Weekend Unthreaded

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257 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

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    Oliver K. Manuel

    I am watching the attempted shutdown of Jon Rappoport’s blog with great interest.

    He seems to be proclaiming on first principles what is recorded in both the US Declaration of Independence and in the rest masses of the ~3,000 known types of atoms:

    Freedom is our natural state of being.

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      Oliver K. Manuel

      Jon Rappoport’s blog is the “coal miner’s canary” that will tell us if there is any hope for freedom:

      Jon Rappoport’s blog site was shut down after he essentially reported that the US DOE‘s (Departments of Education & Energy)

      1. Teach students NOT to use simple tools of logical analysis that would allow them to see basic truths that our government hides from the public, like the logical error from 1935:

      https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Nuclear_Energy_Error7.pdf

      2. Support CERN’s illogical, irrational and absurd claim protons are made of the short-lived fragmentation products made by accelerating beams of protons to high energies in opposite directions to collide in the Large Hadron Collider:

      https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/05/05/no-more-fake-news-site-temporarily-down-jons-blog-is-working/#comments

      The energy (E) of acceleration in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider made a False God particle of CERN’s Fysicts,” that is totally alien to “reality, truth, God:

      https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/HIGHER-POWERZ.pdf

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      Oliver K. Manuel

      Is improved awareness (contact) of Reality, Truth, God the common, but elusive goal of science, religion, experimentation, meditation, contemplation, measurement and prayer?

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        Will Janoschka

        “Is improved awareness (contact) of Reality, Truth, God the common, but elusive goal of science, religion, experimentation, meditation, contemplation, measurement and prayer?”

        NO! Reality is nonsense as it must include everything including every thought! There is no Truth that cannot be adjusted by God, and God remains separate; even from Reality!
        Science is refutation of fantasy (thought), through measurement of the part of Reality that is measurably physical.
        Religion is the antithesis of measurement that can falsify. Belief!
        Experimentation, meditation, and contemplation are parts of both.
        Prayer, mostly religion; is employed by science rather than skill, only upon the abandonment of the hope, that the damned thing might work!
        All the best!-will-

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          “Reality is nonsense…” is like saying, “I am a liar”, and expecting anyone to listen to you further. Then you aver that science deals with “that part of Reality…”, something which you just branded as nonsense.

          Oh what a tangled web atheists weave, when first they practice to deceive (for that is really all that your comment means, without honestly saying so: that you are an atheist, and unable and/or unwilling to deal with either a mental or a spiritual “part of reality”–much less a HIGHER reality, that INCLUDES the physical as but a small part of the whole).

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            Will Janoschka

            (“Reality is nonsense”)
            Just whom are you accusing of being an atheist? You agree that parts of ‘reality’ can possibly make sense but the remaining pasts remain nonsense! Is that not what I wrote? Not me but proper science itself shuns belief! A carve out from Reality that the Climate Clown ‘believers’ ignore!!!

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        Oliver K. Manuel

        I personally disagree, Will, but I also accept that everyone is endowed with the right to develop their own, personal concept of Reality, Truth, God.

        Here is my admittedly crass, over-simplified, capitalistic analysis of the development of energy for humanity:

        1. Alfred Nobel achieved great wealth and fame by developing and patenting a way to release chemical energy from tri-nitro-glycerine (dynamite) in 1867.

        https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/

        2. Steady progress in development of even more powerful atomic/nuclear energy by Prout, Einstein, Rutherford, Aston and Chadwick in 1815-1932 was abruptly halted in 1935 when Chadwick accepted a Nobel Prize by reversing his 1932 endorsement of Rutherford’s 1920 suggestion “neutrons are compacted hydrogen atoms,” i.e., compacted proton-electron pairs.

        https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Nuclear_Energy_Error7.pdf

        3. Thus human greed and selfishness isolated humanity from the most abundant and powerful source of energy provided by his Creator.

        https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/HIGHER-POWERZ.pdf

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        • #
          Will Janoschka

          I agree except your energy is decreased the the available 50%, mc²/2
          All the best!-will-

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    • #
      Oliver K. Manuel

      The No More Fake News site is back in operation!

      https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/05/12/no-more-fake-news-is-back/

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    James Murphy

    It seems that you cant keep a good alarmist down, with Tim Flannery freely spouting his usual brand of fact-free nonsense about hydraulic fracturing, and the fossil fuel industry in general. Unchallenged in any way by ‘their’ ABC.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-06/tim-flannery-warns-against-nt-pipeline/8502186

    If only the media would apply the same level of scrutiny and scepticism to Flannery and his ilk, as they do to Trump, then I suspect that journalism, and journalists could regain a modicum of credibility amongst those who still have the capacity, even to a small degree, to think for themselves.

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      Glen Michel

      One may reflect on Tims failed geothermal venture that cost the taxpayer. A preposterous man who unfortunately has some cred with the shrinking violets of the ABC.

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        Robber

        Why doesn’t this ever get mentioned on not my ABC? Tim Flannery failure. Geothermal project scrapped. Flannery (Geodynamics shareholder) managed to help persuade the Rudd Government into giving Geodynamics a $90 million grant that’s now gone. Now called ReNu Energy.
        Current share price 1 cent, back in 2008 peaked at $1.92.

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          Dennis

          Is the aluminium fishing boat moored outside one of his two Hawkesbury River (northern Sydney) waterfront properties been upgraded to a Marlin fishing boat yet?

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          Raven

          Why doesn’t this ever get mentioned on not my ABC? Tim Flannery failure.

          For the same reason Prof Chris Turney (of Ship of Fool fame) isn’t mentioned as the Co-Founder and Director of his privately owned business, CarbonScape.

          If the ABC mentioned the vested interests of their favourite ‘experts’ the public might do the unthinkable and follow the money.

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            OriginalSteve

            But fear not…without (carbon) bondage, we cant have freedom….Stockholm syndrome?

            Slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength…

            http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-08/experts-issue-power-price-warning-emissions-intensity-scheme/8499656

            “The lack of a carbon price is paralysing investment in Australia’s energy sector and putting domestic power bills on track to surge by up to 40 per cent, experts have warned.

            Key points:
            •Experts say without a carbon pricing plan, consumers will see electricity prices increase by up to 30 per cent
            •Government is not in support of an Emission Intensity Scheme, says it won’t solve the problem
            •Experts and businesses say a lack of national energy policy has left Australia in the grip of an energy crisis

            The policy vacuum is also raising questions about whether Australia will meet its commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement, with the Energy and Environment Minister admitting that the aspiration for net zero emissions by 2050 is uncertain.

            Consumers on the eastern seaboard could see retail electricity prices rise by as much as 30 per cent by June, energy expert Danny Price told Four Corners.

            “It is an unprecedented rise. That’s simply because there’s a shortage of supply in generation and that’s simply because the market can’t respond because of the lack of any carbon price,” he said.

            Mr Price is the architect of the Emissions Intensity Scheme (EIS), the one carbon pricing plan that after a decade of argument has emerged with the broadest support.

            He said the cost of not putting an EIS in place could eventually see electricity price rises of “around 30 to 40 per cent” and he expects that by the end of next month retail electricity prices could rise “in the order of 20 to 30 per cent”.”

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      I was caught unawares yesterday, and heard two minutes or so of ABC radio’s Philip Adams, ‘interviewing’ Clive Hamilton, who said, without a smidgeon of doubt, “Arctic ice is finished, the Great Barrier Reef is finished”, and I could hear Adams’ nodding agreement.
      Had to turn it off, before the BS meter exploded. Fact free Flannery would have even been shocked.

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      clipe

      A question I asked on the previous thread.

      As expert as David Suzuki?

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  • #
    Alan McIntire

    I am posting a question which has bothered me:
    Nir Shaviv gives the derivation of climate sensitivity here:

    http://www.sciencebits.com/OnClimateSensitivity

    I’m not saying the calculations are WRONG, but I think that Nir Shaviv’s calculation was showing the result of increased wattage by four watts directly from the sun, which would have a different effect than a doubling of CO2, which would NOT affect the sun, but WOULD affect the atmosphere.

    Kyoji Kimoto’s calculation appears to me to be more applicable to the real world doubling of CO2.

    http://edberry.com/SiteDocs/PDF/Climate/KimotoPaperReprint.pdf

    From this simple climate model
    http://c21.phas.ubc.ca/article/simple-earth-climate-model-single-layer-perfect-greenhouse-atmosphere

    It seems that blocking an additional 4 watts from a doubling of CO2 would be equivalent to adding another 4/240 layer to the model, leaving
    240 watts still coming from the sun, 244 watts coming from atmosphere layer 1 to surface, 236 watts going from layer 1 to space, 8 watts being blocked by layer 2, 4 watts going from layer 2 to space, 4 watts going down to layer 1, as below

    layer 2 receives <- 8 watts up from layer 1
    layer 2 radiates

    layer 1 receives -> 4 watts down from layer 2, <- 484 watts up from surface
    layer 1 radiates <- 236 watts up direct to space 244 watts down to layer 1

    surface receives -> 244 watts from layer 1 ->240 watts from sun
    surface radiates 240 watts from the sun, receives <-4 watts from layer 2 , <-236 watts from layer 1.
    so everything is in balance.

    My simplistic model matches Kyoji Kimoto.

    There's a discussion of the issue on "The Blackboard", which I don't understand; the objections seem to be picking nits. I always assumed that the Fs they are arguing about is the 3.7 additional watts absorbed by the atmosphere with a doubling of CO2, and the Fb is the original radiation plus the fraction of the additional absorbed radiation that is received by the surface. I my simple opaque atmosphere figures, Fs is the original Fs plus the additonal 4 watts absorbed by layer 2, resulting in Fb being the original 480 watts plus 4 additional watts thanks to that 4 additional watts absorbed by layer 2.

    http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/ipcc%E2%80%99s-overestimation-of-climate-sensitivity-kimoto/

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    • #
      Will Janoschka

      Alan McIntire May 7, 2017 at 3:56 am ·
      “I am posting a question which has bothered me: Kyoji Kimoto’s calculation appears to me to be more applicable to the real world doubling of CO2.
      http://edberry.com/SiteDocs/PDF/Climate/KimotoPaperReprint.pdf

      I am sure that Dr. Kimoto is much more accurate, than Nir Shaviv, but still not best! I am reviewing the comments at the blackboard and much confusion there about thermal EMR; the big difference between ‘radiance’, ‘flux’, and about why such thermal flux is ever generated at all!!
      I will get back after reviewing that pdf.
      -will-

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    • #
      Will Janoschka

      Alan McIntire May 7, 2017 at 3:56 am ·

      “I am posting a question which has bothered me: Kyoji Kimoto’s calculation appears to me to be more applicable to the real world doubling of CO2.”

      I have read the paper by Kyoji Kimoto entitled:
      ON THE CONFUSION OF PLANCK FEEDBACK PARAMETERS (2009)

      Most obvious is that the paper was written by someone that has no education nor experience with electromagnetic field theory or electromagnetic flux (power generation) whether Electronically generated or produced spontaneously from sensible heat of mass. The confusion is because the CC phrase “Planck’s feedback parameters are but a CC Pfantasy that physically exists nowhere on or about this Earth!
      Most telling are the references. Not one reference is linked to any that have such needed experience as all consider EMR to be a form of heat transfer power.
      Such is never the case except that sensible heat can power spontaneous generation of such EMR in very limited quantity and strictly limited at every frequency, direction, and polarization, But never isotropically (as claimed), just like any other form of EMR. The eventual absorber of such; can and does convert such into many other forms of power or power storage Most common is plant conversion from insolation to cellulose power storage, The most efficient conversion available. EMR can be easily be converted to specific heat as such is not quantized even at the atomic level. Please look at the named references. Can you find even one that may possibly have such education and experience?
      I am willing to discuss this further: Preferably with those who understand CC have no science only pfantasy! Such pfantasy can and has been falsified with most all of the measurable physical science Chemistry Geology, Engineering, etc.
      Coal is but trees that have not caught fire yet! After converting that stored into useful power without insolation. The useful byproduct of that generation eventually used to grow more trees, lumber, even coal.
      All the best!-will-

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      Alan,
      “result of increased wattage by four watts directly from the sun, which would have a different effect than a doubling of CO2,”

      Based on the IPCC’s definition of forging, a W/m^w is the same as any other W/m^2. The claim is that doubling CO2 is EQUIVALENT to 3.7 W/m^2 of incremental solar forcing (after reflection). If this is the case, then the planet behaves like a gray body emitter with an emissivity of about 0.62 resulting in a sensitivity of about 0.3C per W/m^2 which is below the lower limit claimed by the IPCC of about 0.4C per W/m^2. Plotting surface emissions vs. planet emissions confirms this.

      http://www.palisad.com/co2/tp/fig1.png

      Note that the ‘after reflection’ clause means that the negative feedback like effects from albedo are ignored.

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      • #
        Will Janoschka

        “Plotting surface emissions vs. planet emissions confirms this.”
        http://www.palisad.com/co2/tp/fig1.png

        Nice graph, that defeats the Clowns, even using the CC corrupt assumptions! Nowhere on the surface of Earth physically exists, exit flux more than 5% of BB radiance. Earth’s surface need not emit EMR flux at all. Variation in atmospheric H2O can control surface temperature to suit! -will-

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      • #
        Will Janoschka

        By far the largest supplier, by far, to the atmosphere of both CO2 and Ch4 are decaying tree leaves! This replaces all other minerals need for tree growth back into the ground, for efficient recycling. Any critter that is mobile, remains insignificant.
        By now the only thing to defeat “THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT” Is for all, to throw rocks through the glass panes of every GREENHOUSE! That’ll show’em! 🙂

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  • #
    Mark M

    It’s almost like this is a clue that it was warmer back then …

    Horses buried 2,300 years ago found “well-preserved in the permafrost”.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/27/science/horses-genetics-domestication-scythians.html?smid=tw-nytimesscience&smtyp=cur&_r=0

    40,000 years ago a 1,200 pound male bison got caught in quicksand. The entire skeleton was preserved by permafrost.
    http://www.gi.alaska.edu/node/1413

    Long-dormant bacteria & viruses, trapped in ice & permafrost for centuries, are reviving as Earth’s climate warms
    http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20170504-there-are-diseases-hidden-in-ice-and-they-are-waking-up

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      Pretty strong documentary evidence that the Arctic ice was light just after the Napoleonic Wars, despite Year Without a Summer, and despite severe cold preceding as well as following Tambora eruption (please note word “preceding”). Ice was very light again by the early 1920s.

      What happened? The ice came back. It came back in a big way around the end of the 19th century and again by the 1970s.

      And maybe Mawson was able to go where the recent Ship of Fools got stuck in Antarctic ice because…

      Because the ice came back!

      Ice. It goes away. It comes back. Everybody knows it, nobody is supposed to say it. Because once we had observation, now we have narrative.

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        el gordo

        Mosomoso the eruption of Mayon in 1814 may have contributed to the overcast conditions, followed by Tambora in the following year.

        There is still debate whether the cooling was caused by volcanic eruption or a natural Gleissberg cycle, separating the signal from the noise is no easy task, but the effect of a bicentenary Gleissberg without eruptions should give us a clearer picture.

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          EG, of interest from the CET is that the intense cold of 1812 and 1813-14 (including the Great Frost of 1813 and Big Snow of Jan 1814) all PRECEDED the eruption of Mayon.

          My guess is that climatologists have much more to understand. Unfortunately, right now they’re not in the business of understanding.

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            el gordo

            ‘….all PRECEDED the eruption of Mayon.’

            Yep a clear signal that volcanic eruptions at the time were not so important in the cooling, which is a bit of a worry.

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            • #

              The aftermath of Laki was devastating with some of the worst effects, as I remember reading somewhere, in Russia. While the eruption series was followed by a couple of very rough winters, it’s interesting to note in the CET that, five years after Laki, the severe winter of 1788-9 was notorious for cold and a long frost, but it was also very dry and preceded by drought and the surprisingly mild winter of 1786-7.

              What I’m saying is that looking for clear causation by looking at volcanic eruptions can get confusing. To be fair Lamb thought that the eruptive period 1752-1840’s slowed what he called “climatic recovery from the late 1600’s”. However the only major cluster cited was 1812-1814. I reckon if any volcano was going to change your climate long term it would be dirty, long-erupting Laki-Grimsvotn.

              Laki certainly didn’t cool things for Australia and India in the early 1790s, that’s for sure. Similar thing with sunspots. The “quiet sun” of WW1 may have kept France and Belgian cold and boggy, but Australia baked.

              If we ever get cold like Europe 1708-9, or a volcano like Laki stopping aviation and agriculture, I sure don’t want the gig of de-icing the whirlygigs or scouring the grime off acres of solar panels. I want to be sitting by a coal-fueled radiator sipping tea and dreaming up theories about climate.

