Hurricane Irma formed over cooler water, 7th worst, but Climate Druids see fingerprints, tea leaves, crystals everywhere

Hurricanes, forecast, climate change, climate druids, photo, art.

Hurricane Irma is a big bad storm, like other big bad storms. Six awkward facts:

  1. It’s only the 7th most intense at landfall in US history.
  2. It formed over water that was two degrees cooler than normal,
  3. 1893, 1933, 1950, 1995, and 2005 had more Accumulated Cyclone Energy by Sept 10.
  4. In 1933 two hurricanes hit the US in just 24 hours
  5. In 1893, 1909, 2004 there were three Cat 3+ landfalls in US (blame climate change).
  6. NOAA itself says there’s no evidence anyone can detect that greenhouse gas emissions have an effect on hurricanes.

Not to be stopped by a lack of any scientific connection, climate druids are out in force finding fingerprints in every storm. Like all the great witchdoctors of history, Big Storms are a chance to pump fear and sell their services.

Tim Flannery is up with other great scientists like actress Jennifer Lawrence:

Graham Lloyd, The Australian:

Oscar-winning actor Jennifer Lawrence said Harvey and Irma were signs of “Mother Nature’s rage and wrath” at the US for electing Trump to the presidency and not believing in man-made climate change.

The Tim Flannery-backed Climate Council declared: “Fingerprints of climate change all over Tropical Storm Harvey.”

Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie issued a statement to claim climate change was driving and influencing extreme weather events around the globe. “Climate change is now supercharging extreme weather events including storms, bushfires, heavy rainfall and floods,” she said. “This is occurring in a more ­energetic climate system, that’s warmer and loaded up with more moisture than ever before.” McKenzie said Harvey was a “window into our future”.

Let’s not forget Michael Mann and “Irma and Harvey should kills any doubt that climate change is real”

“Hurricanes get their energy from warm ocean waters, and the oceans are warming because of the human-caused buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, primarily from the burning of coal, oil and gas. The strongest hurricanes have gotten stronger because of global warming. “

Irma formed over water that was only 26.5C, fully 2 degrees below the normal threshold

Judith Curry: “In a matter of a few hours, Irma became a major hurricane.  The surprising thing about this development into a major hurricane was that it developed over relatively cool waters in the Atlantic – 26.5C — the rule of thumb is 28.5C for a major hurricane (and that threshold has been inching higher in recent years).

 We can’t blame 26.5 C temperatures in the mid Atlantic on global warming.

The dynamical situation for Irma was unusually favorable.  In particular, the wind shear was very weak.”

NOAA: There is no evidence that there is a human influence on hurricanes.

 The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab at NOAA on August 30th 2017: 

It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity. That said, human activities may have already caused changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observational limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate).

The NOAA team go on to say that maybe by the end of the 21st century man-made climate change will make cyclones 2 -11% more intense. The odds are “likely” or “greater than 66%” as defined by the IPCC, and calculated by climate models that have exaggerated every effect so far in the last 30 years. So, not a wild increase, not spooky, and odds are only “better than even” (yes, they use that phrase).

 Hurricane expert Phil Klotzbach: #Irma at landfall comes in 7th behind 1935 Labor Day storm

Some interesting facts about Hurricanes from Phil Klotzbach:

  • #Irma has now generated enough Accum. Cyclone Energy by itself to meet the NOAA ACE definition of an average full Atlantic hurricane season
  • #Irma‘s 2nd landfall, on Marco Island, is same lat-lon given for Wilma’s landfall in 2005: 25.9°N, 81.7°W. Both also Cat. 3s at landfall
  • In only 5 years has the Atlantic generated more Accumulated Cyclone Energy by Sep. 10 than in 2017: 1893, 1933, 1950, 1995 & 2005.
  •  Major hurricanes making US landfall 23 hours apart in 1933 did so in Jupiter, FL and Brownsville, TX.
  • While 2017 is 1st time with 2 Cat. 4+ US landfalls, US had 4 Cat 3+ hurricane landfalls in 2005 & 3 Cat 3+ landfalls in 1893, 1909, 2004
  • Table of all hurricanes with landfall pressures <= 940 mb at time of U.S. landfall. #Irma was 929 mb and #Harvey was 938 mb.
  • Hurricane Strength, 2017, Irma, Harvey, table, chart.

h/t WattsUp.

I’d bet that Al Gore already has shots of Irma in his Climate-Porn File, but no one would bet against me.

Images: Crystal Ball, by Eva K. Hurricane Isabel MODIS rapid response team

 

 

9.8 out of 10 based on 99 ratings

206 comments to Hurricane Irma formed over cooler water, 7th worst, but Climate Druids see fingerprints, tea leaves, crystals everywhere

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    • #
      ColA

      Thank goodness Irma ran out of CO2 otherwise it could have been a much worse weathertastrophy!!! 🙂

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      Geoff

      The water temperature was crucial to the rainfall, not the wind speed. At 28.5 degrees centigrade CO2 escapes from the ocean surface. This dramatically reduces water capillary forces resulting in increased evaporation.

      So Irma had plenty of wind (big temperature difference from top to bottom) but less rain. Less moisture means a rapid drop off in temperature difference (wind speed) over land.

      A warmer ocean would mean more flooding from rain but a lower but more sustained wind speed.

      The ocean surface temperature is an important parameter for predicting cyclone characteristics.

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        Will Janoschka

        “The water temperature was crucial to the rainfall, not the wind speed. At 28.5 degrees centigrade CO2 escapes from the ocean surface. This dramatically reduces water capillary forces resulting in increased evaporation.”
        You comm up with this canned nonsense from where? Do you have a clue as to what powers a hurricane? Give us your best guess!

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        • #
          Geoff

          Temperature differences power weather full stop. This causes a pressure difference. Its all powered by the sun.

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            Will Janoschka

            “Temperature differences power weather full stop. This causes a pressure difference. Its all powered by the sun.”

            I asked of the source of your claims and you have none! Can you please explain how the hurricane’s angular momentum (power) comes from the Sun rather than from the rotational inertia of the Earth?

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            • #
              Will Janoschka

              “Temperature differences power weather full stop. This causes a pressure difference. Its all powered by the sun.”

              What total BS! Temperature or temperature difference is but a measure of local sensible heat of mass.
              A measurement of the physical can never power any action.

              01

  • #
    Imran Can

    Also worth pointing out that major media are quoting the “fact” that this is the first season since records began with 2 Category 4 US landfalls. But I just checked the data and there were 2 category 4 hurricanes making landfall in 1915. One in New Orleans, and 1 in Texas.

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    • #
      Robert Rosicka

      Standard practise , they mean in the last 3 months and of course they would right .

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      • #
        Imran Can

        Interesting – this Wunderground website has the 1915 New Orleans hurricane as Cat3 at landfall, but the NOAA data has it as Cat 4 at landfall.

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    • #
      Albert

      The Texas hurricane had survivors build homes on high stumps, later generations took no notice of past weather and built their new homes close to the ground, most of them were washed away with following hurricanes

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    • #
      cedarhill

      If one uses “mainland USA”, Irma was a Cat 3 at landfall.

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    • #

      They wait for the emotion of a new and heavily reported event then enhance that emotion with “science” to imply lack of precedent, even if it means grasping at mere inevitable variations or outright trivialities.

      The enemy of the Climatariat is history. They know it. They know that for the New Man at Year Zero there must be no history.

      Oh, and if you think I’m a conspiracy theorist who believes in globalist/neo-Marxist plots…that’s exactly what I am.

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    • #
      RB

      Thanks. Read that in Wikipedia and thought that it might have been Wikipedia’s unreliability.
      ( had the mean max temps of my old home town 10 degrees higher than they should be. Fixed but highest values are still wrong)

      21

  • #
    pat

    scroll down for all the following Tony Heller threads listed below:
    https://realclimatescience.com/

    Plummeting September 10 Temperatures In The US
    Posted on September 10, 2017 by tonyheller

    Hurricane Inflation
    Posted on September 10, 2017 by tonyheller

    Hurricane Gilbert – Too Big To Turn North
    Posted on September 10, 2017 by tonyheller

    New Video : Hurricane Superstition Reaches Category Five
    Posted on September 9, 2017 by tonyheller

    Hurricane Superstition Reaches Record Levels
    Posted on September 9, 2017 by tonyheller

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  • #
    Robert Rosicka

    And Flannery has track record of being totally wrong how many times .

    264

    • #
      CriddleDog

      Every time!

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        “Tim Flannery is up with other great scientists like actress Jennifer Lawrence”

        Classic…gave me a good laugh….

        Feel the quality, Guvnor…..real unicorn feathers, this IPCC model is….

        213

        • #
          Yonniestone

          Once a treat for us going gold class at the movies has been tainted by the complete moronic rantings by actors on all things environmental or political, sure they’re free to express an opinion just don’t expect the public to fund their lifestyles for the privilege of being lectured, blamed or judged by people so far from reality they can afford to opine ideas that defy any semblance to reason whatsoever.

          131

      • #
        Mark

        Tim Flannery is a world insurance policy. If he says it will happen it won’t. The more disaster prognostications he gives, the safer we are. Tim’s only failing so far is that he has not been able to protect us from Al Gore.

        133

        • #
          Sceptical Sam

          Ah! Yes, Mark.

          Feel sorry for poor old Timmy.

          He’s one of the men who could never fit in.

          “Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
          And now is the time to laugh.
          Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
          He was never meant to win;”

          Robert W. Service:

          http://www.wesjones.com/serv1.htm

          11

    • #
      Aert Driessen

      Every time!

      01

  • #

    a pity you listed this at number 1 (hopefully not in order of importance)

    It’s only the 7th most intense at landfall in US history.

    is a completely bogus statistic for ranking whether something is a “big bad storm”. Plenty of big bad storms with high winds and massive devastation are comparatively limp when they breach the US coast – err like Irma.

    521

    • #
      manalive

      Irrelevant — a ‘straw man’ argument.
      The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale was devised by a structural engineer and estimates potential damage “to well constructed frame homes” based on wind speed at landfall.
      Jo’s comparison list refers to precisely that.

