lush lawn at my feet.

      This old farm boy who had spent a lifetime out in those wide open spaces which compared to many parts of Australia is still quite closely settled, had quite a cultural shock following that move to town which took me a year or more to adapt to.

      My thinking about the blind spot re the scale of the global atmosphere and the ability of mankind to deliberately change that global atmosphere and therefore the global environment if we are to believe the climate catastophists, is that climate scientists and most greens and even the majority today of city dwellers have no real knowledge or any level of appreciation of the scale of Nature outside of their highly constrained in every sense, city based culture and mentality.

      I would hazard a guess that all climate scientists and nearly all the influential greens, greenpeace and climate change pushing bureaucrats have lived in a city of some size for their entire lives.
      From their baby days through their school years and then into university and then academia or a government desk, they have been constantly surrounded by a human created and a human sized scale of artificial constructs which has subconsciously shaped and severely limited their whole mentality and understandings of the scale of the planet.

      They are also very limited in their visual and mental appreciations of distance and space .
      Something I ran into regularly when a gliding instructor.

      We have had city visitors who on a still, cold, dark night just simply did not believe the lack of noise and in fact could not sleep properly as they were disturbed by the silence of a dark night in the bush. And that was inside of a farm house as well.

      They just could not get over their amazement at the stars. They had never seen so many stars and so bright .
      Yet they lived in a big city only three hours away by car.

      So we have a bunch of climate catastrophe pushers who grew up in the confines of a city, lived there, were educated there, went to university there and then spent their nearly all of their academic life in a set of rooms looking at computer screens which displayed their pet version of a climate model.

      Their whole mentality has been shaped by the confines of a big city, by the limitations of their visual ranges by buildings, by the small scale of the surrounding human constructs compared to the enormous scale that Nature operates at in geographical terms.

      Their whole mentality and their inbuilt and limited and complete lack of appreciation of the scale that Nature operates at has been conditioned by their lives lived in a small scale human created city environments which can be and are changed constantly and with rapidily over short periods of time.

      So they take those personal limitations of scale and distance and volume and everything that Nature uses to the point where they come to believe that human kind is sufficiently influential and sophisticated enough to take control of Nature’s forces and to shape the global environment and weather and climate to suit a tiny claque of narrow viewed individuals in powerful positions in science and politics, particularly left and green politics.

      Climate scientists are victims of their own lack of appreciation of the scales and the forces in nature, forces on a scale that they have never had to deal with personally and for a long period of time way out in the far flung realms of a wide open land.
      And therefore they have no personal feeling nor any level of appreciation of the forces that they have to deal with and control to shape a global climate and environment.

      It could also be called arrogance based completely on a juvenile ignorance in believing they and mankind can challenge Nature and win.

      Along with a complete lack of humility in not recognising and appreciating the nature of the immense forces that Nature so casually disperses and dispenses every second of every minute of every hour of every day.

      60

      • #
        ScotstsmaninUtah

        ROM, a very nice posting which really does illustrate the problem.
        As an engineer I deal with small and large scale effects, so I am often surprised at how the Greens and Lefties casually declare that implementing a “fix to the climate” requires only a small effort on our part.

        It is a very disturbing attitude as it obviously lacks thought of the logistics involved.

        10

      • #
        Geoff Sherrington

        ROM,
        Ignorance of scale – you are so right.
        We met this in the 1970s when the Labor Minister for Environment used Mining will Swiss-cheese Kakadu.
        We see it daily,being cries of damage to the global environment from puny acts of Man.
        If you start walking at Alice Springs, go in any direction and in no time at all you get that loose bowel feeling that something has gone horribly wrong.bthere is nothing to help you, no interference by Man that might just be helpful to you.
        Try driving from Alice. Same feeling. Try flying in a light – too much space between events. Scales are all too big.
        So it is with CCS and present knowledge. Some knowledge says that we need huge storage caverns that do not yet exist. Other knowledge says to not worry about the lack of storage, rush on with research into compression, liquefaction, chemistry etc as if the lack of caverns did not exist. Gross human stupidity.
        Miles, CCS has zero chance of significant success at anything like acceptable economics. Nuclear, however is proven as to scale and economics.
        Get real, academia, please.

