Curry, Christy, Pielke and Mann testify

Fantastic to finally see real scientists get a voice in a considered, official forum. This should have happened 20 years ago. I expect only climate-tragics will watch a 2 hour dry Congressional testimony, but it is so very rare that both sides of the debate get questioned in the same forum and almost never that skeptical scientists outnumber the unskeptical ones. Michael Mann has little more than namecalling, unscientific social speculation, allusions about “motivations” and political labels. Improbably, Mann the media-climate-celebrity tries to make out he is the victim of bullying and silencing. At 1:10 Mann twists, exaggerates and abuses like a Greenpeace activist and Congressman Lamar Smith pulls him up…

Judith Curry talks about why she changed her mind starting at 20 minutes, and why she resigned.

“… I realized the premature consensus was harming the progress of science”

“Scientists who demonize opponents are behaving in a way that is antithetical to the scientific process. These are the tactics for enforcing a premature theory for political purpose.”

8.9 out of 10 based on 169 ratings […]

Putin: Climate change doubters may not be so silly

What can I say? Putin has the same scientific quals as Al Gore, but more polar bears. The Greenies should love him:

Climate Change Doubters not so silly Sam Meredith | Geoff Cutmore

In an interview by CNBC at the International Arctic Forum in Arkhangelsk, Russia, Putin was asked about the rollback of environmental regulations from U.S. President Donald Trump‘s administration.

“Those people who are not in agreement with opponents (of climate change) may not be at all silly,” Putin replied via an interpreter.

With 10% of the Russian GDP dependent on the Arctic, he also said:

“Climate change brings in more favorable conditions and improves the economic potential of this region,”…

We can’t have that then.

 

Mr. Putin thinks skeptics are right, To reject the fake warmist fight, As a great waste of time, When a mild Arctic clime, Makes the future in every way bright.

— Ruairi

h/t WS.

9.9 out of 10 based on 63 ratings

A big shift: Labor heavyweight tells Greens MP off for zany and mean climate zealotry

The unravelling of the climate religion continues: Graham Richardson is an old-school Australian Labor powerbroker and former senior minister, and yesterday he was bagging out Adam Bandt, the Greens MP, for his atrocious timing, and “meanness of spirit” in using cyclone Debbie to score political points about climate policy “while hundreds of thousands of people are wondering what they will have left.”

What’s remarkable is how flat out unapologetic, no-pussy-footing plain and clear he is, and how much he is making the same points that sensible skeptics have been saying. Is this the first sign of a shift in the ranks of the Labor Party?

Richardson, 2015 was determined to fight for carbon pricing:

You need not worry, dear readers. This fearless correspondent will continue to wage war on this issue even when all my comrades have surrendered.

Graham Richardson 2017:

It is becoming increasingly difficult to remain a hard-core supporter of climate change belief. The entry into the debate this week of zany zealot Adam Bandt was horribly wrong on several fronts.

He [Bandt] made the staggering claim that Malcolm Turnbull would have “blood on his hands” if he supported the […]

SA Premier turned down a $30m coal deal that could have saved a billion dollars

The SA blackout cost around half a billion, and building a new gas plant (with a $170b in green bribes) adds another half. It’s now emerged that Alinta offered Jay Weatherill a deal to keep the Port Augusta power plant running which he turned down. If he had paid just $30m to keep the Northern coal fired station in business, there might have been no statewide blackout, and no need for regular load shedding. Wholesale electricity contracts in SA have risen from 8c per KWhr to 14c since mid last year.

Alinta offered to keep Port Augusta power station running — The Advertiser:

The owner of the now-defunct Port Augusta power station made a secret offer to keep generating electricity until mid-2018 in return for $25 million from the State Government — 22 times less than its $550 million power plan.

In the six-page letter supplied to The Advertiser by the Liberals, Alinta warns of significant risk to the security of South Australia’s power supply and a surge in electricity prices — costing the state $56 million to $112 million a year — if the power station and associated Leigh Creek brown coal mine were to […]

AEMO Report blames renewables: SA Blackout due to lack of “synchronous inertia”

The Final AEMO Report on the big-SA Blackout deals up some hard truths, and contradicts its earlier claim that the “energy mix” didn’t matter. The key theme here is about the system inertia. The Blackout on Sept 28 last year was an accident waiting to happen, and it wasn’t storm damage to lines that caused it. The blackout would not have happened if wind power had not been so dominant.