      274

      • #

        did you understand my comment? Jo is ranking the hurricanes based on US landfall not based on the actual destructive power of the hurricane during its lifetime. The thing you wrote is true regarding when the hurricane hits the US coast and is a correct ranking of what you wrote, but it is not a ranking of how “big and bad” the hurricane actually was.

        One reason I can see for using this as a proxy is that most of those earlier hurricanes have no data for the hurricane’s “big and badness” over the full track since record keeping of that order, over much of that region, is recent. In fact, unless the US coast measurements were at the very peak of the force when measured, then every one of those estimates is less than the maximum big and badness. This table says nothing about the time at the peak and lifetime destructive power and therefore nothing about rank of the total badness of the hurricane.

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        • #
          TedM

          Jo also referred to the ACE index. Did you miss that.

          Get an education G Aye. spend some time over at weatherbell.

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        • #
          gnome

          Yes- comparing landfalling hurricanes is a process colloquially known as comparing apples with apples.

          If you can work out some other way, let everyone know. A better baseline would always be welcome to seekers of the truth.

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        • #
          greggg

          Destructive potential or destruction caused? Destruction caused depends on population and development of areas hit and is not much of an indicator of how “big and bad” the storm is.

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          Rereke Whakaaro

          So, if we are expected to calculate the “destructive power” of the hurricane during it’s entire lifetime, then we have to calculate the destructive power of the hurricane over water, and average that with the destructive power over land? Interesting concept.

          I am not even sure that I understand what is meant by the “destructive power” over water. The water is not destroyed. Although it may be displaced elsewhere.

          From a human perspective, the destructive power is measured, or calculated, by the damage done to the societal and commercial infrastructures. That is why the power of a hurricane at landfall, is the important comparator.

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          • #

            The concept of “big and bad” is power and the ranking Jo uses is nothing to do with amount of destruction (see for example how far down the Galverston event is) but is destructive potential at landfall. Irma was more powerful several days earlier.

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        • #
          ImranCan

          Gee Aye – you already answered your own question. Indeed the reason that the information at Landfall is most relevant is because it means we can check the trend of 150 years of meaningful data. Checking how strong a hurricane has been over its lifetime isn’t very helpful if you are trying to understand whether hurricanes are getting worse or stronger. Not when you have a beautiful 150 year accurate data record.

          Which coincidentally shows that hurricanes were stronger and more frequent in the 1870’s, 1880’s, 1910’s, 1930’s and 1940’s. In fact unless there are a bunch of very strong storms in the next 3 years, the 2010’s might very well end up as the weakest decade on record.

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        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          Gee Aye

          On reflection, you actually raise an interesting point, when you say:
          “… unless the US coast measurements were at the very peak of the force when measured, then every one of those estimates is less than the maximum big and badness.”

          You are obviously referring to some arbitrary metrics for “bigness” and “badness” that takes everything into account. But I am left wondering about who defines the scales for “bigness” and “badness”? Is it a political construct, that is only known to some invisible agency, that can arbitrarily change the rules, as it suits?

          This table says nothing about the time at the peak and lifetime destructive power and therefore nothing about rank of the total badness of the hurricane.

          If the hurricane does not cause any material damage, then it is only of academic interest. Except that, having a metric that can not be verified by any independent observers, might be useful from a supranational political point of view. Now that is an interesting thought, wouldn’t you say?

          “If a tree falls in the forest, with nobody present to hear, does it still make a sound?”

          71

          • #

            ask Jo… her words. I was exploring what it meant too. The rankings above are bigness and badness at landfall in Florida to which I say that is a poor way to compare things.

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      • #
        Dave

        I think I prefer Phil Klotzbach description of 11th

        I don’t think Philip J. Klotzbach meets Geeeyes standards?

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  • #
    Richard111

    The world is cooling. Climate events WILL become more intense. Calling it CLIMATE CHANGE in a loud voice will not prevent the coming ice age and all the problems humanity is NOT preparing for.

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  • #
    TdeF

    So the people who cannot explain why cyclone/hurricane activity has halved since Global Warming started (with the IPCC), cannot explain why it formed over colder water but are certain that these hurricanes are due to human activity?

    I would love to know which specific tertiary qualifications in chemistry, physics, mathematics, computing, engineering or meteorology made Tim Flannery a scientist, let alone a Climate Scientist. Or Al Gore. The thing they have in common is a degree in English.

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    • #
      Robert Rosicka

      A degree in English ehh , I’m sure saying the ocean is becoming more acidic is not more Gooder English .

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        TdeF

        Global Warming has made people famous. Flannery, Gore, Climate Commissioners and Pachauri. Michael Mann. They have to comment on bushfires, hurricanes, droughts, dead molluscs, missing caribou, ice floes and rainfall. Otherwise the world would forget them. The damage they have done to our electricity system is appalling. The huge waste of the world’s resources beyond tragic and the missed opportunity to make a better world.

        As they head into retirement, history will remember them as the carpetbaggers of Global Warming but would have amounted to nothing without the huge Green money machine, like Australia’s AGL who have realised that it is far better to charge 40c a kw/hr for wind power than 4c for the same thing from coal. So they will shut the Liddell coal power plant they bought. Shares are soaring. Global Warming, the gift that keeps on making people rich. Too bad about the poor people, but it was never about poor people.

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        • #
          Mark

          I beg to differ on one point.
          ‘The damage they have done…’
          In fact it is not they who have done the damage. There are many people in the world claiming all sorts of nonsense, but we choose not to listen to them. The people who have done the damage are mainly electors. Many voters have swallowed the cool aid.
          In general electorates are pretty good at screening the dross, but I guess the global warming scam is so audacious, the science so arcane, millennialism so attractive, and the media so locked in, that many people have been fooled.
          Nevertheless, it is heartening to me that so many have resisted the temptation of belief.

          100

          • #
            TdeF

            When the head of the Royal Society, the head of Climate at NASA, the ABC/SBS/BBC science advisers, the head of the American Institute of Physics and endless others say it is all true, people are not fooled. They are intentionally deceived. I cannot believe Brian Cox on the ABC implied strong that NASA were being infallible because they put a man on the moon. These are credible people. Of course many NASA people, members of the American Institute and so many others are outraged.

            We had the same thing last week with the AMA whose board said there was no recognized problem with same sex marriage adoption, without even asking their members, many of whom strongly disagreed. Or the City of Yarra who removed Australia Day because they and a few of their friends thought it was a good idea.

            It all shows you that there are people political top of societies who care more about being seen and heard than about representing their constituents and their employees, electors or members. Does the head of QANTAS speak for all his staff? Does he even have that right?

            It’s hard to switch off when your Prime Minister says Global Warming is the greatest moral challenge of a generation. Of course it is nonsense, but what are most busy people to think? Or the uninformed. Members of the BOM and ABC are paid to be impartial and honest and correct. It is outrageous when they make it up.

            So I do not excuse the people who tell us these fairy tales, homogenise, sanitise, edit and erase information and profit by it. Blaming their audience as gullible is not good enough. There is a duty of care which is being trashed. As the Hippocratic Oath says, do no harm. A great deal of harm is being done.

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        • #
          The Deplorable Vlad the Impaler

          “Global Warming has made people famous. Flannery, Gore, Climate Commissioners Commisars and Pachauri. Michael Mann.”

          Fixed it for you, TdeF.

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    • #
      Chad

      From Wiki….

      Flannery earned a doctorate at the University of New South Wales in Palaeontology for his work on the evolution of macropods (kangaroos).

      See,..He is aProfessor of ‘roos !

      60

  • #

    “On September 3rd of 1821, a category 4 hurricane smashed directly into Cape May Point from where the center of the storm moved north following a route approximated by today’s Garden State Parkway. Hurricane force winds were experienced as far West as the City of Philadelphia, while the New Jersey shore endured the eastern side of the storm with winds of 200mph.” – Really Lousy Weather site of Greg Hoffman

    Nobody can say for sure that 1821 was a landfalling Cat 4. It would be a freakish event so far north. But there is enough reportage of this hurricane, of the Great Colonial of 1635 and of the Hurricane of 1749 which formed the Willoughby Spit in Chesapeake Bay, to raise the serious possibility that an even stronger blow than that of 1938 or 1944 could strike the Atlantic north coast.

    None of this stuff has ever been secret. It’s just that in recent decades a peculiar religious cult with deep penetration into politics, media and academia would prefer we change the subject from historic weather extremes. It’s not exactly rude like belching in a lift…but they’d rather we didn’t do it.

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    • #
      Manfred

      It’s not exactly rude like belching in a lift…but they’d rather we didn’t do it.

      It’s up right up there with the inconvenient truth which dogs them at every turn; such an inadvertently well chosen title.

      I listened to a member of the Conversation blurting through bubbles of bile how the hurricanes had formed over warm water and, well, that man, TTTrrruuummmppp, doesn’t think there’s global warming…. silence hung in the air like phartingly toxic erudition in a lift.

      Such magnificent exercise for the extrinsic ocular muscles.

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  • #
    Bitter&twisted

    I didn’t know Flannery was a climate scientist.
    However he does act like one.

    171

  • #

    Whether shamen have ever known
    which way the wind is blowing.

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    • #
      Ross

      Best stick with ‘citizen’ scientist web blogs, eh’ Beth?
      Yeah….they’ll tell you what you like to hear. Great analysis. (Blimey)
      [Ad Hominem and content free comment] Fly

      00

    • #
      Joe

      As Bob said – You don’t need a weather man / to know which way the wind blows.

      30

      • #
        toorightmate

        It doesn’t matter which way you are facing, the wind is always blowing towards you [wise old Indian saying].

        00

  • #
    David Maddison

    Any news about how the Florida windmills are faring?

    72

    • #

      Gas and nukes are the main power source for Florida.

      The Texas Gulf Coast country, mangled by Cat 3 Allen in 1980, seems to be the only hurricane prone region in the US with major wind investment. (The big Texas wind projects are located in the West and Panhandle.)