        10

    • #
      sophocles

      Geoff, in the rush to bury the `carbon’ underground, the fact that there are also two oxygen atoms being interred for each carbon atom, is always, perhaps carefully, overlooked. If the CO2 was left in the air, the plants would capture the carbon and some of the oxygen, releasing the rest for us to breathe.

      10

  • #
    John Watt

    Prof Allen’s thoughts raise far more questions than they appear to answer. Too close to April 1 to be taken seriously?

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    yippiy

    if we make ourselves a third world nation, we won’t be able to afford to look after the environment

    Reminds me of a comment made by an African minister of Mines, when asked about environmental regulations etc.His reply “Environment is a luxury you westerners think you can afford”

    10

  • #
    john karajas

    This use of “Fracturing” in your title is very hurtful to the Greenies Jo. After all, what do you think the term “fraccing” is short for? You cruel, cruel thing you!

    10

  • #
    el gordo

    ‘The latest data from Pitt and Sherry for the year to March 2016 shows total demand in the east coast electricity market increased for the 13th successive month and demand increased for the seventh successive month in the west.

    “There can be little doubt that the period of falling demand for electricity across Australia has now ended,” said Pitt and Sherry analyst Hugh Saddler.’

    Taylor / Guardian

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    el gordo

    Subtropical Ridge and massive model failure.

    http://www.co2science.org/articles/V19/apr/a3.php

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    el gordo

    Moon major player in maintaining earth’s magnetic field.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160401075118.htm

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    • #
      michael hart

      By whichI mean he’s got a long way to go to rehabilitate himself as a person to be taken seriously

      10

  • #
    pat

    6 Apr: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: Royal reverse: Tubiana allowed to run for UN climate post
    France’s environment minister was widely believed to be behind the government’s move to block Tubiana’s pitch for the Bonn-based post, but now claims this was simply a mistake.
    “Laurence Tubiana came to me and she expressed disappointment,” Royal told reporters in Paris on Wednesday.
    “I’ll see to what extent we can still be a candidate when deadlines are exceeded. I think it is still possible. And if that’s the case, I will support.”…
    Elisabeth Guigo, an MP on the foreign affairs committee, today broke ranks to publicly criticise the decision to block Tubiana’s nomination, saying she was “always a candidate”.
    Meanwhile Green Party MEP Yannick Jadot told Le Canard Enchainé newspaper Royal and France president Francois Hollande had acted out of “jealousy” in rejecting the application.
    A deadline of 28 March had been set for candidates to signal interest, but one veteran UN observer told Climate Home that was a loose date to supplement the UN secretary general’s consultations.
    Ban Ki-moon could have “scratched his head” and chosen Tubiana at any time, they added.
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/04/06/royal-reverse-tubiana-allowed-to-run-for-un-climate-post/

    350 seconds of fame!

    6 Apr: ClimateChangeNews: Alex Pashley: Vietnamese celebrities oppose coal plants in striking photo campaign
    PHOTO CAPTION: Thanh Bui, head of Soul Music Academy, sits by his broken piano, unable to teach while his students also struggle to learn in their gas masks.
    Up to 56 units could still come online, according to latest estimates by campaign group Coal Swarm.
    It is why CHANGE and 350.org have launched a campaign to raise public awareness about the health impacts, while the plants’ construction hangs in the balance.
    The “I can’t” photo series has three editions, entitled Artists, Family, and Everyday Life.
    International choreographer Alexander Tu, actor Diem My and singer Trong Hieu are among eight Vietnamese celebrities posing in the posters…
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/04/06/vietnamese-celebrities-oppose-coal-plants-in-striking-photo-campaign/

    00

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    pat

    6 Apr: CarbonPulse: Mike Szabo: On spending CO2 cash, economists urge Canada’s provinces to choose wisely, adjust often
    Canada’s provinces should make wise choices when deciding what to do with the proceeds of their carbon pricing schemes, and ensure that any spending programmes are regularly adjusted as the governments’ priorities change.
    Those were among the recommendations made by nonpartisan think-tank Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission in a report released Wednesday, which urged provinces to implement carbon pricing as a weapon against climate change but warned them to consider carefully how revenues are recycled…
    “Carbon pricing will increase electricity costs for all users, a burden that will fall disproportionately on low-income households. Our analysis suggests that transferring between 3% and 9% of carbon revenues to [these] households could fully offset this burden,” the report said…
    http://carbon-pulse.com/18056/

    Canadian “environmentalist” Madeleine fantasises!

