Midweek Unthreaded

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165 comments to Midweek Unthreaded

  • #
    PeterS

    Clearly the major event of the day is the North Korean-US summit. Will this put an end to the leftist retards who keep harping about how Trump should be impeached? Of course not. Many of them expected Trump would start a war with North Korea. I bet many now would still would want that to happen to prove them right. Keep it up you leftist retards. All you are doing is guaranteeing that Trump will have a second term in office.

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    • #
      Hanrahan

      Could it be that being only 36 he wants more than to be holed up in Pyongyang for the rest of his life so wants to come in from the cold?

      I loved the comment on CNN that all the previous leaders could have done this but didn’t want to give him legitimacy. REALLY?

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      • #
        Sceptical Sam

        Yep. And Bam Bam Bigelow should’ve been a World Champion too.

        https://www.thesportster.com/wrestling/top-15-wrestlers-who-should-have-been-wwe-champion/

        But he wasn’t.

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      • #
        PeterS

        CNN yet again got it backwards. The real reason why say Obama didn’t do it is because if he did it would give Obama legitimacy. We all know that he has zero credibility. At least Trump is giving it a go. It might not work out in the long run but what’s the alternative? Restart the war games over there that will only lead to a real war with millions of deaths? That’s the left’s way who are as evil as they come.

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        • #
          toorightmate

          Why should Oh Bummer concern himself with North Korea? They aren’t Mozzies.

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        • #
          PeterS

          Our media is not much better, and I mean all of them. It appears they all have suddenly become armchair experts on diplomacy and how to negotiate significant deals with world leaders. They are all criticising Trump for going to far or not far enough, etc., etc.. They all sound like they are disappointed Trump didn’t solve all the world’s problems in one day.

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      • #
        PeterS

        Our media is not much better, and I mean all of them. It appears they all have suddenly become armchair experts on diplomacy and how to negotiate significant deals with world leaders. They are all criticising Trump for going to far or not far enough, etc., etc.. They all sound like they are disappointed Trump didn’t solve all the world’s problems in one day. How moronic.

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    • #
      Hanrahan

      Turnbull, at least, was generous to Trump:

      “The President has to be given credit for having the determination, the courage to act in a way that’s very decisive,” Mr Turnbull said.

      “He has acted in a way that no president has done before. He has gone and seized the opportunity, had a meeting and spent a lot of time with Kim Jong-un.

      “Will it result in the complete denuclearisation of the peninsula? Only time will tell, and the President has acknowledged that.”

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  • #
    Popeye26

    I listened to Trumps Q & A following his meeting with Kim Jong Un.

    VERY refreshing and I feel very confident that he’ll succeed in convincing North Korea to walk into a modern world – God knows their people deserve better than what they currently have.

    Now I’m waiting for all those on the left who have pilloried him for eons to accept that he has been a great negotiator and acknowledge him for it

    Waiting, waiting – crickets, crickets lol

    Cheers,

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    • #
      PeterS

      On the contrary. All you will hear is even louder yells and screams. For example,
      US Democrats slam Trump’s US-NK summit meeting
      You have to realise the left hate Trump so much they will try to destroy him no matter what it takes. That includes the left-minded stooges in the Republican Party. They have today even admitted they prefer Trump go back and make provocative moves with North Korea by resuming their war drills with South Korea, which only risks starting a war. It actually goes beyond that. The modern left hate the West so much they are trying desperately to destroy it.

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      • #
        ColA

        And of course gleefully reported by our modern left, “their Aunty”!

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        • #
          PeterS

          Indeed. The real news is elsewhere, such as
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok44_RNEklA
          Things still might go pear shaped in the longer run but at least we are now heading in the right direction all thanks to Trump and no thanks to the left who all they have done and in fact still doing even after the meeting is trying to derail the situation and leads us straight into a war.

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        • #
          Hanrahan

          Ya gotta luv the trump haters. I got in the car this morning, missed the bit where they explained what they were whinging about but finished up by saying “the devil is in the detail, and we all know Trump hates detail”. That’s absurd. How can you become a billionaire property developer without getting deeply involved in details of the contract, the plans and the construction?

          Anyone involved with his B777 aircraft knows that everything must be perfect.

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          • #
            PeterS

            Trump haters all expected Trump would start a war with NK. Instead Trump snookered all of them and now they are still stuck in that groove by goading him to restart the war games. Also the left before the summit expected it to fail. Now the left are saying it didn’t go far enough. How sick and evil the left are.

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      • #
        el gordo

        ‘The modern left hate the West so much …’

        Guilt created by the green blob, they will never accept Trump. I say to my leftard associates that Hilary couldn’t have achieved this, it required a couple of bovver boys to speak man to man.

        Donald the Great told Kim that his human rights record needs cleaning up and gulags emptied, which will undoubtedly happen.

        US withdrawal from the Peninsula is a certainty and Beijing intends to implement an infrastructure bonanza with their new form of capitalism.

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        • #
          PeterS

          Yes the green blob (ie, modern Greens) have hijacked the old left and pushed the left closer to the extreme. A by-product is it dragged the centre-right and conservative parties, such as the LNP towards centre-left and beyond thus creating a vacuum that helped the ACP to step in and try to fill but has so far failed due to the lack of interest by the public. That’s mostly because much of them have been dragged towards the left as well. The only reason Trump won is because there were sufficient Americans who woke up just in time to see what was happening. I only hope the same thing happens here by the time we have the next election but it doesn’t look promising. I look forward to a nice surprise.

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          • #
            OriginalSteve

            My take on it is that the globalist military-industrial complex wont allow peace for long – there is big money in arms, death and destruction, and the globalists stretch right across china to the USA, they have no political alliegances, their gods are : The Devil, money and power.

            I would suggest that the reality is this peace will be relatively short lived….enjoy it while it lasts.

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            • #
              PeterS

              The point I’m making is the left will do anything and everything to make the West is destroyed – it’s in their blood so to speak. It might help the so called globalists but don’t forget such globalists have no real allegiance to any political side. They will use whatever side that helps their cause, and often they use more than one at the same time. Their agenda is much more evil than the that of the leftists.

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            • #
              el gordo

              The globalist conspiracy is a fiction, in reality Beijing will create a new world order of peace and harmony through their silk roads.

              They are as keen as mustard to get their hands on North Korea, a jewel in the crown for capitalism with a human face.

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          • #

            Peter S. wrote:
            “The only reason Trump won is because there were sufficient
            Americans who woke up just in time to see what was happening.”

            My comment:
            Trump won for three reasons, IMHO:
            .
            (1) Hillary Clinton is a horrible campaigner,
            with no charisma — negative charisma to me,
            .
            (2) Trump over-promised — FAR MORE
            than he could ever deliver in eight years:
            – Spend a lot more money on the military, infrastructure, etc.
            – Cut regulations
            – Cut taxes
            – Stop open borders
            – Fight the trade deficit, and
            .
            (3) Hillary thought she was ahead in the mid-west
            because polls were wrong —
            the Dumbocrats demonized Trump to such an extent
            that some people would not tell pollsters
            they were going to vote for Trump.

            My home state of Michigan was very important
            in getting Trump elected — Hillary just assumed
            she’d win Michigan ( I was fooled too ).

            Of course being investigated by the FBI while
            running for President didn’t help !

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      • #
        Sceptical Sam

        PeterS says:

        The modern left hate the West so much they are trying desperately to destroy it.

        Of course the left want to destroy it, PeterS.

        Remember, they’re totalitarian socialist/Communists in thinking and in deed.

        They do not want to see North Korea, as another of their socialist utopias, fall as a result of the underhanded manipulation of the corrupt Capitalist subversive that has seized power against their will in the USA. The voter of the USA needs to be put through a re-education process, and what you’re hearing is their way of doing it.

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      • #

        Peter S. wrote:
        “At least Trump is giving it a go. It might not work out in the long run but what’s the alternative?
        Restart the war games over there that will only lead to a real war with millions of deaths?”

        My Comment:
        There are a lot of US troops at risk in South Korea.

        They typically stay there only one or two years.

        It is important for them to receive top quality training
        every year, so all the new people
        and could accomplish their mission:
        Protect South Korea and Japan from North Korea.

        The war games are intended so our DEFENSIVE troops
        stationed in South Korea are always ready for a real war.

        US troops in Korea who are NOT well trained
        EVERY YEAR may be ‘sitting ducks’.

        North Korea tricked Bill Clinton — it took seven years
        before he realized they never stopped their nuclear program.

        I was no Bill Clinton fan, but in my opinion he had a high IQ,
        yet he was tricked — so why expect North Korea to be honest
        with Trump? They are probably hiding missiles and bombs
        right now.

        George Bush negotiated with NK for four years — yet there
        was no deal — just four more years for NK to develop
        nuclear weapons!

        O’Bummer was tricked by Iran in his denuclearization deal —
        it was bad enough the deal specified 24 days notice before
        any inspections — but we were tricked because Iran later declared
        all their military bases off limits for inspections ! I wonder
        which military bases they moved their nuclear program to?

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        • #
          Hanrahan

          The next war games were scheduled in 8 months time. If the peace initiative goes pear shaped they can be rescheduled.