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          • #
            el gordo

            A volcanic eruption in 1783-84 in Iceland has been cleared of blame and they have correctly accepted that a negative NAO was the cause.

            http://www.livescience.com/30325-iceland-volcano-laki-eruption-cold-winter.html

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      • #
        el gordo

        There is another facet which has generally slipped under the radar, which you may like to get your head around.

        http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X05003079

        [Remember that correlation doesn’t necessarily show causation. But interesting theory. The bulk of the material is behind a “paywall” which will limit many reader’s interest.] AZ

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          el gordo

          I like the idea of ‘archeomagnetic jerks’, its a plausible theory to add to my arsenal.

          [I’m puzzled. Knowing you I should be suspicious of your use of the word, “jerks”. But since there are 2 ways to interpret your meaning I’ll approve this and readers can decide the issue.] AZ

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          • #
            Will Janoschka

            “jerks” Ha! The first derivative of acceleration with respect to time,the second derivative of velocity with respect to time, the third derivative of location with respect to time, and what is done to correct your dog from trying to go the wrong way! Are there any others? 🙂

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            el gordo

            In my vulgar way I thought it amusing.

            And thanks for the warning that correlation ‘doesn’t necessarily show causation.’

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      Mark M

      The red thumber is really a science denier.

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        I call them Holocene deniers.

        A good denier can overlook active volcanism and massive sub-glacial ash sheet near Pine Island Glacier…while explaining any past climate blips and anomalies by referring vaguely to some volcano that might have gone off at the same time. Or not.

        There are even Holocene deniers who float the idea that humans caused the Medieval Warming by populating and deforesting. They claim further that when population numbers were reduced through the plague or Hundred Years War the forests grew back which caused the Little Ice Age.

        I reckon to be as facile and simplistic as that you have to be born with a gaming console in each claw. Modern education does the rest.

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          The climate will be much more malleable when we finally move into the plastocene.

          Sorry, I couldn’t resist …

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            john karajas

            R.W. you truly do have a warped mind. But, anyhow, carry on——!

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            Will Janoschka

            Rereke Whakaaro May 7, 2017 at 11:49 am · Reply

            “The climate will be much more malleable when we finally move into the plastocene.”

            Would that historic interval not be recorded as the “plastobscene”?

            Sorry, I couldn’t resist …

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          “There are even Holocene deniers …”

          The question I like to ask is did the Co2 emissions that arose from the Industrial Revolution cause a more favorable climate or did a more favorable climate result in the Industrial Revolution?

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          I should add that the onset of miserable climate conditions in the 14th century preceded the Black Death and the Hundred Years War.

          The Great Famine of 1315-17 which killed millions was the direct result of cold and damp conditions which brought the curtain down on the MWP. The people didn’t make the climate go bad. The climate made the people go bad. Happens a lot through history. Think Bronze Age decline after 1200BC and the Bond Event cooling a thousand years before that.

          Better hope it doesn’t happen again soon. Some cold plus either drought or damp, with a major eruption chucked in for good measure, will make us wish for that good old 20th century warming, with all its faults. Because there never was a stable climate to revert to; nor was there ever a “climate change” to be “tackled”. This is about as good as you are going to get, even if it’s not terrific.

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            el gordo

            The never ending pause in world temperature feels unnatural, not that it has anything to do with human induced CO2.

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          Philo

          I think everyone interested in climate should take a good look at the long record ice cores. The Dome C is the longest at 800,000 years, although there is talk of an area in Antarctica with deep ice possibly going to 1.5 million years ago. The biggest observation is that all the records show glaciations lasting up to 110,000 years(the last one). The glaciations all end abruptly(in terms of dates accurate to ~500 years) when the temperature rises from -9-10degC to 0-3degC. The low temps are all in the -9 to -10deg. range, the highs are all in the -3 to +3 range. There are about 11 high peaks, including the current one.

          Most all the warming periods are very abrupt in ice core terms, possibly as short as 1000 years. The longest, highest peak occurred between 425-395,000 years ago. Only 5 peak temperatures were above 0deg.C. including the current one.

          Most of the warm periods are very brief before the temperature starts a long, erratic decay back to -9degC. Fluctuations in both warming and cooling phases “jump” up and down as much as 3-4deg.C.

          What I draw from this is that the climate, at least for the last couple million years, as been stable in the sense that it stays in a ~12degC range. Its unstable in that the temperature swings vary from days to thousands of years with little regularity. Fourier or some other frequency analysis might bring some measure of the range of frequency cycles involved, but it will be hard to ascribe any particular peak or valley to a specific cause.

          It’s only in the last couple years that reports analyzing the natural variability have pointed to natural cycles, other than human causes, have contributed greatly to the temperature change. CO2 changes are unlikely to be a major cause, not even correlating but following temperature changes. We have no way of telling if the temperature is beginning a long decline down to -9C or maybe going to bounce around near present day temps for 5-15,000 years.

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        Yonniestone

        The red thumber will eventually warm to the idea…….

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        Red thumbs are a badge of honor. They confirm the fact that you brought up a point that they can not address without undermining their beliefs.

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    We just did a trip into the Victorian High Country last weekend and discovered that Parks Victoria were closing tracks a month earlier (normally Jun – Nov). The reason:

    …to maintain water quality and prevent erosion during the wetter months as rain and snow softens the tracks, making them vulnerable to damage.

    Either they haven’t heard about ‘climate change’ where the rains won’t fall and temperatures will rise, or they know something we (or most) don’t.

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      Dennis

      I stayed there in March and light snow had already fallen on the higher peaks.

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      Greebo

      PV are well known locally as another branch of the Fun Police.

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      Ted O'Brien.

      4WDriving can be fun and more. When it is part of your business and your own money is being spent it is expensive. but whatever the reason for doing it, it promotes erosion, especially when it is wet. So much so that it is and should be regarded as unsustainable.

      Reopen Hazelwood to give us cheap power to generate the production that makes us wealthy enough to tar seal those trails to minimise the erosion.

      Myself right now, I want to go to Victoria to see the Californian Redwoods and Douglas Fir plantations. The Sequoias in Cook Park at Orange are impressive, a grove of them would surely be narvellous.

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        4WDriving can be fun and more. When it is part of your business and your own money is being spent it is expensive. but whatever the reason for doing it, it promotes erosion, especially when it is wet. So much so that it is and should be regarded as unsustainable.

        I’ve been 4WDriving in Victoria for over 40 years and this is certainly not the case. Closure of tracks in Winter is fine, as most places become impassable anyway and the only way that tracks can remain usable, especially for fire crews during the Summer, is if people are allowed to use the tracks. Long-term tracks closures have had a serious impact in some areas when it comes to access for fire fighting ie the crews can’t get to the fires.

        Myself right now, I want to go to Victoria to see the Californian Redwoods and Douglas Fir plantations. The Sequoias in Cook Park at Orange are impressive, a grove of them would surely be narvellous.

        There are no Redwood or Douglas Fir plantations in Victoria. 🙂

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    An article from the National – The Newspaper that Supports an Independent Scotland
    Scientists say replacing beef with insects in diet could save the planet

    EATING insects instead of beef could help tackle climate change by reducing harmful emissions linked to livestock production, according to researchers.

    The team from Scotland’s Rural College and Edinburgh University say that replacing half of the meat eaten worldwide with crickets and mealworms would cut farmland use by a third, substantially reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.

    I know that it is the usual crazy stuff from the believers. But in Scotland, the Nationalists take this to new heights, providing a more extreme variant of climate lunacy that the rest of Britain. The article shows some Scottish cattle, which Scotland is very good at producing. Crickets in Scotland are not very abundant, and when found are of an extremely small size. Mealworms are cultivated, mostly as birdfeed. But this needs to be done indoors in Scotland. The Scots Nats, to save the planet, are promoting the running down of Scottish Agriculture for inferior imported foodstuffs. But then the same party wants to be free of the democratic Westminster Parliament, but chained to the un-elected officials of the European Union.

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      David Maddison

      As part of the campaign to destroy Western Civilisation and returning us to more primitive ways, the UN has been proposing replacing meat production with insects for some time.

      Presumbly insects will only be for the sheeple, the elites will still have their nice juicy steaks.

      http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e00.htm

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        Are you suggesting that the progressive left in Scotland lack original ideas?

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          Ted O'Brien.

          The inference here is that mealworms do not produce as much GHGs as do cattle. This I doubt.

          If I was commissioning research into the matter I would not expect the GHG production to be any less. I won’t be worrying about it, except to lambast these bleepwits.

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            Ted O'Brien.

            What could worry me, though, is that my 15 yo grandson offered me some dried mealworms from a cellophane packet. Only once.

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      TdeF

      Ironic. As half Scots, I refuse to eat Haggis, that awful concoction of offal in a stomach which was the only way Scots could get a meal when all the prime beef went to the beefeaters in England. It is a symbol of the subjugation of Scotland and I refuse to touch it.

      Thanks to the Protestant movement and the consequent need for everyone to read the Bible, they adopted universal education even for the poor and the educated and literate Scots provided the empire with poets, writers, philosophers, mathematicians and the world’s most famous engineers, even on the Starship Enterprise with the eponomously named engineer Scotty.

      Now are Scots are really suggesting that they do not eat Beef to promote the independence of Scotland? What has happened to Scotland? Is it back to Haggis or worse, porridge three times a day? Porridge with salt for main and with sugar for dessert? No, if anyone needs Global Warming, it is the Scots.

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        “If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding.”

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        tom0mason

        TdeF,
        The haggis is a small Scottish animal with longer legs on one side, so that it can run around the steep hills of the Scottish Highlands without falling over. According to one poll, 33% of American visitors to Scotland believed haggis to be an animal.

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          TdeF

          There are two distinct species, clockwise and counterclockwise which prohibits mating between the species on the steep hills. Also known as left handed and right handed. They taste quite different and so are priced differently. Scotsmen argue endlessly on prices. This is known as haggling, leading to compromise on quality and price and it is universally agreed that the haggis could have been better.

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          Alfred (Melbourne)

          Apparently, when the British were selecting the fittest of the Nepalese to join the Gurkhas, they would ask the candidates to race a short distance. Some of them fell over as they were not very good at running on flat ground.

          https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/dec/06/military.audreygillan

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      • #

        I quite like haggis – or at least the mass market modern variants that are made from pork offal rather than the traditional lamb, and wrapped in plastic. Heats through in about two minutes in the microwave, and makes a cheap meal. Still prefer the Scots beef, though that is a wee bit expensive. Venison is my favorite Scottish meat though. I like a wee dram as well.
        TdeF, in terms of ancestry, I am a tad more Scottish, having one Scots parent and three Scottish grandparents.

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      Geoffrey Williams

      Scottish Nationalists could do with a change of diet;
      could be suffering from mad cow disease . .
      GeoffW

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        TdeF

        Possibly too much Bull. John Bull.

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          Annie

          I tried haggis from Waitrose, just once…disgusting! I’ll ignore the small amount of Scottish ancestry that I possess and never touch it again. Give me ‘Roast Beef of Old England’ ;).

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        Dennis

        That disease has been sweeping Queensland for decades, mad cow disease, it’s known there as Line Dancing.

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        Geoffrey
        Your another one that is criticizing the Scottish diet. 🙂
        A delicacy that emerged about twenty years ago was battered and then deep-fried Mars Bars. What could possibly be wrong with that? A man doing manual labour could get around half his necessary daily calorie intake for around a pound!
        Further back, Johnson in the World’s first dictionary, gave the definition of

        oats: ‘a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.’

        Although oats are a major ingredient of haggis, the major form of consumption was porridge. As recently as 40 years ago it was still the major breakfast cereal in Scotland.

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          Alfred (Melbourne)

          Actually, oats is an excellent source of energy. It has a low GI index. The Russian army is largely dependent on its “kashka” because it is popular and so simple to prepare.

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    David Maddison

    British grapes for sparkling wines ruined by frosts. Yet another sign of the dangerous global cooling phase we are entering.

    http://www.drinkscentral.com.au/4751?Article=frost-devastates-british-wine-industry

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      TdeF

      Exactly. As below.

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      Roger

      Here in the UK, apart from the first week of April, the month has been one of the coldest I can recall. Worse than the April following the exeptionally coldwinter of 1963. In about 1967 we did have an overnight snowfall on the 12th or 13th of April with a few days of cold similar to now, but it only lasted for 3 days or so – I was due to compete in a Pony Club one-day-event which had to be cancelled because of the snow! except for .

      Now into May, this first week has felt more like February or November with, as yet no signs of improving.

      It is not just grape vines which have suffered – we have lost young leaves on Ash, Walnut and other deciduous trees – the exception has been the leaves which had emerged earlier and strong enough to withstand the frost.

      Met Office forecasts for the week ahead have, for each of the last couple of weeks, been forecasting much warmer weather than we have had, by as much as 6-10 deg C ! Never any explanation as to why their predictions have been so wrong – but I suspect it is because the Met Office software is all tuned to its over-heated climate models !!

      The cold has been brought by the flow of cold arctic air from the North and the East – in the same way that summer heatwaves are usually associated with the flow of hot air from the south arising in Africa and passing across Europe. It appears to me that ‘unseasonal’ weather in the UK, be it cold or hot, is typically associated with prevailing wind direction and over what distance those winds prevail. i.e. Cold Arctic air or Hot African air.

      There will be no headlines released by the Met Office about ‘coldest start to May’ in ‘xx’ years, or of ‘coldest April’ since xxxx. No, they keep such news releases for items like the 2 minute temperature blip recorded at Heathrow airport early last year. The data recorded showed a ~1 deg C rise lasting for just 2 mins and which happened to coincide with a Boeing Dreamliner turning around on the taxiway next to the data recorder ! That was pronounced as a record temp – highest evaah – caused by Global Warming !

      Routinely in the Winter the TV weather forecasts predict an overnight temp for London and warn that outside in the rural areas it will be 4 deg C (occasionally 5 deg C) colder. That level of UHI in London is well documented and yet CRU prefers to ‘adjust’ and ‘homogenise’ rural temps by less that 2 deg C – thus creating a genuinely man-made ‘global warming’in the South of England.

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    TdeF

    I still remain amazed at Prof Weiss’s fit using Fourier analysis and yielding really one one major 210 year solar cycle (DeVries) and one smaller cycle (induced PDO Pacidic Decadal Osciallation) to explain all of known temperature patterns. The slides at 12:34 of the last 250 years and at 13:37 are just staggering. He has both the underlying pattern over 2,500 years and the exact detail in the last 250 years including the pause.

    The most important part of the 250 year graph is now, the prediction of the pause followed by a very rapid descent. I would estimate 1C over just ten years from now. It is happening now.

    As this becomes apparent I expect the following

    1. First there will be a great fudging of data just to try to stop the Global Temperature from falling.
    2. Windmills will get the credit, meaning more will have to be built. We are ‘saved’.
    3. the cooling will be a direct result of warming, perhaps by disturbing the Arctic flows and jet stream through climate change and extreme events. Somehow the warming will be flipped around to cause cooling, just as Flannery blames the oceans for stealing his atmospheric heat without the air actually getting hotter
    4. El Nino and La Nina will be responsible. Despite the fact that no computer models can predict either, they are used universally to explain any failure of a prediction
    5. there will be a demand to reduce CO2 even further and faster to stop the warming which is causing extreme events which in turn is causing cooling. It will be back to the future as the IPCC shows that they had warned of this and governments had failed to act.

    Up to 400 million Indians in the valley of the Ganges will now die from thirst as the glaciers refuse to melt. Polar bears will die because they cannot swim home or find prey. Food production will drop dramatically with the frosts, especially grapes and oranges and avacadoes. Penguins will die in their millions as the ice grows too far from their breeding grounds. Oh the humanity of CO2 caused Climate Change and your fault, skeptics.

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      TdeF

      Consider Mann’s Hockey stick. Prof Weiss’s picture of the last 250 years is nothing like the handle, but if the Hockey stick analogy was right, we now have the pause at the top of the blade and the precipitous descent on the other side will follow. Mann will perhaps perversely claim credit for predicting the 20 year pause at the top and the 1.5C plummet on the other side.

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      David Maddison

      I responded but my comment is stuck in moderation…

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      David Maddison

      TdeF, I agree with you that they will promote the “logic” in your sequence in points 1 to 5 above, however, will always be able to point out that CO2 is still rising and likely will for centuries since it lags global mean temperature by up to 800 years. We will only see a CO2 decline centuries after the present cooling.

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        TdeF

        Occam’s razor means Prof Weiss has the full explanation and it does not involve CO2. It’s just the sun. Quelle Surprise!

        As Prof Murry Selby pointed out at the cost of his job, one of the few full time professional climate scientists, CO2 is totally uncorrelated with temperature. However he found good correlation between CO2 and the integral of temperature, meaning again the sun is the driver of CO2, the total solar impulse or heating. This directly confirms that the Henry rule of CO2 determined by ocean surface temperature is the full explanation of CO2, not CO2 of temperature.