    5 Apr: Guardian: Madeleine Somerville: How I deal with the unbearable hypocrisy of being an environmentalist
    It’s not easy living green without going completely off the grid, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do what we can – and accept that sometimes we’ll fail
    This hypocrisy is a delicate balancing act. It speaks to the seemingly inescapable reality of this North American machine we’ve built and which now runs our life.
    In order to avoid it, one needs to escape to the woods, go off the grid. You’ll subtract most of your environmental impact by doing so. I think everyone fantasises about it from time to time (I certainly do), but you’ll also lose priceless human connection and culture, alongside the ability to educate or inspire change in others.
    The fear of navigating this cognitive dissonance, as well as the fear of armchair critics declaring that you’ve failed is, I believe, at the heart of many people’s reluctance to adopt more green practices…
    I think George Monbiot summed it up best: “Hypocrisy is the gap between your aspirations and your actions. Greens have high aspirations – they want to live more ethically – and they will always fall short. But the alternative to hypocrisy isn’t moral purity (no one manages that), but cynicism. Give me hypocrisy any day.”
    http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/05/environmentally-friendly-green-living-ideas

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    • #

      So then, as to the second part of pat’s link here, it seems that for a person to actually live their life, then they need to have access to electrical power, nearly all of it supplied by, well, you know.

      Hmm! Who would have thought!

      Tony.

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    pat

    $8 billion out of $89 trillion committed!

    6 Apr: Financial Times: Banks and investors commit $8bn to low carbon initiative
    by Laura Noonan, Investment Banking Correspondent
    A group of nine banks, investors and public sector lenders have committed $8bn to a collaboration that they say will help them bypass their usual constraints so they can address some of the world’s toughest sustainable development issues.
    HSBC and Credit Agricole have joined the Catalytic Finance Initiative (CFI) that Bank of America Merrill Lynch announced two years ago, as have investors including Babson Capital and MassMutual and public sector lenders including the European Investment Bank and an arm of the World Bank…
    The World Bank said last year that the global economy needed $89tn in infrastructure investment by 2035 to achieve internationally agreed goals of capping climate change at a 2 degree temperature rise. The CFI is just one initiative that banks are using to satisfy this financing demand…
    Mr Lake (vice-chairman of global banking and markets at HSBC) agreed that there was a “moral” aspect to the initiative, but said that “the idea is not to lose money”. “The thesis is that these are good projects, they’re just harder to do,” he said. “And they might be lower returning.”…
    http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d5b05a66-fb44-11e5-8f41-df5bda8beb40.html

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    • #

      How cool is this, eh!

      $8 billion out of $89 trillion committed!

      So, umm, let me see.

      $89 TRILLION……What the!

      In 20 years, so that’s $4.45 Trillion a year, or $12.19 BILLION a DAY.

      So, this $8 Billion commitment is almost two thirds of the first day’s worth of this money that will be just rolling in.

      Please don’t try and tell me that this target will be reached.

      Please don’t ever try and tell me that there will be zero corruption related to this.

      $89 Trillion.

      Who are they kidding?

      Tony.

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      • #
        ROM

        From Pats post @ # 49

        The World Bank said last year that the global economy needed $89tn in infrastructure investment by 2035 to achieve internationally agreed goals of capping climate change at a 2 degree temperature rise. The CFI is just one initiative that banks are using to satisfy this financing demand…

        Along with Tony’s comment above, to put that incredibly ignorant kindergarten mathematics level claim into the context of the global GDP.

        In 2014, global GDP amounted to about 77.27 trillion U.S. dollars.

        ref; The Statistics Portal

        The “Purchasing Power Parity” version of the USA’s GDP gives an annual GDP for the USA of around US $18 trillion.