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    • #
      PeterS

      This one analyses the situation and demonstrates the complete hatred by the modern Democrats and the left in general. Clearly no matter what Trump accomplishes the left will never be satisfied. Even if Trump managed to stop every war and truly created real world peace between all nations, including between the Jews and Islamic nations, the left would still hate him. Of course Trump is not that good but at least he’s made some progress, certainly much more than Obama could ever do in his wildest dreams.
      Democrats slam Trump over outcome of Singapore summit

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  • #
    Another Ian

    Some reading for anyone using Quickbooks etc. Link at

    “Cold, Robbed Hands”

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2018/06/12/cold-robbed-hands/#comments

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  • #
    Ross

    Here is a copy of the video produced by the WH and shown to Kim during the talks. Just another sign that President Trump and his team will try different, unconventional approaches to achieve a result. Scroll down into the comments to see another video where Scott Adams reviews the video and comments on it’s persuasion ability.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/06/12/white-house-created-production-video-to-assist-singapore-summit-talks-with-north-korea/#more-150512

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  • #
    ColA

    Just Googled “ABC peter ridd jcu” their Aunty is obviously ignoring the issue, even the greenardian at least managed some sort of week kneed acknowledgement.

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    • #

      you are right it is pretty scarce though you should do the search properly. Try this

      ridd site:abc.net.au

      there are quite a few and they do deal with the issues Ridd has raised over time, but only one post-dates his sacking and legal action.

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      • #
        el gordo

        Aunty is terrified the Ridd saga will open a can of worms and have decided to say nothing until the High Court rules.

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  • #
    Robber

    Following on from Tony’s analysis, I took a look at Anero.id and eyeballed monthly charts of MW generation from Jan 2017 to Jun 2018 to estimate MW averages.
    2018 Coal/Gas Hydro Wind Lge Solar Total % Renew
    Jun 19000 2500 1500 100 23100 17.7
    May 18500 2000 1500 100 22100 16.3
    Apr 18000 1800 900 100 20800 13.5
    Mar 18000 1200 1300 100 20600 12.6
    Feb 19500 1200 1300 100 22100 11.8
    Jan 21000 1200 1200 100 23500 10.6
    2017 Dec 19500 800 1300 100 21700 10.1
    Nov 19000 1000 1000 100 21100 10.0
    Oct 17000 1700 1200 100 20000 15.0
    Sep 18000 1800 1800 100 21700 17.1
    Aug 19000 1900 1400 100 22400 15.2
    Jul 20000 1900 1500 100 23500 14.9
    Jun 21000 1800 800 100 23700 11.4
    May 19000 1600 1000 100 21700 12.4
    Apr 19000 1000 700 100 20800 8.7
    Mar 20000 800 1000 100 21900 8.7
    Feb 20000 1000 1200 100 22300 10.3
    Jan 21000 800 1200 100 23100 9.1

    Avge 19250 1444 1211 100 22006 12.5
    % 87.5% 6.6 5.5 0.5
    What it shows is that coal/gas still supplies 87.5% of our electricity, and hydro at 6.6% is still the biggest renewable and it varies depending on rainfall. It would have taken more analysis to split coal and gas as Aneroid charts report “fossil”, although production by station is also documented.
    Wind also has some low months, and as we know far greater daily fluctuation. Not enough data to see if there is an upward trend.
    Average renewables equal 24,000 GWhr per year – still well short of the 33,000 GWhr target in 2020 under the large scale RET legislation.
    What impact will a 37% increase in wind/solar in the next two years have on the grid?

    Tony has reported on small scale rooftop solar that also has targets and incentives, and it is booming. Current generation equals 880 MW or about 3.7% of total generation. If each roof has a 5 kW system, at 20% capacity factor that equates to 880,000 rooftop systems. See Jo’s previous article on the duck curve showing the impact of solar on the overall grid.

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    • #
      TdeF

      Good work. Unpredictable replaceables are only 6% of our power.

      Consider how much of it would be used if electricity retailers were not penalized by law if they did no buy every scrap of overpriced wind and predictably useless lunchtime solar?

      None.

      Why should established windmills get cash to make them profitable when they have no debts? How can wind power be cheaper when they cannot make a profit even with the world’s highest electricity prices? Consider private Hepburn Wind who paid off ‘their’ Green windmill ten years early and still cannot make a profit without our cash. Why are we paying them our cash on top of what they get for their expensive random power?

      Still governments force coal power stations to close and the system will get more fragile as AEMO warned this week.

      As for predictably useless solar, it should not be going back into the grid at all! No rational system can cope with useless lunchtime solar input and payment for this output is irrational and robbery. We have to pay again for unwanted power when we paid half the cost of the solar panels in the first place. No system can cope with being forced to accept this power and dump steady coal power at the same time. There should be no payin rate. None. These selfish opportunists can enjoy the same rates we have to pay. Then tell us what the savings are.

      The RET should be stopped completely. Then all these state ‘targets’ would vanish. The Replaceables would go out of business immediately. None can supply cheap power or even pay their costs of operations, unless we do.

      Perhaps we should be taxed to buy giant Tesla batteries or import and rent giant diesel generators or to subsidize businesses which cannot survive with such high prices or give State aid to people who cannot afford to buy power? Oops. That is already happening across the country. Secretly, to hide the rolling disaster.

      Stop the insanity. Repeal the RET. It is destroying our quality of life, designed by communists who call themselves socialists and masquerade as environmentalists. Like Malcolm Turnbull. A new breed, smug and rich self righteous anarchists.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        TdeF:

        It is rational behaviour by homeowners disturbed by rising electricity bills, and rise they will for some time.
        Finkel reported that ALL renewable methods were more expensive than HELE coal fire, let alone existing old style coal fired. Storage ADDS to the cost of renewables, so ‘excess’ renewables going into Snowjob 2 will come out $40 per MWh MORE expensive.
        Those in power cannot see, or say they cannot, that replacing all or part of the cheap methods with more costly methods will raise the end cost. They waffle about prices going down, presumbly because they think that operators of renewables will sell at a loss and go bankrupt. Nor does the government foresee any problem with ageing coal fired units having increased downtime for maintenance forcing wholesale prices up to higher levels than the renewables need to make profits unsubsidised (that’s as polite as I can make it). Nor will they take any decisive action to stop the run to disaster, so elctricity bills are going up.
        So nothing will happen until the grid collapses.

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        • #
          TdeF

          Sure, but we not they are paying for their systems and what I read about is their ‘payback’, again our money going to them. Why?
          I do not blame people for gaming the system, taking the ‘free’ money but consider it selfish and thoughtless.

          People who cannot afford sucsh systems are paying for them both in installation and to buy power they don’t need.

          If people want to buy solar, they can. Why do I have to pay for them? Where is my benefit? Or is it all short term self interest? Even then, thoughtless.

          Then they might consider the rapidly climbing electricity rates is their fault, which negates the whole purpose.
          They are their own worst enemies, short term thinking forcing up the prices from which they think they are escaping. If the grid goes down, so do they.

          The common interest used to be why we have governments, to make sure that everyone does not act in their own short term self interest. Now our Federal and State governments are making it attractive by stealing money from everyone’s power bills and handing it out. The total collapse in social responsibility by governments is appalling. To listen to politicians, you would think they only had everyone’s best interests in mind. They and they alone are saving the planet. With our money.

          Electric cars, solar panels, private windmills. All signs of greed conquering logic, all forcing up power prices which people say they are escaping? Why not sell off the parks and gardens too? Private water. Private sewerage. Private roads.

          Within twenty years, all these systems will be kaput. Unserviceable, irreplaceable, unsubsidized, unafforable, pure pollution like mullock heaps. Then who thinks about the future when you are trying to bring down CO2? All for a good cause? I doubt it.

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    • #

      Whoops!

      My reply to this from Robber went into moderation. I’m usually so careful with that so I must have found a new ‘key’ word.

      Tony.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        Australia’s electricity policy is ‘ridiculous’, or ‘idiotic’ or ‘lunacy’? Any of those apply.

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    • #
      RickWill

      Robber good work.

      The best single term I have yet seen for wind and solar is ambient. I note that is the term gaining currency in Germany as the broader community realise ambient sources are expensive and unreliable. They are gradually appreciating wind generators are unrenewable. So the term renewable is clearly a misnomer.

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  • #
    Graeme No.3

    O/T as it isn’t about Korea or the electricity supply but….