      Maybe they know what they’re doing in Brownsville and Corpus Christie, but I wouldn’t fancy a wind farm around Port Hedland or Innisfail. I guess when ranchers can get up to $5000 annually per tower, lots of them discover a new-minted belief in the efficacy of wind-farming. Bribing landholders legally seems to be the dark art of wind-farming. I know that in Spain the locals without fat contracts for towers are furious with those who have them.

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      Phil R

      Don’t know about the windmills, but along the same lines I was wondering about solar farms in FLA and how they might have fared.

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      • #

        LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla.

        It’s only fitting that solar panels that will help with the power needs of Walt Disney World are shaped like the famous ears of the mouse that started the Disney enterprise.

        Officials with Disney World, Duke Energy and Disney’s private government on Tuesday flipped on the switch to a Mickey Mouse-shaped solar facility located on 22 acres near the Epcot theme park. – AP

        Not only is solar suppoosed to be the best and cheapest solution (everybody knows, to quote everybody as quoted by Alan Kohler), but it’s also clearly the most fun. You’ve heard it from Christiana Figueres, now hear it from Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Daisy.

        However I’m with Scrooge McDuck on this one. Ah, phooey.

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  • #
    Mark

    I reckon the biggest giggle was one of the local sheriff departments was urging people to stop firing their guns at the storm!!!!!

    50

  • #
    Ruairi

    For the climate-change cult it’s the norm,
    That high winds bring on their brain storm,
    Causing mindless confusions,
    They draw absurd conclusions,
    As to hurricanes and how they form.

    100

  • #
    David Maddison

    O/T and feeling sick.

    I rarely watch TV but it happened to be on the 730 Report and the former UN Climate Commissioner was talking and she said coal can’t supply peak power and only renewables can do that at which time I turned it off.

    202

  • #
    Robert Rosicka

    OT just caught the end of an interview on 7.30 report , I think it was with the chief of the AEMO a Yanky woman ?
    She said we have less than three years to reduce emissions and avoid a tipping point of CAGW of which we will suffer the consequences of for the next century.

    70

    • #
      Robert Rosicka

      Ah sorry the previous posts popped up afterwards , so that’s who it was .

      40

    • #
      Dennis

      Meanwhile, 1,600 new coal fired power stations are under construction or recently commissioned, and lines of ships at anchor outside Australian harbours and coal or gas loading ports are assembled ready to be loaded to supply foreign countries with Australian fossil fuels.

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      • #
        Mark

        Oh, come now Dennis. That’d mainly be China you are talking about, and we all know that if China does it it’s no problem at all. They need to catch up. They are a different culture. They are probably communist. They’re a minority, or something. They’re a victim. They’re a glistening pure alternative to the evil hegemony of the West. ‘N stuff.

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        • #
          richard verney

          President Trump calls AGW a Chinese hoax. He may be wrong on that, but the Chinese certainly know how to play the game, and take the West for all it can. For them, it is like take candy from a baby.

          The Chinese have no commitment to reduce CO2. Far from it, they are committed to greatly increase their CO2 emissions between now and 2030. They have no obligation to pay monies into the climate reparation fund. Far from it, they will probably be recipients of money out of that fund. They are investing in fossil fuel generation in Africa from which they will make money and secure political relations, whereas Western finance is prohibited from such investments. To top it all off, the Chinese have a great export business of selling futile wind turbines and lousy solar panels to the West.

          How come can only President Trump see the madness of it all. The rest of the political leaders in the West are just plain old dumb.

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          • #
            Dennis

            Well, the Canadian billionaire, now deceased, who died in China escaping Canadian government authorities, socialist Maurice Strong, is said to be the engineer of man-made global warming political agenda that the UN IPCC pursues.

            His cousin was the lover of Chairman Mao.

            40

            • #
              Rereke Whakkaro

              Maurice Strong was the architect of the entire global warming/climate change play-book. It is probably incorrect to say he was socialist. He was a communist in the Chinese fashion.

              He was also a student of the teachings of Sun Tzu, as am I. He for political reasons, and I for military strategy. It was fashionable for a while.

              Strong’s vision has drifted somewhat, since his death, and the script has lost it’s way. The current Chinese leadership now realises that they can gain more influence through trade, and stability, than they can through fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

              But the climate genie has quit the bottle, and has now gone to roost with the American liberal left, that seem to have the attention span of your average Damsel-Fly, and are determined to show that the current hurricane was the worst ever, and far worse than any others in living memory, or in the historic records either.

              10

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            William

            “How come can only President Trump see the madness of it all. The rest of the political leaders in the West are just plain old dumb.”

            The story of the emperor’s new clothes has a remarkable ability to be reborn over and over again Richard.

            21

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          William

          WUWT has a map from the NYT showing 27 coal fired power stations are planned in the EU (Germany mainly I think), 45 in Japan, 1171 in China, 26 in South Korea, 60 in the Philippines, 24 in South Africa, 93 in Turkey and 446 in India.

          If they are financially viable elsewhere, especially in developing countries and/or where they have to import coal, why are they not more viable here where we have plenty of coal? This is a very simple question that alarmists refuse to answer while arguing that coal is more expensive than unreliable, uneconomical – and environmentally unfriendly – solar and wind farms. They forget that skewing the market against coal, all the time painting it as an evil gas producer, is the sole driver for uneconomical coal as well as a major driver for exorbitant electricity prices.

          40

          • #

            Pity our leaders are exempt from the Hippocratic Oath,
            and embrace that other h-word behavior.

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          • #

            William mentios this:

            …..showing 27 coal fired power stations are planned in the EU (Germany mainly I think), 45 in Japan, 1171 in China, 26 in South Korea, 60 in the Philippines, 24 in South Africa, 93 in Turkey and 446 in India.

            And yet that Figueres woman said categorically to Leigh Sales last night that no one was building them anywhere.

            Tony

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            • #
              William

              The baldfaced lies they tell are breathtaking, either that or they are truly ignorant people – and it is made worse by a MSM that cannot seem to bring itself to even question these statements. On the other hand, if you point out facts to them, you feel like Cassandra.

              Generations to come will be laughing at the gullibility of the current crop of fools.

              40

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              Just Thinkin'

              Tony, what she said, under her breath, at the end was “in Australia”.

              40

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              toorightmate

              Tony,
              I figure that Figueres has had trouble with figures for a long time.
              Who else figures what I figure?

              10

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      Mark

      Wow, that is pretty specific. She must be a genius. I wonder if she can provide the exact date.

      40

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  • #
    Andrew

    Did that Labor Day storm get measured by Doppler radar in the middle of the ocean? Or was that pressure reading measured by an actual weather station on land? About 80km/h faster wins too.

    30

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    ROM

    I have listed below the first 20 of Weather Underground’s list of 35 of the most deadly Hurricanes in world history.

    So far the figures I have just read on IRMA’s death toll give the “Total” number of deaths from IRMA as 30 and rising.

    I don’t wish to try and minimise IRMA’s impact on the American and Caribbean nations and islands but take a long hard look at the incredible number of deaths that have resulted from cyclones , typhoons and hurricanes down through what in some cases is very recent history.
    And these deaths were immeasurably worse and far greater in number long before somebody decided to invent the claimed catastrophic global warming and climate change that is now being blamed for America’s hurricane situation.

    In fact it has been the immense use of fossil fuels that have allowed America and now China and other cyclone prone nations to build the and create the resources such as the Bangladeshi cyclone shelters through out their delta region at the head of the Bay of Bengal where the greatest loss of life from cyclones through history has taken place, that has kept the death toll from recent hurricanes and cyclones / typhoons down to such low figures and has enabled the rescue and recovery situations to be so efficient due to,the wealth and technology that has resulted from the long use of fossil fuels as our energy source when compared to the historical death tolls and the years long human trauma from similar cyclonic disasters in the past centuries when only wind and water and human muscle power were the only sources of energy available to humanity.

    Those poorest of poor who died in those cyclonic disasters were living breathing human beings, no different to each of us with their dreams and hopes and their families and their desperate desires for a better life and some small simple daily pleasures through their lives even though they were humble and truly the poorest of poor.

    The current American experience although a disaster for many individuals pales into almost insignificance when we we see the terrible trauma and loss of life from some of the worst cyclonic disasters ever to strike mankind.

    Weather Underground
    ———
    Hurricane Archive;

    The 35 Deadliest Tropical Cyclones in World History

    Rank_______Name ________Areas of Largest Loss_____Year ________ Ocean Area____________ Deaths

    .
    1. Great Bhola Cyclone, ____ Bangladesh ______1970 [ Nov 12 ] __ Bay of Bengal_____ 300,000 – 500,000

    2. Hooghly River Cyclone,__India and Bangladesh __1737__________Bay of Bengal_______ 300,000

    3. Haiphong Typhoon,_______Vietnam___________1881 _________West Pacific__________300,000

    [SNIP copyright]
    .

    As we go back through history and look at the number of humans on this earth when some of those cyclonic catastrophes struck, the true scale of the disaster to humanity through the history of the past begins to unfold

    In 1804 there were about a billion humans on this planet
    In 1927 humanity’s numbers passed the 2 billion mark.
    In 1960 we passed the 3 billion mark
    In 1974 we passed the 4 billion mark
    In 1987 we passed the 5 billion mark
    In 1999 we passed the 6 billion mark.
    We are now nearing or have already passed the 7.5 billion mark.
    .
    World population when the Hooghly River cyclone struck in 1737 with an estimated loss of 300,000 lives was probably less than a billion humans on this earth.

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    pat

    didn’t see it, but here it is. might watch it tomorrow if I can bear it:

    VIDEO: 7mins39secs: 11 Sept: ABC 7.30 Report: Former UN climate chief discusses Government’s decision to pressure AGL to stay in coal
    Former UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres, joins 7.30 to discuss the Government’s decision to pressure AGL to stay in coal.
    http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2017/s4732703.htm

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      TdeF

      Ms Figueres and her family are part of the UN royalty, previously part of Costa Rican Royalty. Utterly unqualified in hard science as an anthropologist at least she has made it very clear that Climate Change is not about the Climate. It is about the redistribution of wealth. In this case from Australia to her friends overseas.

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      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      Morning Pat,
      Any idea who paid for her visit to Australia?
      Cheers,
      Dave B

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        Robert Rosicka

        David I’ve noticed a few yanky alarmists giving sermons on ABC over the last couple of days , we must be hosting a love in somewhere.

