Fight the forces of darkness, celebrate PowerHour Tonight!

Remember EarthHour? Tonight is the night to rejoice in electricity from 8.30-9:30pm.
PowerHour

Some of those fossil fuels have been waiting for 100 million years to return to the sky.

Things you can do:

  1. Turn on all the lights you can find — Put on the party lights, the patio light, the pool light, the mozzie zappers, unpack those Christmas decorations. Get out your torches. Switch the movement detector spotlights to continuous operation. (Involve the kids — they love to help).
  2. Don’t forget those bar radiators — revel in that infra red! (Light the kitchen with the ones in the oven and grill.)
  3. Eat Argentinian Lamb steak, Danish butter, Argentinian Cheese, Belgian Chocolate, and Californian Oranges.
  4. Drink German Beer and or French Champagne. Drink toasts to coal miners, oil rig workers, and power station staff.
  5. Light your backyard with the landcruiser headlights! (Don’t flatten the battery, make sure you keep that engine running.)

In the hundred thousand years since homo sapiens came to be, people have fled bondage, wars, small-pox, dysentery, died from minor scratches, starved to death, been ravaged by lions, stricken by cholera, and survived ninety thousand year stretches of abysmal ice age.  We lived in the darkness for 99,900 years, cowering in corners, listening to drips, waiting for the sun.

There is only one type of Freedom – and all else is servitude, slavery or tyranny.

It’s your chance to show your commitment to fighting the forces of darkness.

9 out of 10 based on 111 ratings

170 comments to Fight the forces of darkness, celebrate PowerHour Tonight!

  • #

    The folk in South Aussie might be advised to restrain their joy a little.

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  • #

    Hey! Discrimination!

    I’m a bushie conservationist hippie-type and I’ll be eating bean soup with gnocchi tonight, no matter what. But who kicks the warmies and Blob worshippers harder than me? Well?

    Is my neck not also red?

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  • #
    a happy little debunker

    Power is now just too damn expensive to waste.

    I won’t be turning off the lights – but neither will I be wasting my money.

    God willing, by 9 o’clock tonight, I will be knee deep in water catching a bag of flounder – which is only possible using lights and a battery.

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    • #
      sophocles

      I converted my whole house to LED lighting about seven years ago. Payback was savings worth just over the cost of one bulb per month, all other electricity usage kept as close to normal as I could. So payback was eighteen months.

      All the lights on at once for an hour burns only about 160W — the equivalent of two of the old incandescent bulbs, one of 100W and one at 60W. 🙂 Yeah! Light the place up! All of it! No sweat and no waste of money, so no problem. (About 5.5c worth of power).

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  • #
    Gibo

    Jo we have had our power off for 6 and a half days due to cyclone Marcus, some of idiots should try earth week.
    I have no intention of making a religious observance to the weather gods I have already done my bit..

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    • #
      WXcycles

      Yup, been there plenty of times after a
      cyclones, makes you appreciate a proper power grid.

      There’s little that’s more important than continuous cheap baseload power generation, and strong cheap distribution networks.

      Solar panels will see your roof ripped off due to the extra wind loading and debris damage. No one seems to mention that downside aspect of tropics+solar, and if you’re off-grid your power is not coming back on—so get over it, this is your lot, go buy a generator, and a huricane (cyclone) lamp, no more subsidies for you.

      So the Queensland Govt gets all gushy about a solar farm in … Townsville.

      This is the duplicitous stupidity and vandalism of the super enlightened cllowns in all media and all goverment.

      We could have just built a cheap coal or gas generator, and lived happily ever after, but noooooo, apparently those cause cyclones, where previously those had never occurred.

      But the solar farm will ensure tropical cities are never again affected by cyclones. For why else would you ever build a solsr farm in a tropical city?

      Repent Darwin! Install solar, before it’s too late! Sacrifice your toaster to the Sun God!

      ****

      Btw, another dope from BOM was just on ABCLGBTQ, 10 mins ago (12:30 PM), and said TC Nora is still a CAT-1 cyclone ….???!!!???… for real? … you decide, here’s the whole schabang:

      Mornington Island Radar:
      http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR361.loop.shtml#skip

      Dats an official BOM CAT-1 tropical cyclone!

      It completely dissolved by 1:30 AM this morning!

      But ABC and BOMs paid dopes are still pretending it exists!

      Your taxes doing the business for ya.

      131

  • #

    I shall be celebrating my birthday, not their
    pseudo Earth Day, with a seafood dinner at Flinders
    Hotel and afterwards a walk along the pier, enjoying
    the shore lights and the starry firmament.A pox on
    their descent into the Dark Ages.

    350

    • #

      Well, Happy Birthday, my serf. You may have tomorrow off from gleaning duties. (It’s Sunday anyway.)

      170

    • #
      Annie

      Happy Birthday Beth the Serf!

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    • #
      robert rosicka

      Happy birthday serf instead of lighting candles turn all the lights on .

      80

    • #
      sophocles

      HIpy pAPy BUTHUDTHUDTHuDY, Beth Our Serf
      Enjoy the meal and the stroll.

      I turned on all my lights for over an hour just for you.
      (S.O.D candles. Wot a fire risk!).

      70

    • #
      David

      Happy Birthday Beth but with today’s weather here in the southern Peoples Soviet Republic of Victoriastan you’ll be lucky to see the lights on the pier let alone the starry firmament.

      100

    • #
      Eugene S. Conlin

      Penblwydd hapus i chi Beth 🙂

      50

    • #

      Hey y’all, :)Annie,
      mosomoso, robert rosicka,
      sophocles, (luv yer plays,)
      David, Eugene,I’m overwhelmed,
      – after me serf’s night out,
      once more into the breach against
      the forces of darkness and energy
      insecurity.*

      *The dinner was delicious…On the
      pier some ragged clouds parted and lo,
      the firmament!

      140

    • #
      yarpos

      happy serfday!

      30

  • #
    Annie

    Thanks for the reminder Jo…I had forgotten! Now I had better look out some festive meat and turn on all the lights and toast all the people who made our current civilisation possible. 🙂

    241

    • #
      Annie

      Lights all on, both in and out. Nice meal. Also celebrating almost an inch of rain today and the thunder is just returning!

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      I am afraid that I completely forgot about Earth Hour, such is its impact with me. They need a better campaign to raise awareness; how about a commercial with Hoges saying “Toss another Greenie on the BBQ”?

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      • #
        RickWill

        You are obviously not moving in the “right” cycles or viewing SBS. You run the risk of avoiding group think and being labelled a deplorable!

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        • #
          sophocles

          Yep! That’s us! No green toxins, virii, and bacteria here! Just original thinking, original opinions and original ideas … most of which just happen to agree.

          Great isn’t it? 🙂

          60

  • #
    pat

    celebrate the fact no-one is abiding by the Paris Accord. why would they?

    23 Mar: Deutsche Welle: Jens Thurau: Germany to revive climate change, phase out glyphosate
    New German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze from the Social Democrats is still largely unknown. In her first major speech in parliament, she has promised to at least aim to meet climate change targets by 2030.
    Dents in environmental record
    But in recent years, the country that once spearheaded environmental and climate protection has seen its track record dented. Greenhouse gas emissions have risen again because there are still too many coal-fired power plants, especially in Schulze’s home state of North Rhine-Westphalia…

    Let’s phase out fossil fuel, but when?
    Schulze now wants to convene a special commission to clarify when Germany will be able to phase out fossil fuel power stations. For many critics her plan is not ambitious or fast enough, because no fixed date has been set…
    But Schulze has said quite openly that she is also keeping an eye out for the workers who still work in the coal industry. She also said she will always have to consider the social impact of any environmental policies…

    ‘I’m not a fan of driving bans’
    And then there is the ongoing diesel scandal…
    “I am certainly not a fan of driving bans. But I also know that we are going to need some innovative solutions if we want to prevent them,” Schulze says…
    “The perpetrators are not the motorists who bought cars in good faith, believing that they were environmentally friendly. The perpetrators are the car manufacturers.” They will soon have to carry out, and pay for, extensive retrofittings, she said. With this, it would seem that the first conflict is looming with the new transport minister, Andreas Scheuer from the Christian Social Union (CSU)…

    Glyphosate to be phased out
    Schulze announced that the use of glyphosate will be stopped as soon as possible…

    Karsten Hilse, member of parliament for the right-wing populist “Alternative für Deutschland” (AfD), wasted no time in making it clear to the new minister what she can expect to deal with in the Bundestag.
    For him, the greenhouse effect is simply a lie…
    http://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-revive-climate-change-phase-out-glyphosate/a-43110900

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    • #
      Geoffrey Williams

      German climate change minister Svenja Schulze promises to at least aim to meet climate change targets by 2030 . . .
      Another green bone-head politician singing the endless
      ‘greenhouse gas mantra’. Enough to make me puke!
      As for the ban on diesels, well what a bunch of ‘wankels’
      GeoffW

      170

    • #
      sophocles

      I’d better stock up on Glyphosate while it’s still available. Some Cretinous Coprocephalic will undertake to ban it here in NZ soon.

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      • #
        Clint

        Not so fast. The EU did not vote to ban glycophosphate and instead rightly renewed Monsantos licence to continue to produce it for another 5 years.
        EU Observer Nov 2017.

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        • #
          sophocles

          Clint pointed out:

          The EU did not vote to ban glycophosphate and instead rightly renewed Monsantos licence to continue to produce it for another 5 years.