        More importantly though, using this principle you could integrate Prof Weiss’ graph and predict CO2 over the next few decades and it will drop. I believe also that the small seasonal oscillations in CO2 are partly plant and phytoplankton driven and clearly partly local seasonal surface warming, a factor never considered by people who think again that plants control CO2.

        The endless pictures of the Biosphere with its sources and sinks is totally focussed on the role of plants and humans. There is every chance they are substantially wrong, that the major force again even from season to season is simply the sun.

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          Much of the “discussion” about the role of CO2 is base-over-apex.

          It has little to do with atmospheric physics. It does however have lot to do with human physiological response to the ratio of CO2 to O2 in the blood stream, resulting from stagnant air in enclosed spaces.

          As I type this, I am in a closed room, and feeling uncomfortably hot, even though my thermometer reads 17 degrees C.

          I get up and open the door.

          I instantly feel cooler again because of a greater admixture of oxygen from outside the room, and the escape of some CO2. The thermometer however, still remains at 17 degrees C.

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            TdeF

            As you know, my observation is that there is virtually zero fossil fuel CO2 in the air. So the increase is natural. Therefore we can do nothing about it. The second argument about whether the increase matters is also resolved. It doesn’t. As for whether the CO2 increase is a good thing, it is. So there is no problem at all and if there was, we do not control it and windmills achieve nothing, as anyone from South Australia can tell you.

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              Rereke Whakaaro

              I agree Tdef.

              But I like to explain my little “experiment” to people, because it something they can actually try at home. Feeling hot from a surfeit of CO2 is a physiological response and has nothing to do with the physical ambient temperature.

              If we can keep repeating that, the bottom will fall out of the climate scam.

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            Will Janoschka

            Rereke Whakaaro May 7, 2017 at 1:36 pm

            “Much of the “discussion” about the role of CO2 is base-over-apex.”

            This is just one minor detail, in the construction of the Earth!
            All of the 5 responses to minor Solar system God RFQ, for construction in six ‘days’, demanded that the Earth must spin, else critters suffocate in their own farts! Good thing the interval for ‘day’ did not exist. Thats OK, minor detail to be worked out ‘after’ construction begins with ‘after’ and ‘begins’still undefined. Spontaneous creation of lawyers and politicians, ‘before’ time.
            Minor God reports this to ancestor God!
            Ancestor replies, “For consistency If wee Earth must spin, all must spin! Please ask your contractors to calculate the required angular momentum of the Universe. Yous guys claim I am “all powerful”, but yous guys are pushing that to far! Love Gramps! 🙂
            All the best!-will-

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          Alfred (Melbourne)

          As soon as cooling sets in, the Oceans will be sucking back the CO2 which they released in the past 100 years. There is 50 times as much CO2 in the oceans as there is in the atmosphere and when the water temperature drops, equilibrium will require a big transfer of CO2 back into the waters.

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      Rick Will

      You should never use terminology such as Climate Change or Global Warming. Both terms are far too specific and observational evidence can disprove them. If you stick with the more acceptable term, Climate Disruption, then any weather event outside a small deviation from the past average can be used as empirical evidence of such a phenomena.

      It is always Climate Disruption that causes wind turbines to stall or overload. It is Climate Disruption that causes snow in Germany in late April that stops the solar panels from producing. Output from intermittents will be more stable and more reliable once Climate Disruption is tamed by stabilising CO2 at pre-industrial levels.

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        Rereke Whakaaro

        OK Rick,

        I will buy-in. If I am to use the term, “Climate Disruption”, then I will need to have a definition that separates it from all of the other climate jargon.

        For a start, I will need to know what figure to put on, “the past average”, and what deviation from that past average was acceptable.

        I would also need to know how we intend to differentiate between wind turbine failures, due to climate disruption, and wind turbine failures due to engineering faults, or material failures.

        As for solar panels, I accept that snow and ice coverage stops the panels from working. But to categorise that as “climate disruption”, we would need to address the tendency that power companies have, to warm the panels when the ambient temperature drops below a certain level. Tricky one, that. how would you address it?

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          Graeme No.3

          Obviously we should use the term Climate Confusion.
          The Warmists don’t know if the temperature is going up or down.
          Nor do they know why it goes in either direction.
          Having gotten most politicians to believe in Global Warming, they face great problems convincing them that Global Cooling is the new way.
          And the Warmists don’t know if subsidies and grants are going to go up or down.

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            bobl

            If I understand Trump, I think the grants are heading DOWN

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              Will Janoschka

              Well certainly the US$50 is!

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              • #

                We think of U.S. Presidents as old guys the further back you go. At the time he was elected, General Ulysses Grant (on the $US50 as Will alluded to above) was the youngest ever President to be elected. When you think of that, he made Star Rank (BrigGen) at the age of only 39, going on to become General of The Army (4 Star) at the age of 44.

                When elected president he was two Months shy of his 47th Birthday, seven Months younger than Barack Obama (5) when he took over the Presidency.

                He’s still the fourth youngest President, with only Clinton (3) Kennedy (2) and Theodore Rooselvelt younger than he was.

                Tony.

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                Ignore that first ‘l’ (typo, should read just plain Roosevelt)

                Tony.

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          Rick Will

          The definition of Climate Disruption is not difficult.

          Any time a wind turbine is not working is due to Climate Disruption. Wind too strong causing them to shut down, fall down or catch fire are events with Climate Disruption as the root cause. Wind too light and blades stall is due to Climate Disruption.

          If solar panels are not producing any time between dawn and dusk it is due to Climate Disruption. Climate Disruption is responsible for the cloud cover and snow fall. If the efficiency is down because it is hot then that can be sheeted back to Climate Disruption.

          The Climate Disruption Theory can be used to explain any type of weather the proponents choose to label as Climate Disruption. It is the perfect theory of weather and can mean whatever the proponents say it means. It is a theory that can never be disproven. This theory is from the well funded School of Humpty Dumpty Science.

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            Rereke Whakaaro

            Ah, now I understand. It describes much the same phenomena as, “the dog ate my homework”.

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      David Maddison

      The fallacy of human induced global is so well documented that it is utterly inexcusable to not know about it.

      Just as at the Nuremberg trials where “we didn’t know” was not accepted as an excuse, neither should that excuse be accepted for ignorance about warmist misrepresentations.

      As I have said before, as the massive economic and human damage caused by warmist misrepresentations becomes apparent we need to put on trial all those in power who promoted these misrepresentations (corrupt “scientists”, public serpents, greens, industrialists that make fortunes out of unreliable energy production, politicians) in Nuremberg-style trials and we need to start letting them know now what’s going to happen to them. For the most egregious promoters of warmist misrepresentations the penalties should be severe, just as in corporate wrong doings leading to great financial losses.

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        Rob R

        Who will and how can they hold the warmists to account for all the nonsense and waste that has occurred and is still occurring?

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          el gordo

          Because of the ‘precautionary principle’ I don’t expect to see any prosecutions.

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      sophocles

      Dr Willi Dansgaard made a similar analysis of the data from the Greenland Camp Century ice core. He came up with just two cycles: a strong one of about 184 years and a slightly lesser one of 78 years.

      These correspond to the de Vries cycle (~ 200 years) and the second one of c. 78 years. That could be the Gleissberg cycle ( ~ 83 Y ) but that is not a strong one. It’s thought to be amplitude modulation of the Schwabe/Hale cycle.

      Dansgaard made a forecast:
      1 – cooling until the early 1980s
      2 – warming from about 1983 to 2015
      3 – the next fifty years will be chilly.

      Not bad for 1970. The first two points were pretty good.

      That’s not so different from Prof Weiss’s analysis. We know those cycles, like the Schwabe/Hale (11/22 year) cycle(s) all have the wobbles as in minimum lengths when the Sun is highly active to longer lengths when it snoozes. The De Vries cycle may well be as variable. This post at Tallbloke’s Talkshop could be a mechanism for the variability.

      The important points are that CO2 is unnecessary and it’s all natural variation. Just check the maths.

      The CO2 entering the atmosphere now is post temperature rise.

      (Someone at WUWT has alleged that the CO2 emissions from the ocean is the CO2 from the Medieval Warming (based on CO2 follows T + 800 years.) Could be, could be not.)

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        el gordo

        Sophocles the Gleissberg cycle is generally recognised as roughly 88 years, but I’ll pay Dansgaard observation.

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          sophocles

          Pedant. 🙂

          I understand it’s (the Gleissberg Cycle) c. 70-100 years with an `average’ around 87 years, (or an arithmetical mean of 85 years = 70 + (100 – 70)/2) depending on your sources. It’s as variable as most of the other solar cycles.

          About the only one with less variability is the Sun’s rotation. So in Dansgaard’s analysis, the period of the second major cycle at 78 years is not so outerspace as all that. I’d say: ballpark.

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    Mark M

    After the march …

    As scientist-activists who work on climate science and renewable energy, the question we get asked the most is, “What can I do about climate change?”

    Even a homeless person in America has a carbon footprint of roughly 8.5 tons of carbon dioxide per year — far higher than the per capita value needed to hold back dangerous climate change.

    http://mashable.com/2017/05/06/how-you-can-fight-climate-change/#gHr5haA9rOqm

    The 97% will never be happy, even if everyone was homeless. Well, not them …

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    el gordo

    Massive Model Failure

    http://l.yimg.com/fz/api/res/1.2/u.i.A9hIbX2Ql7L7LC5_jg–/YXBwaWQ9c3JjaGRkO2g9Njk5O3E9OTU7dz0xMDE1/http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/73-climate-models_reality.gif

    If the hiatus continues for another decade then both sides of the debate will have to recognise they don’t know what is happening.

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      David Maddison

      The science realists know what is happening.

      We are heading for global cooling, right now.

      See #9 above.

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        TdeF

        Yes, but it is not disastrous, just argument destroying. Prof Weiss’s graph shows an uptick after the fall. This is not like Mann’s absurd projection to infinity with no basis in science or data. Weiss has a perfectly good predictor now.

        You would have to say that if politicians and the Profiteers of Doom had not gone on about this, no one would have really cared or even noticed the slight change in a manufactured average. Al Gore is perhaps the world leader of the Profiteers, giving $300K lectures on how the world is going to end if you do not make him richer. The $300K is being paid by the Australian Government, no less. So at least 20 Trillion dollars for absolutely nothing and in Australia, the pointless and utterly destructive shutting down of our cheap, clean and reliable and adequate electricity system.

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      Peter C

      el Gordo,

      The John Christy graphic that you linked to shows a reality check based on balloon and satellite data (green circles and blue squares).
      https://www.google.com.au/search?q=climate+models+vs+reality&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwimg_jgqdzTAhWMppQKHbAvADoQsAQIJQ&biw=1280&bih=845#imgrc=Vp4wI_cSDi2egM:

      The surface temperature constructions by NASA GIS and NOAA and HadCrut seem to show a different reality. The way that Gavin Schmidt and Thomas Karl work it out, the 1998 el Nino spike and the pause is completely gone. Not only that but the temperature rise is accelerating (if you believe them).
      https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/

      The important part about all this is that David Evans has made a bet on Global Warming out to 2020 with a Brian Schmidt.
      http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/i-already-have-a-climate-bet-with-a-brian-schmidt-id-like-to-do-another/

      By all that we think we understand about the climate at this stage David should be feeling pretty comfortable about his bet. The problem however is that the terms of the bet refer to NASA GISStemp. So unless the NASA GISStemp can be exposed as data manipulation, David is likely to loose.

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        el gordo

        Peter it might be best for us to move the goal posts away from world temperature.

        If we are correct then catastrophic weather should be made the talking point, because global cooling begins regionally.

        My argument is that a string of cool wet summers in Europe is a sign of natural variability overwhelming GHGs.

        In the southern hemisphere I’m particularly interested in the apparent weakness of the subtropical ridge, the blocking highs are a dead give away that cooling has begun. Apart from the early ski season and Queensland cooling.

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          Peter C

          No argument from me el gordo.

          The problem is GISStemp! Why are they making it up?
          https://realclimatescience.com/2016/12/100-of-us-warming-is-due-to-noaa-data-tampering/

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            el gordo

            They are making it up because they have careers to protect and mortgages to pay, we need to move away from world temperatures and concentrate on regional anomalies. Temperatures have been on the slide in Germany for years.

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              sophocles

              Agreed. Snowstorms in January in NZ are a major cold anomaly.

              2016 was the last year of `Global’ Warming. It’s now cooling. That’s the middle of NZ’s summer and at closest approach to the star. It’s always been a hot time during my lifetime.

              Definition of terms:

              `Global’ = Northern Hemisphere.
              The Southern Hemisphere goes its own way.

              It will be interesting to see the effects Down Under.
              The paper this comment references, shows a mostly stable long term NZ average temperature. (I’m not selling my wool shares!)

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    pat

    monolithic MSM is putting its full weight behind this:

    GE’s Immelt urges Trump to remain in Paris climate accord
    Financial Times – ‎May 4, 2017‎

    Shell joins Exxon to defend Paris climate accord
    Financial Times – ‎May 4, 2017‎

    Theresa May urged to persuade Trump not to quit Paris climate accord
    The Guardian – ‎4 hours ago‎

    ‘US people will lose!’ EU officials ‘BEG’ Donald Trump to keep Paris climate change deal
    Express.co.uk – ‎May 4, 2017‎

    NZ Govt Asked to Urge US to Stay in Paris Agreement
    Scoop.co.nz (press release) – ‎May 4, 2017‎

    6 May: AP: US still in climate talks with no decision on Paris pullout
    By JOSH LEDERMAN and CATHERINE LUCEY
    While U.S. representatives are in Bonn, Germany, next week for the U.N. talks, Trump’s advisers will meet Tuesday to discuss what to do about the global pact known as the Paris agreement, officials said.
    Though Trump’s inclination has been to leave the agreement, he’s allowed his daughter, White House adviser Ivanka Trump, to set up an extensive review process, a senior administration official said. The goal is to ensure Trump receives information from both government experts and the private sector before a making a decision…

    To that end, Ivanka Trump will hold a separate meeting Tuesday with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, the official said…
    And the decision to participate in next week’s U.N. climate talks shouldn’t be construed as a sign that Trump has decided to stay in the Paris pact, a State Department official added. To the contrary, the U.S. will be sending a “much smaller” delegation than it has in years past, the official said…
    The State Department official said that the U.S. was focused on ensuring that no decisions are made in Bonn next week “that would prejudice our future policy,” undermine competitiveness for American businesses or restrict U.S. economic growth.

    The U.S. delegation will be led by Trigg Talley, the U.S. deputy special envoy for climate change. The Trump administration has left the special envoy role vacant after the official who held the position in the Obama administration departed…
    Even if Trump announces his intention to withdraw, the lengthy divorce process and other stipulations in the deal mean that the U.S. would remain in the pact at least until November 2020 – around the same date as the next U.S. presidential election.
    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_UNITED_STATES_CLIMATE_CHANGE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-05-06-02-53-35

    ***yet FakeNewsMSM never ever mentions “Paris” is inseparable from Agenda 21, now Agenda30:

    Sustainable Development Goals
    The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), officially known as Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a set of 17 “Global Goals” with 169 targets between them. Spearheaded by the United Nations through a deliberative process involving its 193 Member States, as well as global civil society, the goals are contained in paragraph 54 United Nations Resolution A/RES/70/1 of 25 September 2015…
    The SDGs were in large measure informed by the often quoted assertion by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that “we don’t have plan B because there is no planet B”…
    These included ending poverty and hunger, improving health and education, making cities more sustainable, combating climate change, and protecting oceans and forests…
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals

    if Trump doesn’t keep his promise to withdraw from the biggest globalist scam ever…it’s hard to imagine he would be re-elected.

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      Will Janoschka

      “Even if Trump announces his intention to withdraw, the lengthy divorce process and other stipulations in the deal mean that the U.S. would remain in the pact at least until November 2020 – around the same date as the next U.S. presidential election.”

      The USofA has never even been a party to the Paris accord and no need to withdraw! After Nov 2020, it can no longer even presented to congress. The Donald is not doing exactly what does not need to be done as the Us is not-a-party any longer. I think the Donald has far better ideas on how to handle this with the press and Climate Clowns! Let them all wonder, if they are capable of that! 🙁

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      Annie

      What, exactly, is ‘global civil society’?

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        Will Janoschka

        Serfs!

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        James Murphy

        I tend to interpret “civil society” as a society of people who do what they are told, ask no difficult questions, and never express any ideas which may be deemed offensive – unless those offended are one or more of the following; Christian, Jewish, white, male, not wholehearted supporters of extreme left-wing political ideologies.

        Then, this is just my view, which may vary significantly with those actively pushing the civil society “message”…

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        sophocles

        Annie asked: What, exactly, is ‘global civil society?’

        The taxpayer block whose pockets are to be siphoned.