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    pat

    Sloan should have interviewed Figueres, not the ill-equipped Leigh Sales:

    8 Sept: Australian: Judith Sloan: Australia has gone from cheapest to most expensive power
    If I read another press release about the millions of dollars of our money being handed over to the mendicant players in the renewable energy space, I’m going to scream. The latest was $100 million awarded to Macquarie Leasing to subsidise electrical cars. I’m not joking.

    But here’s the worst bit. Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg says: “The Turnbull government’s investment in clean energy technologies is helping deliver affordable and reliable energy as we transition to a lower emissions future.”

    So we hand over $100m of taxpayer money to Macquarie Leasing so it can offer concessional deals on top-of-the-line Tesla electrical cars to high-­income ­individuals, and the government justifies this as delivering affordable and reliable energy — and a low-emissions future, of course.
    Pull the other one, I say. The last time I noticed, electrical cars will be drawing power from our rickety, overpriced electricity grid…

    But here’s the thing: the greater the penetration of renewables, the more unreliable the system ­becomes even with the latest software being in place. This is not just about the laws of physics (which AEMO emphasises) but the fact that most of eastern Australia shares the same weather patterns, so any gains from heterogeneity (dissimilar weather patterns) are very small.

    However, the kicker is the fact renewable energy, with its preferential dispatch status and low operating costs, sends dispatchable power plants into early retirement and kills off the incentives to build new ones. Note that since 2011 nearly 6000 megawatts of coal-fired plant capacity has been withdrawn from the market, or close to 12 per cent of total capacity…
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/australia-has-gone-from-cheapest-to-most-expensive-power/news-story/e6234beafcf957896c11952cbded77cb

    AUDIO: 11mins33secs: 11 Sept: 2GB: Alan Jones Show: Professor Judith Sloan
    Alan talks to the economist and columnist about the power crisis facing Australia.
    http://www.2gb.com/podcast/professor-judith-sloan-6/

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      TdeF

      You would think the government was not borrowing $50Billion a year! (NBN and most big projects are not in the budget). What’s a lousy $100million to friends?

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      Dennis

      Tesla Model S 75d $114,950

      Tesla Model S 90d $134,050

      NRMA Guide Open Road magazine

      Toyota Camry Altise $26,490

      Toyota Prius C Hybrid $23,450

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        Robert Rosicka

        Just heard Tesla have modified the cheaper one via internet connection to the car so it will get the same mileage as the more expensive one and thus help them get out of Florida .

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      Dennis

      When he retired from politics the first time, before he later accepted appointment to the Federal Senate, NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr was a highly paid consultant to Macquarie Bank. He was also consultant to the Middle East desalination plant supplier he “negotiated” with state premiers to buy.

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    pat

    lol.

    11 Sept: Guardian: Bill McKibben: Stop talking right now about the threat of climate change. It’s here; it’s happening
    Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, flash fires, droughts: all of them tell us one thing – we need to rethink how we live without delay
    For the sake of keeping things manageable, let’s confine the discussion to a single continent and a single week: North America over the last seven days…

    Leaving aside the earthquake, every one of these events jibes with what scientists and environmentalists have spent 30 fruitless years telling us to expect from global warming. (There’s actually fairly convincing evidence that climate change is triggering more seismic activity, but there’s no need to egg the pudding.)…
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/11/threat-climate-change-hurricane-harvey-irma-droughts

    11 Sept: ABC PM: Warnings for Australian coastal cities in Irma’s wake
    by Caroline Winter on PM with Matt Wordsworth
    As Irma terrifies and destroys, one US expert is warning Australian coastal cities need to be better prepared for extreme weather and higher sea levels.
    Australian Coastal Councils agree, and say federal funding cuts to critical research areas is putting the nation at risk.

    Featured:
    Adam Parris, executive director of the Science and Resilience Institute, New York City
    Alan Stokes, executive director of the Australian Coastal Councils Association
    David King, Department of Disaster Studies James Cook University
    http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/pm/coastal-risk/8893724

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    pat

    11 Sept: SMH: ‘Grandmother plant’: Ex-UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has advice for PM
    by Peter Hannam
    AGL’s Liddell power station is a “grandmother” plant that shouldn’t receive funds more usefully invested elsewhere to improve Australia’s energy prospects, Christiana Figueres, the former United Nations climate chief, said…

    The Greens, meanwhile, are planning to seek support from Labor and other parties for a bill that would prohibit Commonwealth government aid for coal-fired power stations whether existing or new ones…

    The former Costa Rican diplomat, who will address a CityTalks event at the Sydney Town Hall on Tuesday on how cities can lead climate action, said governments should focus on what was to be gained from exiting fossil fuel industries…
    “Australia is actually facing a very bright future with limitless renewable energy resources to begin with,” Ms Figueres said. It also has many of the minerals such as lithium used in batteries that “can be the new exporting engines in the economy.”
    Australia’s current level of renewable energy could also triple its share of the electricity market to 50 per cent provided integration issues were resolved, she said…

    While the massive destruction wrought by powerful hurricanes Harvey and Irma in the past fortnight was unlikely to alter the stance of President Donald Trump, many people would be prompted to reflect on the risks of a warming planet.
    “Those events are typical of the kind of acceleration and intensification of natural disasters that we are already seeing and will continue to see with climate change,” she said.
    “They are a reminder of the fact we are not doing as much as we need to do on global emissions reduction, in particular for low-lying islands and vulnerable populations.”…

    The Greens bill, expected to go before the Senate next month, would aim to block Turnbull government moves to extend the life of coal-fired power stations “that make global warming worse and threaten our way of life”, Adam Bandt, the Greens climate change and energy spokesman, said.

    “We wouldn’t let the government subsidise asbestos and we shouldn’t let them subsidise coal,” Mr Bandt said, adding that “Labor needs to choose which side they are on.”
    ***Fairfax Media sought comment from Labor.
    http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/grandmother-plant-exun-climate-chief-christiana-figueres-has-advice-for-pm-20170910-gyerob.html

    ***why do you only mention seeking comment from Labor, Fairfax? didn’t you seek a response to Figueres’ rant from the Govt?

    ***where in the following are the “national thought leaders”?

    What’s On: City of Sydney: CityTalks: Cities taking the Lead
    At this CityTalk, hear Christiana Figueres, Vice Chair of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, and Mayor of Vancouver Gregor Robertson discuss the targets set by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement and the responsibility of city leaders to achieve the targets.

    Entrenched inequality, rising populism and political instability are contributing to an uncertain future and dramatically changing the world we know. While nations delay progress on critical issues like climate change and housing affordability, cities around the world are working together to address the gaps.
    Can city leadership globally and at home set the journey towards a net zero carbon future and build a more equitable and inclusive society?
    They will be joined by ***national thought leaders to discuss the role of government, business and society in creating a sustainable and inclusive future for all.

    MC: Adam Spencer
    Discussion panel includes Figueres, Robertson, Clover Moore and…
    •John Hewson AM – Professor at Crawford School of Public Policy ANU and former Opposition Leader

    Presented by the City of Sydney in partnership with UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures

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    Alice Thermopolis

    Thanks Jo

    With a name like IRMA….she had to be trouble:

    https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2015/04/weather-girls-burn-bra-ometers/

    What is it about climate change that brings out the nuts and fruitcake theories? We all know about Tim Flannery’s catastrophist tendencies, and now we learn that bestowing feminine names, or merely feminine-sounding ones, on hurricanes makes them so much more deadly. The new scourge in the gender-weather space is rampant sexism.

    Alice

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    sophocles

    It’s an interesting old Solar System, it really is.
    Some bona fide cretinous coprocephalics like Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute, rail on about Donald Trump’s “climate apostasy” as if he caused Harvey and Irma. What fatuous fools.

    The president’s luxurious Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida may escape Irma’s wrath, but with the deaths of so many Americans, and billions of dollars in damage to homes and businesses, the costs of climate change denial are beginning to pile up at the door of the White House.

    How can giving notice of withdrawing from the Paris Climate Conference call the first two land falling hurricanes in twelve years to land on the US? I can see that Mr Ward must devoutly believe in magic. I don’t. TANSTAM (There Ain’t No Such Thing As Magic).

    Even the standard CAGW recipe for Tropical Cyclones (which includes Hurricanes and Typhoons), is inadequate. Mr. Ward’s implicit excuse of magic is totally off the wall. Tim Flannery’s Climate Council has to join the Pseudo-Science Chorus with:

    Fingerprints of climate change all over Tropical Storm Harvey.

    Really? What are the fingerprints?
    What do they look like?
    Why can’t they be described?
    What’s the mechanism?
    Oh, I see. Magic again.

    How do tropical cyclones form?
    Why do they usually start (or seem to) at Cat 3?
    How do they go from Cat 3 to Cat 5?
    How can CO2 at a mere 0.04% [or 400 ppmv] in the atmosphere cause hurricanes?
    Why, when CO2 reached 0.04% in the atmosphere, was there a 12 year hiatus in land-falling hurricanes in the US?
    And there were lots of “Hottest year evahs!” during that hiatus. Do hot years and no cyclones go together?
    Why, when CO2 was at only 0.035-0.038% [350-380 ppmv] in the atmosphere was there a lot more land-falling hurricanes in the US? [1890’s-1930’s]
    C’mon: explain! People need to know!
    Oh, I see, more Magic.

    Dr Thomas Allmanberger’s experiment [2017] shows that so-called “Greenhouse Gases” aren’t any different from the standard atmospheric gases of Nitrogen, Oxygen and Argon, which comprise 99.6% of the atmosphere are.

    This is reinforced in Volokin’s and ReLlez’s paper Emergent Model for Predicting the Average Surface Temperature of Rocky Planets with Diverse Atmospheres [2015] which doesn’t require any magical Greenhouse Gases at all to predict the average surface temperature on other planets of the Solar System, not just Earth. Again, there’s no need for so-called Greenhouse gases.