          So what? That’s the EU. NZ is not part of the EU. It’s got it’s own nutcases who go off without any cause and with no regard for what other countries do. Now the UN has declared glyphosate “probably a human carcinogen,” these nutcases will go off like a Guy Fawkes fire work (a celebration you guys have sensibly banned) and demand a ban—and get it—even if the EU doesn’t agree.

          It was a New Zealander—and I blush to admit it—who declared in the face of all contrary evidence, that storms are becoming so much more frequent and intense so that we should consider introducing a Category 6. The poor fool didn’t know that Cat 5 was open-ended.
          (James Shaw, a philosophical twin to Richard di Natale who both just happen to lead our two nation’s respective Green Parties; Let Ignorance Govern—it’s never wrong because it never knows enough to know it’s wrong…) Certainly not a Rutherford…

          They did it to DDT and now you should see the cockroaches. The native ones grow up to 150mm long, the imported South African ones grow to 50 to 60mm and the imported European ones are the same. Fortunately they stand out when they come in. But the cockies now almost outnumber crickets and grass beetles when forty years ago we almost never saw them before.
          Pyrethrum-based residual surface sprays (made in Australia), claiming to last up to 6 months, are only good for about 4 weeks (less rather than more.) One application of DDT lasted between 1 and 3 years.

          Now the UN’s little unscientific science panel has come out and said glyphosate causes human cancer, flying right in the face of fifty years of human experience. It’s just like we were told the damage to the ozone layer would cause heaps of skin cancers. The “Slip, Slap, Slop” campaign may actually be creating them because of lack of exposure and consequent low low low Vit-D levels. (Incidentally, the rise of “slip slap slop” parallels the increase of asthmas, allergies, ADHD and autisms in the population of children … could there be a connection?) It’s like the Cholesterol advice. Most people who die from stroke and heart attack have great cholesterol levels—at the far too low recommended levels.

          Prof Johan Moan of the Norwegian Cancer Institute found that while the annual incidence of melonomas in Norway had quadrupled between 1957 and 1984, there had been no corresponding change in the ozone layer over the region.

          Must be Norwegians playing tourist to NZ and Aus? Catching cancer here and taking it home?
          Who knows?

          Guess what?
          1. Humans create Vitamin D in our skins
          2. UV-B exposure is the active agent
          3. Vitamin D drives—it doesn’t just help—our immune systems with over 3000
          4. Vitamin D is our frontline defence against skin cancers (basal cell, melanomas, breast cancers, prostate cancers, colonic cancers, alzheimers and other dementias, heart disease etc) It is our immune system.

          So those who don’t ensure their Vit D levels stay up are endangering their own lives.

          Australians and New Zealanders have much higher instances of skin cancers than elsewhere, New Zealanders more so than Australians (we have cloudier skies) but both nationalities have a higher rate of survival than others and Australians have a higher rate of survival than NZers.

          I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to work out how and why over the last 40,000 years, humans developed skin types containing certain melanin levels, skin types related to regional areas …

          Now: given DDT, Climate Change, the Ozone Scare, life threatening low Cholesterol levels, and now Glyphosate being declared a carcinogen, I’m going to quietly stock up with about 25 years worth of glyphosate concentrate before someone in this country throws a paddy and has it banned. The EU can do what it likes. It won’t affect the Nutters in Godzone.

          10

          • #
            sophocles

            Errata: `over 3000′ should read `over 3000 receptors throughout the body.’

            Interesting how posts can self post while they’re being proof read …

            10

    • #
      Graeme No.3

      I wonder how long this Coalition will last? Only the fear of AFD (& others) gaining votes to keep them together.

      30

  • #
    Another Ian

    We run by sun time here.

    So just checking – what is it Qld time please?

    60

  • #
    pat

    23 Mar: EurActiv: EU leaders take Brussels to task over 2050 low-carbon roadmap
    By Frédéric Simon
    EU leaders have urged the European Commission to come forward with a 2050 climate strategy “by the first quarter of 2019”, ending speculation over the timing of the proposal…
    The mid-century roadmap had been expected for months but the Commission appeared to hesitate amid speculation over the deadline..

    …legal experts disagreed over the deadline, with some putting it at 1 January 2020 and others saying it is 31 December 2020. At the European Commission, senior officials preferred leaving the decision to the next EU executive that will replace the Juncker Commission in Autumn next year, after the May 2019 European elections…

    The Commission was not alone in dragging its feet. Member states have also been reluctant to adopt a long-term plan for greenhouse gas reduction in ongoing negotiations over the Energy Union Governance regulation…
    https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/eu-leaders-take-brussels-to-task-over-2050-low-carbon-roadmap/

    40

  • #
    pat

    21 Mar: EconomicTimesIndia: PTI: 11 mines allotted to Coal India to add 225 MT in annual output
    Allocation of 11 mines to Coal India will enhance its annual output by 225 million tonnes (MT), Parliament was informed today…

    23 Mar: Bloomberg: Rising Global Coal Prices No Worry For India, Says JSW Energy’s Prashant Jain
    Rising prices of thermal coal, which is burnt to generate electricity, will not significantly impact power prices in India at a time when the market is hit by a shortage of coal.

    That’s according to Prashant Jain, managing director and chief at JSW Energy Ltd. “Power prices in India are not determined by imported coal,” Jain told BloombergQuint in an interaction. He explained that for India’s largest thermal power generator NTPC Ltd., out of 190 gigawatt of its coal-based power capacity, only 20 GW is generated from imported coal. The rest is met by domestic coal
    Power prices in India will remain on an uptrend due to a shortage of coal and as demand outpaces supply, Jain said…
    https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/2018/03/23/rising-global-coal-prices-no-worry-for-india-says-jsw-energys-prashant-jain

    60

  • #
    pat

    even two-faced Labor is backing coal:

    24 Mar: TheMercury: New coal explorations mean more jobs for Townsville
    by CLARE ARMSTRONG
    EXPLORATION of the state’s “next generation” of coal reserves could provide a wealth of economic opportunities for North Queensland.
    Townsville companies could benefit significantly after Metroof Minerals and Sojitz Coal were awarded government tenders to explore about 131,100ha between Middlemount and Blackwater in the Bowen Basin.
    Marty Costello is the managing director of Northern Resource Consultants, a Townsville-based company that specialises in environmental consulting for the resources industry…

    (Labor) Mines Minister Dr Anthony Lynham said the new tenders were an important step towards unlocking resources.
    “Potentially, these tenders could be our next generation of coal development in an area with a history of successful coal development for export and electricity generation,” he said.
    “The Bowen Basin contains the majority of Queensland’s coking, metallurgical and thermal coal reserves which ***are ripe for export.”…
    http://www.themercury.com.au/news/national/new-coal-explorations-mean-more-jobs-for-townsville/news-story/5fdb4f994b922fe75e6a103053f8eac0

    ***why not build coal-fired power plants so we can also use the coal?

    60

  • #
    Geoffrey Williams

    ‘Brilliant Reminder!’ Dont you love the pun . . .
    It will be well worth the money tonight to light the house up like ‘Blackpool Tower’
    And if the grid goes down so much the better!
    House full of candles & gas lighters for backup.
    GeoffW

    100

  • #
    pat

    23 Mar: World Coal: Taiwan Ministry of Economic Affairs defends new coal-fired plant
    by Nicholas Woodroof
    A statement released by the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs has strongly defended the controversial Shenao Power Plant, arguing that its operation is essential to the government reaching its 2025 power reserve margin target.
    The nation’s electricity reserve margin would fall further from this year’s 7.1% if new-generation capacity is not brought online, the economy ministry said…

    Taiwan is likely to see a power shortfall by 2025, as the reserve margin is expected to decline 1.4% if the plant does not come online in July that year, the ministry said in a statement. The government aims to improve the margin to 15% after next year from 7.1% this year by accelerating construction of several power plant projects, including upgrading the Shenao plant in New Taipei City’s Rueifang District.

    Upgrading the plant would guarantee a stable power supply and improve energy efficiency, the ministry said, adding that the facility’s lower heating value — its efficiency taking into account the energy lost as water evaporates during combustion — is forecast to grow to 45% from 38% after the upgrades are completed. Upgrades at the coal-fired Linkou Power Plant in New Taipei City are finished, the ministry said, adding that it would strike a balance between efficiency and environmental protection when upgrading the Shenao plant. With more advanced equipment, the facility would be capable of reducing sulfur oxide and nitric oxide emissions, it added.

    The ministry’s remarks came after the plant passed an environmental impact assessment on Wednesday; the decision provoked a backlash from environmental groups concerned about worsening air quality in northern Taiwan…
    Despite the government’s goal of generating 20% of Taiwan’s electricity from renewable sources by 2025, the ministry said it still needs to partly rely on coal-generated energy to ensure a stable energy supply. Taiwan is vulnerable to fluctuations in global energy prices, as it imports nearly 98% of its fuel, the ministry said. Coal-generated energy is seen as a more stable energy resource compared with renewable sources, as coal can be stored for 30 days, it added.
    https://www.worldcoal.com/coal/23032018/taiwan-ministry-of-economic-affairs-defends-new-coal-fired-plant/

    23 Mar: E&P Mag: Mexico Unveils List Of Bidders For Round 3.1
    An opportunity to develop and produce oil from the Burgos, Tampico-Misantla-Veracruz and Cuencas del Sureste (Southeast) basins has attracted three dozen companies—including the U.K.’s BP, Capricorn Energy and Premier Oil—to Mexico.
    Mexico’s National Hydrocarbons Commission (CNH) said 36 companies from 14 countries have qualified to bid during the country’s next tender. The tender will mark the start of Mexico’s third round of tenders since the country decided in 2013 to open its energy sector to foreign investors.