The transition to a 35% wind powered system left the SA grid very vulnerable. On Sept 28 last year, the safety settings on wind turbines were overly sensitive and when voltages “bumped” the turbines shut off suddenly, but those shutoffs hit the system too fast, and that caused the interconnector to shut off too, sacrificing SA to protect the rest of the national grid. The settings themselves are not the main issue — because they can be changed to prevent a repeat. It is a fixable problem — what is harder to fix, is the lack of inertia, and the sheer complexity. These are the biggest challenges of any renewables grid. We can fix even those problems, but at what cost in order to change the weather 100 years […]

Watching Debbie — Cat 4 hits the coast

From the BOM animated satellite viewer. (Click to enlarge, or click here for the animation — if you have the bandwidth).

This image was taken at about 6pm EST as darkness started to sweep across the nation. (It is all dark now).

Tropical Cyclone Debbie: Queenslanders preparing for worst cyclone since Yasi 256km Radar at Mackay (for a cat-4 the rain is very underwhelming) The fantastic Nullschool wind track image. Twitter Cyclone Debbie

For sheer weather voyerism (forgive me people of Ayr-to-Mackay): at the BOM satellite animation watch night befall the nation and notice how the the clouds appear for-all-the-world like river rapids flowing over rocks. Up close in the darkness, the clouds roil and churn like a wave smashing over a beach. (I’m sure if someone could capture some cropped video it would be impossible to tell if it were clouds or waves, see the “white-water” above Antarctica. See the two waves collide explosively into each other over the Pilbara in NW WA).

Best wishes to everyone in Debbie’s path tonight.

UPDATE:

12 noon QLD Time: Hamilton Island is on the edge of the eye right now according to the radar. Latest Observations at Hamilton Island show wind […]

Hazelwood — the shutdown begins — lowest cost electricity forced out by government design

TonyFromOz reports that the first generator at Hazelwood Power Station has stopped after 53 years of operation.

If only the Victorian government saw value in keeping an old cheap power generator going. Marvel that even though this plant can sell wholesale electricity at 3 or 4 cents per KWhr it is unable to make a profit. There is no free market in electricity in Australia, only the illusion of it. Hands up who thinks a million households would buy direct from Hazelwood and keep it going, if there was no government intervention to stop them? — Jo

Hazelwood Power Station, closes, March 2017. Photo David Maddison.

_____________________

Hazelwood Update – The shutdown has started

At 1.51AM Monday 27th March, Unit 8 was the first Unit at Hazelwood to shut down. It reduced power at around 3.45PM on Sunday afternoon from around 170MW to between 128MW and 134MW, trying vainly to stay operational for as long as possible. At 11.05PM Sunday night, power started falling even more, leading me to believe it was starting the shutdown process, which took almost three hours. Power fell off over the next almost three hours and finally, it stopped […]

Weekend Unthreaded

8.6 out of 10 based on 29 ratings

EU countries used €600 million climate loophole worth extra “114 million cars”

Taxing a basic molecule of life on Earth was never going to be easy.

Leaked paper exposes EU abuse of climate loophole

EXCLUSIVE/ European Union countries exploited loopholes in United Nations forestry rules to pocket carbon credits worth €600 million and the equivalent of global-warming emissions from 114 million cars.

That’s slightly more cars than exist in Germany, France and Italy combined.

You will not believe, governments overstated their logging targets then claimed credits for the forests they didn’t cut down, and the EU paid them for it.

Just saving the world, one lie at a time.

The document said that leaving the loophole open risked 133 million tonnes of unearned carbon credits falling into governments hands.

133 million tonnes is worth €665 million at today’s carbon price and is equivalent to 127 million cars on the road.

It’s a market based on intentions instead of a product. What could possibly go wrong?

9.4 out of 10 based on 78 ratings

Climate media news coverage collapsed in the 2016 election year

After the 2009 peak of Copenhagen-fever and ClimateGate, media coverage dropped precipitously. Then there’s been a kind of dead cat bounce as the extreme voodoo climate meme was pumped and every hot afternoon became a front page headline. But media interest has plummeted — and in a US election year. To some extent this was coming as the crowd was tired of the hottest year after the hottest year, the tipping points came and went, the apocalypse didn’t happen but the fatigue did. But there is more to that crash that just weariness. Looks like Trump just killed climate news…

See Grist: Major TV Networks spent just 50 minutes on climate change combined last year…

Climate broadcast coverage was already over the peak before the election year, but the crushing collapse in a “hottest ever massive El Nino year” says a lot. Trumps mockery of the topic was something the media news broadcasters couldn’t handle. It wasn’t a case of Any News Is Good News as the cliche goes, if Trump or the Deplorables had been given any real airtime the whole rent-seeking fantasy gravy train would have run off the rails.