    Dr Nir Shaviv uses the Svensmark Theory very convincingly to demonstrate the climatic effect of the solar system’s orbit of the galactic centre and its crossings of the spiral arms. This so elegantly explains the regular Ice Ages throughout the last 500MY of history and the PETM, the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum of 56MYA. That warm blip has entertained researchers for some time, researchers who spend their well paid time trying to find CO2 jets to explain the PETM’s temperatures and are thoroughly entertaining. If they had paid attention to Shaviv’s and Svenmark’s paper, they would have been able to work it out without requiring oodles of (non-warming) CO2 or Methane. (Think: too few GCRs, too little cloud and too much sun. No need for CO2 jets, Clathrates or other exotic blankets.)

    Shaviv used the oceans as a calorimeter to measure the amount of heat our planet absorbed and re-emitted every solar cycle. (Yes, the paper was published, in the peer reviewed literature.) Nice experiment.

    None of the believers in Magic seem to be aware that we are currently in an inter-stadial in an ice age, the Holocene inter-stadial which started about 12,000 years ago. There have been at least 17 previous interstadials since the present or Quaternary/Pleistocene Ice Age began circa 2.5MY-3MY ago. 34 is a number I vaguely remember from somewhere. History shows the inter-stadials are very temporary warmings, lasting about 10-15 thousand years, before subsiding back into another fresh glaciation, and which seem to run in time with the Milankovich Variations.

    They also carefully overlook the Holocene Optimum with average temperatures 2° to 3° C warmer than any of The Warmest Years EVah!, which means we are slowly beginning to sink into the next glaciation. An overheated Earth is most unlikely. The explanation for the Quaternary Ice Age lies in the current galactic position of the Solar System: in Gould’s Belt, a volume of space in the Orion Spiral Arm rich in cosmic rays. We’re literally in the refrigerator for a few more million years, maybe 20-35 MY or more.

    There’s Dr David Evan’s solar notch-delay theory and the coming 2030-2040 new solar Maunder Minimum from Prof. Zharkova. These discoveries, one correcting a significant error in the IPCC radiative hypothesis (or should it be called dogma?) and the other predicting significant cooling, are too far away from the CO2 meme to be considered. The next three decades may well be very cool.

    It’s obvious, at least it is to me, that all those warmists haven’t caught up with the very latest real science, and haven’t got the message yet. With independent research showing the likelihood of significant cooling and the weather in both northern and southern hemispheres rendering 2017 a cool year, then how on this planet are TC’s formed? How do they ramp up?

    Solar weather might do it. I pay regular attention to Spaceweather, the activity on the sun. Piers Corbyn of Weather Action a private weather forecasting agency with a better record than the UK’s Met Office, uses solar weather in combination with lunar orbital stresses and past statistics, to make weather forecasts which seem to be significantly more accurate than the supercomputer CO2-based ones out the the UK Met Office. So maybe there really is something in space weather affecting terrestrial weather.

    For all my interest, I missed what was happening when both Harvey and Irma formed. But I was watching as closely as I could from September 1st through to September 4th, when sunspot AR 2673 appeared almost out of nowhere:

    Sunspot AR2673 has a “beta-gamma-delta” magnetic field that harbors energy for X-class solar flares …

    Over that weekend, AR2673 and its neighbour AR 2674, were like both barrels of a big shotgun aimed directly at us. Any flare’s CME from either one or both of them, just couldn’t miss. I went to bed about midnight local time (10pm Oz East Coast time) Sunday night. All the databases I was trying to watch seemed to be in “weekend” mode. When I came back on line the next day, Irma had gone to Cat 5. Sometime during my down time, there had been an M class Flare, and the CME was due to hit Tuesday 6th. (I live next door to the International Date Line, so when it’s morning here on a particular date, it’s afternoon of the day before for the rest of the planet. This sort of mucks up timings and makes my observations more retrospective than not: I’m asleep when everything happens … darn.)

    I had noted that similar things had happened with TC Pam (a south Pacific Cyclone) back in early March.

    There seems to be some complicity with large “sparking” sunspots and formation and strengthening of bad terrestrial weather. When we have geomagnetic storms above, big storms (and TCs ) seem to form below. I have no explanation for any mechanism, but the coincidences have been so often, that the correlations may actually be causations..

    But to blame President Trump? CAGW? That’s shamanism of the worst sort, a return to and a revival of superstition, the ancient practice of Pointing the Bone, or the 17th Century Witch Hunts. We’re being dragged backwards 400 years. TANSTAM.

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    pat

    Accuweather now forecasting costs:

    11 Sept: Accuweather: AccuWeather predicts economic cost of Harvey, Irma to be $290 billion
    This is the first time in the history of record keeping that two Category 4 or higher hurricanes, Harvey and Irma, have struck the U.S. mainland in the same year.
    “That is extraordinary by itself,” Dr. Joel N. Myers, AccuWeather founder, president and chairman, said.
    “And also unprecedented is that this particular storm, Irma, has sustained intensity for the longest period of time of any hurricane or typhoon in any ocean of the world since the satellite era began,” Myers said…
    Then, it hugged the Florida coast as a major hurricane. it has since weakened into a tropical storm while over Florida…

    The life-threatening impacts will include rain and flooding Tuesday through Wednesday, and possibly into Thursday, across Georgia, northeastern Alabama, the mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, and perhaps as far north as Kentucky and the mountains of West Virginia.
    “This is a story for many days to come, and Florida will be ravaged the most through Sunday night and maybe north Florida Monday morning,” Myers said.
    “We believe the damage estimate from Irma to be about $100 billion, among the costliest hurricanes of all time. This amounts to 0.5 of a percentage point of the GDP of $19 trillion,” Myers said.
    “We estimated that Hurricane Harvey is to be the costliest weather disaster in U.S. history at $190 billion or one full percentage point of the GDP. Together, AccuWeather predicts these two disasters amount to 1.5 of a percentage point of the GDP, which will about equal and therefore counter the natural growth of the economy for the period of mid-August through the end of the fourth quarter,” Myers added.

    Economic costs are incurred by, but not limited to, the following…READ ON
    https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/accuweather-predicts-economic-cost-of-harvey-irma-to-be-290-billion/70002686

    ABC America picks it up:

    Hurricanes Harvey, Irma could cost US economy $290 billion, estimate says
    By Karma Allen
    ABC (Americs) News-1 hour ago
    AccuWeather President Joel Myers said in a statement Sunday…

    CAGW is not political:

    11 Sept: NYT: Lisa Friedman: Hurricane Irma Linked to Climate Change? For Some, a Very ‘Insensitive’ Question
    Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, says it is insensitive to discuss climate change in the midst of deadly storms.

    Tomás Regalado, the Republican mayor of Miami whose citizens raced to evacuate before Hurricane Irma, says if not now, when?
    “This is the time to talk about climate change. This is the time that the president and the E.P.A. and whoever makes decisions needs to talk about climate change,” Mr. Regalado told the Miami Herald. “If this isn’t climate change, I don’t know what is. This is a truly, truly poster child for what is to come.”…

    For scientists, drawing links between warming global temperatures and the ferocity of hurricanes is about as controversial as talking about geology after an earthquake. But in Washington, where science is increasingly political, the fact that oceans and atmosphere are warming and that the heat is propelling storms into superstorms has become as sensitive as talking about gun control in the wake of a mass shooting…

    Ben Kirtman, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, said he believes failing to discuss climate change hurts Florida and the entire country…

    “We know that as humans, we are all too good at pretending like a risk, even one we know is real, doesn’t matter to us,” Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, wrote in an email as Harvey lashed the Texas coast…
    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/climate/hurricane-irma-climate-change.html

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    Graeme No.3

    O/T but good for a laugh.

    Premier Weatherill has departed South Australia for warmer? places (can’t be bothered finding where, just hoping he stays there).
    His loyal deputy Tom Koutsantonis (sometimes known as Silly Koot) has claimed that within 2 years SA should be able to export hydrogen gas to the world using the State’s renewable resources.
    PAUSE while engineers and scientists roll on the floor laughing hysterically.
    Firstly, the efficiency of intermittent hydrolysis using the output from wind turbines is not likely to be more than 35%, so the cost of this carbon free fuel will be roughly 2.3 times that made by the continuous HP way, which cannot compete with reforming of natural gas to hydrogen.
    Secondly, hydrogen is difficult to transport. You cannot freeze it to a liquid without huge energy usage, it leaks through many metals and it has a wide explosive range. Also the flame is colourless so no early warning. And extra refrigeration during transport.
    Thirdly it isn’t that great a fuel. It doesn’t work well in internal combustion engines ( octane rating 66) and its low density means that any existing pipelines would need to be replaced with ones roughly 3 times the diameter. And its high temperature flame means the generation of lots of nitrogen oxides if burnt in air.

    Fourthly they can’t keep the bloody lights on yet they think they have extra electricity somewhere. From their diesel generators? Incidentally was organising for a generator hookup today and the electrician tells me that SA will rely on diesel generators this summer. The much ballyhoo’d 9 OCGT burning diesel will be installed in the next 2 years. Along with the HUGE solar heat station that has the Greenies wetting themselves despite it actually delivering about 5% of the power that the demolished Northern power station could supply.

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      TdeF

      Yes, but that 5% is for the government alone. No way are they running out of power. It is really annoying when you have to live like everyone else. I think this is the first Labor government which does not even pretend to care about factory workers, the previous backbone of the Labor movement. Now Labor is all about and only about public servants, teachers and people in health and administration. The rest can just pay up. More money is needed.

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      Curious George

      That’s a sign of desperation. He realized that the biggest battery in the world will only store a couple of hours of excess wind/solar energy. Now what? You can stop a windmill – I am not sure if it prolongs its life – or you can use its output for something useful, no matter if at a 1% efficiency or at a 35% efficiency. Efficiency be damned.

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        Graeme No.3

        Curious George:

        Using electricity that costs $200 a MWh to generate at 35% (and that is a maximum) means that the “fuel” cost goes up to near $600. Doing so at 5% efficiency means a ‘selling price’ around $4000. Even if you could transport it to a customer they aren’t going to buy it except at a competitive price, below $100 (like oil, gas and coal or even uranium). So the more wind electricity you use to make hydrogen the more money goes down the drain.