    California-headquartered Chevron is the only U.S.-based company among the bidders, which also include oil players Eni and Total along with ONGC Videsh and Mexico’s Pemex among others…
    https://www.epmag.com/mexico-unveils-list-bidders-round-31-1691866

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  • #
    Karim Ghantous

    Are search lights legal? Maybe next year I’ll install one in my backyard.

    100

  • #

    You can stand anything for an hour. Stand on head. Balance on one leg. Listen to Craig Emerson singing No Whyalla Wipeout on a loop…

    Why don’t our Green Betters have a long Lenten period every year when they refrain from all the naughties? And they could renounce, say, jet travel all together and forever. I mean, three full airbuses ready to take off for a climate conference contain nearly a million litres of kero. That should be haram, right?

    Come on, warmies. Shame us!

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    • #
      David

      Listen to Craig Emerson singing No Whyalla Wipeout on a loop

      No can do. It is now considered a worse sin than water boarding.

      90

  • #
    robert rosicka

    I’m 54 now and I promise to reduce my carbon footprint to zero by the year 2175 or my names not Harold !

    120

  • #
    OriginalSteve

    Is it earth hour?

    I hadnt noticed….

    60

  • #
    RGB

    Thank you Jo for the laugh tonight.

    After a full day of work and an hour and a half of travel, I have returned home to my spacious modern abode in the hills, complete with all of the current mod cons. A tasty cooked dinner and a “tastier” glass of Adelaide hills wine.

    And yes, a toast to all those who made this possible. Great thanks to the miners of coal and gas and oil, and all those who have enabled the easy access to affordable and abundant energy. As well as those who use this energy to produce such wonderful things to make my life and all others comfortable and enjoyable.

    Thanks again and remember, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only the light can do that”

    333

  • #
    OriginalSteve

    Damn…. Kinda interesting to see how slick the CAGW factory is….

    https://climatechangedispatch.com/how-successful-climate-pressure-tactics-paved-the-way-for-gun-control-bullying/amp/

    “The gun control lobby is borrowing the playbook from one of the most effective propaganda campaigns in history: anthropogenic global warming.

    From engaging celebrity activists to bullying private industry to portraying opponents as murderers, the well-funded and highly-orchestrated gun control lobby is copying the same approach that has been successfully deployed by the international climate change movement to sell the dubious claim that humans are causing global warming.

    Indoctrination and Exploitation of Children
    Textbooks are filled with bogus scientific “studies” about global warming and dire warnings about its consequences. Schools commemorate environmental holidays like Earth Day, so they can push climate dogma.

    Teachers are encouraged to tag climate change in every subject area from science to health to history. And whoever disagrees, or even mildly objects, is portrayed as a child-hating monster.”

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  • #
    robert rosicka

    No television advertisements this year for earth hour .

    90

  • #
    pat

    strong-man Macron at a meeting the MSM didn’t cover – more on that later:

    22 Mar: ClimateChangeNews: Macron: EU ‘mad’ to do trade deal with US after Paris climate withdrawal
    ‘I’m not in favour of showing any softness to those who decide to break those rules,’ the French president said about the deal struck in his capital in 2015
    By Arthur Neslen in Brussels
    Macron was speaking a day after the Irish Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, implored Trump to consider “a new trade deal between the US and the EU”, as a way of lowering trade tensions over steel and aluminium tariffs.
    Speaking at a conference in Brussels, Macron said that since Trump had indicated US withdrawal from the Paris deal, a new trade deal would undermine clean energy producers in Europe, and project a message of weakness abroad.

    Far from bending to the will of the US, “trade agreements should reverse the burden of proof,” Macron said. “They should be a way of spreading our standards. Anyone who signs an agreement with the EU should be committing to put the Paris Agreement into practice…
    “We even go beyond our own rules and ask our own economic agents to do the same. Why should we sign a trade agreement with powers that say they don’t want to implement the Paris Agreement? We would be mad [to do so].”…
    “I’m not in favour of showing any softness to those who decide to break those rules,” he said. “We can no longer pursue objectives that work against our own [climate] policies inside our own borders.”…

    Macron called for the EU’s budget – currently being negotiated – to increase the fifth of budget spending currently earmarked for climate measures. This is likely to upset some other EU states, such as Poland, which has painted climate action as a drag on economic growth.
    “In the [European] Council debate, we have to set an objective that none of the expenditure is hostile to the climate,” he said. “Setting climate spending at 40% of the budget would be ambitious compared to today but I think we can achieve it.”…

    ***Macron’s oration brought what would normally have been a staid sustainable finance conference to its feet for a one minute standing ovation, with attendees enthralled at the sight of an EU leader ‘walking the walk’ in the face of Trumpian assault on Paris…

    “I think he’s right,” Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate chief told Climate Home News immediately after hearing Macron’s comments linking trade deals to the Paris accord. “What more can I say?”…
    Earlier in the day, the UN’s special climate envoy, Michael Bloomberg, told the conference that under Trump, Washington was “out of synch with the national zeitgeist but it matters less”…

    Multilateral banks including the EIB, EBRD and World Bank, appealed to states, ***pension funds and investment houses for $200m to fund developing cities and $600m for enhanced credit financing…
    This sum could then be leveraged up to $6bn, according to Cristiana Fragola, a director of the covenant.
    “If pension funds – most of which spend just one-two percent of their funds on climate action – were to allocate even a minor portion of their assets to this call, we could really move the needle substantially,” she told CHN.
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/03/22/macron-eu-mad-trade-deals-us-paris-withdrawal/

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  • #
    pat

    ignored by MSM. were any Aussie mayors or their proxies in attendance?

    22 Mar: European Commission: Speech at the inauguration of the International Secretariat of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy
    by Maroš Šefčovič, Co-Chair of the Global Covenant of Mayors, Vice President of the European Commission
    Speech at the inauguration of the International Secretariat of the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM) for Climate and Energy – in the presence of His Majesty the King of Belgium; Brussels.
    We must fill the green investment gap. That is why, last December, during President’s Macron One Planet Summit, we launched Global Urbis. This new instrument covers partnerships between the Global Covenant, the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank. Global Urbis has already made some important progress and will continue to ensure that more sustainable financing flows into cities worldwide…

    But today is also a day to celebrate. I would therefore now like to invite His Majesty the King and Mike Bloomberg to sign with me the book to mark the occasion of the opening of this office…
    https://ec.europa.eu/commission/commissioners/2014-2019/sefcovic/announcements/speech-inauguration-international-secretariat-global-covenant-mayors-climate-and-energy_en

    meetings, meetings, everywhere!

    22 Mar: European Commission: Global Covenant of Mayors announces commitment to build city research & innovation agenda – Brussels
    Co-Chairs Michael Bloomberg and Maroš Šefčovič are driving effort to provide cities with urban-focused research
    This agenda will be co-developed by engaging cities and city networks as well as scientists and research institutions around the world, to complement the IPCC research agenda on the science of cities and climate change. The City Research and Innovation Agenda will be discussed with Mayors and Ministers alongside the third Mission Innovation Ministerial on May 23-24 in Malmö/Copenhagen with the goal to include cities’ needs in national research agendas. It will be taken forward at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco this September…

    In Europe last February, the 2018 Ceremony of the European Covenant of Mayors (the European chapter of the Global Covenant of Mayors) had a particular focus on ‘Speeding up Innovation in Cities’, in the presence of Bertrand Piccard, President of Solar Impulse…
    And at the global level, this initiative builds off the first of its kind CitiesIPCC Cities & Climate Change Science Conference that took place in March 2018 in Edmonton, Canada, where leading scientists, urban policy makers and practitioners gathered to discuss the urgent need to generate a new global body of knowledge on cities and climate change to further innovation in action…

    And today, Global Covenant Co-Chairs Michael Bloomberg and Maroš Šefčovič will make the commitment to lead a jointly developed response, additionally mobilizing the science, technology & innovation community, including the private sector, to join city policy makers, scientists and practitioners…
    Vice President Šefčovič will host a cities roundtable with mayors and ministers during the third Mission Innovation Ministerial on May 23-24 in Malmö/Copenhagen to galvanize climate science and create the next generation of research and innovation…

    22 Mar: European Commission: New call to cities and investors announced to deliver sustainable finance growth in cities wordwide
    by Maroš Šefčovič, Co-Chair of the Global Covenant of Mayors, Vice President of the European Commission
    The Paris Agreement funding shortfall is further enhanced by the US$ 2 billion deficit left by President Trump bailing out the US contributions to the Green Climate Fund. We need to leverage on public funds to mobilize significant private capital flows.

    In response to this funding shortfall the Global Covenant, the EU, EIB, EBRD and World Bank Group are announcing a second call today: an Invest4Cities Call to the global investment community. The Call aims to raise an initial US$ 200 million for technical assistance for 400 cities, primarily in the Global South, and US$ 600 million for credit enhancement financing, which combined can catalyze up to US$ 6 billion in green and resilient urban infrastructure – making public funds go further.