        In short the proposal as outlined in Pat’s post at # 49 is based on spending the equivalent of the GDP of the largest national economy on Earth, the USA’s GDP , about 16% of the total global GDP every four years until 2035 to stop a hypothesized and unproven climate modelled claim that a 2 degree increase in global temperatures will be catastrophic.

        IF that 2 degree increase even eventuates, an increasingly unlikely proposition.

        The people who proposed this are either amazingly ignorant, quite stupid or literally can’t even add up or a deliberately misinforming the public for their own extremely selfish and nefarious ends.
        Or the lot!

        00

      • #

        To put into some semblance of context that $8 Billion that has been raised here, that will but 4 new wind plants of 500MW each, so a Nameplate of 2000MW.

        If (hey presto) these 4 wind plants were online and delivering power tomorrow, then the total power that will be generated by those 4 wind plants in a whole year is the same as what is being delivered now from Bayswater every 110 days, and Bayswater is a 40 year old plant, and going on the longevity of large plants like this, there’s a good chance it will still be delivering its power in 2035, and by 2035, those 4 wind plants will need to be replaced.

        All that from two thirds of the total money needed ….. EVERY DAY between now and 2035.

        Who are these people trying to kid?

        Tony.

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      • #
        Analitik

        US$89 Trillion? They’ll do it for less (if we let them).

        The pointless drain of capital will cause the collapse of industrialized civilization, taking us back to hunter/gatherer societies (multiple since communication will be restricted to walking distances). CO2 levels will then drop as required.

        The 2030 Agenda achieved.

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          AndyG55

          And the world population will fall to about 20% of current through war, starvation and uncontrolled disease.

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  • #
    pat

    as per Carbon Brief (see url), but I can’t find it at Wiley Online Library itself!

    5 Apr: WileyOnlineLibrary: Reflections on climate change communication research and practice in the second decade of the 21st century: What more is there to say?
    Author: Susanne C. Moser
    Through a selective literature review, focused on contributions since a similar stock-taking exercise in 2010, the article delineates significant advances, emerging trends and topics, and tries to chart critical needs and opportunities going forward. It describes the climate communication landscape midway through the second decade of the 21st century to contextualize the challenges faced by climate change communication as a scientific field. Despite the important progress made on key scientific challenges laid out in 2010, persistent challenges remain (superficial public understanding of climate change, transitioning from awareness and concern to action, communicating in deeply politicized and polarized environments, and dealing with the growing sense of overwhelm and hopelessness). In addition, new challenges and topics have emerged that communication researchers and practitioners now face. The study reflects on the crucial need to improve the interaction between climate communication research and practice, and calls for dedicated science-practice boundary work focused on climate change communication. A set of new charges to climate communicators and researchers are offered in hopes to move climate change communication to a new place—at once ***more humble*** yet also more ambitious than ever before, befitting to the crucial role it could play in the cultural work humanity faces with climate change…
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.403/abstract?utm_source=Daily+Carbon+Briefing&utm_campaign=7a7cae9778-cb_daily&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_876aab4fd7-7a7cae9778-303449629

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    pat

    7 Apr: ABC: $670m wind farm project approved in southern NSW
    After a seven-year delay, the New South Wales Government has approved a wind farm project for the southern part of the state.
    The Planning Assessment Commission (PAC) has signed off on Epuron Project’s $670m project across the Harden and Yass Valley shires, but it will be around one-third of the size originally proposed in 2009.
    The PAC found the western ‘Coppabella Precinct’, containing 79 turbines would have the least impact on the environment and could be effectively managed to achieve acceptable outcomes for the local community…
    The Commission’s report said previous concerns about the farm’s impact on local radar systems and airstrips had been addressed and Air Services Australia was satisfied.
    It said the new scale of the project reduced the amount of native vegetation to be cleared from 226 hectares to 83 hectares.
    The wind farm will be subject to 75 conditions of consent and is expected to create 167 construction jobs and 34 full-time operational jobs…
    The Harden and Yass Valley councils will each receive $2,500 a year, for every turbine placed in each local government area.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-07/wind-farm-approved-in-harden-and-yass-valley-shires-nsw/7306554