        That could well be a plan that current governments (State and Federal) would endorse except they would be dumped at the earliest possible time, and rightly so.

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          ROM

          Don’t under estimate South Australia’s “Silly Koots” business acumen.

          “Silly Koot” may well have identified a rather lucrative outlet for the liquid Hydrogen that could be generated by a surplus of ultra cheap power from South Australia’s ‘s Renewable energy Wind Turbines and the newly South Australian commercialised Concentrated Solar Systems that have been under long term development for over more than the last 35 to 40 years.

          It should be realised that liquid Hydrogen was used in the second and third stages of the mighty Saturn V rockets that took men to the moon and landed them there and then brought all of them back home to Earth no less than 6 times.

          The Moon rocket Saturn V’s S-11 second stage rocket held some 984,000 liters of liquid Hydrogen fuel.

          Saturn V’s third stage S-IV-B third stage held 252,750 liters of liquid Hydrogen fuel.
          .

          I am sure that given the proven use of liquid Hydrogen fuel for high performance rocket use that “Silly Koot” could quite easily take South Australia to the forefront of Hydrogen rocket fuel production and with his business acumen he could and no doubt would find a ready market if he contacted a gentleman by the name of Kim Jon Sik, the chief engineer for North Korea’s intercontinental missile and Space Launch Rocket program.

          Silly Koot and his boss Jay Weatherdill have after all shown their true business acumen in the manner in which they have been running the rest of South Australia over the last few years.

          And they have done it all and achieved so much without the addition of of “Blackout Bill’s” Federal Labor Party’s assistance and business smarts as well.

          [ Do I need a sarc/ ? ]

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    To get a major hurricane, let alone any tropical cyclone, a number of conditions must be met. What is this 28.5C nonsense? The threshold is 25C, or at least that’s what they said 40 years ago. (Recalling that there was a little ice age scare going on back then.) Oh, that 25C applies not just to the skin, but to the whole mixed layer, some 200m depth, too; if I am remembering correctly. Then you must have: a low to mid level low pressure area, high pressure area at the mid to upper levels and little to no wind sheer. Only have one, two or three of these and can’t get the fourth? No tropical cyclone gets formed.

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    Dennis

    AGL Rejects Call To Extend Coal

    MATT CHAMBERS
    AGL Energy chief executive Andy Vesey says building coal-fired power stations is no longer ‘economically rational’.

    The Australian

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    Gazman

    So, the “magnitude of the changes” are so small that they cannot be detected or modelled, yet they are driving catastrophic changes in the global climate?

    Maybe its dark energy…

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    RB

    We can’t blame 26.5 C temperatures in the mid Atlantic on global warming.
    We can’t because we feel shame. Its not going to stop others.
    You need to add that fossil fuels saved lives and reduced casualties. From better buildings/shelters to observations, warnings and rescue/aid.

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    TdeF

    This morning the Australian reported one death in Florida from Irma. Really? Amazing. More middle aged men fall off ladders in Australia each weekend, comparable in population to Florida.

    As I suggested, the sheer experience of Floridians, the strength of building, the planning, the evacuations and the advanced warning satellites means that this is in terms of loss of life, a very quiet weekend for Florida. Consider that in 2015 there were 2559 gun deaths, that’s 50 a week. That is not to say that the devastation and level of disaster was not terrible, but it was neither unexpected nor deadly.

    What make this significant is the flood of people to a place which has ideal weather most of the year from a country which is frozen in winter. Texas has 1 inch of ice on the roads in winter and the airports can be snowed in. For Australia this is unthinkable but we too are retiring to the cyclone zone. I do not think most Australians know how extreme the weather is in the US. Almost never would be people be frozen here. We worry about -10.4 when in the mid west they worry about regular -40C/F. In summer we worry about +40C but so do the people of Colorado. As for storms, we have no idea and cannot imagine 20 million people on Cape York.

    So I hope the place can recover quickly, as it always seems to do. The disaster in Houston though is probably far worse as it is much more unusual. So much of down Houston is underground, largely because of the steamy or frozen Climate.

    The idea that a mere 0.5C is mainly responsible for such devastation is absurd. Where and if such giant storms make landfall is a matter of luck, but Florida seems to be firmly at the end of a real hockey stick. This one is real.

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    WayneT

    Could the fact that we are heading into a grand solar minimum, and that because of this the earths magnetic field has shrunk and more cosmic rays are penetrating the atmosphere, have anything to do with it? If I understand correctly, cosmic rays contribute to cloud formation (under the right circumstances).

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    pat

    how funny “natural disasters” is in the headline, not to mention “climate deniers”!
    the MSM is a joke:

    11 Sept: LA Times: Climate deniers play politics with looming ***natural disasters
    by David Horsey
    (LA Times bio: Two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and columnist David Horsey is a political commentator for the Los Angeles Times)
    Well, the climate change issue definitely has been politicized, but most of that exploitation for political purposes has been done by the fossil fuel industries, their mouthpieces in the right-wing media and their minions among Republican elected officials.
    The dreadful force of Irma has slammed into Florida and one would think everyone could agree on some basic science. Warmer ocean temperatures have a multiplying effect on hurricanes that increases their energy and size. At the same time, the destructive potential of hurricane-propelled storm surges is made greater by the rise in sea level. This warmer, higher water is the direct result of a global climate that is getting hotter, year after year.

    No, climate change is not the cause of hurricanes — nor wildfires, nor tornadoes — but, as scientists have predicted for some time now, swift alterations in our climate are magnifying the force of these natural events. In other words, there are worse disasters to come. That is not politics, that is science…
    http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-looming-disasters-20170910-story.html

    Concha could have pointed out everyone knows the climate changes, but he doesn’t:

    11 Sept: The Hill: CNN’s Tapper: Republican party ‘acts as if climate change is not real’
    By Joe Concha
    The commentary came as Hurricane Irma slammed into south Florida during Tapper’s Sunday political affairs program, “State of the Union.”…
    “As it hits Florida, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that many experts say that the storm is more intense because of climate change”…

    “But generally speaking, the president, the governor of Florida, et cetera, act as if it’s not real even though the overwhelming scientific consensus is that it’s real and it’s man made.”…
    http://thehill.com/homenews/media/350047-cnns-tapper-republican-party-acts-as-if-climate-change-is-not-real

    10

    • #
      TdeF

      You would really think that Tim Flannery and Al Gore had predicted ‘warmer ocean temperatures’ (a tautology). They did not. You would think these produced the Hurricane. They did not, forming over water which was 2C colder than usual.

      Surely it was the atmosphere which was supposed to warm up in a runaway mode due to the CO2 blanket? Now a intransigent and non warming atmosphere is somehow producing warmer oceans? How does that involve CO2? The seque from atmospheric warming to any warming has been utterly without science scruples, prediction or explanation but that is as usual.

      In Australia, it seems the Great Barrier Reef coral bleaching is due to warming oceans and that is due to Global Warming and that is due to Climate Change and that is due to CO2 without actually heating the atmosphere. Obvious. Isn’t it? What science?

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        el gordo

        ‘What science?’

        Its a shambles which needs to be unwound.

        For example, we have to convince the masses that coral bleaching only happens when sea level temporarily falls, exposing the coral, and not because of rising temperatures.

        20

    • #
      el gordo

      ‘This makes 2016 the third year in a row to set a new record for global average surface temperatures,” the report from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded.’

      This is the tipping point and millenarian expectations are running high.

      10

  • #
    John F. Hultquist

    “… climate druids …

    Please, do not give Druids a bad reputation.
    They were more aware and understanding of their environment than today’s climate activists. Likely had greater intelligence.

    60

  • #
    pat

    while flying around the world, with a plane load of journalists, the Pope has something to say about “climate deniers”, according to MSM!

    12 Sept: AFP: Pope slams climate change deniers as ‘stupid’
    On board the papal plane (AFP) – Pope Francis on Monday slammed climate change doubters as “stupid” in the wake of a spate of hurricanes that have thrashed the US, Mexico and the Caribbean.
    “Those who deny it (climate change) should go to the scientists and ask them. They are very clear, very precise,” the pontiff said Monday during a press conference on the return leg of a five-day Colombia trip.
    “A phrase from the Old Testament comes to mind: ‘man is stupid, a stubborn, blind man’,” he added.

    Francis said individuals and politicians had a “moral responsibility” to act on advice from scientists, who had clearly outlined what must be done to halt the course of global warming.
    “These aren’t opinions pulled out of thin air. They are very clear,” he said…

    11 Sept: Pope says humanity will ‘go down’ if it does not address climate change
    ABOARD THE PLANE (REUTERS) by Philip Pullella Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg
    Pope Francis said the recent spate of hurricanes should prompt people to understand that humanity will “go down” if it does not address climate change and history will judge those who deny the science on its causes…
    “You can see the effects of climate change and scientists have clearly said what path we have to follow,” he said, referring to a consensus by scientists that global warming is caused by human activity such as fossil fuels…
    PHOTO CAPTION: Pope Francis talks to journalists during a press conference aboard a plane to Rome at the end of his visit to Colombia.
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-storm-irma-pope-climatechange/pope-says-humanity-will-go-down-if-it-does-not-address-climate-change-idUSKCN1BM1M4

    MSM is loving it:

    Pope Criticizes Climate Change Deniers and Trump on DACA
    New York Times-7 hours ago

    ***CONDEMNS?

    Hurricane Irma: Pope Francis ***condemns climate change sceptics
    BBC News-5 hours ago

    11 Sept: La Stampa: Vatican Insider: The Pope on climate change, humankind “is a stupid and stubborn man, that does not see”
    by Andrea Tornielli On the Cartagena-Rome flight
    Tornielli: While we are flying, we are pass near Hurricane Irma which, after causing dozens of deaths in the Caribbean, is now heading towards Florida where there are millions of displaced people. Scientists think that ocean warming makes hurricanes more intense. Is there a moral responsibility of those political leaders who refuse to cooperate with other nations by denying that this climate change is man-made?