    Many people wrongly associate the phrase “the missing link” with Charles Darwin, but it is of much older provenance.
    Renaissance religious belief was that all animals were created by God, and the observed abundance was due to The Great Chain of Life. This was the belief that God left no vacancy but a smooth transition from one form to the next.
    Thus Angels were thought to have the form of humans but a divine nature.
    Hence the numerous portrayal of them as human in paintings of the time.
    Humans basically had animal natures but an aspiration to higher things.
    The Missing Link in the Great Chain.
    Chimpanzees, though obviously related, were animal in form and nature.
    The Gap was where they expected a creature of human form but wholly animal in nature, hence the description The Missing Link.
    There was brief excitement when explorers first discovered Howler Monkeys which react to those entering their territory with incoherent screams of rage and showers of excrement, but closer examination revealed them as primitive monkeys.
    Gradually the idea of the missing link faded into a cliché, not helped by the scandalous account by Schnellhuber claiming to have seen them in the jungles of the Congo. He described them as remnants of the time when a drying climate caused most humans to adopt a terrestrial life style but the ancestors of the Missing Link refused to leave the trees and wailed about Climate Change. His description of their sexual practise of grasping a stout overhead branch while bouncing on a springy branch underfoot as a means of congress was considered highly indecent in Victorian times, and well bred young ladies were forbidden access to the book. (This prohibition may not have been universally successful judging by the fad among delicate young ladies at that time of referring to various young males as “a real bouncer” or “definitely on the weaker branch of the family”).

    Biologists were stunned then about thirty years ago when The Missing Link was found to be alive and living, in all places, the inner cities. Suburbs in the centre with abundant fruit shops, coffee bars and playgrounds containing trampolines were positively infested with them. Researchers were unable to discover how they subsisted but inferred that they lived as scavengers and parasites. They were able to confirm that these poor creatures were completely lacking of knowledge of higher things, such as physics, chemistry, geology, thermodynamics, logic and with no ability in simple arithmetic before they were driven away by incoherent screams and showers of ordure.

    The scientists are keen to conduct a population count and seek our help. The identification will be easy in that all missing links have a recessive gene which causes them to have a red thumb. Count the red thumbs now.

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  • #
    pat

    read all:

    11 Jun: EurActiv: Germany pours cold water on EU’s clean energy ambitions
    By Frédéric Simon
    Voters across Europe have lost faith in politics partly because of “unachievable targets” on renewable energy, said German Energy Minister Peter Altmaier, who rejected calls from a group of other EU countries to boost the share of renewables to 33-35% of the bloc’s energy mix by 2030.

    Altmaier made the comments during an on-the-record exchange between the 28 EU energy ministers, who are gathered in Luxembourg today (11 June) for a meeting of the Energy Council…
    “Germany supports responsible but achievable targets,” Altmaier said from the outset, underlining Berlin’s efforts to raise the share of renewables to 15% of the country’s overall energy mix.
    But he said those efforts also carried a cost for the German taxpayer, which he put at €25 billion per year…

    The Visegrad group of countries comprising the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland reiterated their opposition to raising the EU’s level of ambition. Hungary, for instance, said any increase in the renewable energy target should trigger a new impact assessment from the European Commission, a lengthy procedure that would delay the adoption of the directive…
    https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/germany-pours-cold-water-on-eus-clean-energy-ambitions/

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  • #
    pat

    11 Jun: GWPF: SpectatorUK: Andrew Montford: Why Britain can never rely on wind power
    For the last ten days or more the UK has been becalmed. In theory, our windmill fleet should be able to generate 20 gigawatts of power, more than 50 percent of peak demand at this time of year, but with barely a puff of wind this month, it has been generating next to nothing…READ ON
    http://www.thegwpf.com/andrew-montford-why-britain-can-never-rely-on-wind-power/

    11 Jun: GWPF: Carbon Bubble or Green Babble?
    Models Of Stranded Fossil Fuel Assets Cannot Be Trusted
    The GWPF is today publishing a brief comment on the recent and much publicised paper in Nature Climate Change by J.-F. Mercure et al.
    Dr Mercure and his colleagues offer modelled outputs to suggest that fossil fuel demand will fall sharply on the basis of current policies, and with additional policies arising from the Paris Agreement commitments they predict that the value of fossil fuel assets will collapse by 2035.

    In their comment, Professor Gordon Hughes and Dr John Constable point out that for several reasons these are implausibly strong claims, that should not have passed the peer review process.
    Professor Hughes and Dr Constable write:

    “This paper appears to be yet another exercise in producing speculative numbers that fit a particular set of preconceptions without any willingness to make a meaningful commitment to the predictions. Journalists, such as those who gave so many column inches to this paper, should be very careful in reporting modelling exercises even from prestigious academic sources, particularly when they are at complete variance with the behaviour of investors who are both informed and strongly motivated to reflect accurately on the probable future of that market.” LINK TO PDF
    http://www.thegwpf.com/carbon-bubble-or-green-babble/

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  • #

    I am noticing something really interesting now I am doing this daily data collection.

    Robber mentions this:

    It would have taken more analysis to split coal and gas as Aneroid charts report “fossil”, although production by station is also documented.

    At each of the daily Posts, I break down the fossil fuel data into two images for Fossil Fuels, and they are the second and third images from the top.

    The first image shows the two black lines. The top black line is for all fossil fuels, and the one just under that is just for the coal fired component.

    The next image down shows just the total for natural gas fired power.

    You can ‘hive off’ data for both by knowing which of those fossil fuelled plants are the Coal fired Units, and I have the list of those at my Base Load Intro Post at this link.

    Just open up TWO fossil energy graphs at that site. With the first, tick MW at the power graph, go to the bottom of the list and UNTICK all the States and the Total and SubTotal. Then, starting at the top of the list tick all the boxes for the coal fired Units, and there’s 48 of them. then tick the SubTotal and that gives you the total for all coal fired power only. If you then tick the Total box, you can see both black lines and the relationship between coal fired and ALL fossil plants.

    At the second fossil graph, again click MW, UNTICK the Total Box only, and then just start at the top of the list and UNTICK all those coal fired Units.

    Sounds (a little) complicated, but easy once you do it a few times.

    One thing I have noticed is that no matter what wind power is doing, it has no effect at all on coal fired power, as that just delivers what it always does deliver. The only thing I am noticing is that if wind is high, then natural gas is low, and, a surprise for me, hydro is also low as well. They are using both natural gas and hydro to ‘even out’ wind power when it is high or low.

    Also, and this is early days yet, after only four weeks, but it seems to me that rooftop solar is also having no effect at all on coal fired power. As an exercise, I went back as far as I could at that site, and did the exercise for coal fired power over a week, and it looks like coal fired power is similar now to what it was back then, when there was a helluva lot less rooftop solar power.

    I have the breakdowns between coal fired and natural gas components of fossil fuels at my weekly data collection Post, at the end of each Sunday, so Monday Post time (the latest at this link) and after 4 weeks now, coal fired is at 74% and natural gas at 9.5%, and if I can inject the tiniest bit of sarcasm here, it seems that large scale solar power plants just could be the saviour we need, as they have now reached 0.4% of average daily power needs!!!!!

    Tony.

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    • #
      Annie

      Gosh Tony….that really encourages me to hope for great things from the planned micro-solar grid in our village here in Victoria!
      Sarc/…..is that really necessary?
      We have had our usual local winter fog until lunchtime or even beyond, or, as in the last couple of days, dreary dull (mostly windless but not always) weather with rain verying between drizzle and brif torrential downpour.

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        Annie

        Or should I have said solar micro-grid? No matter…it’s all pie-in-the-sky stuff anyway, at our cost.
        What really irked me was that the flyer that went around invited us to be ‘independent’ of the grid (despite their plans to ‘hire’ the grid to work the system). Battery storage? Yeah, topped up by the grid in this sort of weather. What was that about commonsense not being very common? Apparently there are 33 households signing up as interested; we are not one of them.

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    • #

      There was an intersting thing I noticed when I did this exercise:

      As an exercise, I went back as far as I could at that site, and did the exercise for coal fired power over a week, and it looks like coal fired power is similar now to what it was back then, when there was a helluva lot less rooftop solar power.

      I understand that this may only be anecdotal, but I based it on the shapes of those Load Curves, and here I compared like with like, eg Winter Load Curves with Winter Load Curves, so the shapes are similar eg, with a morning peak, and then a trough and then the solid rise to the main evening peak.

      Back even only four years ago, there were a number of coal fired Units more than there are now, and that may seem relatively insignificant, as those older Units were just that, a lot older.

      The ONLY place rooftop solar power (RTS) has effect is during that trough between the two peaks when RTS provides a hump of power that is not ‘seen’ by the AEMO. However, what I did notice was that the shape of the load curves for coal fired power remained the same as it always has, both then and now. I suspect that RTS is only having an effect on natural gas fired power, and hydro power, in other words, they need less of both of those, and coal fired power just hums along oblivious of RTS.

      Another thing I thought about was that they do regular maintenance, as you may imagine, and those times are pretty much well and truly scheduled.

      When one of those large (newer) plant’s Units was due for maintenance, they would just fire up one of those older Units and at the required time, the old one would come on line as the newer one went down for maintenance. They could take their time with the maintenance and do the job well, and when the time came again, just start the firing up process with the newly maintained Unit, and ease the older Unit back down, considering that after a long maintenance, it takes around 6 to 12 hours to get the Unit back up to full ‘whack’.

      Okay, now, here we are when there are (literally) no more of those older Units left which can be used as ‘reserve’ for situations like this.

      So. come maintenance time now, and there’s, well, nothing to fall back on. They just have to use either natural gas fired plants or hydro to deliver that ‘backup; for when those big Units go down, and both of those are more expensive than the old ‘clunkers’ even were.