    6 Apr: Leicester Mercury: Appeal against council’s ban on wind-turbine dismissed
    A council’s decision not to allow a wind-turbine to be erected on land at Billesdon will stand…
    The inspector said:”The council failed to make a decision on the planning application in the required amount of time. “However, had it been able to do so, it would have refused the application because of significant harm to the character and appearance of the landscape and visual amenity of the locality, with the turbine visually dominating and overpowering its rural setting.”
    He said building the turbine would have caused “substantial harm” to local heritage features notably the rural setting of Frisby Medieval Village, which is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, and the Grade II Listed Building St John the Baptist Church.
    Historic England pointed out that the turbine would be visible from the vicinity of Frisby Medieval Village and that the introduction of the turbine as a large moving object in the landscape would cause some harm to the significance of the Scheduled Ancient Monument…
    http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Appeal-council-s-ban-wind-turbine-dismissed/story-29062431-detail/story.html

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    pat

    6 Apr: Reuters: Krishna N. Das: SunEdison setback may delay Modi’s ‘ultra mega’ solar drive in India
    The likely collapse of SunEdison Inc’s (SUNE.N) solar project in India, the first of 32 planned “ultra mega” complexes, could delay Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal to increase renewable energy fivefold by several years and probably cost consumers more.
    As the U.S. solar giant fights to stave off bankruptcy, the 500 megawatt project in Andhra Pradesh state it won last November lies idle with ground yet to be broken. The other projects are still to be bid on…
    Tightening auction rules could slow the pace at which projects are awarded and built, pushing back Modi’s goal of expanding solar capacity to 100 gigawatts by 2020 to the middle of the decade, say officials and industry players…
    The company is now exploring a sale of its Indian assets of around 1 GW or seeking partners for them, sources said, and has drawn preliminary interest from billionaire Gautam Adani’s fast-expanding Adani Group…
    A person close to Adani said the low tariff agreed for the Andhra plant will make any deal with SunEdison difficult for Indian firms, which have a relatively high cost of capital…READ ALL
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sunedison-inc-india-idUSKCN0X32TY

    multiple links:

    6 Apr: MarketOracleUK: James Hall/BATR: SunEdison Green Power Bankruptcy Inevitability
    Take the tour of the SunEdison: A Timeline of the Biggest Corporate Implosion in US Solar History, and understand that the solar and wind industry is founded on a Ponzi scheme of investor hype and government subsidies. Forbes investigates the convoluted and intertwined relationship in Reconsidering The SunEdison YieldCos, TerraForm Power And TerraForm Global…READ ALL
    http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article54695.html

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    pat

    6 Apr: Daily Journal: AP: Spanish renewable energy and engineering giant Abengoa says it is asking to be delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange as part of its debt-restructuring plan
    Spanish renewable energy and engineering giant Abengoa says it is asking to be delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange as part of its debt-restructuring plan.
    Abengoa, which began bankruptcy protection proceedings five months ago, is also seeking deregistration of its shares from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
    Abengoa, S.A. said in a statement Wednesday that in future its shares will be traded only on the Spanish stock exchange.
    It said the move aims to remove administrative burdens and costs associated with being a U.S. listed company and meeting SEC regulatory requirements…
    http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/8a1dd9e2de7140dfbf26467bea59124e/EU–Spain-Abengoa

    6 Apr: Expatica Spain: AFP: Spanish court gives Abengoa seven months to restructure debt
    A Spanish court said Wednesday it had agreed to give Spanish renewable energy firm Abengoa an additional seven months to strike a debt restructuring deal with creditors and avoid bankruptcy…
    The deal gives the company until October 28 to convince banks and bondholders that have not already done so to sign off on a restructuring agreement…
    http://www.expatica.com/es/news/Spanish-court-gives-Abengoa-seven-months-to-restructure-debt_637994.html