    ***It will finance low-carbon initiatives and resilience projects such as public transit, e-mobility and bike sharing infrastructure, energy-efficient buildings, clean energy, waste management and flood walls, improving the quality of life for citizens even in the most vulnerable communities. As recently reported by the OECD, in 2012 to 2015, US$ 81.1 billion were already mobilised from the private sector by strategically leveraging official development finance in the form of guarantees and other risk-sharing instruments…

    The Invest4Cities Call aspires to connect the dots with other initiatives announced by French President Emmanuel Macron during the Climate Finance One Planet Summit, such as the Climate Action 100+, where 225 of the most influential global institutional investors with more than US$ 26.3 trillion in assets under management committed to engage with the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters to step up their actions on climate change…
    https://ec.europa.eu/commission/commissioners/2014-2019/sefcovic/announcements/new-call-cities-and-investors-announced-deliver-sustainable-finance-growth-cities-wordwide_en

    10

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    yarpos

    I find it heartening (I misspelt that heatening at first, how Fruedian of me) that there has been little or no publicity to the unwashed masses like me.

    Sensor lights on!!

    100

  • #
    Mark M

    It only took the Beatles 12 and a bit fossil-fuelled earth hours to record their first album …

    > Instead, Martin would re-create the electricity of the Beatles’ live shows inside the recording studio:

    “I said, ‘Let’s record every song you’ve got. Come down and we’ll whistle through them in a day.'”

    Recording a full album in such a short span didn’t seem like an unreasonable request in 1963.

    Songs were recorded live to a two-track BTR machine, leaving few opportunities for overdubs or elaborate edits.

    That was the idea, at least. Instead they showed up late, with John Lennon nursing a bad cold …

    https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/beatles-please-please-me-session-hour-by-hour-w517921

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    • #
      Mark M

      Curses …

      The point was it was Global Warming which caused the Beatles to become history …

      “The winter of 1963 was one of the most brutal in England’s history, and the record-breaking cold forced many to spend their Saturday nights at home in front of the television just in time to catch the band making one of its earliest national broadcast appearances on ITV’s pop-music program Thank Your Lucky Stars.

      100

  • #
    TdeF

    No need in Middle Park/Albert Park. The energy is flowing like the beer. Huge screens, F18 fighter, roulettes, Porshes, V8 super cars and F1 cars. Petrol heads everywhere and not a lithium battery to be seen. All to the glory of coal and petrol. Have not heard a diesel yet, so we are safe from pollution. Just lots of lovely CO2. The trees are loving it.

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    • #
      RickWill

      You may not see batteries but all F1 racing cars are hybrids these days:
      https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/technique-the-mgu-k-and-mgu-h-explained-791187/

      I think the battery of choice id Lipoly but not certain of that. The capacity delivery is limited to 4MJ and minimum weight is 20kg:
      http://www.whtimes.co.uk/sport/formula-1/technical-specifications-of-lewis-hamilton-s-new-2018-mercedes-f1-w09-eq-power-car-1-5405345

      The lithium batteries are well hidden and away from the driver as they are prone to fires just like the fuel used.

      20

      • #
        TdeF

        Lithium batteries are replacing car batteries too, at a fraction of the weight. However batteries are not a power source. For some strange reason, the Greens think batteries change the argument about man made Global Warming. No CO2 generated. Really? It seems with losses in electricity generation and distribution, the CO2 footprint of a fully battery driven car is actually higher than a petrol car or a hybrid. So much for virtue signalling.

        100

      • #
        TdeF

        Also limited to 160hp of the total 800hp. So 20% electric. For the KERS system to save the braking power for later use.

        60

        • #
          RickWill

          Not only to save the braking energy but also heat recover from the engine. There is no limit on the heat recovery that is achieved although its deployment to assist propulsion is limited.

          The battery is also used to spin up the compressor/turbo to avoid turbo lag.

          F1 power units have become much more complex than an ICE. The technology is gradually trickling down to road cars although hybrids have used similar technology for decades now.

          30

      • #
        sophocles

        Rickwill said:

        The lithium batteries are well hidden and away from the driver as they are prone to fires just like the fuel used.

        ROTFL! 🙂

        10

  • #
    Mark M

    For those wishing to signal their virtue while on the road for Earth Hour, please do not turn off your car lights.

    It makes it much more difficult for e.g. @WAPoliceTraffic to stop you for drug tests, etc. as virtue signals are invisible.

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  • #

    The tide is turning.

    On social media, William Shatner discovered intelligent life on Earth when he tweeted about Earth Hour:

    Who’s in for #EarthHour this Saturday March 24 at 8:30PM local time? Join hundreds of millions of people around the world and turn off your lights for one hour to show our collective solidarity in the fight against climate change.

    After a short time it became obvious that the majority of his followers didn’t think much about Earth Hour and voiced their disappointment in their Captain. Not just a few; hundreds!

    Maybe Denny Crane was just shiftposting on Twitter.

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    • #
      TdeF

      Monty Python’s Galaxy song ends ..
      “and pray that there’s intelligent life up there in space
      because there’s b*gger all down here on Earth”

      110

    • #
      glen Michel

      A well known piece of toilet graffiti.”Beam me up Scotty -no intelligent life here”. Or this; “What is the similarity between the starship Enterprise and a roll of toilet paper?.They both circle Uranus searching for Klingons”

      120

    • #
      PeterS

      Of all the actors he is one of the least competent ones to talk about how we ought to live our lives here on earth given his fictional journeys in space to meet stupid looking aliens. Actors really should just stick to what they are half good at – acting, and leave reality, fact and truth to others. William Shatner is a greater fool today than ever before.

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    King Geo

    And no doubt former USA Prez Obama will highlight the “Earth Hour Event” while delivering his million US$speech in Sydney (now). What a legend (not) delivering the USA a US$20 trillion debt during his 8 year term (yes he more than doubled the US debt and got applauded by the MSM) – now Trump is trying to fix the damage but after 15 months in office is getting killed by the MSM (except Fox News) despite delivering significant economic growth in such a short period – what a “mad mad world” we live in.

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    • #
      NB

      Give him a break. He’s got to stash away the cash before he goes to prison for bugging Trump and his campaign team. Obamagate…

      110

    • #
      Greg in NZ

      Obammy the Scammy? He who made a tidy little half-million New Zealand pesos last week for playing two rounds of golf and giving one speech at an invite-only [read: millionaires and politricksters] dinner? Organised by Slur Shonkey, our ex-Dear Leader [ex-Merrill Lynch-mob derivatives seller, ex-Bank of America bankster, ex-Federal Reserve Bank ‘member’… y’know, an ‘Everyman’ who wanted a Brighter Future™ for all his mates – oops, I mean Hobbitses]. Lest we forget: Yes They Can!

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  • #

    What about the poor wretches with greenoid girlfriends who are busting to watch Parra or Cronulla go round but instead they’re obliged to sit there in the dark like owls on valium? Thousands go sneaking off to the candle-lit bathroom to check the NRL app.

    90

  • #
    neil

    From my balcony just before 8:30 I counted 28 residences with their lights on at 9:00, 28 just after 9:30, 31.

    What earth hour?

    120

  • #
    PeterPetrum

    Gee! Was it Earth Hour? I was across the road in the Golf Club enjoying a meal and a glass of wine – a four piece band with amplifiers playing, all lights and heating on – me bad. So sorry. I’ll. turn off my electric blanket now and go to sleep – so sorry!

    140

  • #
    Lionell Griffith

    Yes! Celebrate life. Life that results from the use of minds that are uniquely human.

    “Let there be light!”

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    ren

    The stated 37 degrees C (which is the average human body temperature prior to viral attack) corresponds to 310 Kelvin (K) (Celsius temp plus 273). If we enter the Venus altitude-versus-temperature graph at 310 K and go straight up (red line) to the temperature profile, and then horizontally to the left axis we find a corresponding altitude of 52.5 kilometers (33 miles).
    Now, as a rough cross-check, we enter the Venus altitude-versus-atmospheric pressure graph at 1000 millibars (the Earth’s average sea level atmospheric pressure) and go up to intersect the altitude-pressure profile line, and across to the left axis where we find the corresponding altitude of 49.5 kilometers (31 miles). This altitude is only three kilometers (or six percent) different than we found from the temperature graph.
    So, in spite of the surface temperature of Venus being on the order of 864 degrees Fahrenheit, there is a region in the Venusian atmosphere which approximates that of Earth with respect to temperature and pressure. But there may be problems.
    https://web.archive.org/web/20080205025041/http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/vel/1918vpt.htm
    The temperature in the troposphere of Venus, as on Earth, drops linearly with atmospheric pressure.
    The Troposphere of Venus, just like the Earth’s troposphere, ends at a level just below the 100 hPa pressure level.
    http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_MEAN_ALL_EQ_2017.png
    http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/
    “A minimum atmospheric temperature, or tropopause, occurs at a pressure of around 0.1 bar in the atmospheres of Earth, Titan, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, despite great differences in atmospheric composition, gravity, internal heat and sunlight.”
    https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2020?WT.feed_name=subjects_giant-planets&foxtrotcallback=true

    30

  • #
    ren

    It is obvious that any excessive temperature rise induces a feedback reaction. Proofs are changes in ENSO.
    https://climexp.knmi.nl/data/inino5_1996:2002.png
    Currently.
    https://climexp.knmi.nl/data/inino5_2014:2018.png
    La Nina is reborn.
    https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/ocean/nino12.png

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  • #
    pat

    23 Mar: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: Trump’s EPA Prepares To Overturn Obama’s Global Warming Rule For Cars, Trucks
    EPA has a draft decision on revising fuel efficiency regulations, two people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. A third source familiar with the matter confirmed this to The Daily Caller News Foundation…

    Automakers accepted regulations when they were first adopted in 2012, but have since changed their tune now that gas prices have come down and Americans, indeed much of the world, buy more SUVs and trucks.
    Companies and the Obama administration did not foresee the collapse in oil prices, spurred by booming U.S. production, and lackluster sales in electric and hybrid vehicles.
    Indeed, former President Barack Obama fell short of meeting his own goal of getting electric or hybrid cars on the road by 2015, despite generous subsidies and government loan guarantees…

    Environmentalists pressed the Trump administration to keep the Obama-era policy as a way to keep U.S. companies competitive in a global market that’s increasingly eschewing gas-powered cars.