        Translation from UN speak:
        Global – everyone except the UN, Green Activists and Kevin Trenberth. Oh, and Gavin Schmidt.

        Civil – dumb, silent, not listened to. Sheeple.

        Society – herds of them.

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    pat

    exposing another of the CAGW mob’s lies – & the mob includes academics, media, NGOs, and politicians from all sides who want to protect special interests and not the public at large:

    4 May: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: Architect Of Paris Agreement Undercuts Arguments In Favor Of The Climate Deal
    A key architect of the Paris climate agreement says countries are not allowed to scale back their pledges, which undercuts arguments made by supporters of the global warming accords…
    This argument has been advanced by pro-Paris Republicans and former Obama administration officials with an interest in keeping the U.S. in the agreement. But Laurence Tubiana, France’s climate diplomat in 2015, said the Paris agreement does not allow countries to weaken their pledges, despite what Paris supporters argue.

    “The text is very clear,” Tubiana told E&E News. “The sense of the direction is really progress; it’s not going backwards.”…
    She cited Article 4.11 of the Paris agreement: “A party may at any time adjust its existing nationally determined contribution with a view to enhancing its level of ambition.”…
    Tubiana was backed up by former Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh.
    “The absence of clear legal language precluding downward adjustment cannot mean that downward adjustment is possible,” he told E&E News. “This will defeat the soul and spirit of the Paris Agreement.”…

    But former Obama administration officials argue the U.S. can weaken its pledge, despite the language being ambiguous at best on that issue…
    But Paris critics say the Stern-Biniaz legal argument makes no sense. It would make no sense for Trump to be allowed to submit a weaker pledge to rapidly expand coal, oil and gas production.
    “That interpretation is bizarre,” wrote Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute…READ ON
    http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/04/architect-of-paris-agreement-undercuts-arguments-in-favor-of-the-climate-deal/

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    Roy Hogue

    Trump did quite a speech on that aircraft carrier for Turnbull’s sake, didn’t he? I think he laid it on real thick. I hope Malcolm Enjoyed it.

    As for me, I got a little nauseated by it. But then Trump has a habit of laying it on a bit too thick a lot of the time. I know what America means to Australia and Australia means to us and I have no trouble understanding that a large number of Australians dislike Malcolm Turnbull for, among other reasons, the backroom deal that brought down Tony Abbott. And I’m with you on that one all the way.

    Politics sure makes for strange bedfellows, Trump and Turnbull, no?

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      There was one (almost throwaway) comment from President Trump during that little interview with both leaders aboard the Intrepid. Evidently Malcolm had told Donald earlier that our two Military forces had been allies for 99 years. During that little talk, President Trump said:

      So we’ve been allies for 99 years. Can you imagine that. 99 years, and never a bad time, so it’s a great great thing.

      It gave me the impression that this was probably the first he had heard of it, because, well, you know, the Americans won every War since The Great War, well, almost anyway.

      President Trump probably won’t bother to find out where that association began, and (I suspect) for Malcolm, it was probably just a talking point someone mentioned to him to bring up, so please excuse my cynicism here.

      That association between our two military forces goes back to July 4th 1918, and The Battle Of Hamel, and it almost never came to pass.

      I wrote two Posts at my site over the last two days detailing the events, and I know it sounds like my drumming up readers for my site, but hey, that’s neither here nor there to me. You can read it if you wish, because it is just so interesting.

      Monash is sometimes forgotten when it comes to what he did, but the War along the Somme had bogged down with hardly a move one way or the other for four years.

      After Hamel, which Monash won in 93 minutes, he was given more Battles to plan, the first of them the huge Battle Of Amiens, another comprehensive rout of the Germans, and from there he was given even more planning. In the end, Monash had 300,000 Australian under his sole Command, and just as many from a number of other Countries, the U.S. included among them.

      Monash took his men from the Somme to The Hindenburg Line, where the Germans asked for cessation to hostilities on October 6th 1918.

      So, four years on the Somme, and from there to the end of the War, in, umm, 94 days, most of it under Monash Command.

      Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery (Monty) the World War II British army commander, later described Monash as the best World War I general on the Western Front in Europe.

      Monash, he’s that guy on the $100 note.

      Link to both Posts

      American And Australian Military – A 99 Year Relationship

      American And Australian Military – A 99 Year Relationship (Part Two)

      Tony.

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        TdeF

        And a Jewish engineer from Melbourne, famous for his engineering achievements as well almost more than his military ones. We have Monash University named after him, one of the two top universities in Victoria.

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          TdeF

          As later head of the Victoria State Electricity Commission (SEC), he would be rolling in his grave at the closing of Hazelwood. The dream of cheap, reliable, clean and adequate power being destroyed by politicians like Weatherill and Turnbull who cannot tell their Megawatts from their Indonesian Presidents. Between blowing up power stations and pumping water uphill, it is sad to see that the politicans only look after themselves and their interests. That was often the case, but never so blatantly have they acted against the best interests of the people. Labor with their rusted on voters and Liberals with the deluded conservatives and the Democrats with their deplorables. It is the elites against the people, as in the US, UK, France and Germany. We will see if Le Pen wins and then it will be clear. People have had enough of rule by rich autocrats and cliques.

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            politicians like Weatherill and Turnbull who cannot tell their Megawatts from their Indonesian Presidents.

            Now that really is clever.

            Tony.

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            As later head of the Victoria State Electricity Commission (SEC)

            The Victorian State Electricity Commission, (SEC) set up and run by a real Lieutenant General, (Sir John Monash) and killed off in 1994 by a High School Cadet Corps NCO. (Jeff Kennett)

            Tony.

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              “The Victorian State Electricity Commission, (SEC) set up and run by a real Lieutenant General, (Sir John Monash) and killed off in 1994 by a High School Cadet Corps NCO. (Jeff”
              You got that half right Tony.
              The SEC was finally killed off by Labor under Joan Kirner.
              I was there and made redundant in the third wave of redundancies back in 1990 years before Jeff Kennett became Premier.
              The SECV was assessed as a financial basket case way back in 1988 with negotiations to sell it and it’s new 1,000 MW Loy Yang B well underway in 1990.
              Jeff managed the privatisation transition that was well under way by Labor in 1990 and he got excellent value for Victorians assisted by a tough treasure Alan Stockdale.
              BTW I think Kennett retired from the ADF with the rank of captain.

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              Ted O'Brien.

              Yes “Privatisation” had been promoted for years by “free marketeers”, but I thought it was Jeff Kennett who started their ‘Free Market Theory” ball rolling. Thank you Terence M. for putting us straight there.

              Memory tells me that this was the first major privatisation of government assets in Australia. And it created the set of circumstances we see today, where it is in the best interests of the power station owners that power prices be higher, rather than that greater quantities of more efficiently produced power be sold. All because it is a political market, not a free market.

              Or is it perhaps not better for them that prices be higher? What can we read into AGL’s threat to close Loy Yang? Which TonyfromOz declared, it seems correctly, was a bluff.

              That announcement surely startled the pollies, including the Prime Minister. And it was surely intended to startle them. So what is the message? Is it a message from AGL that coal fired stations should not be closed, even on schedule for Loy Yang?

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            David Maddison

            he would be rolling in his grave at the closing of Hazelwood.

            And here is his grave in Brighton General Cemetry, Caulfield South, Victoria which I visited a couple of years ago (see link below).

            It is relatively modest for such a great man due to the Jewish tradition of only having modest graves for all. Rich or poor, famous or not famous, all grave monuments are meant to be of modest design.

            I wonder how many people today would be fully aware of his achievements?

            https://www.facebook.com/david.maddison.758/posts/10156124040298082

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              That extra plaque at the front of the grave was added at a much later date. He specifically asked that all he wanted on any headstone of his was just plain John Monash.

              Tony.

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          Annie

          Field Marshall Montgomery’s father was a Bishop of Tasmania.

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            Peter C

            True Annie,

            Church of England breeds great warriors.

            However I am a bit equivocal about the legacy of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
            He did get twice the recognition of John Monash, but felt that it was not enough.

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              Annie

              Yes, an interesting character but Monash sounds very good. I read Monty’s autobiography years and years ago and it’s about time I read it again. Time to read about Rommel again also.

              I saw Monty once, when I was a young child, when he was visiting the troops in Egypt. We were all Monty fans, needless to say!

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        Mickey Reno

        Great post, Tony, and your two blog posts are also quite enlightening. I recommend them to all. Generals can be like bureaucrats, most of the time. But Monash understood that surprise, mobility, armored tanks and wireless radios could overcome lots of the lethargy and hopelessness bound up with trench warfare. He was a visionary, a true thinker. The Germans would copy his model in WW-II, and sadly, the French army still could not fathom the strategy being used against them.

        Btw, for those who don’t follow Climate Audit (Canadian Steve McIntyre’s blog, now mostly dormant), his latest post includes a PDF link to a diary of a family member which depicts the life of an infantryman fighting in the Somme region during the Great War. That is also a very interesting read.

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        Roy Hogue

        I would not bet that Trump didn’t know the basis for the 99 year relationship statement by Turnbull. He has access to staff who can research anyone or any country and brief him before he meets with world leaders. But his response to it is more of what I called, laying it on real thick — not the kind of statement I would make. On the other hand you might interpret his response as sarcastic. So I don’t know except to say, that’s Donald Trump.

        I didn’t know the history you related, Tony. So thanks for elaborating on what Malcolm said.

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    pat

    setting the rules amounts to an “uneventful” meeting, according to the Minister from The Maldives!

    7 May: Straits Times: AFP: Doubts over US’ stance dog key UN climate talks
    Forum to advance Paris Agreement risks being sidetracked by Trump’s threat to ditch deal
    The round of haggling, beginning in Bonn tomorrow, is meant to begin work on a crucial rule book for signatories of the pact…
    The Maldives Environment and Energy Minister Thoriq Ibrahim said: “This was supposed to be a highly technical and ***uneventful meeting to flesh out some of the details in the Paris Agreement. But, obviously, the speculation coming out of Washington is now at the top of our minds.”…

    Washington-based World Resources Institute climate programme head Paula Caballero said: “The question of whether this creates a difficult backdrop for the negotiations is clearly a ‘yes’.”
    A US State Department official confirmed that a US delegation will travel to Bonn, although it will be a “much smaller” one than in recent years.
    Asked about the negotiators’ brief, the official said: “We are focused on ensuring that decisions are not taken at these meetings that would prejudice our future policy, undermine the competitiveness of US businesses, or hamper our broader objective of advancing US economic growth and prosperity.”…
    http://www.straitstimes.com/world/doubts-over-us-stance-dog-key-un-climate-talks

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    pat

    fake public poll gets top position:

    5 May: NRDC: Han Chen: Pruitt vs Planet: Who Supports & Opposes the Paris Agreement
    Seventy percent of the American public support the Paris Agreement because they want to rein in the impacts of climate change and start building a low-carbon economy that generates far cleaner, safer and more numerous job opportunities for Americans…

    Thousands of businesses want America to honor our commitments and stay in the Paris deal. This includes dozens of Fortune 500 companies with combined annual revenues of over $3.6 trillion. America’s businesses support the Paris Agreement. Some of America’s largest companies recently sent a letter to the White House supporting Paris, including Apple, BHP Billiton, BP, DuPont, General Mills, Google, Intel, Microsoft, National Grid, Novartis Corporation, PG&E, Rio Tinto, Schneider Electric, Shell, Unilever and Walmart. Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE urged Trump to stay in the Paris Agreement. Exxon sent a letter to the White House supporting Paris, as did the CEO of ConocoPhillips (company statement). Several oil companies including BP and Shell, Total and Statoil support Paris, as did Cheniere Energy which exports U.S. LNG to 19 countries…

    Governors of states that accounted for one-third of the U.S. population and nearly 40 percent of US GDP have publicly urged Trump to stay in the Agreement. Fourteen Attorneys General of the U.S. have urged Trump to remain in Paris. Senators Cardin (D) and Collins (R) issued a letter to the Administration supporting the U.S. remaining in the Paris Agreement: “Doing so keeps the U.S. safer and our global alliances secure.” Even before the news of potential withdrawal, 75 mayors across the country had urged Trump to stay in the Paris Agreement…

    CHART:

    Who supports? ***70% of Americans moves to the bottom of the list outlined above.

    Who Opposes? One coal company, One mining company, Scott Pruitt, Steve Bannon.
    https://www.nrdc.org/experts/han-chen/pruitt-vs-planet-who-supports-opposes-paris-agreement

    About the “swamp” writer:

    Han Chen helps implement NRDC’s strategy to address climate change at the international level and in key countries around the world including the United States, India, China, Canada, and myriad Latin American nations. This work includes engagement in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change climate negotiations and other venues for international climate action. Prior to joining NRDC, Chen was a researcher at the Brookings Institution. She holds a bachelor’s degree in international studies from American University and a master’s degree in international development from Beijing’s Tsinghua University. She is based in NRDC’s Washington, D.C., office.

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      bobl

      The real question is not what the fortune 500 say publicly but rather what they will say to Trump privately.

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    pat

    not quite “buried”:

    6 May: WaPo: The EPA just buried its climate change website for kids
    By Juliet Eilperin
    The youth-oriented resource of more than 50 pages, which features educational videos and shows students how to calculate their own carbon footprint, has not been removed. But it is now very difficult for a casual reader to locate, even through a Google search…

    In an sign of the ongoing political resistance to the agency’s actions, the city of Chicago posted the previous EPA site on its own web domain Friday…

    “The City of Chicago wishes to acknowledge and attribute this information to the United States Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies for the decades of work that they have done to advance the fight against climate change,” it explains in a note at the top of the site. “While this information may not be readily available on the agency’s webpage right now, here in Chicago we know climate change is real and we will continue to take action to fight it.”…
    In a statement, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that over the coming months the city’s Department of Innovation and Technology “will be developing tools so that the city and the public as a whole can easily save, archive and preserve open data from public data portals, such as the EPA site.”…

    RELATED LINK: [This home page just went dark. Really dark. Literally as black as coal.]
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/06/epa-buries-climate-change-site-for-kids/?utm_term=.67165fc44268

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    pat

    comment in moderation re: 6 May: WaPo: The EPA just buried its climate change website for kids

    thought the greenies were up against all these Paris “Supporters”!

    5 May: NRDC: American Business Overwhelmingly Supports Paris Agreement
    by Brendan Guy, Jake Schmidt & Han Chen

    SUPPORT
    (SCROLL DOWN FOR COMPLETE LIST) INCLUDES
    15 BEGINNING WITH “GREEN”,
    7 BEGINNING WITH “CLEAN”,
    15 BEGINNING “SISTERS OF”+ 5 BEGINNING “DOMINICAN SISTERS OF”,
    18 BEGINNING WITH VERSIONS OF “SUSTAINABLE”
    PLUS:
    GOOGLE COMPANIES
    20th Century Fox
    Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Berkshire Hathaway, Morgan Stanley
    BHP Billiton, BP, Chevron, Exxon, Conoco Philips, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Statoil, Eni, Enel,
    California Public Employees’ Retirement System
    California State Teachers Retirement System
    ETC ETC ETC ETC ETC

    OPPOSE (TOTAL)
    Murray Energy Corporation
    National Mining Association (26‐5 vote)
    https://www.nrdc.org/experts/brendan-guy/american-business-overwhelmingly-supports-paris-agreement

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    pat

    ***if only Clive would remain silent! lol.

    5 May: Guardian: The great climate silence: we are on the edge of the abyss but we ignore it
    We continue to plan for the future as if climate scientists don’t exist. The greatest shame is the absence of a sense of tragedy.
    by Clive Hamilton
    (This is an edited extract from Clive Hamilton’s Defiant Earth: The fate of humans in the Anthropocene, available now through Allen & Unwin. Clive Hamilton ***will be speaking at The School of Life in Sydney and Melbourne in June 2017)

    But consider this astounding fact: with knowledge of the cycles that govern Earth’s rotation, including its tilt and wobble, paleo-climatologists are able to predict with reasonable certainty that the next ice age is due in 50,000 years’ time. Yet because carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere for millennia, global warming from human activity in the 20th and 21st centuries is expected to suppress that ice age and quite possibly the following one, expected in 130,000 years…

    I heard of a dinner party during which one of Europe’s most eminent psychoanalysts held forth ardently on every topic but fell mute when climate change was raised. He had nothing to say. For most of the intelligentsia, it is as if the projections of Earth scientists are so preposterous they can safely be ignored…

    Yet the Earth scientists continue to haunt us, following us around like wailing apparitions while we hurry on with our lives, turning around occasionally with irritation to hold up the crucifix of Progress.
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/05/the-great-climate-silence-we-are-on-the-edge-of-the-abyss-but-we-ignore-it

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      Will Janoschka

      pat May 7, 2017 at 12:28 pm

      “***if only Clive would remain silent! lol.
      5 May: Guardian: The great climate silence: we are on the edge of the abyss but we ignore it
      We continue to plan for the future as if climate scientists don’t exist. The greatest shame is the absence of a sense of tragedy.”