      So now we have the case where any down time from those big Units necessitates that they be brought back on line as quickly as possible. There are not enough Units to cover what is needed and to also have backup insurance when they go down. So, the maintenance might become more hurried.

      Also, those existing Units now are operating virtually all the time, and they can cope with perhaps eight to ten Units down in the benign Months of Spring and Autumn, (when power consumption is less) but when all that power is really needed, they have problems (like last week) which really are just that, problems.

      As an example, check out coal fired power for Victoria, and now there is no Hazelwood, there is only ten Units at Loy Yang A and B, and Yallourn W.

      Over the last year of watching power generation so closely. Victoria’s coal fired Units run at a flat line Load Curve, while in NSW and Queensland, the Load Curves for power generation (relatively) closely follow actual power consumption Load Curves.

      When a Unit in Victoria goes down, (like around Midnight last night) such as one of the Units at Yallourn W, Victoria is a little stressed for power, and luckily, it has three States it can call on for a bit extra.

      I am of the impression that the existing Units are now being ‘flogged like the proverbial dead horse’, hence we might see more ‘fails’ of those big Units.

      Like I said, all anecdotal, as someone with a green leaning might say, without the slightest understanding of what really is happening might think.

      Tony.

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        toorightmate

        Tony,
        It is unlikely that a mob that specializes in squeezing subsidies out of suckers is adept at routine maintenance of a power station (eg AGL).

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      • #
        Rob Leviston

        Don’t think your assertion is that anecdotal Tony. Isn’t this exactly what the AEMO is saying? That there is little emergency reserve in the system?
        But you are correct. An unplanned unit, or more going offline, at a critical time of the year, and/or day, and we will see brownouts, and possibly blackouts! No wonder Audrey Zibelman is keen to bring in demand management! Because, when the crap hits the fan, there will not be enough power to go around!

        40

        • #
          Robber

          AEMO already has in place a Reliability and Emergency Reserve Trader (RERT) process. The RERT is a function available to AEMO to maintain power system reliability and system security using reserve contracts. It is termed off-market as the generation or demand response sits outside the wholesale electricity market. Through the RERT, large electricity users and generators are contracted by AEMO to either use less energy or generate power from their own generators. Aggregators are also contracted to procure demand response from electricity users.
          Participants include Alcoa Aluminium 440MW, Steel Companies 60MW, APM (Paper) 15 MW, AGL 40 MW, Powercor 100 MW and more (total of 1,150 megawatts of strategic reserves across Victoria and South Australia).
          AEMO makes payments
          – Availability payment (not for short-notice situations)
          – Pre-activation payment (for unscheduled reserves only)
          – Usage payment
          – Early termination payment (optional for medium and long notice)
          For the summer period up to the end of January, a total of $27 million is being recovered from Victorian and South Australian customers, and further costs will accrue till the end of March. The full costs will ultimately be revealed in a report AEMO is obliged to publish by mid-2018.

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          • #
            Kinky Keith

            Hi Robber,

            The management of all that extra complexity in coordinating the future shutdown or sidelining of major users is another industry in itself.

            That Costs! And we pay.

            This is nothing more than the concept of SMART METERS all over again but on a grander scale. Instead of shutting down part of a household with restrictions on heating and cooling, and possibly interfering with one of the many small businesses run from the suburbs, this is much more serious.

            Major industries have been forced to pack and leave Australia and others have planning in place to shut down.
            The green infiltration of our basic services has been going along very well for some time now.

            No more Dams.

            They “fixed” that with highly complex roofwater collection in cheap Chinese tanks with little pumps in them.

            High breakdown rate.

            There has also been green “water rationing” program.
            We also have the green waste recycling through local councils which I thought was a great idea until my suspicions were recently confirmed by the announcement that China would no longer be taking Australia’s recycled waste. That was O.K.but what sealed my cynicism was the sideline that suggested that the waste going to China was going to landfill.

            And the world goes round and round.

            “Oh when will they ever learn ,,,,”

            KK

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    • #
      Robber

      Per my analysis at #6 and Tony’s comments at #10, I have now split the 87.5% Fossil fuel share of AEMO electricity generation courtesy of the Anero.id site into coal/gas, and those numbers are 77.5% coal and 10.0% gas. Hydro contributes 6.6%, wind 5.5% and large solar 0.5%. Gas generation varies by month from 1700 MW to 2700 MW, and clearly there are far greater variations by day and by time of day. Daily gas variation is from 500 to 5000 MW as it covers the variability of demand due time of day, and intermittent wind/solar.

      What I am now interested in doing is projecting forward to 2020. Renewables are currently supplying 24,000 GWhr per year, and per the RET legislation that must grow to 33,000 GWhr by 2020. Or expressed in MW, current renewables average 2760 MW, target 3760 MW, an increase of 1000 MW. Currently, hydro provides 1440 MW on average, and large solar just 100 MW. If I assume that neither hydro or solar will grow between now and 2020, wind generation must increase from its current average of 1210 MW to 2210 MW. And that means that at times of high wind, generation from wind could be above 6000 MW. With an overnight demand of just 18,000 MW, how will the grid cope with 33% intermittent wind?
      Add to that the impact of rooftop solar as Jo has described in the recent article on the duck curve. If by 2020 midday demand on the AEMO network is just 12,000 MW because 6,000 MW is “behind the meter”, and then we add 6,000 MW from peak wind, is that a viable, reliable and cost effective network? Which coal stations will be the next to be declared uneconomic as 1000-2000 MW of demand is met by increased wind and rooftop solar?

      When will AEMO and the Energy Security Board and the governments tell us the answers? Why is it taking them so long? We need honest answers well before the next elections.

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    Another Ian

    Pat

    This “ephemeral energy” has some similarity to tyhe story of the tight Scotsman whose ambition was to breed a draft horse that didn’t need feeding.

    Several times he got near his goal, only to have the horse die on him

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  • #
    pat

    behind paywall:

    11 Jun: UK Telegraph: Ofgem to toughen up on new energy minnows
    By Jillian Ambrose
    The energy watchdog is planning to raise the bar for companies to enter the market, as thousands of British homes are at risk of being left in limbo by a new breed of unstable energy minnows.
    Ofgem said it has launched a review into its supplier licensing to ensure that “appropriate protections” are in place against poor customer service and financial instability.

    The regulator’s U-turn has emerged amid rising criticism that it has presided over a flood of financially unstable new suppliers into the market.
    The number of energy suppliers has ballooned to more than sixty in recent years, of which half are understood to face an existential risk in the wake of severe energy market price spikes over the winter…
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/06/11/ofgem-toughen-new-energy-minnows/

    11 Jun: Post-Bulletin: Consumer choice has suddenly revolutionized the electricity business in California. But utilities are striking back
    By Michael Hiltzik Los Angeles Times
    Nearly 2 million electricity customers in California may not know it, but they’re part of a revolution.
    That many residents and businesses are getting their power not from traditional utilities, but via new government-affiliated entities known as community choice aggregators. The CCAs promise to deliver electricity more from renewable sources, such as solar and wind, and for a lower price than the big utilities charge…
    But with more than 1.8 million accounts now served by the new system and more being added every month, the changes in the state’s energy system already are massive…

    California created its system via legislative action in 2002. Assembly Bill 117 enabled municipalities and regional governments to establish CCAs anywhere that municipal power agencies weren’t already operating…
    The big utilities would retain responsibility for transmission and distribution lines.
    The first CCA, Marin Clean Energy, began operating in 2010 and now serves 470,000 customers in Marin and three nearby counties…

    The CCAs have been successful at holding on to their customers because they have several inherent advantages over the incumbent utilities. For one thing, they aren’t saddled with high legacy costs from the construction of big power plants or long-term contracts for renewable power at the high prices that prevailed just a few years ago…

    But it’s not clear that they can maintain their price differential over the utilities. State law prohibits the shifting of legacy costs from ratepayers and leaving a utility’s generating service to remaining customers, a concept known as “indifference.”

    The principle is enforced through “exit fees,” which are charged to CCA customers to cover the embedded costs of older power plants and power contracts. Without this system, those costs would be shouldered by customers remaining with the utilities, which isn’t fair or economically sustainable. Utilities and some energy experts say the exit fees are too low, giving the CCAs a pricing advantage…

    The fight is being waged before the Public Utilities Commission, which is pondering how to refashion its exit-fee calculations to meet the challenge of suddenly proliferating CCAs. A decision, expected within the next few weeks, could help determine whether the CCAs’ price advantage over the utilities is sustainable…

    Another question is whether a fragmented system of 20 or more local CCAs is really up to the challenge of setting energy policy for the state as a whole.
    “In the short term, they’re creating a lot of chaos in the regulatory space,” says Matthew Freedman, staff attorney at the consumer group Turn. “We have big goals in California. We’re committed to this low-carbon grid, and transforming the entire energy sector requires some degree of coordination and long-term planning. No one has figured out what the system’s supposed to look like for overseeing all this.”…

    The developing relationship between the utilities commission and the CCAs isn’t auspicious. CCAs universally condemned a white paper issued last month over the signature of commission President Michael Picker. The paper said the “splintering” of central decision-making on energy raised the specter of a repeat of the 2000-01 energy crisis, which was caused by hasty deregulation of the state’s energy market…

    If CCAs didn’t exist, would the utililies still offer these choices at a reasonable price? The betting here is that the answer is no. That’s as good a reason as any to appreciate the changes that CCAs have wrought.
    http://www.postbulletin.com/news/business/consumer-choice-has-suddenly-revolutionized-the-electricity-business-in-california/article_53811efa-6e66-596f-8bc2-6f0cc7be23a2.html

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    OriginalSteve

    Have the submissions to journals seem to have been “rejected” so the infra-sound reality isnt public knowledge? It seems anything that might derail the green madness is censored…

    Are some peer reviews…. may be more equal than others….?

    https://www.canberratimes.com.au/politics/federal/500-000-wind-farm-experts-provided-no-advice-in-two-years-20180611-p4zks3.html

    “The committee is required to provide advice on developing wind farm standards, including sound measuring methods.