    6 Apr: MacauHub: China State Grid evaluates the assets of Spanish group Abengoa in Brazil
    Staff from China State Grid visited the power transmission projects in Brazil owned by Spanish group Abengoa to consider a possible acquisition of these assets, Reuters reported Tuesday.
    The Spanish group, which requested creditor protection in November 2015 due to debts that could reach 25 billion euros, has ended any investment in Brazil, leaving some work to be completed.
    A federal source cited by Reuters said the Brazilian government would prefer that all assets of the Abengoa group were sold as a package to China State Grid, which is considered the only group with the financial capacity to make a success of this business…
    http://www.macauhub.com.mo/en/2016/04/06/china-state-grid-evaluates-the-assets-of-spanish-group-abengoa-in-brazil/

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    pat

    and now for the hilarious spin:

    6 Apr: Bloomberg: Sunedison may be biggest renewable collapse with least impact
    by Joe Ryan and Brian Eckhouse
    The collapse of SunEdison Inc. may be among the most resounding single downfalls in the history of solar. Yet the impact on the clean energy industry could be little more than a hiccup.
    The aggressive expansions and crushing debt load that pushed the Maryland Heights, Missouri, company to the brink of bankruptcy as it lost $9.2 billion in equity in nine months are not emblematic of the industry at large, according to clean energy analysts and executives interviewed at the ***Bloomberg New Energy Finance summit in New York, which continues Tuesday…
    Clean energy is a young and fragmented industry, with legions of companies perpetually popping up and flaring out. SunEdison’s rise and fall may be a footnote in the annals of clean-energy collapses, resulting in less lasting damage than the crashes of Suntech Power Holdings Co. and Solyndra LLC.
    “It doesn’t change anything,” said Francesco Venturini, chief executive officer of Enel Green Power SpA, the renewables wing of Italy’s biggest utility and a competitor of SunEdison…
    “Nothing has fundamentally changed to the attractive thesis of solar, globally as a result of SunEdison,” (Conergy CEO R. Andrew) de Pass said during at interview a the BNEF summit. “People ***will have to remember that — even through it may be one of the largest non-financial bankruptcies in U.S. history.”…
    For Jim Hughes, the CEO of First Solar Inc., the biggest U.S. solar panel maker, now is ***“as close as you get” to the best time to invest in renewables, SunEdison’s problems notwithstanding…
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-05/sunedison-may-be-biggest-renewable-collapse-with-least-impact

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    pat

    great headline, and a lengthy must-read for those interested:

    6 Apr: Business Today: Solar under cloud
    Even as India rolls out the world’s most aggressive solar energy programme, falling tariff and squeezing margins threaten to derail the country’s ambitious 100-GW plan.
    By Anilesh S. Mahajan, Delhi (for April 24 Issue)
    It’s a tough task ahead for Pashupathy Gopalan, the President of US-based SunEdison Asia Pacific. Most of his peers have already pronounced the demise of his pet project, the 500-MW solar park in Andhra Pradesh, long before it has even taken off…
    Further, SunEdison had to call off its acquisition of Continuum Wind Energy, a Sin-gapore-based company with assets in India, soon after a June 2015 announcement, followed by the termination of yet another acquisition bid for renewable energy company Latin American Power having assets in Chile and Peru, in October…
    http://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/features/india-ambitious-100-gw-plan-might-be-derailed/story/230754.html

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    pat

    great headline, and a lengthy must-read for those interested:

    6 Apr: Business Today: Solar under cloud
    Even as India rolls out the world’s most aggressive solar energy programme, falling tariff and squeezing margins threaten to derail the country’s ambitious 100-GW plan.
    By Anilesh S. Mahajan, Delhi (for April 24 Issue)
    It’s a tough task ahead for Pashupathy Gopalan, the President of US-based SunEdison Asia Pacific. Most of his peers have already pronounced the demise of his pet project, the 500-MW solar park in Andhra Pradesh, long before it has even taken off…
    Further, SunEdison had to call off its acquisition of Continuum Wind Energy, a Sin-gapore-based company with assets in India, soon after a June 2015 announcement, followed by the termination of yet another acquisition bid for renewable energy company Latin American Power having assets in Chile and Peru, in October…
    http://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/features/india-ambitious-100-gw-plan-might-be-derailed/story/230754.html

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    fretslider

    “They will they need to pay for carbon dioxide disposal,” Professor Allen said”

    Sorry, that’s patent tosh

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