      The greatest shame is the absence of any science or integrity among all that claim to be a “climate scientist”. All with even slightest knowledge know there is no need to plan for for some imaginary ‘abyss’. Great word for those that scam!

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      el gordo

      ‘…. the next ice age is due in 50,000 years’ time.’

      The Holocene has already passed its used by date, compared to earlier interglacials, so I’m not too optimistic about that prediction. I’ll put up a quote from Nicola Scafetta for no particular reason.

      ‘These results clearly indicate that solar and climate oscillations are linked to planetary motion and, furthermore, their timing can be reasonably hindcast and forecast for decades, centuries and millennia.’

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    pat

    ***5 meteorologists involved!

    6 May: Sentinel: Meghan Foley: Antrim Wind project gets go-ahead again; appeal to New Hampshire Supreme Court could be forthcoming
    CONCORD — But in the meantime, the developer of the project and its proponents are celebrating a victory after a state committee decided it won’t reconsider its earlier approval of the plan…
    As a result of its vote Friday, the subcommittee also immediately lifted the suspension it placed on the project when the motions were filed, said Jack B. Kenworthy, head of development for Walden Green Energy.
    The New York City-based company owns Antrim Wind…

    Stoddard resident Fred Ward, listed as one of the ***five meteorologists involved in one of the motions, said 20 to 30 people attended Friday’s hearing in Concord, and it lasted just shy of two hours…
    Ward said he and the other meteorologists can’t do anything to appeal the subcommittee’s decision until the written order comes out. Once that happens, they’ll have 30 days to decide if they want to appeal to the N.H. Supreme Court.

    He noted that there is a lot riding on the outcome of the Antrim Wind project. Many people in the state and elsewhere believe it’s going to be the defining case for the siting of wind energy facilities, he said.
    “That’s why so much time and effort is being put into it,” he said. “The general feeling is if Antrim Wind loses the case, it will be the end of industrial wind facilities in New Hampshire, or at least in populated areas,” he said…
    http://www.sentinelsource.com/news/local/antrim-wind-project-gets-go-ahead-again-could-be-appeal/article_4dba6caf-2f08-5cac-868d-15573488b126.html

    6 May: Daily Caller: Andrew Follett: Offshore Wind Power Will ‘Absolutely Cost Jobs’ Of US Fishermen
    An offshore wind turbine three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island, will kill large numbers of fish and potentially drive hundreds of small coastal enterprises out of business, according to a fishing industry representative.
    “This will absolutely cost jobs in the U.S.,” Bonnie Brady, director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “If New York Governor [Andrew] Cuomo’s administration gets what it wants from offshore wind that’s thousands of fishing jobs. It’ll rip the coastal communities apart.”…

    “Block Island has messed up gill netters and trawlers,” Brady said. “They’re not going to certain areas because its a risk to the boat. The five turbines they put in place there are ruining one of the most productive bottoms around.”
    Estimates from the liberal Brookings Institution suggest the U.S. fishing industry supports 1.5 million jobs and generated $90 billion annually…

    DW (Deepwater Wind) plans to use loud pile driving to anchor the windmill to the seabed. Water magnifies sounds, and so underwater the pile driving noise can reach levels up to 220 decibels, according to Brady…
    “Biologically these things are a nightmare,” Brady said. “The only green about this project is that which lines investors pockets…
    “Piledriving the ocean floor kills fish through pressure waves or by messing with their swim bladder,” Brady said. “The sound is super loud and can mess with marine mammals and fish. They take a 25 foot wide hammer and beat turbines two hundred feet into the ocean floor.”…
    When fully implemented, offshore wind is expected to cost four to six times more than traditional fossil-fuel based plants, according to Brady…
    The salt water of the ocean is incredibly corrosive and makes operating such facilities difficult and expensive…READ ON
    http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/06/offshore-wind-power-will-absolutely-cost-jobs-of-us-fishermen/

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    pat

    6 May: NYOOOZ: ‘Windmills in near Gir sanctuary can harm lions’
    Summary: Claiming that windmills being set up by a private company near the Gir sanctuary will be detrimental for the lions, a public interest litigation was filed in the high court. Petitioner submitted that 25 Asiatic Lions on an average and 121 leopards died due to unnatural causes, in which electrocution played a major part. “We have filed petition challenging construction of large sized wind mills in the crucial lion habitat near reserve forest in Talaja Range. The plea stated that construction of the wind farm and movement of heavy vehicles would cause irreparable damage to the wild population of Asiatic Lions and other scheduled species of birds and animals. “The land given to the company is a government wasteland and is surrounded by gauchar land in some areas,” it said…
    “Transformers being set up in the area are an impending danger,” the plea claimed…
    LINK TO SOURCE: Ahmedabad Mirror
    https://www.nyoooz.com/news/ahmedabad/804129/windmills-in-near-gir-sanctuary-can-harm-lions/

    6 May: LongfordLeader Ireland: Residents express concerns about Derryadd Wind Farm
    A public meeting was held on Thursday April 27 last to discuss the implications the construction of the Derryadd wind farm will have on the local area.
    Around 70 local residents attended the meeting, which was held in Lanesboro, to air their concerns about Bord na Móna’s proposal to erect 28 wind turbines on the bogland at Derryadd…
    “There was a big attendance. People are concerned about this, and they’re concerned about the local ecosystem,” Cllr Casey told the Longford Leader on Friday.
    “People weren’t happy with Bord na Móna,” he added, pointing out that of the questions put to Bord na Móna about the wind farm, 17 of them are still unanswered…

    “My proposal is on what happened in Donegal. The council in Donegal is in the process of changing their development plan so that the windmills have to be 10 times their own height away from houses,” he said.
    “So if it’s a small one, it won’t be as bad, but a large one would have to be far away from houses. This would ensure that there are no adverse effects on the residents and it would be a fair compromise…

    The meeting also dealt with the effects that the wind farm could have on tourism in the area. A presentation was given by the Golden Eagle Trust, suggesting that the area would serve well as a wetlands wilderness park and a tourist asset instead.
    “No-one in the history of mankind has ever done a tour to see a wind farm. They go to see wetlands and heritage sites. These wind turbines are bringing nothing to the local economy,” said Cllr Casey, adding that the Wetland Wilderness idea is “a fabulous idea”…
    The planning application for Derryadd wind farm is due to be lodged with An Bord Pleanála by the end of June.
    http://www.longfordleader.ie/news/home/248064/residents-express-concerns-about-derryadd-wind-farm.html

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    pat

    7 May: Fairfax Warrnambool Standard: Andrew Thomson: Portland police initiate successful operation to catch copper thieves
    “Two Portland men, aged 53 and 31, and a 44-year-old Portland woman have now been arrested…
    The detective said there had been a number of break-ins at businesses, including those associated with wind farm manufacturing, Keppel Prince and TW Power Services.
    “During those burglaries rolls and anodes of copper have been targeted because of their significant resale value,” he said.
    “​In one of the offences a 300​-​metre ​long ​cable​ was stolen​​,​​which was a special overseas order costing​ $250,000.
    “That cable was ​needed to replace existing wiring​ and if that work was not done the wind turbines could have been damaged.”…

    “​That cable was very fortunately identified and recovered at a scrap metal yard ,” he said.
    “But a team of special technicians had been flown out from Germany to replace the cable at a cost of more than $20,000 and that work was unable to be done.
    “Part of the police brief of evidence will be a compensation order for $30,000.”…
    http://www.standard.net.au/story/4644711/copper-thieves-who-stole-wiring-worth-250000-caught/

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    pat

    good idea, but…

    15 Mar: Bloomberg: The Dark Secret Behind India’s Solar Plan
    by Saket Sundria, Rajesh Kumar Singh, and Anindya Upadhyay
    Remote villages fall back into darkness as equipment fails
    Power company forced to return to conventional cables to grid
    Maharashtra, home to the financial capital of Mumbai, declared itself fully electrified in 2012, relying on solar panels or small wind turbines to cover remote areas. India considers a village electrified if at least 10 percent of the households and public places such as schools have electricity.
    But theft and damage have plunged 288 villages and 1,500 hamlets in Maharashtra back into darkness, according to Saboo. “Most of the equipment is either stolen or not working,” he said. “Now we have decided that a majority of these villages will be electrified in the conventional way.”…

    When the first solar units were installed in Bhamana in 2010, most houses got a small photovoltaic panel connected to a battery that could power a light for five to six hours. Seven years later, only four or five houses still have working lamps…
    Dead Battery
    “We have no clue how to fix the equipment,” said Achildar Pesra Pawra, a member of the Bhamana village council. “Some batteries stopped working within months. Others lasted for about two years. Some of the solar panels were broken.”
    Part of the problem is that the factors that make solar attractive for isolated communities — ease of transport and installation — also make them easy to steal, said Shantanu Jaiswal, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance…

    “The instances of theft and destruction of distributed renewable energy appliances has been very prevalent in programs especially run by aid agencies as part of corporate social responsibility or where the government provides a subsidy,” said Jarnail Singh, India director at The Climate Group, a London-based organization promoting low-carbon solutions. ”This is because there is no maintenance of equipment after installation.”
    As a result, Maharashtra’s state-owned power retailer is now planning to spend spend 3.85 billion rupees by 2018 to connect many of the isolated villages to the grid, according to Saboo…
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-15/the-dark-secret-behind-india-s-solar-plan-to-bring-power-to-all

    not sure SolarReserve’s only up-and-partly-running facility in Crescent Dunes is powering Las vegas:

    Wikipedia: Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project
    The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is a 110 megawatt (MW) net solar thermal power project with 1.1 gigawatt-hours of energy storage, located near Tonopah, about 190 miles (310 km) northwest of Las Vegas…

    nonetheless:

    6 May: Courier Daryl Passmore: Solar power Queensland: Plans for up to six solar thermal stations
    A COMPANY which helps keep the neon burning bright in the casino capital Las Vegas is planning a series of solar power plants across Queensland, creating more than 20,000 construction jobs.
    SolarReserve is scouting sites for up to half a dozen solar thermal stations, each of which generate enough electricity for 90,000 homes…
    Areas being considered include Mt Isa, Roma, Moranbah and Georgetown.

    SolarReserve’s operations include the Crescent Dunes facility in the Nevada desert which uses groundbreaking technology to generate electricity for the 24-hour city.
    Unlike photovoltaic, solar thermal uses molten salt heated to over 566C to store energy so it can be used on cloudy days and at night…

    The 110MW plant in the US, the world’s first utility-scale facility to use the technology, features 10,000 billboard-sized mirror panels which direct the sun’s rays on to the tip of a 195m concrete tower containing tens of thousands of tonnes of a sodium and potassium nitrates mix which acts as a giant battery.
    Stored heat is used to power a steam turbine to supply power to the grid. The process has zero emission…
    The company is considering four to six plants, each with a capacity of 100MW to 150MW.

    Each would cost about $600 million to build, requiring 4000 construction workers and 50 staff once operational…
    The company is seeking government support for the first plant, possibly through a long-term supply agreement or a NAIF loan…
    http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/solar-power-queensland-plans-for-up-to-six-solar-thermal-stations/news-story/500edfdd61cdd0603bb876a8a558e3b0

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    • #

      There was a news story during the week, (yeah, you guessed right, the ABC) on how Las Vegas was now powered by renewables, touting this solar thermal plant and others nearby.

      Man, I know fake news when I see it.

      Las Vegas consumes around 90% of the power used by the whole State of Nevada.

      Nevada consumes almost 40TWH of power a year, so that effectively means that just Las Vegas alone consumes almost 20% of the power that the whole of Australia consumes in a year.

      More than 70% of that power is generated by Natural Gas fired generators, and when coal fired power is added to that the total is up close to 80%, so that means 20% only from renewables, and 5.5% is Hydro , so that leaves 14.5% from wind and solar.

      So, the idea that Tonopah and other CSP plants are powering Las Vegas is laughable in the extreme.

      And hey, six of them at around a total of $3.6 Billion. So, 6 X 110MW X 25% comes in at an average power delivery the same as for 165MW.

      $3.6 Billion for 165MW, well, now there’s a bargain, that’s way way cheaper than coal fired power. WTF!

      Tony.

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      • #
        Dennis

        But did you note the comment from the solar farm holding company CEO, when asked if renewables are the future, and he replied carefully choosing his words that for the foreseeable future a mix of technologies will be needed including coal fired power stations.

        30

        • #
          Dennis

          Not on ABC, a CH9 I think it was programme that covered Las Vegas so called renewables.

          00

      • #
        bobl

        The turbine engine of a 777 (GE90) generates about 80MW so the agregate of all 6 power stations (after losses) will still be less than the generation capacity of just ONE 777 aircraft. $3.5 Billion later and we have the equivalent of just one Jet liner, without the comfy seats, and in flight service

        50

        • #
          James

          And a jetliner as a lot less expensive. The figure of $250 million for a 777 comes to mind. The reliability of modern jet engines is mind boggling. I have read somewhere one shut down every 1 million flying hours. The reliability is so high, that most planes use only 2 engines these days not 4 for long flights over isolated areas (no alternate airports). Airbus stopped making the A340 as there was not demand for a 4 engine version of the A330.
          The turbine engine is a great example of a technology which works very well! So much different from a wind turbine.

          30

          • #
            Annie

            James, true enough but my son is an A380 pilot and one of his favourite quotes is ‘Two engines good, four engines better!’ and he wasn’t impressed by the fact that we flew around Mt Cook and Mt Tasman in a single-engined aircraft; said he would never have done that!

            00

      • #
        David Maddison

        A single GE90-115B engine which powers the Boeing 777 produces 82MW. Cost US$24 million.

        20

        • #
          Bobl

          Hmm, 48million vs 3.6 billion – choices, choices…

          Such is the power of spending other people’s money. After all the cost Isn’t AUD$3,600,000,000 it’s “only” OPM$3,600,000,000 which must be worth less than AUD$48 million to the government. Of course we should also note that the ge90 could probably fit in your lounge room rather than on a few square km of farmland.

          00

    • #
      Curious George

      Crescent Dunes went off the grid in October 2016, before reaching a full production. It seems to be still off.
      http://pvtimes.com/news/tonopah-solar-plant-restart

      20

  • #
    Dennis

    I thought I would share this with people here: I was talking to a young building industry tradesman about comments I received from an inner city dweller who “loves” wind turbines and who admitted to being a “bit of a lefty”, who asked me to stop mentioning “right wing stuff” because is creates “stress”.

    The tradesman (who well understands the wind and solar handicap) responded “if these people are so smart why do they need tradesmen to build them dwellings and to maintain them”.

    LOL

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    • #
      Geoffrey Williams

      These are the people who know everything but can do nothing for themselves!
      GeoffW

      60

    • #

      The logic of the situation, say, is it animal, vegetable or political?

      10

    • #
      David Maddison

      I bet he’s a member of the CFMEU…

      00

    • #
      Annie

      I’d ask him to stop mentioning left-wing stuff because that causes you stress…

      10

    • #
      Fred Streeter

      Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
      Himself.
      It struck him dead: And serve him right!
      It is the business of the wealthy man
      To give employment to the artisan.

      Hilaire Belloc

      No doubt each of us, could have a bash at installing a bathroom, building an annex, etc.
      We may be ‘smart’ enough to understand the principles involved, but some of us are ham fisted (or is it just me?).

      It’s not a question of ‘smart’ but of skill obtained through training and experience.

      10

  • #
    liberator

    My workplace has put in a new website filter to stop us from visiting sites deemed inappropriate. Guess whos site now comes up as blocked?

    Web Page Blocked

    Access to the web page you were trying to visit has been blocked in accordance with company policy. Please contact your system administrator if you believe this is in error.

    User: 192.168.162.93

    URL: joannenova.com.au/

    Category: philosophy-and-political-advocacy

    Yet I can still visit other climate sites such as What’s up and Judith Curry during my lunch break. I’ve no idea how a climate web site falls under philosophy and political advocacy, I’ve questioned the block so wait and see…

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    • #
      Dennis

      The Thought Police at work again

      60

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      There are a number of proxy sites that will do a pass-through. You go to the proxy, and then ask for the site you want. Your workplace would have to block all proxy sites to stop you doing that.

      I am not going to mention the actual proxies here, but you can do a search from your workplace, which will probably result in your thought-police having conniptions*, anyway. They will figure out that it is probably easier to let you go to this site, in your lunch break, that to spend all their time tracking down and locking out all of the proxies.

      * conniption American colloquialism A fit of rage or hysteria, in pl. hysterics. Also “conniption-fit”.

      30

    • #
      Yonniestone

      joannenova.com.au/ has become one of the most dangerous websites on the internet evoking the attention of government intelligence agencies worldwide.

      The fact that a low life imbecile like me is allowed to comment is validation of such a reputation.

      81

    • #
      Peter C

      Maybe read JoNova at home and keep your job.