    The report, dated April this year, said it “is yet to provide this advice” because “it must first determine exactly what needs to be measured”, including whether it is necessary to measure low frequency sound and infrasound – sound waves so low they are inaudible to humans.

    In February last year the committee resolved to publish parts of their research as papers in learned journals, so they would be peer-reviewed.

    The first paper, covering wind turbine sound limits, was submitted to the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The journal asked for the paper to be modified after “extensive” peer review comments. The paper was resubmitted but again rejected.

    It was also rejected by the Journal of Sound and Vibration because it was “outside the scope of the journal”. In December last year the paper was sent to the Applied Acoustics journal.”

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Steve,

      When I was studying this about 18 years ago it was interesting to find No research on low frequency vibrations. The only published works related to iron curtain countries where presumably workers were unable to sue employers.
      You will only hear references to “noise pollution” in discussions on renewables. This is to distract the discussion from VLF pulsing which is a serious health issue for heavy machinery drivers and free Wind turbines.

      More than a little deliberate withholding of information by renewables promoters that suggests that they don’t mind if a few locals near the turbines get damaged.

      KK

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      • #
        Annie

        If there is heavy machinary working anywhere nearby for any length of time I find I feel really tired and crotchety by the end of the day. Hay harvest is one such time and the job has to be done, as has any other work on paddocks, but I loathe the noise of it; there is often a deep inescapable element to it that becomes extremely bothersome after a while.

        10

        • #
          Kinky Keith

          Hi Annie

          The atmospheric compression that is VLF pulsing influences the human body obviously by overriding the breathing mechanics.
          It can lead to signals being sent from the heart lung system back to the control area of the brain trying to indicate that all is not normal.
          Nausea results and heart problems.
          The normal response would be to get away from the problem but when you are driving a heavy locomotive or have a Wind turbine near your home that’s not possible.

          Surely we have learned never to trust governments, especially when they are making hay for themselves.

          KK

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          • #
            Kinky Keith

            Forgot the most important sensor which picks up pressure pulsing and sends a message of complaint to the area of the brain involved in monitoring such things. Our skin is an appropriate sensor.

            20

            • #
              Annie

              The skin is an organ of many talents! I do sometimes wish I had been born a bit less sensitive to noise and other nuisances 🙁

              00

  • #
    Mark M

    New Zealand prepares for perfect climate:

    2015: NZ coal power generation gone by 2018

    “Genesis Energy has announced that its last two coal-burning electricity generators at the *Huntly Power Station will be permanently withdrawn from the market by December 2018, signaling the end of large scale coal-fired generation, and associated carbon emissions, in New Zealand.”

    * The Huntly Power Station is situated on the northern island.

    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/element-magazine/news/article.cfm?c_id=1503340&objectid=11492913

    Wait. What?

    June 12, 2018: Schools closed, heavy rain, severe gales, thunderstorms and flooding strike New Zealand’s North Island

    https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/schools-closed-heavy-rain-severe-gales-thunderstorms-and-flooding-strike-new-zealands-north-island/news-story/2455d1209ff27afcbaea82912c544703
    ~ ~ ~
    Good luck and be safe to our Kiwi friends over the ditch surviving their failed meteorology service and their failed carbon (sic) predictions.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Yes, ( and this is hypothetical, lest anyone get bent out of shape …)

      Instead of the locals greeting people at the airports ( I guess like in Hawaii they have locals in traditional dress as part of tourism ) , now it will be NZ witchdoctors with bones through their noses and wailing etc….

      Its all going to endin tears…we are regressing to primitive ignorance and associated heathen practices….

      80

    • #
      Ross

      Unfortunately we have worse to come Mark. Our current Government via the Greens (who are coalition partners) want to introduce a UK style Climate Act with the wonderful sounding tag line “carbon neutral by 2050”. They will probably succeed with their wish. Like Australia we have a significant proportion of the population who are brainwashed with the propaganda.

      100

      • #
        sophocles

        Virtue signalling is all it can be, and on a suicidal scale.
        Hey, Look out world! Us too, Hey! Wait for us! Us too! We’ll die with you!

        I don’t want to become an involuntary citizen of the People’s Republic. Neither do I want to be reduced to poverty by some prat.

        A country which emits somewhere about 0.1%, or less, of the globe’s so-called “carbon emissions” is about to commit ritual suicide in the face of what is about to be added by China and India. Prof. Fritz Vahrenholt writes and is quoted at notrickszone:

        In China 280,000 MW and in India 174,000 MW are going to be added. By comparison: the entire brown coal fleet in Germany has a capacity of 22,700 MW. 1600 coal-fired power plants will be built in 62 countries across the world, most of them, by the way, will be built by Chinese power plant builders with the help of credits from China. Approximately 15,300 MW in Pakistan, 16,000 in Bangladesh, and even Myanmar with 5100 MW. (Source: South China Morning Post).

        [emphasis mine]

        WTF! 1600 coal burners. Our darling ever so brainy, thoughtful, and clever-clogs Minister for Climate, James “Cat-6” Shaw, hasn’t seen that, as Vahrenholt points out, the “foundation of the Paris Accord has collapsed.” Recent research has disproven the IPCC claims of greenhouse gas-itis and the cheeriest serious outlook for the next few decades is “it might not be that cold” given the Sun’s dimming and the magnetic poles trying to swap, which rips the carpet out from under the Paris Accord intent. But of course, it’s like the lookout calling “reefs dead ahead!” and the 2nd Mate replies “Maintain course! Full speed ahead!”

        Ouch. The wreckage is NOT going to be fun. It’s not to NZ’s benefit at all. It will be a disaster.

        With 1600 coal-fired power stations being built and planned to be built across 62 countries, NZ’s miniscule output will be totally dwarfed. We don’t have to do a thing and nobody, but nobody, will notice any change! Our emissions will be totally totally dwarfed instead of just totally dwarfed as they are at present.

        Hasn’t anyone got any sense of proportion?
        Emissions of 0.1% or less and the economy has to be wrecked…

        At least we can make submissions to the commission now sitting.
        I’ve never written a submission, so I’m going to have to learn. Fast.

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    • #
      Dennis

      Don’t forget that the NZ PM has an impressive background in socialism, first as a staffer to NZ Labour PM Helen Clarke (the capital Wellington was renamed by the people Helengrad) and when Clarke retired moved to join UK Labour PM Tony Blair’s office as a staffer.

      And today she is the NZ PM selected to lead a minority Labour alliance government.

      It must make sense?

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      • #

        Don’t forget”

        I didn’t forget it because it is not true.

        Helen Clarke retired as PM after Tony Blair ended his time as PM. She might have moved before Helen Clarke retired or worked with Balir after he ceased being PM but I forget.

        01

        • #
          Dennis

          “After graduating from the University of Waikato in 2001, Ardern began her career working as a researcher in the office of Prime Minister Helen Clark. She later worked in the United Kingdom as a policy advisor to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

          In 2008, she was elected President of the International Union of Socialist Youth. Ardern became a list MP in 2008, a position she held for almost ten years until her election to the Mount Albert electorate in the 2017 by-election, held on 25 February. She was unanimously elected as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party on 1 March 2017 following the resignation of Annette King.”

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        • #
          sophocles

          A bit muddled G.A. Let’s throw some clarity over it all:

          Helen Elizabeth Clark of New Zealand and Helen Rosemary Clark of Britain have nothing to do with each other, other than membership of their respective countries’ Labour Parties. H. R. Clark was the Labour member of the British House of Commons for Peterborough, whereas H. E. Clark was the MP for Mt. Albert (Auckland, New Zealand) in the New Zealand House of Representatives. They are literally on opposite sides of the globe from each other. They shared mostly the same name—and note the spelling.

          Helen E. Clark did not retire as PM. She was voted out of office in the November 2008 New Zealand election, which was won by John Key and the New Zealand National Party, plus a few coalition members, and promptly resigned as Leader of the New Zealand Labour Party on Election night when it was clear Labour could not make the numbers for a coalition. She resigned from Parliament in April 2009 and left NZ to become administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. In 2016, she stood for the position of Secretary-General of the United Nations, but was unsuccessful.She returned to NZ in 2016 at the end of her term.