    However, SUVs sales are still booming. SUVs and crossovers “made up more than one in three cars sold globally last year, almost tripling their share from just a decade ago,” The New York Times reported on March 3.
    http://dailycaller.com/2018/03/23/epa-overturn-obama-gas-emissions-regulation/

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    toorightmate

    Do you want to know how many “likes” Earth Hour has on Facebook?
    Just ask Oh Bummer. He obtained his electoral espionage from Facebook, but nobody is talking about that.

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  • #
    pat

    lol. I was joking earlier how Macron was being portrayed as a strong-man by Arthur Neslen – see comment #21 – and decided to finish off the nite by checking if this was a new FakeNewsMSM meme, given he’s usually been portrayed as somewhat effete, e.g.

    Aug 2017: WaPo: Molly Roberts: Emmanuel Macron’s $30,000 makeup scandal hides a much bigger blemish
    France reportedly spent 26,000 euros ($30,000) on makeup for its new president in the first three months of his term.
    The hefty cost to taxpayers of making the handsome young leader appear even more handsome prompted criticism on French social media that migrated across the pond. So much, Americans said, for the narrative of Macron as a progressive savior: Look how much the boy king’s subjects are spending on his pretty face while the working man suffers…

    sure enough…he’s now on a par with Putin, no less!

    23 Mar: Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Analysis: Macron uses flattery, familiarity to become the European who can talk to Trump
    by Anne Gearan, Washington Post
    Macron — also an unconventional political figure — has used a mixture of flattery and man’s-man bravado to become Trump’s favorite European leader and a counterpoint to Trump’s affinity for strongmen, including Russian President Vladimir Putin…
    https://www.myajc.com/news/analysis-macron-uses-flattery-familiarity-become-the-european-who-can-talk-trump/iG3Yy7acwrmvLYeDTexiYP/

    don’t know why WaPo’s Ann Gearan is being published at AJC above (except to spread the Macron/strong-man meme), but the original headline at WaPo is:

    WaPo: Anne Gearan: Using flattery and man’s-man bravado, Macron seems to crack the Trump code

    what is “man’s-man bravado”?

    naturally NYT is spreading the meme:

    Emmanuel Macron Becomes France’s Answer to Strongman Populism
    New York Times-22 Mar. 2018

    while, behind a paywall, The Economist has this:

    22 Mar: The Economist: Emmanuel Macron, the new Teddy Roosevelt
    There are intriguing parallels between France’s president and America’s Rough Rider

    FAKENEWSMSM…CAN IT GET ANY WORSE?

    meanwhile, Macron is not quite as popular at home, as he is in the FakeNewsMSM:

    22 Mar: TheLocalFrance: AFP: Strikes in France: 200,000 march through streets to protest Macron’s reforms
    • Violent clashes between protesters and riot police in Paris
    • Hundreds of TGV and mainline rail services cancelled across the country
    • Air France: Between 25% and 30% of short haul flights cancelled at CDG and Orly airports in Paris
    • Ryanair and easyJet cancel scores of flights to/from/over France
    Seven unions representing staff in the public sector led strikes and protests, and a third of railway workers walked out to join the demonstrations against 40-year-old Macron’s bid to shake up the French state…
    Thursday’s major strike won’t be the end of the travel headaches for the public. On Friday Air France staff will stage a walk-out as they demand a 6 percent pay rise across the board, which will see scores of flights cancelled again and rail workers have announced a wave of rolling two day strikes throughout the spring as they aim to pressure the government into ditching its planned reform of the rail sector.

    40

    • #
      yarpos

      Im imagining Macron and Trudeau together at a spa having a pamper, white robes , fluffy slippers, towelled heads, longing on deck chars with cucumber slices on their eyes. Such are the new generation of pollies that will save the world.

      (I mistyped Turdeau at first , I might start using that 🙂

      30

  • #
    neil

    According to the 2016 Census there are 9,901,000 private households in Australia. According to Earth Hour Australia’s website 29,994 households committed to switching off.

    0.3% !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    160

    • #
      Curious George

      These guys lack ambition. How about an Earth Week?

      110

      • #
        Mary E

        Only for the wealthy elite, famous and fatuous, and politicians. Let them eat fast-food take-out and sleep in no heat, no air con and take cold showers; let them go a week without seeing their own faces or hearing their own voices on the TV and radio; let them not be able to charge their phones, cars and laptops, or access the internet at all; let THEM show the world that yes, we the leaders and politicians and wealthy spreaders-of-consciousness and EcoBabble can go a whole week without electricity and the lovely things electricity allows us.

        Let them have a taste of what they want us to have.

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    • #
      The Deplorable Vlad the Impaler

      For GOSH sakes, Neil! Your Math is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!! OFFFFFFFF!!!!! Get up to speed, man!! IT’S 97% OF HOUSEHOLDS OBSERVING “EARTH HOUR”!

      Have you no shame, young man!!!! It’s AGW Math!!!!

      130

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  • #
    F. Ross

    I think Iĺl even turn on the Xmas lights still hanging from the eaves. Add a little color to the nighty night.

    70

  • #
    Ruairi

    From space, let us see the bright glow,
    Which lights up the land far below,
    Celebrating an hour,
    Of electrical power,
    That on mankind great comforts bestow.

    170

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  • #
  • #

    Many feel strongly that CO2 has no significant effect on climate but are unsure why. Here is why: http://energyredirect3.blogspot.com/

    70

  • #
    PeterS

    Also don’t forget to light up all the candles you can muster to increase CO2 emissions.

    40

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    scaper...

    According to the Outsiders program, power use spiked in Sydney during earth hour. Well done!

    150

  • #
    Cog Williams

    Hi All,

    I have been a regular reader of these comments for years and have learnt a huge amount from Jo’s articles. More recently I have visited less often and wondered why.

    I am not critical of the subject matter but rather the manner in which opposing views and ‘dumb’ questions are dealt with. Where are the red thumbs? Where are the people behind the red thumbs?

    I have just realised that it is because this comments section has become a bit of an echo chamber. We need that interaction to validate these concepts. I am very much on-board with the ideas commonly discussed here but the treatment dealt to those that come to the table with different, sometimes daft, ideas is sometimes cringeworthy.

    A conversation where everyone agrees is boring. Maybe next time a naive or aggressive commenter appears they could be handled like a grown-up rather than by releasing the hounds. The ensuing discussion might just be interesting.

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    scaper...

    Why give any warmist respect? Many here have been attacked and banned elsewhere. Besides…reasoning with the anti-humanists is futile. Abuse is the least we can give.

    80

    • #
      Cog Williams

      I believe that well mannered discourse and respect are two completely different things, i.e. don’t lower oneself to a lesser standard. Maybe I’m just being old-fashioned…

      20

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        scaper...

        Respect begets respect. Been around here for awhile although don’t comment much these days, have seen quite reasonable debates here over the years. Seen bonhomie at times.

        70

        • #
          el gordo

          Victory is just around the corner, lets be magnanimous in advance.

          Turnbull has the bullet train tenders in his bottom draw, do you think he’ll bring it on before the next election?

          30

          • #
            scaper...

            Been out of the loop for almost a year so don’t know. Will get back into it soon.

            50

            • #
              Gee Aye

              so no new information for a year but you know what is right already. Why not stand out for 10 years and concentrate on something more challenging?

              30

          • #
            yarpos

            Seems to be working so well of Gov Brown in California, unleash the hounds?

            20

  • #
    pat

    co2islife is on the case of Myles Allen’s diagram:

    24 Mar: CO2IsLife: Climate Sophistry In San Francisco; Half-Truths are Twice the Lie
    https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/24/sophistry-in-san-francisco-half-truths-are-twice-the-lie/

    23 Mar: WUWT: Anthony Watts: All the “tutorial”, reference, and amicus brief documents for the #ExxonKnew federal court case
    FROM COMMENTS:
    jaymam March 24, 2018 at 4:53 am
    Professor Myles Allen’s diagram of CO2 actually shows 260,000 parts per million instead of 400 ppm…

    jaymam March 24, 2018 at 3:44 pm
    I have added a yellow sphere to represent what the actual proportion of CO2 should be in Professor Myles Allen’s diagram.
    I can’t imagine what the blue, red and cyan spheres are supposed to represent. Perhaps Oxford University could clarify, or issue a new diagram…ETC
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/23/all-the-tutorial-and-reference-documents-for-the-exxonknew-federal-court-case/

    30

  • #
    PeterS

    To promote common sense, truth and fact we ought to shine more light onto the cockroaches and have our own earth reality day where people all over the world turn on all their lights.

    20

    • #
      Another Ian

      How about we just claim the other 364 days?

      10

      • #
        PeterS

        One day a year should suffice to get the message across – I don’t like the idea of paying that much extra. As a compromise perhaps once a month would be OK.

        10

  • #
    pat

    23 Mar: BusinessGreen: US and Chinese companies team up to drive zero carbon, zero waste strategies
    by Madeleine Cuff
    New Race to Zero campaign recruits business superstars such as Apple CEO Tim Cook and Alibaba founder Jack Ma to push climate action amongst US and Chinese companies
    Alibaba, IBM, Trina Solar, and KraftHeinz are among the US and Chinese business giants to back a new campaign today to encourage companies in both countries to go further and faster in cutting their environmental impact.