      So far we are allowed some leniency with what we do with our own leisure time. I am not sure how long that will continue.

      60

      • #
        James Murphy

        In some parts of the world, my employer insists on installing quite sophisticated telemetry boxes, and an in-car video camera (not just a dash-cam, but audio and video of car occupants) in all privately owned cars if used for travel to and from their office. They also have to undergo a driving test every couple of years to validate their competency. In theory, failing that test means they can’t drive themselves to and from work.

        I’m willing to consider that if the cars were owned and maintained by the employer, they could probably get away with insisting on all this, but I very much hate the idea of private vehicles being monitored by employers, all on the grounds of “health and safety”.

        40

  • #
    el gordo

    Very Small Business

    ‘Chinese students in Australia say as many as eight in 10 of them are involved in the daigou business. Some are just trying to make ends meet with occasional sales. Others have managed to build significant export businesses. They mail their products to customers in China or ship them to Hong Kong, where traders can carry them across the border to avoid mainland tariffs.’

    Australia NYT

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  • #
    el gordo

    ‘Senior management at Fairfax Media were on Sunday locked in urgent meetings after private equity outfit TPG Capital approached the company with an offer to buy its biggest assets.

    ‘TPG has offered to buy Fairfax’s online real estate business Domain and the company’s three big publishing mastheads – The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review.’

    SMH

    10

    • #
      el gordo

      I’m guessing the junior member of the consortium is the CPP (Canadian Pension Plan) who are also into infrastructure, they have $300 billion at their disposal. Around the traps its been rumoured that the CPP already owns Britain.

      00

  • #
    Raven

    Since it’s a Weekend Unthreaded, I thought it a good time to wish Marine Le Pen the very best of luck in the French election.
    Apparently we will know something tomorrow about 4:00am AEST in Oz.

    It’s a long weekend in France and there’s talk that many people won’t vote at all, preferring to get away from it all.
    Perhaps if we have some Froggy readers, they might care to comment.

    If Marine wins this thing, no one will be able to say BrExit and The Donald were a couple of flukes.
    Of course, the polls have Macron about ten points ahead so I hope they’re using the same pollsters who blundered so magnificently with the US election. 😉

    Vive la France

    41

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      Yonniestone

      I sincerely hope Le Pen is victorious, Macron is just another socialist Mother……….

      32

    • #
      James Murphy

      Not French, but I have been living in Paris for the last few years, since just before Hollande was elected, as it happens.

      As I write this, Le Pen has made her concession speech, and Macron is just about to speak.

      Amusingly, Le Pen has her election night event in Vincennes, on the “right” of Paris (if North is at the top of the map), technically outside what Parisians refer to as ‘the real Paris’, but only just, and Macron has his event at the Louvre, which is on the left of Paris, but not as far left as Le Pen is ‘right’… (possibly this is only amusing to me, but I thought I would share it anyway)

      I cant claim to be able to represent the French population, so, based on comments be friends and colleagues, it seemed like Le Pen was always going to have an uphill battle, but Macron was not liked either, seen as a potential Hollande puppet, with no real political experience, and as someone who doesn’t pretend to listen to people he doesn’t agree with. Macron being an ex-banker is also a bit of a turn-off, but seemingly less scary than Le Pen.

      A couple of people said they were not going to vote, and a couple more said they were going to deposit their voting envelope containing the names of both candidates. What they will really do, is anyone guess, though they do seem to have more pride, passion, or acknowledgement that the right to vote is the cornerstone of a democracy, than many Australians seem to.

      The issue of compulsory voting is a mixed one, with most people saying its a great idea, but a few saying that people should not be forced to vote if they do not want to.

      As far as the voting process – voters are given an envelope, and have piles of papers with individual candidate names on them. the voter then collects 1 or more pieces of paper, heads to a booth, puts one piece of paper with the desired candidate name in the envelope, seals it, then goes to have their ID/voting status checked, and then deposits their vote in the ballot box. No writing required. Voters can nominate others to vote for them, if they cannot vote themselves. Voting is not compulsory.

      Personally, had I been eligible, I would have voted for the candidate who really really wanted to set up a moon base in the next 5 years, but sadly, he was out in the first round.

      10

      • #
        philthegeek

        Macron being an ex-banker is also a bit of a turn-off, but seemingly less scary than Le Pen.

        I’ve seen it wrote that in France, the first round you vot for who you want, the second round you vote against who you hate.

        Interesting that the two round system is almost a stab at preferential like we have, but here we try and get it all out of the way in one day. Some debate out there as to whats the better system. On compulsory, i’m an advocate of that on the basis that we have both a right AND a responsibility to vote.

        10

      • #
        Bobl

        It strikes me that the French didn’t really have a lot of choice since the national front is far right, and there is no true centre right to vote for. As such their choices were a bit like ours last election far left, left labor or left liberal/Nat or the minors. No wonder the minors are doing so well. It’s a worry that the national front got well over 30% in France, does the vacuum that exists there with no centrist libertarian / conservative option to vote for. Huge, huge opportunity there for a Trump like centre right option.

        10

    • #
      philthegeek

      Le Pen Buried. Good news to start the week. 🙂

      10

    • #
      sophocles

      Macron: the President without a party. Could only happen in France.

      A statistic worth noting is the size of the `unofficial’ vote …

      00

  • #
    pat

    well worth noting…even tho it’s not been mentioned in major MSM and is the final line in this piece:

    5 May: InsideClimateNews: Zahra Hirji: Trump Admin Responds to Countries’ Climate Questions With Boilerplate Answers
    This exchange between America and key players in the United Nations climate talks quietly played out in a corner of the U.N. website devoted to what’s called the “multilateral assessment.” This is a platform for countries to keep each other accountable on their progress toward meeting individual climate pledges…

    ***And when China asked whether the U.S. had any preliminary thoughts on the use of carbon trading schemes in what could be seen as a possible opening for cooperation, the U.S. responded, “no.”
    https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04052017/donald-trump-climate-change-paris-climate-agreement-china-eu

    it’s properly the headline at Daily Caller:

    5 May: DailyCaller: Michael Bastasch: Trump says no to a global cap and trade plan
    At one point, China asked the Trump administration if it would consider an “international market mechanism” in place of Obama-era policies to cut emissions. The Trump administration said, “No.”

    “Does the U.S. have any plan or preliminary thoughts on using international market mechanism to accommodate recent changes?” China asked in questions submitted through the U.N.
    “If still not, what additional measure will the U.S. consider to take to achieve the 2020 target?” China asked.

    ***“On the first question, no,” the Trump administration responded…

    CEI scholars Chris Horner and Marlo Lewis also published a paper laying out the case for why the Paris agreement should be sent to the Senate — where it would surely be voted down
    “This treaty is designed to expand every government’s control over private energy-related capital,” (CEI’s Marlo) Lewis said, adding Obama wanted to use Paris to make his “domestic energy policies immune to legal challenges.”
    “There is no way on Earth an executive can reorganize the economy for the next 35 years,” Lewis said
    http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/05/trump-says-no-to-a-global-cap-and-trade-plan/?utm_campaign=atdailycaller&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Social

    21

  • #
    David Maddison

    This is a short video I made of the Lake Goldsmith Steam Rally I attended today. I have a number of other videos on my YouTube channel concerning previous visits as well so I didn’t take a lot of pictures or videos for this visit. The Rally is not just about steam engines but old internal combustion engines and all sorts of other vintage and historical material.

    https://youtu.be/BUO3rWcXzLs

    The cannon is from the US Civil War. The Confederate ship CSS Shenandoah recruited mercenaries in Melbourne to fight for the Confederates and they spent time sinking Yankee shipping. At the time, Victoria was a British Colony and aligned with the South. They continued to sink Yankee shipping for six months after the war finished as they were not aware the war was over so the United States sued Britain in international court for $15 million dollars payable in gold bullion and won. That was a vast amount of money in those days. Google for more information.

    50

  • #
    pat

    have been watching a bit of tennis from Morocco, Portugal, Germany & Istanbul and spectators all seem to be dressed for winter, especially in Portugal, where sweaters and hoodies weren’t enough, and half the spectators were making use of blankets presumably provided by the tournament organisers, as they were all the same pink colour.

    more cold news. who would want politicians pretending to cool down the temperatures at very considerable public expense?

    6 May: WTVB: Freezing temperatures expected overnight
    COLDWATER, MI (WTVB) – Somebody forgot to tell Mother Nature this is the merry month of May.
    The unseasonable cold temperatures are expected to get downright frosty this weekend. Patchy frost is expected after 4:00 a.m. Sunday morning.
    With lows expected to get down to around 30 degrees, Branch County along with southwest Michigan, northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio have been placed under a Freeze Watch from late Sunday night through Monday morning.
    Sensitive outdoor plants will be damaged or killed if left unprotected.
    You may need that ice scrapper Monday morning before you head to the office. Widespread frost is expected Monday morning between 3:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m.
    Northern lower Michigan is under a Freeze Warning Monday morning as temperatures are expected to drop into the low to mid 20s.
    http://wtvbam.com/news/articles/2017/may/07/freezing-temperatures-expected-overnight/

    6 May: AlabamaNewsCenter: Brian Peters: Nice warm-up for Alabama after a cold Friday By Brian Peters
    MAY RECORDS TIED AND BRRRRROKEN: The official high temperature at the Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport yesterday was 52, which established a new record low maximum temperature for May 5. It also tied the coldest May day on record, set on May 3, 1921…

    5 May: Alabama: Several Alabama cities have their coldest May 5 on record
    By Leigh Morgan
    The numbers are in — almost — and today has been cool enough to score a spot in the record books for several Alabama cities…
    All of central Alabama’s climate sites had record low maxes, according to the weather service in Birmingham.
    Forecasters there said they were watching temperatures in Tuscaloosa. The skies were beginning to clear there, and its temperature was only 1 degree away from the record.
    In north Alabama, Huntsville set a record for lowest max temperature…
    Anniston: 52, 27 below average
    Birmingham: 51, 28 below average
    Dothan: High 62, 22 below average
    Huntsville: 53, 26 below average.
    Montgomery: 58, 23 below average
    Muscle Shoals: 56, 24 below average.
    Troy: 58, 24 below average
    Tuscaloosa: 57, 24 below average
    http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/05/several_alabama_cities_have_th.html

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    • #
      • #
        clipe

        3:22 PM EDT Sunday 07 May 2017
        Frost advisory in effect for:

        Burlington - Oakville
        Caledon
        Halton Hills - Milton
        Mississauga - Brampton

        Frost may damage some crops in frost-prone areas.

        An unseasonably cold arctic air mass has become entrenched over Southern Ontario.

        Temperatures tonight are expected to plunge to near or a couple degrees below the zero degree mark in most areas under partly cloudy to mainly clear skies and diminishing winds. Hence widespread frost is likely across most of of the region overnight into Monday morning.

        Tender plants should be protected or brought indoors by this evening.

        Temperatures will slowly recover to above the freezing mark Monday morning.

        Take preventative measures to protect frost-sensitive plants and trees.

        Frost advisories are issued when temperatures are expected to reach the freezing mark during the growing season, leading to potential damage and destruction to plants and crops.

        Please continue to monitor alerts and forecasts issued by Environment Canada. To report severe weather, send an email to [email protected] or tweet reports using #ONStorm.

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        • #
          clipe

          Dear red thumber, (reminds me of the answer to a cryptic crossword puzzle clue. Back Number? Answer — Epidural), at time of writing you missed #32.1

          I tried to give myself a red thumb on your behalf. Seems that’s not allowed. So sorry.

          23

          • #
            clipe

            I’m pleased to report that the throbbing purple plum has given me a red thumb.

            10

            • #
              David Maddison

              Red Thumb can’t handle the truth, like most Lefties / anti-science types.

              Even though Red Thumb is too stupid to comment, his/her beliefs are revealed by what it Red Thumbs.

              22

    • #
      john karajas

      A blizzard has wiped out wheat crops in Kansas. Must be all that global warming.

      01

  • #
  • #
    Another Ian

    “Have you ever heard of TRUTH DECAY?”

    http://www.yesterdaystractors.com/cgi-bin/viewit.cgi?bd=ttales&th=132361

    Goes well with fake news IMO

    10

  • #
    Robber

    What’s happening on May 11?
    AEMO ELECTRICITY MARKET NOTICE
    The Forecast LOR3 condition (ie load shedding) in the Victorian region advised in AEMO Electricity Market Notice No. 58514 has been updated at 1430 hrs 07/05/2017 to the following:
    From 1730 hrs to 1800 hrs on 11/05/2017.
    The maximum load forecast to be interrupted is 166 MW at 1730 hrs 11/05/2017

    AEMO is seeking a market response. AEMO will determine the latest time at which it would need to intervene through a AEMO intervention event.

    Seems there is a forecast cutback in Victorian scheduled capacity: AEMO 7 day forecast in MW: 6332 4751 4683 4353 4303 4472 3487
    This may be related to the AGL announced shutdown of Loy Yang power station May 15 as a result of a strike by ETU members. The Victorian government has announced that it will take action to stop the strike.

    Back in January: The alleged industrial action, which also included an overtime ban, has caused Loy Yang A to operate at half its capacity as workers’ increased absenteeism requires more overtime. The Fair Work Commission has found workers at AGL Energy’s Loy Yang A power plant are faking sickies to take covert industrial action, which the energy giant says is threatening Victoria’s summer power supply.

    Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/policy/industrial-relations/agl-loy-yang-wins-orders-against-industrial-action-disguised-as-sick-leave-20170118-gttp0r#ixzz4gQwsxbGk

    Meanwhile, wholesale electricity prices in Victoria since the closure of Hazelwood in March have jumped from $46/Mwhr average in 2016 to over $100/MWhr in April/May 2017.
    Memo: Governments, what we need is reliable and affordable electricity. Just days out from Tuesday’s budget, Treasurer Scott Morrison confirmed pensioners will get a $75 payment for singles and $125 for couples, which will be paid before June 30. “That’s specifically because of increasing electricity prices,” Mr Morrison told the Nine Network on Sunday.

    If the government simply abolished the RET we would all enjoy lower electricity prices and that would provide a boost for industry as well. But no, we must all do our bit to save the planet, even if the lights go out.

    90

  • #
    David Maddison

    Debunking junk science – the MIT / Berkeley device to extract water from dry desert air.

    It’s amazing that this device got so much uncritical publicity and that the junk science was actually published.

    https://youtu.be/EGTRX6pZSns

    This is not to say that water cannot be economically extracted from air in certain very limited circumstances such as causing the condensation of fog on shade cloth type mesh in the mountains of Chile. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2630864/The-fence-make-water-air-Researchers-reveal-harvest-morning-fog-drinking-farming.html

    21

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    pat

    no surprise…and the story is prominent on DrudgeReport & ClimateDepot:

    6 May: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Another Arctic ice panic over as world temperatures plummet
    Meteorological Institute (DMI), as charted by our friend Paul Homewood on his blog Notalotofpeopleknowthat, with the news that ever since December temperatures in the Arctic have consistently been lower than minus 20 C.
    In April the extent of Arctic sea ice was back to where it was in April 13 years ago. Furthermore, whereas in 2008 most of the ice was extremely thin, this year most has been at least two metres thick. The Greenland ice cap last winter increased in volume faster than at any time for years.

    As for those record temperatures brought in 2016 by an exceptionally strong El Niño, the satellites now show that in recent months global temperatures have plummeted by more that 0.6 degrees: just as happened 17 years ago after a similarly strong El Niño had also made 1998 the “hottest year on record”.

    This means the global temperature trend has now shown no further warming for 19 years. But the ***BBC won’t be telling us any of this. And we are still stuck with that insanely damaging Climate Change Act, which in this election will scarcely get a mention…
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/06/another-arctic-ice-panic-world-temperatures-plummet/

    ***ditto the ABC or the rest of the FakeNewsMSM.

    41

  • #
    Neville

    I hope somebody who understands energy and pricing in OZ watches tonight’s 4 corners on ABC.
    Bottom line is we are closing our coal power stations and replacing them with Hansen’s BS, frau-dulent and fairytale energy like S&W. This will force up prices even higher and won’t make any measurable difference to temp or co2 levels by 2100 and beyond. Why is this so difficult to understand?

    30

    • #
      David Maddison

      I can’t imagine them pushing a pro-science approach. They would support expensive and unreliable energy and the fallacy of anthropogenic global warming even though we’re cooling. What is their angle?

      40

    • #

      This is 4 Corners we are talking about here, so I strongly suspect that even though it’s ostensibly about one thing, it’s really about another thing altogether.

      I’m of the opinion, (mind you, this is before the fact here) that the underlying thing they will be looking at will be the introduction of an Emissions Intensity Scheme, (EIS) basically another CO2 Tax.

      The thinking is that power prices cannot come down until an EIS is in place.