          Helen R. Clark was defeated in the 2005 British Election and she resigned from the Labour Party three days later. She was never P.M. of anywhere, but so what? She was rather critical of Blair at the time.

          When I last looked, the UK and NZ were and are still on opposite sides of the world.

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          • #

            fair enough Clarke retired by not as PM. I was too excited about the dates and should have checked details.

            I really don’t know why you raised HR Clark. There must be thousands of other H something Clark(e)’s in the world. What of them?

            And thanks for the reminder of the geography. Fascinating. Did you know that much of New Zealand’s antipodes covers Spain?

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  • #
    PeterS

    I see that the federal government has announced new child protection laws as a result of a Royal Commission, which Turnbull says will emphasise the importance of protecting children from abuse. I therefore look forward to lots of [SNIP 18C] children being taken away from the abusive parents very soon if not today. Otherwise, as per usual Turnbull will prove himself to be a hypocrite of the worst kind. Since that would leave many children to remain in the direct hands of extremely abusive parents then it will paint Turnbull as very evil person as well for ignoring the situation if such children are not taken away. Better to have a child “stolen” than one harmed in a savage and evil way.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      Thanks for replying in weekend unthreaded Peter but moderation took a while, a good point you made was despite what some people might mislabel us out of confusion, ignorance or fear in the end we want a fair go for anyone willing to uphold the values of our society, one that amongst few that has offered tremendous freedoms and potentials to an eclectic mix of people that would never have had they lived in other countries.

      Despite the frustrations and let downs people give each other the real power of democracy is freedom to hope, to decide of your own volition that you want changes that will benefit the greater good that starts with your vote, but not just that because as you live in a free society there’s other choices to take action if you believe its needed like peaceful protest, contacting elected officials, actively involved in political parties, public speaking, charities etc..

      All these activities can be done entirely by own choice compared to what has become the replacement called government sanctioned activism, where once the social rebels were seen to be activists fighting for whatever oppressed minority adopted is now the state modus operandi under the guise of social justice or anti (something)ism and the new rebels are the ones trying to reclaim the liberties lost, the voices silenced, a future not gifted to our children we enjoyed, a nation we once loved.

      10

  • #
    RickWill

    I posted the link on the weekend to Michael Mischenkio’s lecture but it deserves repeating:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjKJyn_uoIE

    It is the most compelling example of the inability of climate models to produce anything of value. The models’ basis on Radiation Transfer Equations is an unsound basis for determining what occurs in Earth’s atmosphere. The fact that they embrace back radiation was the clue for me that the modellers need to buy one.

    Mischenko shreds the basis of the models. At the 47 minute mark in the video he responds to a question regarding climate models by pointing out they use “unphysical” relationships and have thousands of tuning parameters that can produce “whatever”.

    The reason Mischenko deserves recognition is not simply that he understands electromagnetic energy transport but he is also a scientist employed by NASA GISS. The fact that this lecture remains available and he has readily available peer reviewed papers that condemn the conventional RTEs adds to the unarguable weight of this lecture and may mean NASA GIS is becoming more scientific in their approach.

    40

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    pat

    11 Jun: Baltimore Sun: A wind farm developer offered Ocean City free electricity, but resort town is still fighting offshore turbines
    By Scott Dance
    Ocean City officials say they don’t want offshore wind turbines to be built within 30 miles of the resort town’s beaches under any circumstances — not even in exchange for free electricity.
    That was among the offers energy developer U.S. Wind recently made to appease concerns that its planned wind farm off Maryland’s coast will harm tourism.

    The company also dangled other community investments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, and offered to alter its plans if Ocean City agreed to cover the costs of seeking new government approvals.
    None of that was adequate to allay fears that tourists will abandon Ocean City and flock to other beaches if Maryland’s horizon is dotted with towering wind turbines, though. Town leaders rejected the offer, Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan said…

    But as the proposal advances through federal reviews, Meehan said he won’t stop fighting to push the project farther off shore and protect beach views.
    “We’re going to continue to proceed with any avenue we have to address our concerns,” Meehan said…

    The response from Ocean City has surprised and frustrated U.S. Wind leaders, said Salvo Vitale, the company’s general counsel. He said such community investment packages are routine for Toto Holding Group, the Italian firm that owns U.S. Wind, and other developers, and are usually welcomed by shore cities and towns in Europe and elsewhere.
    Vitale said the company isn’t worried that Ocean City’s opposition will kill the project, which falls mainly under federal authority. But he also said the town’s demands are unreasonable, and aren’t feasible — building so far from shore would require starting from scratch on an offshore leasing process that began in 2010…
    http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/environment/bs-md-ocean-city-wind-20180611-story.html

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  • #
    Another Ian

    And while you were all eyes on Trump and KJU

    “Claim: Trump Tariffs Forced Shelving of $2.5 billion of Solar Projects”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/12/claim-trump-tariffs-forced-shelving-of-2-5-billion-of-solar-projects/

    40

    • #

      Oddly, large scale solar power plants are the coming thing in the U.S.

      They currently deliver 1.3% of all generated power.

      Tony.

      (ah c’mon Tony, what have I told you about that sarc button)

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    • #
      PeterS

      The more Trump can do to stir up the left the better. I like to see him next start building new coal fired and nuclear power stations like China is already doing. Lots of catch-up to do. At the moment though he probably sees the existing once are sufficient for now, which is why he’s announced new plans to bolster them and extend their life spans, something we should do with our coal fired power plants.

      20

    • #
      RickWill

      This is extracted from WUWT link:

      The U.S. solar industry employs more than 250,000 people – about three times more than the coal industry – with about 40 percent of those people in installation and 20 percent in manufacturing, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

      Solar industry in USA employs 3X the number of people to achieve 1/25th of the output. That gives a clue to why China has abandoned its subsidies to solar. They were happy making and supplying panels to the USA on the basis that it would hobble US industry, keeping US uncompetitive with China. Now China needs to rethink how it can remain competitive with US no longer on a path to economic ruin.

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    Another Ian

    “The Bubble Chamber of the “Intellectual” Left”

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2018/06/12/the-bubble-chamber-of-the-intellectual-left/

    Canadian slant but – – –

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  • #
    PeterS

    I just listened to some of the National Press Club speech by Darren Chesster. His views climate change and CO2 emissions are in exact alignment with those of the ALP+Greens. I couldn’t believe what I heard. That’s it. The LNP is exactly the same as the ALP when it comes to climate change, and a vote for the LNP might as well be a vote for the ALP.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Well I have been saying for a long time we live in a one party country…but people wont believe me.

      Maybe now the proof is where it counts – all “parties” are colluding to implement Socialism via the Big Green Lie…

      In terms of empirical evidence, you’d be hard pressed to provide anything more convincing.

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      • #
        PeterS

        I believe you and said similar things. The LNP has morphed into a left wing party and the ALP has moved further to the left. As far as I’m concerned we have no conservative or centre-right party, apart from the ACP and ON, respectively, which no one appears to take seriously. This nation apparently prefers the road to socialism or communism. Let’s see how far we are prepared to cop it.

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        • #
          Len

          It is only called the LNP in Queensland.There are still conservatives in these parties but lefties have infiltrated a fair way into the parties.Chester has very left wing policies.

          00

  • #
    RicDre

    Astronauts alter the temperature of the moon by disturbing the regolith and turning it darker which reduced the albedo of the disturbed area causing it to warm by 1.6 to 3.5 K.

    That’s worse than the warming caused by a doubling of CO2 on earth. Everything man touches gets hotter. Now both the Earth and the Moon are DOOMED!

    https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018JE005579

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    David Maddison

    At the following link you will find within that a video which Donald Trump showed Kim Jong-Un. Of course the Leftard media call it “propaganda”.

    http://www.euronews.com/2018/06/12/trump-had-this-propaganda-video-made-to-show-kim

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    • #
      PeterS

      Trump likes to sell dreams. Sometime he succeeds and sometimes he doesn’t THat’s life. I rather he do that than seeing Obama and like selling nightmares.

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    David Maddison

    It’s Donald Trump’s birthday tomorrow (June 14th).

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  • #
    David Maddison

    With the US out of the Paris Accords, I find it remarkable that the rest of the world remains fully committed to them, especially Australia as we enter into full self destruct mode.

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      PeterS

      The difference though between Australia and the rest of the world who still subscribe to the Paris accord is that the rest do not take it seriously and are still building lots of coal fired power stations and/or new nuclear power plants and/or bolstering their existing ones with massive amounts of government handouts. Australia is alone on the road to commit economic suicide. I do hope that will change soon somehow. At the moment though it’s all up in the air.

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        OriginalSteve

        Maybe we need to set up a UN registered NGO for fighting Australian poverty caused by the UN and its lunatic climate policies…..that should have the UN tied in knots for years….

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    Mark M

    If you won’t trust the abilities and methods of these erudite and brave explorers to record temperature, why rainfall data … ? …

    Grain growers scale back winter crops as driest autumn conditions since 1902 take hold

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-06-13/dry-start-to-season-sees-grain-crops-scaled-back/9853916

    > Temperature data prior to 1910 should be used with extreme caution as many stations, prior to that date, were exposed in non-standard shelters, some of which give readings which are several degrees warmer or cooler than those measured according to post-1910 standards. <

    http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/cdo/about/about-airtemp-data.shtml

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    • #
      el gordo

      I’m not playing their games, it was a Gleissberg Minimum.