The Boy Who Cried Warming had […]

Climate caused Brexit sayth the Gore

Righto. It’s time to blame climate change for causing British voters to vote against German rule of Britain. Back when the climate was ideal, the Brits would’ve been fine with that.

Instead, even though the world has not warmed for 80% of the history of the EU, the EU is breaking up because of climate change.

It’s not like Al Gore to draw conclusions from a long nebulous chain of dubious reasoning, but here’s how it goes: Coal gives off CO2, which causes droughts according to models that don’t work, and that made Syrians migrate. Everyone got unhappy and voted for Brexit.

Climate change helped cause Brexit, says Al Gore

Brexit was caused in part by climate change, former US Vice-President Al Gore has said, warning that extreme weather is creating political instability “the world will find extremely difficult to deal with”.

Really, it’s all about coal, cars and plastic bags. If the EU had only put in more wind farms, the UK would have voted to stay in.

If it weren’t for a lack of rain in the middle east, the British Isles would want to leave decisions about immigration, fishing and light bulbs to their friends […]

Gottleibsen: Australian Energy Crisis “criminal” with 75% chance of blackout

Last days before Hazelwood shuts down.

Robert Gottleibsen in The Australian a couple of days ago has investigated our energy crisis, and discovered our old centralized grid design is quite likely to fall over next summer in an incredibly expensive way. It’s nice that he did some research and even talked to engineers:

The looming crisis is much worse than I expected. Three state governments, Victoria NSW and South Australia, have vandalised our total energy system. The Premiers of each state clearly had no idea what they were doing and did not sit down with top engineers outside the government advisers to work out the best way to achieve their objectives — whether that be an increase in renewables or gas restrictions.

He warns that it is potentially criminal:

I have been alerted that in the 1995 Federal Criminal Code under Section 137.1 in Chapter 7 there is a section entitled ‘Good administration of government’.

Me? I remain a cynic (not that I’m a lawyer). The legislation has been there since 1995, threatens 12 months in prison for “misleading information”. It can’t be this simple.

Still it would be good if politicians were scared into doing […]

Watch the 12th International Conference on Climate Change Live (Thursday morning US time)

The 12th International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC-12) will take place on Thursday and Friday, March 23–24 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Washington, DC, thanks to the Heartland Institute. Watch and hear the scientists, economists, engineers, and policy experts who persuaded President Donald Trump that man-made global warming is not a crisis, and therefore Barack Obama’s war on fossil fuels must be ended.

WATCH LIVE STARTING AT 8:00 AM (ET) ON THURSDAY, MARCH 23

More information below…

8.4 out of 10 based on 24 ratings […]

Hazelwood Countdown: 53 years old and making more electricity than Australia’s entire wind industry

Three days to go: The Hazelwood shut down begins

The situation in Australia right now:

The total fossil fuel output compared to total wind power generation, NEM, Australian electricity market, 21 March 2017

One old coal plant makes more electricity than all the wind farms

Guest Post by TonyfromOZ and Jo Nova

I’ve been watching the output of all eight generators at Hazelwood closely all month and comparing it to the total wind farm generation across the National Electricity Market (NEM). The old warhorse is a remarkable engineering and economic success.

I’ve kept a total of the power output each day from midnight to midnight and a running cumulative total. So far, the running total output from Hazelwood has always stayed ahead of the total from wind farms. So this 53 year old coal fired plant that is being shut down next week has produced more energy than the 43 wind plants on the National Energy Market. Even if we could store the energy from the wind farms, it still doesn’t add up to the same as one very ancient coal plant. The shut down starts in three days time on Friday March 24th.

Over […]

All Australians “are detrimental”. Climate Scientist worries that her baby will cause floods, droughts, and warm globe

After years of struggle to conceive, plus tortured introspection about the effect her baby might have on future storms, Sophie Lewis, climate scientist, announces conception in the most convoluted way:

And then, just as senselessly as our grief began, it ended. For no particular reason, the expected bad baby news never arrived and now the complexity of having an imagined child will become a concrete ethical entanglement.