      What I can’t understand, (and forgive my facetiousness here) is that how in the hell do they expect us (well, some of us anyway) to believe that they can lower the cost of electricity by raising the cost of generating electricity.

      If they introduce an EIS, in other words, a price on every emission of CO2, the electricity generating entity just passes that cost directly down to the consumer, raising the price.

      EIS is just Cap And Trade under another guise. A way for middlemen who have absolutely nothing to do with generating or distribution of any electricity at all can cash in on the generation of electricity by others. Generators make the power, and the consumers buy and use the power. The middleman just rakes in the money from both sides.

      4 Corners. I reckon it’ll be a hit job.

      Tony.

      71

      • #
        Another Ian

        Tony

        I just heard EIS mentioned on radio

        20

        • #
          David Maddison

          Yes, let’s not get our hopes up expecting a rational approach from Their ABC.

          I bet the opening scenes will be about heading for a warmist climate disaster.

          And who’s willing to bet they’ll portray water vapour condensation from cooling towers as smoke? Or that they’ll call carbon dioxide “carbon” and they’ll call it a “pollutant”?

          40

      • #

        A ruse by any other name is …

        30

    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      Thanks Neville,
      I’ve set up to record it, on the assumption I won’t be able to take it in one dose.
      Cheers,
      Dave B

      10

  • #
    clipe

    A headline on a news story falsely claims that ‘9 countries outspend the US on science.’ In fact, America spends more than all nine combined.

    Science Funding Misinformation

    50

  • #
    Oliver K. Manuel

    The current conflict between individuals and governments may be reduced to:

    The God-given rights of individuals to improve their conscious awareness (contact) with Reality, Truth, God using the tools of science, religion, experimentation, meditation, contemplation, measurement and prayer versus

    The self-appointed rights of the most selfish world leaders to control and “domesticate” humans like other forms of life that are controlled and domesticated to benefit the elitists.

    31

  • #
    pat

    gotta stop that GLOBULL WARMING, whatever the cost:

    7 May: CBS Los Angeles: Spring Storm Delivers Blast Of Winter Weather
    An unusual spring storm delivered a blast of winter weather to many parts of the Southland late Saturday and early Sunday morning, including snow to higher elevation areas…
    Temperatures were in the 40s and 50s Sunday morning across Los Angeles, with gusty winds expected throughout the
    day…
    http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/05/07/storm-blast-winter-weather/

    7 May: ABC7: Late-season spring storm brings thunder, heavy rain, snow across SoCal
    A winter weather advisory has been issued for the Los Angeles and Ventura county mountains, excluding the Santa Monica range. It expires at 9 p.m. Sunday.
    A wind advisory has also been issued for the L.A. County coast and downtown, which expires at noon…
    Mountain areas will be cold with highs in the upper 30s…
    http://abc7.com/weather/spring-storm-brings-heavy-rains-snow-to-socal/58983/

    20

  • #
    pat

    more globull warming:

    7 May: UnionBulletin: Mike Denny: From snow-bound trip, to bank swallows in Walla Walla Valley
    Last week, MerryLynn and I decided to go somewhere that would be warmer, less windy and more spring-like. So off we went to Great Basin National Park along the Nevada-Utah border…
    In southeastern Oregon, we began to sense that the weather was not cooperating as hoped. There were great snow squalls falling out of huge, dense gray clouds, and winds pushing ahead of these snow cells as well as sucking up behind them.
    Down through Harney County and into Humboldt County, Nev., where the wind picked up and spitting snow became constant.
    On we went toward Great Basin, headed east towards Elko with great white vails of snow tumbling out of great gray clouds sweeping across the landscape.
    On south we went to Ely, thinking that things have to get better as we move south.
    Wind and snow showers kept slamming into the Toyota…
    To cut a long story short, we were snowed on and wind hammered for three days, yet completely enjoyed this spectacular national park…
    http://www.union-bulletin.com/things_to_do/diversions/from-snow-bound-trip-to-bank-swallows-in-walla-walla/article_2ab82118-30f2-11e7-aa79-5740fb1b577c.html

    8 May: KVOA Arizona: Flagstaff officials address snow concerns
    FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) – Flagstaff city officials are trying to figure out ways to reduce traffic and litter from visitors coming to play in the snow…
    City Economic Vitality Director Heidi Hansen said during Tuesday’s meeting that the staff has gotten together to discuss options such as greater police presence, more trash receptacles, volunteers from the city’s master recyclers and more education literature for winter visitors. Hansen is considering putting $90,000 from the budget toward the issue..
    http://www.kvoa.com/story/35364537/flagstaff-officials-address-snow-concerns

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    pat

    and more…

    7 May: Times-UnionNY: Lauren Stanforth: Snow could fall in Cap Region Monday-Tuesday
    Snow showers, and maybe some accumulation in higher elevations in place of rain
    As temperatures continue to be unseasonably cold until mid-work week, snow showers could pop up during the early morning hours of Monday and Tuesday.
    The National Weather Service said because of cold air that has moved south from Canada, the rain we would normally get early Monday and Tuesday morning could change over to snow…
    ***Temperatures are going to be 10 to 20 degrees colder than normal Monday and Tuesday, with lows in the mid to upper 30s, and highs in the mid-50s…
    Temperatures will still be cooler at the end of the work week, but the air will get warmer…
    http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Snow-could-fall-in-Cap-Region-Monday-Tuesday-11127793.php

    7 May: Post-Journal: Katrina Fuller: Forecast Shows Region Could Get Some Rare May Snow Today
    While spring has sprung in Western New York, the familiar sight of white flakes in the area might greet residents today.
    Colder temperatures could lead to some snow accumulation in the area. Meteorologist Aaron Reynolds of the National Weather Service in Buffalo said the drop in temperature will turn rain in the forecast into snow…
    Snow in early May is not unheard of in Western New York, Reynolds said.
    However, the temperatures will be lower than usual…
    http://www.post-journal.com/news/local-news/2017/05/forecast-shows-region-could-get-some-rare-may-snow-today/

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    John

    Michael Brissenden told us this morning whilst chatting to Fran Kelly on ABC radio RN that the reason that domestic energy costs are so high is that successive governments did not introduce a carbon tax – sorry price.

    Yes, Michael joined Four Corners last September and ABC Current Affairs head Bruce Belsham tells us that “Michael has brought intelligence, deep political knowledge and a robust ability to ask the questions the audience wants asked.”

    SO, tonight on Four Corners he will astonish us with all the revelations of his last 7 months deep research (minus 6 weeks Christmas break of course when ABC Current Affairs all but closes down). So there you have it, all your questions will be answered even though he hasn’t asked us any yet. But it seems he doesn’t have to as the solution is simply in a carbon tax – sorry price.

    Gosh, if there is a creator of the trillions of stars and planets in the universe and possible multiverses they will be so relieved to discover that on little old planet earth all Australia had to do was introduce a carbon tax – sorry price and the government would be able to tweak the planet’s climate thermostat down from an increase of 2 degrees to 1.5. Gee I’m glad Michael has spent time in Moscow, Brussels and Washington to find out how just powerful governments can be. Another Walkley coming up?

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    Go on then, I’ll do this exercise again, and keep in mind I’m simplifying it here for ease, because we already have some Hydro, so I’ll just do the exercise for Wind Power.

    Every so often I have a look at the two biggest power generating Countries on Earth just to see how they are going, and I do that because even though they are monstrously more vast than we are here in Oz, it gives a good indicator towards one thing.

    There is always talk that here in Oz, we can achieve 100% renewables, and trust me, that’ll never happen.

    So, why would the U.S. and China indicate something like this for me.

    All three Countries have relatively the same land mass, and note I said relatively here, so coverage for wind power across that similar land could give us some sort of indication of what might be needed.

    Here, I’ll use the U.S. specifically, and I’ll explain about China later.

    In Australia, the current total power consumption is around 200TWH a year, give or take, so for 100% renewables, we would need to supply that amount of power.

    The U.S. currently generates around 220TWH from Wind power. That comes from a Nameplate of around 84,000MW, or approximately 40,000 Plus wind towers, but look at the Nameplate here, 84,000MW. That’s a Capacity Factor of around 30%, the same as here in Oz.

    Here in Oz, we consume a total of around 200TWH, and Wind is around that level of actual generation in the US.

    Our current Nameplate for wind here in Oz, and it’s just gone up recently, is 4395MW.

    So, simplifying it, to achieve that 100%, and most of it is expected to come from wind anyway, we would need to have ALL those currently existing wind plants in Oz, ….. multiplied by 19.

    Not going to happen.

    Discount China. Why?

    They have a Nameplate higher than the U.S. well higher really at around 148,000MW, but actual power generation for consumption is only 240TWH, which is still higher than what we need here in Oz. That Capacity Factor for all China wind is only around 18%, so even though green spruikers tell us China is powering ahead with wind, it’s not doing very well.

    Every currently existing wind plant in Australia, multiplied by 19, just will not happen.

    Pointless exercise really.

    Tony.

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      Neville

      Tony I gave a link over at Don Aitkin’s blog a few days ago trying top point out the stupidity of OECD co2 reductions. This link is from Obama’s US govt EIA latest update. The graph is very informative and just shows how much BS they’ve been feeding us years.
      Neville

      May 1, 2017 at 7:06 am

      Have a look at the history of co2 emissions since 1990 and beyond to 2040. The EIA shows that their CAGW (?) problem is NON OECD country emissions and that will go a long way past 2040.
      But the SCC is baloney if you look at all the benefits to human life expectancy, health and prosperity since 1800. And the planet is greening and deaths from extreme weather events have dropped off a cliff in the last 100 years. What’s not to like? Here’s the EIA link.
      https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/pdf/emissions.pdf

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    pat

    7 May: WeatherNetwork: Daniel Martins: Frost and flurries as May chill enters Ontario
    Now, weather that has felt more like April than May will shortly feel like late March, with a drastic cooldown followed by accumulated wet snow in some areas, and a touch of late-season frost for much of the southwest.
    “Temperatures tonight are expected to plunge to near or a couple degrees below the zero degree mark in most areas under partly cloudy to mainly clear skies and diminishing winds,” reads a frost advisory ranging from the Windsor area through to the western GTA. “Hence widespread frost is likely across most of of the region overnight into Monday morning.”…
    The wind will make it seem more harsh, especially for communities on the shores of Lake Huron and Georgian Bay, where winds gusting in the 50-60 km/h range will make it seem colder than zero…
    https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/after-intense-rainfall-a-cooldown-and-some-snow/82041

    they don’t know if it’s coming or going…but the ***movie works either way…READ ALL:

    VIDEO: 7 May: DailyStarUK: Joshua Nevett: ICE AGE BRITAIN: River Thames will FREEZE OVER on ‘this date’ – and could kill millions
    A GLOBAL cool down will “march in with vengeance” to usher in a 100-year mini-ice age that could freeze over the River Thames, climate scientists told Daily Star Online

    Research shows a natural cooling cycle that occurs every 230 years began in 2014 and will send temperatures plummeting even further by 2019.
    Scientists are also expecting a “huge reduction” in solar activity for 33 years between 2020 and 2053 that will cause thermometers to crash…

    ***If predictions of the world-wide big freeze come true, the plot to 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow would not be far from reality during winter…

    David Dilley, CEO of Global Weather Oscillations, told Daily Star Online global warming and cooling cycles are determined by the gravitational forces of the Earth, moon and sun…
    “The last global warming cycle ended in 1790 and the year 2020 is 230 following this – thus I have been talking about rapid cooling beginning in 2019.”
    He said the oncoming cooling will send temperatures plummeting to lows last seen in the 1940s – when the mercury bottomed out at -21C during winter in the UK…
    He said: “Cooling from 2019 into about 2020 to 2021 will bring world temperatures back to where they were in the 1940s through the 1960s.

    “The Arctic will freeze solid and rapidly by 2020 and thus allow much more Arctic air to build up and move southward toward Great Britain.

    “Expect by the mid to late 2020s that winter temperatures will dip even colder than the 1940s to 1960s.
    “This will last for 60 to 100 years and then a gradual warm-up toward the next global warming cycle that will not be as warm as the one we are now coming out of.”…

    Research from mathematics professor Valentina Zharkova shows that low solar activity could cause global temperatures to dip to their lowest levels for more than 350 years.
    Within three years drastic reductions in heat-releases from the sun could drive substantial cooling in Europe, North America and Asia…

    The Met Office has previously told Daily Star Online that a new mini-ice age is a “worst case scenario”, adding that while temperatures are likely to dip, it will do little to offset man-made global warming.

    George Feulner, of the Potsdam Institute on Climate Change Research, agrees with this view, adding: “The expected decrease in global temperature would be 0.1 degrees Celsius at most, compared to about 1.3 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times by the year 2030.”…
    http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/611671/ice-age-britain-freeze-climate-change-weather

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    Neville

    I tried to get a response about the “social cost of carbon” over at Don Aitkin’s blog a few days ago, but alas they’re still a bit timid over there.

    Neville

    May 6, 2017 at 11:01 am

    So what are the costs of using fossil fuels? List your so called CAGW icons and provide evidence since 1850 explaining the negative impact from coal, oil or gas. And then tell us how to mitigate your so called problem.
    I’ve listed a lot of benefits from FFs since the end of the LIA and I’ve given the simple EIA co2 emission numbers since 1990 and IEA graphs showing that S&W are make believe energy and by 2040 will still be SFA of the TOTAL energy used in the world.
    So come on, if it’s all so easy to understand you should be able to provide the evidence of your problem and maths proof of mitigation and temp and co2 reduction by 2100. OH and don’t forget to explain it all to China, India and all of the developing NON OECD countries as well. Funny thing is that they also want to develop and provide their people with higher living standards and life expectancy. This should be interesting and be sure to use the US EPA MAGICC modelling tool as used by the IPCC and Lomborg’s team.

    Don’t forget these new FF facts and future soaring co2 emissions from countries like Pakistan. It seems FFs are very addictive.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-21/coal-addiction-spre ads-as-chinese-workers-dig-in-pakistan-desert

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    pat

    meanwhile, more good ideas, but…

    8 May: Weekly Times: Peter Hunt: Murray-Darling Basin: Water savings lose their spark
    SKYROCKETING power prices are undermining water ­efficiency works in the Murray-Darling Basin, irrigators say.
    Many of the projects funded under the Federal Government’s $626 million On-Farm Irrigation Efficiency Program require electricity to drive pumps that feed water into lateral and pivot irrigators, pipes and risers on dairy farms or pressurised pipelines for spray and drip irrigation.
    “Everyone is getting into water-efficiency grants, but haven’t realised it’s killing their energy efficiency,” Murrumbidgee Irrigation director Tony Sergi said. “What we’re saving in water, we’re losing in electricity.”
    Rising power bills led Mr Sergi to abandon electric pumps on his own plum and winegrape property and opt for diesel instead…

    “At the moment we’ve got irrigators on hybrid systems, whose pumping costs are being socialised (paid by all irrigators in the district),” (Victorian Farmers Federation water council chairman Richard Anderson) said.
    “I think Goulburn-Murray Water needs to spell out whether that will continue or those individuals will have to pay their own costs. I don’t think the rest of the customers even realise they’re subsidising a better service for others.
    “Given the way electricity prices are going I don’t think that’s going to last forever.”
    On his own farm Mr Anderson is considering connecting a diesel generator to his pumps…
    http://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/news/national/murraydarling-basin-water-savings-lose-their-spark/news-story/cd133a0f3d225c3124e4dadb2892e4f3

    update on the not-so-smart meter saga in UK:

    5 May: UK Telegraph: Katie Morley: Millions of smart meters may need replacing due to IT blunder
    For the first time major energy suppliers have admitted that some of the 8 million “first generation” smart meters fitted in households are incompatible with a new national communications network, which links their systems to the devices.
    A row has broken out after the government last night denied that the meters would need to be replaced…

    Estimates show a worst case scenario in which every smart meter has to be replaced would add as much as £100 to every UK household’s energy bill, although sources said this was unlikely.
    Meters not connected to the system “go dumb” when consumers switch energy suppliers to get a better deal, meaning they are no better than traditional meters as customers have to rely on estimated bills…

    Last night consumer experts described the smart meter roll-out as a “cock up” while sources at major energy firms admitted the cost was “spiralling” despite customers receiving “sub-par experiences”.
    Until now the Government had presumed that the problem of “first generation” meters going dumb would be fixed as they could easily be connected to the system through simple computer programming.