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    • #

      well a lot of the affected grain growing areas were not grain growing (except in a minor way) areas prior to 1910 so the record could be easily given proper context.

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        el gordo

        Yeah, context, that would be useful, its a Gleissberg.

        The Federation Drought from wiki.

        ‘Though often thought of as a long drought, until the record dry year of 1902 the period was actually one of a number of very dry spells interspersed with wetter weather. Dry conditions gradually became established during the late 1890s and several dry areas joined together to create the end result of a drought covering over half the continent.’

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        el gordo

        There appears to be a cycle of drought and flooding rains, the 1870s in south east Australia was a wet time, dry in the 1880s, then very wet in the 1990s, followed by the Federation drought.

        Timbal and Fawcett refer to the 11 year cycle.

        https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00082.1

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      • #
        Another Ian

        The area around here (south west Qld) was opened up for selection for wheat growing (in a burst of government enthusiasm) in 1902. Blocks beside the railway started at 160 acres.

        Our family arrived in that era. According to my father from the break of the 1902 drought to the 1915 drought they jagged a wheat crop about 4 years out of 5. One grandfather had around 800 acres of cultivation – in that horse drawn era.

        Suggesting a winter rainfall pattern, which went the way of climate change after the 1915 drought. Property amalgamation began soon after.

        One of our 320 acre paddocks was a dairy farm, one of several in the area. Including the other grandfather who was milking something like 90 dairy cows. Cream went by train to the nearest butter factory.

        el gordo

        Rangeland research indicates that the early 1890’s were a set of seasons that provided pasture growth beyond anything we’ve seen since. Probably accounts for the last of the big fires being around then, and would have helped with the buildup in stock numbers pre-1902 that were wiped out in the subsequent drought.

        From official stock records that number has never been equaled since – IIRC it got to around 2/3 of the peak around the 1960’s after post-WW2 pasture development.

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          el gordo

          Thanks for the insight Ian, this is how Jennifer Marohasy saw things.

          ‘Dry conditions established in the late 1890s and continued until November 1902 when the drought broke.

          ‘While 1903 may have been a relatively wet year, the Federation Drought is generally seen as marking a major climate shift across eastern Australia to four relatively dry decades until the 1950s.’

          10

      • #
        el gordo

        Warwick Hughes thinks BoM and aunty are beating up the drought thingy.

        http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=5837

        10

  • #
    OriginalSteve

    When they stop teaching basics in school and go for dumb “emotive” education…?

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5832789/Young-people-really-getting-stupid-IQs-falling-seven-points-generation.html

    “Young people’s IQ scores have started to deteriorate after climbing steadily since Wold War Two, a new study has found.

    The fall, which equates to about seven points per generation, is believed to have begun with those born in 1975, according to the first authoritative study of the phenomenon.

    The drop in scores marks the end of a trend – known as the Flynn effect – which has seen average IQs rise for the past 60 to 70 years by roughly three points a decade.”

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    • #

      Sooooo, where Stan Grant, the new head journo at the ABC says that people are worried about their jobs going to robots, it seems that pretty soon, people will be able to look in the mirror, and actually see those robots, and still be just as jobless!

      Tony.

      PostScript – Just how did Stan Grant get to the top of the ABC? (says he, knowing exactly how)(it also seems that a mindless h@tred of President Trump is a really BIG help when when clawing your way to the top at the ABC)

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        Another Ian

        ABC radio a while ago had a session on ABC funding.

        Seemed to be someone from the ABC interviewed by someone from the ABC on the terrific service provided by the ABC, how it is the “most trusted news service in Australia” and that is why they need more money not less.

        That report might be a bit sketchy as there were a few turn-off points in there.

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          OriginalSteve

          Hmmm…..if the Australuan Bolshevik Collective is our most trusted ( ahem…allegedly ) new source, it means either they are lying,or, Australians are as dumb/ignorant/thick as house bricks….

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        • #
          RicDre

          ‘…ABC, how it is the “most trusted news service in Australia”…’

          Ah, the Ministry of Truth is busy again. I think they may have stolen that line from CNN. Somebody should tell the ABC that it will sound more believable if they can get James Earl Jones (who did the voice for Darth Vader) to say “This is ABC..The most Trusted News Service in Australia”

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    pat

    13 Jun: The Conversation: Are solar panels a middle-class purchase? This survey says yes
    by Adam McHugh, Honorary Research Associate, Murdoch University
    (Disclosure: Adam McHugh is a Director at Ernst & Young, and consults to both government and the private sector on energy industry related matters. The views reflected in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global Ernst & Young organisation or its member firms)

    The rate of growth in residential rooftop solar photovoltaics (PV) in Australia since 2008 has been nothing short of breathtaking.
    Our new research suggests that the households most likely to join in the solar spree are those that are affluent enough to afford the upfront investment, but not so wealthy that they don’t worry about their future power bills.

    Australia now has the highest penetration of residential rooftop PV of any country in the world, with the technology having been installed on one in five freestanding or semi-detached homes. In the market-leading states of Queensland and South Australia this ratio is about one in three, and Western Australia is not far behind, with one in four having PV.

    While PV panels give households more control over their electricity bills, and each new installation helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the market’s rapid expansion has posed significant challenges for the management of the electricity system as a whole…
    But as solar panels spread rapidly through the suburbs, the job of forecasting supply and demand is getting much harder…

    (AT BOTTOM: The research paper can be downloaded here (LINK) for free until August 1, 2018)
    http://theconversation.com/are-solar-panels-a-middle-class-purchase-this-survey-says-yes-97614

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      Kinky Keith

      The rate of growth of rooftop solar has been “breathtaking”.

      Those who don’t understand how scary this should find out quick and avoid the 3 major parties at the next election.

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      • #

        Australian Rooftop Solar Power Nameplate – 8,000MW

        Australian Coal fired power Nameplate – 23,000MW (bigger by a factor of 2.875)

        Australian Rooftop Solar Power daily power generation – 20GWH

        Australian Coal fired power daily power generation – 420GWH (bigger by a factor of 21)

        Umm, see why they use Nameplate?

        Tony.

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      RickWill

      AEMO can forecast solar with impressive accuracy.

      They have no idea how to forecast wind and it can have extraordinary high ramp rates. With installed wind capacity now at 5222MW there are times when the output changes more than 1GW in one hour. Makes it tough for scheduled generation.

      South Australia has achieved 40% market share with 1700MW of wind. The average demand is 1200MW so capacity can exceed demand and Victoria acts as the MASSIVE battery for SA; able to source and sink up to 600MW with unlimited capacity.

      If the whole grid aims for just 40% ambient energy like SA there will need to be 41GW of wind. Imagine how well the grid will cope with ramp rates in the range 10GW/hour at any time day or night with very poor predictability.

      Although senior people at AEMO say they are easily managing the intermittency I can imagine operators at the control centres are being stressed on a regular basis.

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        Kinky Keith

        Rick,

        This situation, where control staff are at their wits end, should never have gotten this far.

        There is a serious engineering problem here and it is being hidden.

        KK

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          OriginalSteve

          Hi, Ed, I guess its open to interpretation. I’ve said many many times I’ve never ever advocated violence toward anyone, I cant however speak for chunks of the rest of humanity, who seem to have an unhealthy re-occurring ability to carry out such acts, which is what I was alluding to in my post….

          Perhaps I should be more specific….?

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    pat

    13 Jun: Bloomberg: Buried in Musk Job Cuts Memo: End to Home Depot Solar Sales
    By Lynn Doan; with assistance by Matthew Townsend, Dana Hull, and Brian Eckhouse
    Tesla Cutting 9% of Jobs Across Company
    Just four months ago, Tesla Inc. began a major expansion of its solar division at Home Depot Inc., rolling out Tesla-branded selling spaces at 800 of the retailer’s locations. The areas were to be outfitted during the first half of this year and staffed by Tesla employees to demonstrate that its panels and batteries have mainstream appeal.
    It was an experiment that would prove short-lived…

    Buried in a memo about a major reorganization and job cuts, Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said the company has decided not to renew its residential sales agreement with Home Depot. It will instead “focus our efforts on selling solar power in Tesla stores and online,” he said…
    Home Depot’s relationship with Tesla will continue through the end of the year, and the company “plans to continue offering solar options to our customers,” according to an emailed statement from Steve Holmes, a spokesman for the retailer.
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-12/buried-in-musk-s-job-cuts-memo-an-end-to-home-depot-solar-sales

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    pat

    13 Jun: Reuters: Italy’s A2A to pull out of race for Terra Firma Italian solar power – sources
    by Giancarlo Navach, additional reporting by Stephen Jewkes
    Italian utility A2A has pulled out of tender to buy Terra Firma’s solar power assets in Italy, two sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
    The British private equity firm is looking to sell its solar farms in a deal expected to fetch more than 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion).