    Race to Zero, the new campaign launched jointly by the Paulson Institute and the China International Economic Exchange Centre, has already recruited 24 multinational companies based in China and the US to issue a rallying cry for climate action across the business community…

    Members of the CEO council include the bosses of some of the world’s largest companies, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, Trina Solar CEO Gao Jifan, and Alibaba CEO Jack Ma…
    https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3029038/us-and-chinese-companies-team-up-to-drive-zero-carbon-zero-waste-strategies

    Wikipedia: Paulson Institute
    The Paulson Institute is an independent, non partisan think tank and research institution located at the University of Chicago in Hyde Park, Chicago. Named after former Goldman Sachs CEO and Chairman and the 74th United States Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, the institute was founded in 2011 by its namesake with the goal of attempting to solve today’s most pressing economic and environmental challenges in the United States and China, as well as promote positive systemic cooperation between these two global powers, through aggressive research done by a worldwide network of prominent thinkers…
    It has assembled fellows and researchers from around the globe, including figures like the former Prime Minister of Australia ***Kevin Rudd, former United States Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman, and the Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business Randall Kroszner.

    Chinese backing for Jessica Rudd venture Jessica’s Suitcase
    The Australian – Jan 23, 2018
    Jessica Rudd’s online retail business has caught the attention of Chinese-based technology group eCargo, which has acquired a 45 per cent stake in the fledgling Jessica’s Suitcase. The move marks a key step for the daughter of former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who operates her store on Alibaba’s Tmall…

    Jessica Rudd steaks her claim on China
    SMH – 16 Nov 2017
    Australia’s biggest ASX-listed cattle group, Australian Agricultural Co (AACo), has recruited Jessica Rudd – daughter of our former PM Kevin Rudd – to help sell its branded beef strategy to China…
    She is also the Australasian lifestyle ambassador for billionaire Jack Ma’s Alibaba, which was a major beneficiary of the $33 billion worth of sales generated by China’s annual Singles Day over the weekend.

    April 2016: Perth Now: Liam Bartlett: A Ruddy nightmare — why Kevin Rudd must be kept away from the UN’s top job
    Rudd is president of the Asia Society Policy Institute, chairman of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism and he is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
    The list goes on. He was appointed the first distinguished fellow of the Paulson Institute — by former US Treasury secretary Hank Paulson — a distinguished statesman at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC and a distinguished fellow at London’s Chatham House.
    He’s also on the advisory board of the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing and he chairs the Sanitation and Water for All initiative. You get the idea…

    24 Mar: China.org: Leading global CEOs launch ‘race’ to cut emissions and waste
    By Zhang Jiaqi
    Leading global CEOs came together in Beijing on March 23 to launch a new campaign encouraging the international business community to take additional steps toward zero-carbon and zero-waste business practices.
    The Race to Zero campaign highlights measurable actions that companies can adopt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and waste in their direct operations and supply chains, particularly in China…

    The campaign was sponsored by the U.S.-China CEO Council for Sustainable Urbanization, co-convened by the Paulson Institute, a non-partisan and non-profit “think and do” tank jointly founded in 2011 by the 74th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry M. Paulson, Jr., and the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, a comprehensive association led by Zeng Peiyan, former vice premier of China. The mission of the Paulson Institute is to promote international economic research and exchange and to provide consulting services…

    To date, 22 global companies, including Alibaba, Broad, Honeywell, HP, Hyatt Hotels, IBM, TCL, Vanke, Wahaha and Walmart, have pledged new emissions and waste reductions, committing to actions such as adopting science-based targets, switching to low-carbon energy sources, and working with suppliers to increase resource efficiencies in their factories and properties…

    Partners of the Race to Zero campaign, including We Mean Business, KPMG, SynTao and World Wildlife Fund China, will provide technical assistance and support to companies that have pledged a new commitment…
    http://www.china.org.cn/business/2018-03/24/content_50744521.htm

    from Race to Zero website: Media partner: Harvard Business Review

    20

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    I was going to comment. But no. There’s nothing I can say about PowerHour.

    Have fun down there in Oz.

    30

  • #
    pat

    surrounded by anti-Trump articles, ABC chooses Reuters/AP/Globalist viewpoint of US tariffs. has any FakeNewsMSM looked at this issue from the US viewpoint? haven’t come across anything:

    24 Mar: ABC: Reuters/AP: China ready to ‘defend its national interests’ in US trade spat, state media says
    In a telephone call with Mr Mnuchin, (Chinese Vice-Premier) Liu, a Harvard-trained economist who advises President Xi Jinping, said China still hoped both sides would remain “rational” and work together to keep trade relations stable, the official Xinhua news agency said…
    The Section 301 investigation report “violates international trade rules and is beneficial to neither Chinese interests, US interests nor global interests”, Xinhua cited Mr Liu as saying…

    The state-run Global Times said China was only just beginning to look at means to retaliate, following the announcement of its initial response.
    “We believe it is only part of China’s countermeasures, and soybeans and other US farm products will be targeted,” the widely-read tabloid said in a Saturday editorial…

    “It does not look like just a trade war, but rather the US is trying to bully China and the rest of the world in order to make China concede economic resources and development opportunities to the US and make the US forever big and strong.”
    The Chinese move appeared to be warning shot aimed at increasing domestic US pressure on Mr Trump by making clear which exporters, including farm areas that voted for the president in 2016, might be hurt.
    On Friday, American farmers from hog producers in Iowa to apple growers in Washington state and winemakers in California expressed deep disappointment over being put in the middle of a potential trade war with China by the president many of them helped elect…

    China has made great efforts to be constructive to try and deal with the trade frictions in the face of US provocation, the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily wrote in a commentary.
    “But Washington was determined to choose rashness and impetuousness, and the necessary effect from this was China’s follow-up actions to resolutely protect its own legitimate interests,” it said.
    The United States should not underestimate China’s determination to protect itself, the paper said in an article signed “Zhong Sheng”, or “Voice of China”, used to express its views on foreign affairs.
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-24/china-says-ready-to-defend-its-interest-in-us-trade-spat/9583438

    Kevin Rudd was there. btw the Communist Chinese Vice-President is a close ally of the Communist Chinese President! imagine that:

    25 Mar: StraitsTimes: US violating global trade rules: China V-P
    by Goh Sui Noi, China Bureau Chief
    However, on a more conciliatory note, Mr Liu, who is a close ally of President Xi Jinping, also said China hopes “the two sides would work together to safeguard the overall stability of China-US economic and trade relations”…

    However, former Chinese finance minister Lou Jiwei said this response from the Commerce Ministry was “relatively weak”.
    “If I were the government, I would probably hit soya beans first, then hit cars and planes,” said Mr Lou, now chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund. He was speaking at the annual China Development Forum that began yesterday.
    China imports more than a third of all US soya beans, which accounted for US$12.4 billion of the US$19.6 billion worth of US agricultural exports to China last year.
    Any Chinese penalties on US farm products would hurt the struggling US farm sector, reported Reuters, adding that tariffs on soya beans would hurt Iowa, a state that had backed Mr Trump in the 2016 presidential elections…
    China is also a huge customer of US aircraft maker Boeing which last November said one out of four planes rolling off its assembly lines was delivered to Chinese clients.

    ***Also speaking at the forum yesterday, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd noted that both the American measures and Chinese countermeasures did not go to the core of trade and economic interests of either side.
    “I take it as a signal that both sides are still trying to work things out,” he said.

    British economist Nicholas Stern, speaking to reporters at the forum, warned against a trade war, saying it would be very bad for the world as it would decrease its rate of growth and lead to its decline.
    http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/us-violating-global-trade-rules-china-v-p

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    pat

    classic “clean coal power plant” mention at the end!

    25 Mar: StraitsTimes: Belt and Road plan could ease climate change: experts
    by Goh Sui Noi, China Bureau Chief
    China has done well in slowing its carbon emissions growth and its actions could be an example for countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects, Professor Nicholas Stern, the British economist and advocate for combating climate change, has said.
    Echoing this hope that the BRI could be an opportunity for mitigating climate change, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs said the world’s largest infrastructure programme would make history if it is environmentally sustainable.

    Speaking at the annual China Development Forum in Beijing yesterday, Prof Stern noted that China had decelerated its carbon emissions during its 12th five-year plan in 2011-2015 and plateaued emissions in the current 13th plan of 2015-2020. He expects that in the 14th plan, its emissions would go “strongly down”…

    During another session on the BRI at the forum, Prof Sachs said the massive project would be remembered for whether or not it was done with environmental sustainability in mind.
    “If it is more of the same, building more of fossil fuel-based economy and building more of a materials-based economy, it will go down in history as a disaster,” he said.
    However, if it is a progenitor of 21st century infrastructure, of clean transport, zero-carbon energy and smart, interconnected networks, “then it will not only make history but also secure a sustainable development future”, added Prof Sachs.

    ***As if in answer to the two academics, Ms Jin Qi, chairman of China’s Silk Road Fund, which was set up specifically to fund BRI projects, gave an example of a project in Dubai to build a ***clean coal power plant.
    She noted that its environmental standards were in line with the International Finance Corporation’s rigorous standards of emissions.
    http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/belt-and-road-plan-could-ease-climate-change-experts

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    Steve Spencer

    I’d be happy to play my part, but I’ll need to contact my bank first, to check if they will grant me a mortgage.