    Pope: “Those who deny this must ask the scientists: they speak very clearly, they are precise. The other day the news came out of a Russian ship that went from Norway to Japan and crossed the North Pole ***without finding ice. From a university, they have said that we only have three years “to step back”, if not, the consequences will be terrible. I don’t know if the three years are true or not, but if we don’t step back, we will fall! We can see climate change in its effects, and we all have a moral responsibility when we make decisions. I think that is a very serious matter. We all have our moral responsibility and politicians have their own. Let them ask the scientists and then decide. History will judge on their decisions.” …READ ON
    http://www.lastampa.it/2017/09/11/vaticaninsider/eng/the-vatican/migrants-those-who-governs-must-manage-the-problem-prudently-GFKpPgt4Wn2UjPNnKIHWXI/pagina.html

    ***1 Aug: IndependentBarentsObserver: Information from the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute indicates that the ship encountered its first ice only in the eastern part of the Kara Sea. More complicated ice conditions will be met in the waters around the New Siberian Islands and the more eastern Wrangle Island…

    20

    • #
      Dennis

      The Guardian newspaper as far as I am aware was first to carry the story about the Russian LNG tanker that travelled (in summer) without an ice breaker escort. I checked and discovered that the tanker ship was recently built in South Korea for Russia and it is an ice breaker tanker.

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      • #
        John PAK

        Yes,- I read that too. It appears from the photos that the bow is designed to part water and the stern is the ice-breaker “spoon” shape. I wonder what happens with the props. Perhaps it is like a jet-boat with internal propellers or perhaps I’ve got it completely wrong and it just happened to be reversing through some ice at the time of the photo.

        20

    • #
      Annie

      The pope is going to have to answer some questions and take some responsibilty sometime. I notice the question of the years of no landfalling hurricanes is not addressed…how does he account for that?

      20

  • #
    pat

    this is hilarious:

    9 Sept: Youtube: 1min11secs: Fox reporter is schooled by resident who seems to know more about Irma than the network
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl_tCEWGUBA

    10

  • #
    Dennis

    I still smile when the former UN IPCC senior official from India is mentioned, the former railway engineer.

    A perfect leader for a gravy train.

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  • #
    Earl

    Hurricane Irma was all Donald Trump’s fault.
    Mother Nature saw him on CNN, and read read about him in the Age and Sydney Morning Herald, and decided that he is a particularly wicked person.
    Then she set about to punish the voters in Florida for helping him get into office.
    That will show them,
    Unfortunately there are people who really believe this.

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    John PAK

    So, why do tropical depressions become Cat 4 cyclones so fast and at around the same time?

    I routinely browse Weatheraction, Spaceweather and Earthnullschool and it would appear that there is some connection with the interplanetary magnetic field, the solar wind speed and the Moon’s gravity. By now we should be able to get through to the media that climate has factors that are external to the atmosphere and completely outside Mankind’s control.
    We’re wasting our time arguing about drivel from non-climate folk and the MSM. Even discussing it diverts attention towards the possibility that they have a valid point.

    We need to focus on what IS happening in our climate.

    30

    • #
      el gordo

      Hear Hear

      We need something really big to get their attention, like a Gleissberg Minimum.

      00

    • #
      Will Janoschka

      “We need to focus on what IS happening in our climate.”

      Perhaps later! More important is repeated public announcement that not one of the self appointed Climate Clowns has the slightest clue as to the cause of weather; as demonstrated by the hourly computer generated colorful cartoons of Irma’s predicted track, all wrong!
      Give the task of atmospheric, ocean, interaction to those with some interest in compressible fluid dynamics, and geometry of a non uniformly illuminated rotating sphere. All we have are scammers\con-artists! These scammers know not even the amount of this atmosphere, or why the Earth has just that amount!
      All the best!-will-

      10

  • #
    Dennis

    JOHN DURIE
    The simple fact from where Andy Vesey sits is that wind and solar power are now significantly cheaper than coal.

    The Australian

    30

    • #
      Dennis

      Therefore, AGL Limited, please explain why Australia has the world’s highest electricity pricing, higher than the countries buying Australian coal and gas?

      70

    • #
      TdeF

      You have no investment and earn twice the income plus double for LGCs. 20c per kw/hr for a windmill paid by a tax on other people’s electricity. Also as manufacturer, trasmitter and retailer, they keep half the money for doing absolutely nothing. The RET is a licence to print money. Vesey is right. Why burn coal when you can burn cash?

      11

  • #
    John PAK

    (from Spaceweather.com on Tues 12th Sept)

    Normally, solar radiation storms are held at bay by our planet’s magnetic field and upper atmosphere. On Sept.10th, however, there was a “ground level event” (GLE). Neutron monitors in the Arctic, Antarctic, and several other high latitude locations detected a surge of particles reaching all the way down to Earth’s surface:

    If you missed this, you can go to the archive section on the top RH side on the site.

    My guess is that we are going to see more GLEs as Earth’s magnetosphere fades but I’d like to know how these alter the weather.

    00

    • #
      Will Janoschka

      “My guess is that we are going to see more GLEs as Earth’s magnetosphere fades but I’d like to know how these alter the weather.”

      These do not alter the weather. They are ‘like the weather’ only observations\assumptions of the effects as each of the massive solar system objects spontaneous readjust individual angular momentum, both rotational and orbital, to maintain the angular momentum of the universe at precisely zero. The magnitude of such spontaneous adjustment upon each planet’s sensible heat (temperature); is yet to be discovered.
      This makes “any” claim of causal Earth temperature by those that claim to know; the most egregious scientific SCAM ever perpetrated upon the earthling population.
      All the best!-will-

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  • #
    Amber

    Quick somebody better give NOAA those stats to “adjust ” . A little recalibration of windy facts and
    Irma can be the biggest storm in 6 billion years .
    The only time wind or solar is cheaper than coal is when you don’t need it .
    Tax payers already paid for it once anyways .

    As usual Al Gore’s timing just sucks . The Inconvenient lame duck movie launch was a couple of months too early
    missing the Hurricane marketing bounce .

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    • #

      “Quick somebody better give NOAA those stats to “adjust ””
      Time to change NOAA to PAA. Political Action Administration! They have clearly demonstrated, over and over,they are clueless and lack interest in anything to do with the actual workings of either ‘Ocean’ or ‘Atmosphere’! the only interest is in the production\dissemination of massive colorful political propaganda aided by expensive computer simulation of garbage. Keep the peasants entertained!
      Give the job of identifying all unknown of these global observations to an organization like JPL\Caltech who have at least ‘some’ folk qualified to interpret such observations.

      00

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  • #

    It is premature to conclude that human activities–and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming–have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane or global tropical cyclone activity.

    00

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    pat

    the sort of piece theirABC loves:

    12 Sept: ABC: Irma and Harvey: Two very different storms both affected by climate change
    from The Conversation, By Andrew King, University of Melbourne
    (Andrew King is a climate extremes research fellow at the University of Melbourne)
    Atlantic sea temperatures have warmed over the past century, thus enhancing one of the key ingredients for hurricane formation…

    While we have low confidence in the effect of human-caused climate change on hurricane formation, it is clear that climate change is enhancing some of the impacts of these storms…
    By warming the atmosphere we’re also increasing its capacity to carry moisture.
    When we have the trigger for heavy rainfall, climate change makes it rain harder…
    Climate change has likely worsened the effects of Irma…

    It’s clear that climate has worsened the impacts of Atlantic hurricanes and will continue to do so. Improved forecasting provides a glimmer of hope that the death tolls from future events can be reduced, even as the economic impacts increase…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-12/hurricane-irma-harvey-both-affected-by-climate-change/8895590

    doesn’t sound like Andrew is researching whether or not there are links – seems his mind is already made up:

    PIC OF ANDREW KING: ClimateSystemsScience: Dr Andrew King, Uni of Melbourne
    Andrew investigates the links between human-induced climate change and extreme events…
    He is also interested in the timing of an anthropogenic emergence in climate extremes.
    Andrew completed his undergraduate degree in Meteorology at the University of Reading in 2011…
    https://www.climatescience.org.au/staff/profile/aking

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  • #
    pat

    11 Sept: Bloomberg: Chris Martin: U.S. Solar Bracing for First Decline as Rooftop Demand Slumps
    Residential installations slipped 17% in second quarter
    Industry sees two down years, and that’s without panel tariffs
    Utilities are reaching state-mandated goals and rooftop suppliers are slowing growth in some of the largest markets, dragging down demand this year. And that’s before a trade complaint that may prompt President Donald Trump to impose tariffs on imported panels, a move that the industry warns would dramatically…
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-11/u-s-solar-bracing-for-first-decline-as-rooftop-demand-slumps

    11 Sept: Sunday Herald, Scotland: Body blow for flagship renewable energy project
    by MARK WILLIAMSON
    The UK government snubbed an application to provide support for the expansion of the MeyGen tidal development off northern Scotland casting the future of the project into doubt.
    Atlantis Resources was seeking support for a plan to install 49 turbines on the seabed of the Pentland Firth which it reckoned had the potential to transform the tidal energy industry…

    However the Government decided the tidal energy that would be produced at the MeyGen extension would be too expensive. It rejected Atlantis’s application for funding in the latest auction under the Contract for Difference scheme…
    London-listed Atlantis warned the rejection could derail efforts to develop the tidal energy industry in the UK…

    Scottish wave power firms Pelamis and Aquamarine Energy called in administrators in November 2014 and October 2015 respectively.
    Atlantis hopes to persuade the government to think again.
    http://www.heraldscotland.com/business_hq/15528576.Body_blow_for_flagship_renewable_energy_project/

    30

  • #
    pat

    surely the headline is suggesting supply for the whole month of August!

    ***so what would turn the lights on for the other 22 days?

    11 Sept: Herald Scotland: WWF: Almost every home in Scotland could have relied solely on wind power for electricity last month
    by Iain Smith
    SCOTLAND harnessed enough wind-generated power to supply every home in the country ***on a total of nine days last month, according to the WWF…

    While the summer weather proved to among the poorest in recent memory, it brought with it much-welcomed benefits for the renewables sector.
    Analysis from the conservation charity also found that in August windfarms produce enough energy to power 93 per cent of Scottish households.
    This shows a stark increase against figures from the same month last year, when the total megawatt hours (MWh) could have powered just 69 per cent of the country’s homes…READ ON
    http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15526564.WWF__Almost_every_home_in_Scotland_could_have_relied_solely_on_wind_power_for_electricity_last_month/

    and if the wind doesn’t blow hard next year or the year after, et?