Exactly. And many a climate model operates with all the same clarity and insight.

But sincere congratulations to Sophie Lewis. We hope her good news brings her years of joy.

We also pray she escapes the climate bubble soon. Because by golly, she’s in deep.

Lewis reveals the paroxysms of irreconcilable guilt — where the evolutionary drive conflicts with the climate religion:

Older climate scientists speak widely about their worries for their grandchildren and the world they have provided them. While such concerns must weigh on older minds, younger climate scientists’ future concerns require active deliberation. Should we have children? And if we do, how do we raise them in a world of change and inequity? Can I reconcile my care and concern for the future with such an […]

Weekend Unthreaded

7.8 out of 10 based on 29 ratings

Climate-Dollar bragging is over: funding goes underground to avoid “climate-axe”.

Once upon a time governments bragged about how much they spent on “climate change”. Every Climate Quiz or tin-pot-program to insulate a chicken-run was wrapped under the Climate Action banner so that politicians could claim they were saving the world. Nowadays voters have voted for the guy who called it a hoax, and the funding’s gone underground because he was going to boast about how much climate funding he’d cut.

When I wrote Climate Money in 2009, a lot of the spending was already documented, under the Climate Change Science Program or by the GAO. How times have changed.

To Protect Climate Money, Obama Stashed It Where It’s Hard to Find

President Donald Trump will find the job of reining in spending on climate initiatives made harder by an Obama-era policy of dispersing billions of dollars in programs across dozens of agencies — in part so they couldn’t easily be cut.

Climate change is so important that no one even estimates what the government spends on it:

The last time the Congressional Research Service estimated total federal spending on climate was in 2013. It concluded 18 agencies had climate-related activities, and calculated $77 […]

Energy crisis in Australia: Feds versus State

Turnbull announces beefing up the Snowy Mountains Hydro. Weatherill gets grumpy. Insults exchanged.

Things are so serious that suddenly the Feds are unveiling a new solution to fix the blackouts and “load shedding”. http://a.msn.com/01/en-au/BBybbQL?ocid=se

As Bob FJ writes: see Canberra Times and note the eye-contact avoidance etcetera twixt Weatherill and Frydenberg.

h/t To Bob FJ

9.3 out of 10 based on 49 ratings

Infamous Milgram experiments repeated: Only a few will stand up against authority

The Milgram Experiment. Image Wikimedia.

The chilling Milgram experiments have been replicated, and yet again, 9 out of 10 are willing to inflict electric shocks and pain on another person. In these infamous experiments the power of a white lab coat was enough to get more than half the participants (26 out of 40) to deliver a fatal shock (the participants didn’t realize the shock was faked, and the victim an actor).

This willingness to obey authority is both a great strength of humanity when authority is worthy and yet leads to the darkest abyss when it is not.

By nature, we are largely empathetic creatures: most people really don’t want to cause pain, they get quite upset themselves in the process. Yet many people will override this inbuilt ethical wiring if a person in a position of authority insist they do. It’s time we talked about ways to train people to resist. There is hope as outlined below in a different study from last year.

Conducting the Milgram experiment in Poland, psychologists show people still obey

Press Release: The title is direct, “Would you deliver an electric shock in 2015?” and the answer, according to the […]

Battery powered SA, could be 100% renewable for just $60 – $90 billion

South Australia (SA) is planning to build a new gas fossil fuel plant for $550 million because it has too much competitive and “cost efficient” free energy. There are fears this will not only push up electricity prices in the state but in Victoria, NSW and Tasmania too. (Bravo, SA). In order to build a new fossil fuel plant with Greens permission they spend $360m on the new gas plant, and then offered $150m more to appease the angry renewables spirits. It is said to be needed to encourage investment. Obviously no sane investor would spend money on renewables for purely economic reasons.

Meanwhile Elon Musk offered to fix the states problems in just 100 days or “it’s free” and with only $33million for a 100MWh battery farm. The offer has triggered a bun fight between Musk and local companies who say they can do even better.

But in the long run, SA wants to go “100% renewable”. Below Paul Miskelly and Tom Quirk calculate that for SA to truly do that, it would need about 270GWh of batteries to cover the peak use. This would require 7.5 million tonnes of lead acid batteries and cost 60 – 90 billion […]