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    pat

    odd thing is I haven’t found this in main Fairfax papers, NOR at ABC, Murdoch press, etc! google images showing the march not as impressive as this piece makes it out to be:

    24 Mar: Guardian: ‘We want to repower NSW’: thousands rally against coal in Sydney
    ‘Time to Choose’ protest demands a fresh focus on renewable energy by the state government
    by Helen Davidson
    PHOTO: Janine Barratt leading the rally, which began at Martin Place in Sydney, stretched almost 2km.
    Exactly a year out from the state election, thousands of people from across New South Wales – including some on horseback – have marched through Sydney, calling for an end to coal seam gas and coal mining and a renewed focus on renewables.
    The “Time to Choose” rally, which began at Martin Place, marched to Prince Alfred Park in the city’s south stretching almost 2km along a partially closed Elizabeth Street.
    Neha Madhok, from rally organiser 350.org Australia, said people had come from across NSW “to put the state government on notice”.
    “We want the state government and the opposition to know that over the next year we are not going to stop talking about climate change, about coal and gas. We want to repower NSW, we want a renewable energy-powered NSW.”…

    Glenn Morris, who made headlines in 2016 after riding his horse Hombre across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to raise awareness about climate change, was one of the 25 farmers on horseback.
    “There is devastation because of climate change all across NSW,” the Inverell farmer said. “We can’t afford to destroy any more healthy land.”…

    Bill Ryan, in his 90s, said he wanted governments to realise citizens wanted renewable energy now.
    “They’ve got to take into consideration that this is what the people want. So we’ve got to get out and let them know they can’t get away with backing the mining sector all the time. They have to listen to the citizens.”…

    The Greens MLA David Shoebridge praised the size and breadth of the turnout at the rally…
    He said there needed to be a “just transition plan” into renewables to support people and communities that relied on industries that had closed.
    “We know for a fact that jobs in the coal industry are drying up. Conditions for those workers are getting more and more severe. Meanwhile there is a wonderful opportunity for ongoing solid employment in the renewable energy sector.”…
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/24/we-want-to-repower-nsw-thousands-rally-against-coal-in-sydney

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    Mark M

    Here is an amazing display of power – energy …

    A huge male jaguar pulling a caiman out of the water up a slippery, muddy river bank in the northern Pantanal, Brazil.

    This jaguar demonstrated the meaning of the term power dragging this 8ft long, armour plated, 74 toothed, chunk of contracting muscle out of the water and into the bushes.

    Jaguars are estimated to have the 5th strongest bite in the entire animal kingdom …

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BcmRgZhjukS/?taken-by=natgeo

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    pat

    Aurora Energy Research: Aurora Spring Forum 2018: Tuesday 20 March
    “Navigating the Global Energy Transition”
    The Aurora Spring Forum is one of the leading gatherings of the European energy industry. It brings together industry leaders in an exclusive and intimate setting at Oxford University to engage on key issues impacting GB, European and global energy markets
    (Aurora was founded in 2013 by University of Oxford Professors and economists that saw the need for a deeper focus on quality analysis)

    20 Mar: TheEnergyst: Brendan Coyne: Scottish Power chief: You’re bonkers if you think we will build offshore wind ‘subsidy-free’
    Scottish Power chief executive Keith Anderson has questioned the apparent obsession with achieving ‘subsidy-free’ renewables, warning it will not happen any time soon in the UK for technologies such as offshore wind.
    Anderson took part in a panel debate around ‘post-subsidy’ renewables at Aurora’s Spring Conference.

    Asked which markets are most attractive to parent company Iberdrola in terms of ‘subsidy-free’ development, Anderson replied that he “hates the expression”.
    “I can’t understand why the renewables industry has become obsessed with talking about becoming ‘subsidy-free’. Right now, nothing in the UK energy industry is being built without some form of support, so why in god’s name is the renewables industry running around desperate to [be seen] as subsidy-free?” Anderson asked.
    “Everything has some form of support. If you think we are going build a £2.5bn offshore wind farm in UK at market risk, you’re bonkers.”

    While power purchase agreements (PPAs) with large corporates are seen as a way of mitigating risk for developers, Anderson said the UK market for such deals is nowhere near mature.
    “If the only thing out there is a corporate PPA, the market will slow down dramatically, because frankly, that market doesn’t really exist in UK [at the scale required],” he said. “That might change in 5-10 years, but it doesn’t exist right now.”

    “I caution against taking about subsidy-free world, or a world without a mechanism to underpin investment risk,” he said, pointing to the ongoing construction hiatus of unsubsidised large power stations.
    “A gas plant is probably the easiest and quickest thing to build… but nobody is building those right now.”…

    Anderson added to calls from other renewables companies speaking at the conference to bring onshore wind into the CfD mechanism.
    “If it is the cheapest form of generation, then underpin it with a market mechanism,” he said. “Why shouldn’t UK consumers get the benefit of that cheap energy?”
    https://theenergyst.com/scottish-power-chief-youre-bonkers-think-will-build-offshore-wind-subsidy-free/

    the Guardian’s spin:

    20 Mar: Guardian: Adam Vaughan: Subsidy-free renewable energy projects set to soar in UK, analysts say
    Falling cost of wind and solar will unlock £20bn of investment, Aurora Energy Research says
    The falling cost of wind and solar projects combined with advances in battery storage technology will unlock about £20bn of investment in the UK between now and 2030, Aurora Energy Research said. Onshore wind and solar will both be viable without subsidies by 2025 in the UK, it added…
    “The [subsidy-free] future is within reach,” Magnus Hall, Vattenfall’s chief executive, told an industry audience in Oxford.

    But the switch to a post-subsidy world would still require some financial aid during the transition period, Hall said, to ensure that risk was fairly shared between energy firms and governments…
    Hall urged ministers to consider reversing the UK’s ban on subsidies for onshore windfarms, saying developers of these projects should be allowed to compete in auctions for subsidies.
    His call was echoed by two of the UK’s big six energy firms, SSE and ScottishPower.

    Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive of SSE, said onshore windfarms should be given a chance where communities support them. “I’d like to see onshore wind coming back in the UK,” he said.
    Keith Anderson, chief corporate office at Scottish Power, told the Guardian: “Let’s use it, let’s deploy it. There are still areas absolutely where we could build onshore windfarms, areas where the local community are acceptive of windfarms.”…

    Having so much green energy generation will squeeze out the opportunity for the likes of Germany’s RWE to build large gas power stations in the UK.
    The government has already downgraded the amount of new gas power capacity it expects to be added by 2030 from 22GW to 7GW, but Aurora said that would shrink to just 1GW if subsidy-free renewables took off as anticipated.
    Mateusz Wronski, an analyst at Aurora, said: “The subsidy-free revolution is here and it’s big.”…

    The energy minister, Claire Perry, announced on Tuesday that the government would be launching a formal review of the capacity market later this year. One consideration will be whether to open up the scheme to renewable energy projects, a step that would further hammer gas.

    Perry said the cold snap at the start of March, which saw gas demand jump 40% above normal levels, had shown the UK energy system was robust but there are “lessons to be learned”.
    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/20/uk-subsidy-free-renewable-energy-projects-set-soar-aurora-energy-research-analysts

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    Art

    I switched on the Christmas lights to celebrate PowerHour. After half an hour I stepped outside and looked up and down the street.

    A few years ago almost all the houses were dark. This year I can’t see even one without lights.

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    Dennis

    I am totally opposed to multiculturalism.

    However I enjoy living in a multicultural country as long as new Australians, immigrants to Australia are qualified and willing to contribute to our national prosperity and want to assimilate.

    Unfortunately, as many EU member nations are now learning to the horror and terror of citizens allowing all and sundry to enter is a recipe for disaster and social disruption.

    The Australian Minister for Immigration, Peter Dutton, has decided to fast track applications from South Africans now under threat of having their lands and possessions confiscated, and many have already been killed. This is a repeat of the Zimbabwe massacre of white citizens however, at least some politicians in Australia prefer to take the PC ground and common sense is not on their agenda;

    https://cairnsnews.org/2018/03/25/white-south-african-immigrants-getting-preference-over-blacks-stirs-up-the-communists-in-liberal-labor-and-greens/

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    Michael S. Kelly

    I turned all of our lights on for the hour. Can’t understand those who wouldn’t.

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    Andrew McRae

    Jo, more China waffle…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-25/china-pledges-to-drastically-cut-fossil-fuels/9500228

    China says it will be the world’s biggest investor in renewables and has pledged $400 billion by 2030.
    But the problem is much of the electricity is not getting onto the grid. It is being squeezed out by coal, which provides three-quarters of the nation’s energy needs.

    Yeah, that’s it! Inside every darkened solar panel there’s a mighty powerhouse just struggling to get out. It’s just being suppressed by nasty coal electrons. 🙂

    Coal is cheap, and China is self-sufficient. And that has created a dependency.

    Is this a joke? If China makes its own solar panels it will also be self-sufficient in solar-panels. How does that not create a dependency in equally pejorative terms?

    I’ll leave it to you to point out that breaking the “coal culture” logically implies breaking the self-sufficiency and the value-for-money cultures. Sounds like a political winner eh?

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      Graeme No.3

      Andrew:

      Just the ABC being slightly more incoherent than usual. The ‘problem’ is where to put the solar panels? In the densely settled farmlands or on the outer fringes where less people live. The obvious places are usually primitive and lacking proper electricity grids with reliable generation, so they may not be able to accept the solar (or wind) power when generated, hence a considerable proportion (10-14%) won’t be used. China has a lower percentage of renewables than Australia and no intention of matching us anyway. I think the target is 8.6% by 2025.
      The ABC thinks that “every renewable electron is sacred” and must be used regardless of cost or convenience..