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    • #

      So then, let me see if I’ve got this right.

      Enough power to cover 93% of Scotland’s homes for nine days.

      Great, eh!

      Almost enough to cover the Residential sector.

      Forget the other two sectors, Commerce and Industry. You know, where everyone works, does their business and shops, the bulk of where all electricity is actually consumed.

      Isn’t it wonderful how they can so cluelessly use maths to tell them exactly what they want to hear.

      Those wind plants are connected to THE GRID, not just the homes of Scotland.

      And even so, what of the other 22 days.

      Tony.

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    • #
      mikewaite

      It may be worth your time looking at the current article on Paul Homewood’s site;
      https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/latest-cfd-auction-offshore-wind-only-double/#comments

      and particularly the comments from Mark Tinsley, from which I have taken some (IMO) relevant extracts:

      -“3. Every single offshore wind farm in the entire UK only generated 1,876 Megawatt (MW) of electricity in 2016, despite an installed offshore wind capacity of ~5,350 MW. So it is about 35% efficient. Nuclear is 90%, Gas around 60%-75%. This inefficiency is why just one large offshore wind farm needs 130,000+ acres of “the environment” (compared to 1,000 acres for Nuclear or Gas).
      4. UK electricity generation in 2016 was 38,740 MW – offshore wind was 4.8%. For comparison that is still half that of coal (9%), X4 less than Nuclear (21%), and X9 less than gas (42%).
      5. Ah, isn’t wind on a steep upward curve and the “future”? Not really: UK offshore wind generation fell by 5.8% in 2016 compared to 2015. This trend was also replicated in Germany and across Europe. It may well fall further with lower subsidies. Gas grew by 43%, so frack, baby, frack?”

      [This comment may be better focussed on a thread that discusses wind generation. ] Fly

      [Thanks Mike. Good pick – Jo]

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    John of Cloverdale, WA, Australia

    I wonder what Flannery thinks of this report on Kangaroos:

    In 2010, there were around 27 million, with the huge rise in numbers considered to be due to environmental factors, with high rainfall resulting in more food for the kangaroos.


    Tim -not enough rain to fill the dams- Flannery and Dr. -permanent drought- Jones,
    please take note.

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    Robert Rosicka

    Just heard Latrobe council is trying to see if they can get Hazelwood going again .

    60

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    Robert Rosicka

    Our Glorious leader in Victoriastan is spending nearly $300,000 on Facebook on himself .

    50

    • #
      Dennis

      It’s their money now, ask them

      40

    • #
      David Maddison

      Apparently the $300,000 of OUR MONEY purchased Dopey Dan of Victoriastan who has never had a proper job in his life the position of Australia’s most “liked” “leader”.

      21

      • #
        Robert Rosicka

        I only heard he was more popular on faceache than Turdball which when you think of it is probably true , both detested it’s just which one do people hate the most .

        30

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    Andrew McRae

    Is anyone else finding the alarmist reaction so pathetically predictable as to be boring?
    No new tricks in a long time.

    60

  • #
    Robert Rosicka

    ABC are really showing their true colours at the moment, nothing but anticoal and the usual CAGW rants .

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-12/liddell-power-station-true-cost-of-keeping-open/8896278

    50

    • #
      TdeF

      As Alan Kohkler says, power stations like factories do NOT have a use by date. They need maintenance and development but that is part of the cost. AGL did not buy the station to close it, but the mountain of cash is in renewables? Cheaper? Of course if you get your customers to pay for it and then you rent it back to them. The situation with the RET is wrong, should be illegal and a travesty of justice. All because some very silly people hate coal and think CO2 is pollution. They also think Tim Flannery is a scientist and Al Gore is an expert. Thanks to the ABC/Guardian/Age/Fairfax/CNN/BBC.

      41

  • #
    pat

    recently I posted this article:

    6 Sept: ClimateChangeNews: Norway election could be a turning point for Arctic oil
    Could Norway lead the way in a global transition away from oil production? Truls Gulowsen is hopeful, as campaign to ban new Arctic exploration gains traction.
    (Truls Gulowsen is head of Greenpeace Norway)
    Support for parties that want to ban new oil investments has grown significantly. Those parties will not win a majority, but could end up with the balance of power in parliament…
    It remains to be seen how many voters will actually cast their vote for one of the small parties that are arguing for reduced oil investments, and how much power these may get in a future government coalition…

    12 Sept: Guardian: Best way forward or missed opportunity? Norwegians react to the general election
    Prime minister Erna Solberg and her rightwing coalition government are set to hold on to power. So what do the next four years hold for Norwegian politics?
    by Guardian readers and Tom Stevens
    Labour had looked on course for victory, but lost crucial support ahead of the election with the economy recovering and unemployment figures down…

    Elsewhere there was disappointment for potential kingmaker the Green party who lost some MPs including the party leader Rasmus Hansson, while the government’s junior coalition partner the Progress party benefited from their strong stance on border control and immigration. We asked voters which party they supported, and what hopes they have for the next four years in Norwegian politics…

    Anders: I’m very happy that Erna Solberg and the Conservatives (Høyre) will continue to govern for another four years…

    E.S. Andresen: I felt that voting for Labour (Arbeiderpartiet) was the best way to spend my vote. I really wanted a leftwing coalition to take control of the country…We need to take care of the environment, and we need to really invest in green energy, which will very possibly become Norway’s new source of income and new major export for the next generation, when the oil industry comes to an end…

    TJ: I’m very disappointed that the Green Party (Miljøpartiet De Grønne) couldn’t get more votes, and that leader Rasmus Hansson lost his seat. I was impressed with their focus on the environment and push for Norway to create a sustainable economic future of the country not based on oil and gas…I still think we need to put in place a plan for research, innovation and industry growth outside of oil. Oil has put Norway into too much of a comfort zone for the last 20-30 years. We need to prepare for a new era. We also need to become a global leader in environmental efforts.
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/12/best-way-forward-or-missed-opportunity-norwegians-react-to-the-general-election

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  • #
    pat

    12 Sept: NewshubNZ: Greens out of Parliament on latest Newshub poll
    by Anna Bracewell-Worrall
    The Green Party has been in every Parliament since 1999, but unless the party can turn Newshub’s latest poll result around, this year its streak could end.
    The latest Newshub-Reid Research poll has the Greens on 4.9 percent, just below the 5 percent threshold required to enter Parliament without the security of an electoral seat win…
    The Green Party typically does slightly better in Newshub polls compared to its election-day result…

    The result isn’t just devastating for the Greens.
    Without the Greens, on this poll, Labour wouldn’t have the numbers to form a coalition Government with New Zealand First and the Māori Party.
    National would have a majority of 61 seats in a 121-seat Parliament on this polling…

    In the lead-up to the election, the Greens have struggled to deal with both internal and external challenges.
    Inside the party, Metiria Turei’s admission of benefit fraud saw two senior MPs quit their list positions in protest. Ms Turei then stood down from co-leadership herself, followed by two senior staffers…
    http://www.newshub.co.nz/home/election/2017/09/greens-out-of-parliament-on-latest-newshub-s-poll.html

    11 Sept: SMH: Ross Gittins: Fairfax-Ipsos poll: We now know the economy is not what’s dragging the Coalition down in the polls
    On which party has the best policies for managing the economy, the Coalition is preferred by 38 per cent of respondents, hardly overwhelming, but comfortably ahead of Labor’s 28 per cent, with the Greens scoring ***a mere 3 per cent…

    ***The big test is the clean energy target.
    Turnbull needs a proper carbon abatement policy, rather than a political fix transparently designed to appease recalcitrants. That means staring down the Nats, staring down the right, staring down coal.
    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/fairfaxipsos-poll-we-now-know-the-economy-is-what-is-dragging-the-coalition-down-in-the-polls-20170910-gyeh8n.html

    Greens score 3% on the economy, yet the same Fairfax-Ipsos poll claims the Greens have 14% approval? go figure:

    10 Sept: FairfaxBrisbaneTimes: Fairfax-Ipsos poll: Labor maintains election-winning lead despite Bill Shorten nosedive
    By James Massola
    The primary vote of both the Coalition and Labor fell in the poll, to the benefit of the minor parties…the Greens rising 1 point to 14 per cent…

    10

  • #
    pat

    re comment #25 above –

    11 Sept: Accuweather: AccuWeather predicts economic cost of Harvey, Irma to be $290 billion
    “We believe the damage estimate from Irma to be about $100 billion, among the costliest hurricanes of all time” (said Dr. Joel N. Myers, AccuWeather founder, president and chairman)…

    maybe Accuweather was not as wrong as some others, if the following proves to be credible!

    11 Sept: Bloomberg: Brian K. Sullivan: A $150 Billion Misfire: How Forecasters Got Irma Damage So Wrong
    It was poised to be the costliest U.S. storm on record. Then something called the Bermuda High intervened and tripped it up.
    “We got very lucky,” said Jeff Masters, co-founder of Weather Underground in Ann Arbor, Michigan. If Irma had passed 20 miles west of Marco Island instead of striking it on Sunday, “the damage would have been astronomical.” A track like that would have placed the powerful, eastern eye wall of Irma on Florida’s Gulf Coast.

    By one estimate, the total cost dropped to about $50 billion Monday from $200 billion over the weekend. The state escaped the worst because Irma’s powerful eye shifted westward, away from the biggest population center of sprawling Miami-Dade County.

    The credit goes to the Bermuda High, which acts like a sort of traffic cop for the tropical North Atlantic Ocean…READ ON
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-11/-150-billion-misfire-how-forecasters-got-irma-damage-so-wrong

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    Michael Slater

    http://radio.abc.net.au/programitem/pgxVLKrAd6?play=true

    ABC RN Breakfast says Hurricane Irma was “really an unprecedented storm” of course.

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    Aby

    Oil and Gas industry at USA affected most this time just because of Hurricane Harvery & Irma. Hope So, soon everything will be fine.

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