    But now it has emerged that many are incapable of being adapted to the central system, meaning they will have to be replaced…
    It has also emerged that an unknown quantity of other meters may require expensive engineer visits to be brought onto the system…

    But even a programming overhaul would come at a cost of £500m, according to a consultation paper seen by the Daily Telegraph…
    A senior source at one major energy supplier said: “We have a smart meter trilemma: if we don’t roll out smart meters we can be fined. If we do, we know we could be offering a sub-par consumer experience. And all the while we’re told by BEIS to never mention the costs.”…

    An executive at another large provider said: “Some homes will need to have a new meter installed. Whatever solution we find is going to add huge costs on top of the £11bn estimate. We’re talking hundred of millions of pounds to fix this mess.”
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/05/millions-smart-meters-may-need-replacing-due-blunder/

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    pat

    7 May: Fortune: David Z. Morris: Scientific Journal Retracts Controversial Paper Claiming That Fish Prefer Plastic Over Real Food
    The esteemed journal Science last week retracted a research paper on the impact of so-called microplastics on fish. The research received widespread media attention in June of last year—”Fish eat plastic like teens eat fast food, researchers say,” proclaimed one of many similar headlines—but an investigation following its publication concluded that its authors, led by Dr. Oona Lonnstedt, were guilty of “scientific dishonesty.”
    Critics quickly spotted signs that the research was, in the words of one whistleblower, “a complete fantasy.” Among other tells, scientists working at the same research station as Lonnstedt claimed she hadn’t been there long enough to do the experiments she described, and didn’t have the necessary equipment.
    As questions mounted, the paper’s authors claimed that a laptop containing the sole copy of their raw research data had been stolen just 10 days after the paper was published…

    But Lonnstedt’s Science paper went even further, claiming to demonstrate that young fish raised in environments high in plastic actually preferred plastic particles over natural food. Speaking to the BBC after the study’s release, Lonnstedt said that for young fish, plastic could be compared to “unhealthy fast food for teenagers.”
    Cue the headlines.
    Those claims were catchy enough to get the research featured by the BBC, the Guardian, and the Independent (which have not yet amended their articles to reflect the retraction), among other outlets…

    Scientific controversies have contributed to a growing skepticism of science and its institutions. Both 2009’s “Climategate” email leaks and accusations of fraud surrounding a key 2015 study on global warming provided fuel for climate change skeptics, though further investigation showed ***little actual misconduct in either case…
    http://fortune.com/2017/05/07/science-retraction-plastic-fish/

    7 May: DailyCaller: Chris White: NYT Columnist Warns Of ‘Intellectual Hubris’ Among Climate Scientists
    New York Times columnist Bret Stephens said Sunday that climate scientists risk sounding incompetent when making predictions about the future effects of global warming.
    Stephens, who formerly worked with the Wall Street Journal, told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that climatologists should dial back their dire predictions about the effects of global warming or risk looking foolish when those predictions turn out to be false. He also reiterated that he is not a climate skeptic…

    “The point of the article (STEPHENS’ FIRST COLUMN) was to say that there is a risk in any predictive science of hubris,” Stephens said, referring to a U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report in 2007 claiming a very high likelihood that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 — the prognostication was later discredited. “I think that’s a distinction that I’m afraid was lost in some of more intemperate criticism,” he added. “But people who read the column carefully can see I said nothing outrageous or beyond the pale of normal discussion.”…
    http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/07/nyt-columnist-warns-of-intellectual-hubris-among-climate-scientists/

    7 May: Breitbart: Neil deGrasse Tyson: Global Warming Skeptic Lawmakers Are Unraveling ‘Informed Democracy’
    by Pam Key
    Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said Lawmakers who question global warming are engaged in an “unraveling of an informed democracy.”
    Partial transcript as follows…READ ON
    http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/05/07/neil-degrasse-tyson-global-warming-skeptic-lawmakers-unraveling-informed-democracy/

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    pat

    comment in moderation beginning with: 7 May: Fortune: David Z. Morris: Scientific Journal Retracts Controversial Paper Claiming That Fish Prefer Plastic Over Real Food

    how India is properly headlining this story:

    7 May: Times of India: PTI: Antarctic ice sheet stable since ***WARMER times: Study
    Central parts of Antarctica’s ice sheet have been stable for millions of years, even when conditions were considerably warmer than present, new research suggests…
    Researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Northumbria in the UK studied rocks on slopes of the Ellsworth Mountains, whose peaks protrude through the ice sheet.
    By mapping and analysing surface rocks – including measuring their exposure to cosmic rays – researchers calculated that the mountains have been shaped by an ice sheet over a million-year period, beginning in a climate some 20 degrees Celsius warmer than at present…
    “These findings help us understand how the Antarctic Ice Sheet has evolved, and to fine-tune our models and predict its future,” said David Sugden, of the University of Edinburgh…
    “The preservation of old rock surfaces is testimony to the stability of at least the central parts of the Antarctic Ice Sheet – but we are still very concerned over other parts of Antarctica amid climate change,” Sugden said.
    The research was published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/antarctic-ice-sheet-stable-since-warmer-times-study/articleshow/58565872.cms

    MSM not much interested elsewhere, but ScienceDaily & Phys.org go with a ***MILDER headline!

    5 May: ScienceDaily: Antarctic study shows central ice sheet is stable since ***MILDER times
    Summary: Central parts of Antarctica’s ice sheet have been stable for millions of years, from a time when conditions were considerably warmer than now, research suggests…
    The research, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, was done in collaboration with the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre. It was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council and supported by British Antarctic Survey…

    5 May: Phys.org: Antarctic study shows central ice sheet is stable since ***MILDER times
    Central parts of Antarctica’s ice sheet have been stable for millions of years, from a time when conditions were considerably warmer than now, research suggests…
    By mapping and analysing surface rocks—including measuring their exposure to cosmic rays – researchers calculated that the mountains have been shaped by an ice sheet over a million-year period, beginning in a climate some 20C warmer than at present.
    The last time such climates existed in the mountains of Antarctica was 14 million years ago when vegetation grew in the mountains and beetles thrived. Antarctica’s climate at the time would be similar to that of modern day Patagonia or Greenland…
    https://phys.org/news/2017-05-antarctic-central-ice-sheet-stable.html

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    James

    http://www.aemo.com.au/Electricity/National-Electricity-Market-NEM/Data-dashboard#nem-dispatch-overview

    NEM now forecasting lack of reserve level 3. Are these kind of events happening more often now? Will you get load shedding? Looks like frost in the forecast. That means stable air, no wind. You might want to get the wood stove fired up. Have they banned those yet? Does anyone heat with coal in Australia? Coal give out great heat, and is perfect for irritating a greenie!

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      Bobl

      Actually looking at a fireplace and using coal in it.

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        James

        Coal is safer as there is no creosote to build up on your chimney. I think lot of the old fireplaces in Australian houses were designed for coal.

        If you can get hold of a proper coal stove, they work great. Best to get one that does not need electricity to run. The Amish make them, however I doubt that they are sold in Australia.

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    Robber

    Origin is set to pay Goldwind Energy less than $60/MWh for power from the Stockyard Hill wind farm in Victoria under a sale and power purchase agreement deal struck over the weekend. The price is close to the estimated $50/MWh for power from black coal and includes the purchase of large scale generation certificates required under the 2020 renewable energy target.
    The project’s 149 wind turbines on a site 35km west of Ballarat will be Australia’s largest single wind farm, generating 530Mw — enough to power Ballarat, Newcastle and Adelaide for a year.
    Stockyard Hill with 149 towers will generate 530 MW when the wind blows at optimum speed. On average it will deliver 160 MW, and sometimes it will deliver zero. So now add in the cost of backup supply to keep the lights on. They may well sell the electricity at a wholesale price of $60/MWhr, but who gets to pocket the additional $80/MWhr from the sale of renewable electricity certificates factored into the retail price that is mandated by the RET scheme? The electricity tax that isn’t a tax, just a slug on all consumers.

    Replace Hazelwood that was delivering a reliable 1400 MW 24/7? I think not.

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      PeterS

      The fact remains wind and solar will not replace coal for power generation for obvious reasons. Yet we are going ahead as though it will be. This nation is doomed unless we get leaders at state and federal level who will act. The likelihood of that happening is like me winning the main prize in lotto 10 times in a row without buying any tickets.

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      Just a point here.

      You know how they say that all these wind plants will be up and running before you can say hey presto, you know, so we have 50% renewables by, well, whenever, whatever Labor says.

      This Stockyard Hill Wind Plant was first proposed in 2009, so it’s been almost 8 years and it’s still not even up and running.

      Says a lot that supporters will say they can all be in place in such a short time.

      Same applies for the Coopers Gap wind plant near Toowoomba in Queensland first proposed in 2006, still not even started 11 years later.

      Tony.

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    David Maddison

    Whatever you think of his remarks that got him into trouble, he shouldn’t have been made an “unperson”.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James-Watson-selling-Nobel-prize-because-no-one-wants-to-admit-I-exist.html

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    David Maddison

    I sent this to the relevant minister, Barnaby Joyce.

    Dear Sir,

    I refer to the linked news item below.

    The incomptence and lack of common sense displayed by officers of your department is simply staggering.

    Wouldn’t the antiquity of these specimens be a clue that they might be special and worthy of further investigation even if the paperwork was deficient in some way?

    I don’t doubt there are many more such incidents that simply don’t get reported.

    We pay huge taxes and expect better than this.

    http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-08/irreplaceable-plant-specimens-destroyed-by-biosecurity-officers/8504944?pfmredir=sm

    Sincerely,

    Dr David Maddison

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      James

      A friend of mine has had similar problems trying to import grave vine planting material, not making it through quarantine.
      Previously he had planted a variety which was thought to be Albarino, which turned out to be Savagnin blanc. (not Sauvignon blanc). This material was sourced from the CSIRO Merbein variety collection. Both of these incidents cost him a lot of money.
      Ask him about how he feels about having to pay winegrape levies?
      Ask him about energy costs. No wonder Australia cannot compete!

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    Another Ian

    ” Jer0me
    May 7, 2017 at 5:21 pm

    Meanwhile, back in the real world:
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/07/27/new-nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-in-global-warming-alarmism/amp/

    In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth’s atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth’s atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.

    When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a “huge discrepancy” between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/05/07/climate-change-clobbers-french-wine-crop/#comment-2496684

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      Lionell Griffith

      Considering that the more things change, the more things stay the same, I predict this good news will be rejected as false news by the climate alarmists. They know that the data they use to “prove” catastrophic man made climate change has been tampered with by NASA et.al. and has no recognizable relationship to the real world. Hence, they will presume this new data has also been tampered with by NASA et.al. to “prove” the counter argument.

      Since the true believers in such things really believe that if they really believe something the belief makes it so, they will stick to their story. The various governments will stand by the alarmist’s story and continue to spend unaccountable billions/trillions of our and our progeny’s hard earned wealth on the alarmists various schemes.

      Noble cause, virtue signaling, getting away with it, going along to get along, sense of power over others, feelings of inadequacies to overcome, and a preference for coercion over rational persuasion and productivity are some of the motivations keeping the monumentally self destructive SNAFU going.

      They are eating the equivalent of our seed corn. When that is gone, there will be nothing to eat and no way to grow more. It won’t be pretty. The only optimism I have about the situation is that it is possible for us to wake up, use our powers of reason, and pull back from the abyss. Stop feeding them and we might have a chance.

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        Will Janoschka

        Lionell Griffith
        May 9, 2017 at 3:04 am

        “Considering that the more things change, the more things stay the same,”
        opposing politics,belief,religion.Just who is preventing ‘science’ from this CC mess?
        Well they cannot ‘prove’ anything! They can only ‘falsify’ the brilliant fantasy of CAGW… We can’t have that! Hillery won the popular vote. Who are these these scientific criminals, who disagree with what is popular? Is this not a democracy?
        The popular buy groceries; the non-popular produce groceries. Those with money control the serfs, including voting. This has never been successful. Pitchforks and torches are way to easy to construct by anyone skillful enough to grow a tomato! Just wait ’till your torches and pitchforks need be ‘registered’. Oh woha are we! 🙁
        All the best!-will-

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    el gordo

    Regional Cooling Signal

    ‘….this season the US Department of Agriculture said American farmers had planted their smallest wheat crop in nearly 100 years.’

    Weatherzone

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    pat

    8 May: Australian: Matt Ridley: Trump is right to doubt climate deal
    I am not quite sure why his critics mind so much. Indeed, if I were one of those who thought climate change the biggest threat to humankind bar none, then I would be far more critical of the Paris agreement than I actually am. I would rail against the fact that it is a futile gesture, neither legally binding enough to be enforceable, nor of sufficient scale to make a difference to climate change. It’s those people who most worry about global warming who should be most critical of Paris…READ ALL
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-times/donald-trump-right-to-be-sceptical-of-paris-climate-agreement/news-story/55c207a0df7c6403bd573774628742ae

    7 May: DailyCaller: Michael Bastasch: Conservatives Urge Trump To Keep His Promise, Ditch The Paris Climate Agreement
    Dozens of conservative and free market groups sent a letter Monday to President Donald Trump, urging him to keep his campaign promise to withdraw the U.S. from an international agreement to fight global warming signed by the Obama administration..g groups told Trump (LINK) a withdrawal from the Paris climate change agreement “is a key part of your plan to protect U.S. energy producers and manufacturers from regulatory warfare not just for the next four years but also for decades to come.

    Conservatives told Trump to send the Paris agreement to the Senate as a treaty — where it will surely be defeated, pull out of a parent United Nations climate change treaty or unilaterally withdraw from Paris on the four-year timeline specified in the agreement…
    Conservatives warned “[e]nvironmental pressure groups and several state attorneys general have begun to prepare lawsuits in federal court to block withdrawal of the ‘Clean Power’ Plan and other greenhouse gas rules.”…READ ON
    http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/08/conservatives-urge-trump-to-keep-his-promise-ditch-the-paris-climate-agreement/

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    7 May: CEI: Marlo Lewis Jr: Misdirected Paris Agreement Debate Fixates on Meaning of ‘May’
    If a legal disputation about the meaning of “may” in Article 4.11 sounds to you like a ridiculous basis on which to decide whether America should stay in or withdraw from the “most ambitious” environmental pact in history, that’s because it is…
    https://cei.org/blog/misdirected-paris-agreement-debate-fixates-meaning-may

    7 May: CEI: Marlo Lewis Jr: The Paris Agreement and the Imperial Presidency: My Response to David Bookbinder
    The following is a reponse to “Is the Paris Climate Agreement a Treaty?” by David Bookbinder of the Niskanen Center, in which Mr. Bookbinder addresses arguments made in the recent CEI study The Legal and Economic Case Against the Paris Treaty…
    https://cei.org/blog/paris-agreement-and-imperial-presidency-my-response-david-bookbinder

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    excerpted from cached version:

    8 May: E&E News: Jean Chemnick: Only 7 U.S. diplomats are at U.N. climate talks this week
    The seven U.S. civil servants who will participate in the two-week session are short on marching orders as well as personnel. Two years ago, the United States sent 45 people to the same type of midyear negotiating session. About 97 people traveled as part of the official U.S. delegation to the 2015 Paris summit, where they helped deliver a global accord.
    This week, the tiny team will have the unenviable task of explaining President Trump’s climate change policies to an anxious world…

    Should Trump decide to “cancel” the Paris deal as he promised in the campaign, and should that news leak out while thousands of diplomats and activists who have dedicated their lives to fighting climate change are meeting in Bonn, environmentalists are ready with their spin. A withdrawal, they insist, will do more harm to the United States than to the Paris Agreement.
    “If the U.S. decides to leave the agreement, this will be unwelcome, I think, by everybody,” said Paula Caballero, global director of the World Resources Institute climate program.
    But Caballero said climate leadership has become “diffuse and decisive” in recent years, and now no longer depends on a proactive United States wrangling recalcitrant international partners…

    “Despite the political unknowns around the climate talks, in Bonn, negotiators have real opportunity to advance implementation of the Paris Agreement,” added Yamide Dagnet of WRI.
    Of course, none of this will be the news out of Bonn if Trump announces a Paris exit in the middle of the talks.
    “It’s like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” one source predicted…

    The U.S. team will be led by Deputy Special Envoy for Climate Change Trigg Talley and includes six State Department officials and one representative of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The State Department roster includes Andrew Rakestraw, from the Office of Global Change, a co-facilitator on negotiations on the transparency provisions; Kimberly Carnahan; Jennifer Austin; Andrew Neustaetter; and Meredith Ryder-Rude. CEQ’s Christine Dragisic is the only White House representative.
    The team is small even by off-year standards. The United Kingdom’s government, for example, is sending 26 participants to the meeting…
    https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2017/05/08/stories/1060054180

    8 May: Guardian: Liberal MP says Australia’s part in Paris climate pact
    Zed Seselja says Turnbull government committed to climate change agreement, but if the US pulls out, it would put a question mark over the deal
    by Katharine Murphy and Paul Karp
    The assistant minister for social services and multicultural affairs, Zed Seselja, one of the government’s up-and-coming conservative figures, told Sky News on Monday that “as it stands” the Turnbull government was committed to Paris agreement, but if the US quit the pact, that would change the nature of the agreement.
    He added Canberra was currently “doing more than our share, in my opinion”…
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/08/liberal-mp-says-australias-part-in-paris-climate-pact-would-change-if-us-quit

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