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      pat

      Andrew McRae – a good read. theirABC and the rest of the FakeNewsMSM believe almost anything the Chinese Govt tells them:

      21 Mar: Foreign Policy: Nobody Knows Anything About China
      Including the Chinese government.
      by James Palmer
      As a foreigner in China, you get used to hearing the retort “You don’t know China!” spat at you by locals…
      We don’t know China. Nor, however, do the Chinese — not even the government.

      We don’t know China because, in ways that have generally not been acknowledged, virtually every piece of information issued from or about the country is unreliable, partial, or distorted. The sheer scale of the country, mixed with a regime of ever-growing censorship and a pervasive paranoia about sharing information, has crippled our ability to know China. Official data is repeatedly smoothed for both propaganda purposes and individual career ambitions. That goes as much for Chinese as it does for foreigners; access may sometimes be easier for Chinese citizens, but the costs of going after information can be even higher…

      We don’t know the real figures for GDP growth, for example…
      If you add up the GDP figures issued by the provinces, the sum is 10 percent higher than the figure ultimately issued by the national government, which in itself is tweaked to hit politicized targets…
      We don’t know the extent of bad loans, routinely concealed by banks. We don’t know the makeup of most Chinese financial assets. Sometimes we don’t know the good news of recoveries because the concealment of bad news beforehand has disguised it. We don’t know China’s real Gini coefficient, the measure of economic inequality…

      Look at any sector in China and you’ll find distorted or unreported public information; go to the relevant authorities and they’ll generally admit the most shocking practices in private.
      We don’t know the true size of the Chinese population because of the reluctance to register unapproved second children or for the family planning bureau to report that they’d failed to control births. We don’t know where those people are; rural counties are incentivized to overreport population to receive more benefits from higher levels of government, while city districts report lower figures to hit population control targets. Beijing’s official population is 21.7 million; it may really be as high as 30 or 35 million…

      We don’t know whether these people are breathing clean air or drinking clean water because the environmental data is full of holes…
      We don’t know the real defense budget…
      Our sources of information, always a thin stream, have dried up almost entirely under an increasingly tight censorship regime of the last few years…ETC
      http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/21/nobody-knows-anything-about-china/

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      Mark M

      China’s ageing solar panels are going to be a big environmental problem …

      Sunday, 30 July, 2017

      http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2104162/chinas-ageing-solar-panels-are-going-be-big-environmental-problem

      Chinese warn toxic solar waste is “ticking time bomb.” Recycling panels “more expensive than raw materials” to make …

      “The country’s cumulative capacity of retired panels would reach up to 70 gigawatts (GW) by 2034.

      That is three times the scale of the Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydropower project, by power production.

      By 2050 these waste panels would add up to 20 million tonnes, or 2,000 times the weight of the Eiffel Tower, according to Lu.

      “In fair weather, prepare for foul,” she warned.

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    pat

    23 Mar: UK Independent: Jack Peat: Households are using twice as much energy as needed for laundry, reveals research
    ‘One promise from a person might seem like a small step, but the collective power of many people making small adjustments can have a genuine impact’
    British households are using twice as much energy as necessary on laundry, new research has revealed.
    Six in 10 are keeping their washing machines running at high 40C temperatures, using more than double the energy they need.
    That’s despite huge improvements by detergent makers to enable washing at cold temperatures…

    The study found that if every household in the UK turned their washing from 40C to 30C for one year, it would save carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to powering 1,550 homes for an entire year.
    If every household in Greater London switched from 40C to 30C throughout the year, they could save enough energy to rotate the London Eye 2.3 million times…

    The research by Ariel and the Energy Savings Trust is being released to encourage people to participate in WWF’s #PromiseForThePlanet campaign for Earth Hour…
    WWF is encouraging people to make small lifestyle changes, like using reusable coffee cups and turning down their washing to 30C, while for every promise made online using the hashtag or via the WWF website, Ariel will donate £1 to WWF to the value of £50,000…
    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/washing-machines-energy-consumption-laundry-uk-households-renewable-electricity-a8270561.html

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    Another Ian

    Pat

    “Six in 10 are keeping their washing machines running at high 40C temperatures, using more than double the energy they need.
    That’s despite huge improvements by detergent makers to enable washing at cold temperatures…”

    The 6 in 10 don’t want cleaner lice, they want any such dead

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      Annie

      I don’t call 40C high. To clean items like towels, bedding and tea towels properly requires much higher temperatures. Also, after a while, the washing machine starts to become smelly if it doesn’t do a much higher temperature wash from time to time.

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        Ian1946

        Annie,

        My wife assures me you are 100% correct, cold power is a 20th century theory.

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          Another Ian

          That ought to be “ANOTHER 20th century theory” IMO

          And as the saying goes “Theoretically sound but practically imperfect means that you ought to have another look at the theory”

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    Ian1946

    O/T but the BassLink seems to have been transferring zero power in either direction today according to the AEMO dashboard. Can anyone shed any light on this, normally Ther is quite a large transfer in both directions at certain times duration Ng the day.

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    Saighdear

    Earth hour last night ??
    1. N Scotland – cold dark night, 1/2 moon – no Aurora – seen none this year as it happens
    2. Glimpsed at our GB National Gridwatch website (gridwatch.templar) and WOW – Near Max demand without going into the orange/red sector – and how much wind power? Something to do with the Scottish Football Assoc. ! ( SFA )
    3. I do watch / Listen to most news bulletins – Background radio on – NO MENTION of Earth Hour
    4. Edinburgh Castle lights off ? On whose behalf? Probably some Green Blob Zealot in charge…
    5. Watching / listening to Media Programs -BBC or other – even form Europe, there is ALWAYS a Gonk who brings up “… due to Climate Change” without challenge. … and the Politicians are still on the Blob Train
    Och the Sun is shining as it always does – but without a Layer of Clouds – Been the Longest Dullest / darkest Winter I have seen for over 1/2 a Century. I’m going outside now to make the most of it. Happy Palm Sunday!

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      Annie

      Happy Palm Sunday to you Saighdear! Almost over here at 2351.
      I was amused at your use of ‘Gonk’….haven’t heard that for years. 🙂

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    Another Ian

    Earth Hour as seen by Ross McKitrick

    “Earth hour is tonight – instead of turning off your lights, turn them on to celebrate what electricity has done for mankind”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/24/earth-hour-is-tonight-instead-of-turning-off-your-lights-turn-them-on-to-celebrate-what-electricity-has-done-for-mankind/

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    RAH

    This post at WUWT got me to thinking (always a dangerous thing).
    In California, #EarthHour failed to even register a blip in electricity reduction

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/25/in-california-earthhour-failed-to-register-a-blip-in-electricity-reduction/

    Where in Australia are the most heavily leftist enclaves and how much if any did their electrical power consumption drop during the proscribed period? One can take this line of inquiry even further to ask what the campuses and homes of the most vocal warmist blowhard academics and politicians looked like over those hours? They should have all looked like mini North Koreas. Demonstrations of hypocrisy may not seen effective but they really do work in swaying some people.

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    If Society Can’t Trust Science, What Can They Trust? Climate Alarmist is Playing San Francisco Judge as a Complete Fool
    Dr. Myles Allen must think that the San Francisco Judge is a complete fool. I just finished a post refuting many of his claims, but one example needed to be singled out. In his presentation, Dr. Myles Allen replaced the poster child Mt. Kilimanjaro, which was exposed as a fraud in the Climategate emails, with … Continue reading
    https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2018/03/25/climate-alarmist-is-playing-san-francisco-judge-as-a-complete-fool/

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    Dave in the States

    The time appointed to douse the lights was 8:30 pm through 9:30 pm local time. I was busy fine tuning a guitar and had all my tube amplifiers on, so I missed the appointed time to light up. When I remembered at about 9:00, I noticed that my home was pretty well lit up and the green fanatic that drives an EV that lives in the neighborhood was the only one that had his lights doused. I hurried up and switched on the remaining outdoor lights.

    It will be interesting to see how Ed reacts. We actually get along fine, which is a bit unusual, because many greens/lefties often take disagreement and noncompliance with their world views personally. We will laugh about it I predict.

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    RAH

    OT but I can’t resist.

    Climate Change is even ruining auto racing (and thus beer sales)!
    “NASCAR Cup, Truck series races at Martinsville postponed due to snow”

    https://www.sbnation.com/nascar/2018/3/25/17161008/nascar-cup-truck-series-races-martinsville-speedway-stp-500-postponed-snow

    “This marks the first Cup Series race to be postponed by snow since March 1993 at Atlanta Motor Speedway.”

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    Clint

    Fight the forces of darkness, celebrate PowerHour Tonight!

    We live in entirely another more relaxed Universe, one where our power company allows us to designate an hour of free power every day. We are encouraged to utilise this time thoroughly, to do whatever we must and anything we want. In the last year we have enjoyed >$800 free power. We warm the entire house, cook and bake, run the washing machine and drier, do the luxing. We relish this time to participate fully in 21st century life.
    Try Electric Kiwi.co.nz.

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    Lawrie

    Not that I was looking too hard but there was a paucity of advertising and few news reports of success. I usually light up the hood but I completely missed it this year. My heartfelt apology to you all. I always like to do my bit and a photo of my bit made it into Tim Blair’s blog a few years back. Mea Culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

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