    If successful, the transaction will be Italy’s largest solar energy sale in a fragmented industry under pressure to consolidate with the end of generous state subsidies…

    Oil major Eni, together with Qatar Petroleum, and Enel, with fund F2i, are also competing for the 330 MW of solar energy put up for sale by Terra Firma.
    https://www.reuters.com/article/rtr-ma-a2a/italys-a2a-to-pull-out-of-race-for-terra-firma-italian-solar-power-sources-idUSS8N1LF026

    12 Jun: CommonwealthMag: Clouds over Mass. solar industry
    Clear, bold leadership needed from Beacon Hill
    by Sean Garren
    (Sean Garren is northeast senior director for Vote Solar)
    What’s been dubbed a “solar revolution” in Massachusetts over the past several years didn’t happen by accident. Rather, it was the result of policies aimed squarely at growing the state’s renewable energy sector in order to stimulate local jobs and business innovation while reducing reliance on the fossil fuel-generated electricity that pollutes our communities and contributes to climate change.

    Unfortunately, those policies – and the Massachusetts solar industry as a result – have suffered recently due to resistance from utility companies, as well as delays in expanding legislative initiatives essential to growth in the sector. Bold and swift action by Gov. Charlie Baker and our state legislators is needed to reverse this troubling new trend…
    We hope both branches of the Legislature can reach consensus on the Senate bill’s key solar provisions and pass it in the remaining weeks of this legislative session…

    Among the culprits: a long running and frustratingly intermittent cap on one of Massachusetts’ most successful solar programs (net metering), a longer-than-expected development effort for the next iteration of Massachusetts’ solar incentive program, and the Department of Public Utilities’ approval of an unfair new charge that will hike and confuse bills for future solar customers of Eversource, the Commonwealth’s largest utility.

    The new Eversource “demand charge,” which is remedied (along with net metering caps) in the Senate bill, has the potential to be especially damaging. To our knowledge, the only other time a utility of a comparable size has imposed this type of confusing and costly charge on residential customers was in Arizona in 2015, and it resulted in an astounding 95 percent decrease in solar adoption by that utility’s customers.

    With these uncertain or negative policies as a backdrop, The Solar Foundation’s latest Solar Job Census found that the number of solar workers in Massachusetts dropped by 21 percent last year, the second largest decline of any state in the nation. Massachusetts lost more solar jobs—3,000—than were gained by 20 other states combined…

    The 2017 Solar Jobs Census marked the second straight year of job losses for Massachusetts in what should be, and has been for most of the past decade, a bright spot in our economy. The Commonwealth still ranks among the leading solar employers in the United States, but the fact that new residential solar installations declined by half – from over 23,000 in 2016 to approximately 10,000 in 2017 – is worrying in a state that claims to lead the nation on clean energy and climate.
    https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/clouds-over-mass-solar-industry/

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    pat

    12 Jun: Motley Fool: Why First Solar’s Stock Dropped 20% in a Week
    First Solar was felled by the industry’s woes.
    by Travis Hoium
    Last week, First Solar’s (NASDAQ:FSLR) stock plummeted 20% in a move that caught solar investors off guard. The plunge was caused by China cutting solar incentives for the rest of 2018, which could reduce the country’s solar installations by 30%-40% in 2018, a big deal considering China installed about half of all solar panels worldwide in 2018.
    First Solar was supposed to be insulated from some of the ups and downs most solar manufacturers experience, with its rock-solid balance sheet and billions in contracted sales, but clearly that didn’t matter last week…

    Why solar stocks dropped last week
    First Solar wasn’t the only solar stock that dropped last week — the plunge was an equal-opportunity event for the industry…READ ALL
    https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/06/12/why-first-solars-stock-dropped-20-in-a-week.aspx

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    Rob Leviston

    And if there was any doubt where the earth gets its warmth from, here is an interesting report from the folks at GWPF,
    https://www.thegwpf.com/the-sun-and-volcanoes-cause-the-pause/

    The one thing I immediately noticed in this report, was the use of margin of error, for the different temperature sources!
    Now, in all the reporting of temperature, especially extremes, have you seen the margin of error reported? No? You haven’t? Wonder why that is?
    Could be that the margin of error exceeds the supposed increase in the ‘record’!

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    Mark M

    Energy grid at ‘crisis point’ as power prices surge 160 times the usual rate.

    On three separate occasions Tomago, the state’s largest single energy user, was forced to halt production as spot prices soared to a staggering $14,000 per megawatt hour.

    Tomagao Aluminium Smelter CEO Matt Howell “hit back at suggestions New South Wales should go down the same track as South Australia and buy a giant Tesla battery.

    “The largest battery in the world… would power this smelter for all of eight minutes. It’s clearly a nonsense.”

    https://www.2gb.com/energy-grid-at-crisis-point-as-power-prices-surge-160-times-the-usual-rate/

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      pat

      Mark M –

      thanks for posting the interview with Tomago’s CEO.

      I forgot to post it. probably too depressed at what he had to say.

      surely it is criminal that the two major parties are guilty of destroying our industrial base.

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      • #
        sophocles

        Pat said

        surely it is criminal that the two major parties are guilty of destroying our industrial base.

        Unfortunately there’s no law against it, so it isn’t technically criminal. The evidential requirements also rule out charges of treason. The saddest part is that they all think they are doing the right thing. (The Italians did deal decisively with Il Duce towards the end of WW2.)

        If enough people decide that it is, then that’s a different story.

        Sad, isn’t it?

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      Kinky Keith

      Sadly Tomago looks like a foregone conclusion.

      How many jobs are on the line here: unfortunately No politician’s jobs are at stake.

      KK

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    pat

    behind paywall:

    Blackout fears delay South Australian electricity grid maintenance
    The Adelaide Advertiser – 12 Jun. 2018
    FEARS of a widespread blackout in South Australia have delayed maintenance work on a major transmission line, in a sign that the state’s …

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    pat

    13 Jun: 2GB: Ross Greenwood Money News: ‘Clear case’ for coal-fired power stations as state dodges energy crisis
    An energy expert says there’s a “clear case” for coal-fired power stations after New South Wales dodged a power crisis…
    Japan is set to build 45 new coal-fired power stations using coal, mostly imported from Australia.
    So why aren’t we doing the same?
    “It just beggars belief,” says Ross Greenwood.

    COAL21 CEO and Executive Director of Coal at the Minerals Council of Australia Greg Evans tells Ross there’s a “clear case” for new coal-fired power stations.
    “As older power stations are phased out, we should certainly look at the possibility of replacing those with modern, high-efficiency, low-emission power stations as is happening throughout Asia.
    “The case is pretty clear that we need affordable, reliable power.”

    He tells Ross he’s been approached by international companies to build the power stations, but the possibility of changes to policy in the future is a hindrance.
    “One of the uncertainties is regarding future government policy”

    ***Listen to the full interview below
    https://www.2gb.com/clear-case-for-coal-fired-power-stations-as-state-dodges-energy-crisis/

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    pat

    Trump Derangement Syndrome in Australia is truly destroying what’s left of the MSM’s credibility:

    13 Jun: ABC: Donald Trump factor could hurt North American bid to host the 2026 World Cup
    by Liam Butterworth
    What has Trump got to do with football?…
    Mr Trump’s domestic policies could also come into play, and form part of the “medium risk” designation given by FIFA to the United 2026 bid — even though the US President should be out of office…
    You also can’t forget the impact of January’s “s***hole” countries comment, which was in reference to countries in Africa and Central America.
    Mr Trump’s lack of popularity around the world has seen US Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro come out and ask football federations to forget about politics when making their choice…

    NewsCorp’s Jai Bednall chooses virulently anti-Trump ESPN for this one:

    1 March: news.com.au: Anti-Trump sentiment could cost US chance at World Cup
    ANTI-Trump sentiment has loosened America’s grip on hosting the next World Cup — as an underdog contender emerges.
    by Jai Bednall
    ESPN.com reports the United States-led 2026 bid is in jeopardy, in some part due to president Donald Trump’s growing unpopularity in Arab and poorer countries.
    “Support for the United States-led bid to host the 2026 World Cup is more divided than most predicted,” ESPN.com senior writer Sam Borden wrote. “With some estimates of voting totals having Morocco not just threatening the North American bid but actually beating it, multiple high-ranking football executives within FIFA and the continental confederations told ESPN this week.”…
    But what had been viewed as a very easy choice has become more interesting following Donald Trump’s election as president.
    His disparaging remarks about poorer nations and contentious foreign-policy moves have diminished America’s popularity in many countries, perhaps giving Morocco a chance to profit from anti-Trump sentiment…

    uhoh…

    13 Jun: BBC: World Cup 2026: Canada, US & Mexico joint bid wins right to host tournament
    The 2026 World Cup will be held in the United States, Canada and Mexico after their joint bid beat Morocco’s proposal to host it.
    The ‘United 2026’ bid was selected by Fifa member nations, winning 134 votes compared to 65 for Morocco.
    The 2026 tournament will be the biggest World Cup ever held – with 48 teams playing 80 matches over 34 days…

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    • #
      Hanrahan

      Do these people ever get sick of being wrong??

      For the first time in 32 years, the men’s World Cup is coming back to North America.

      FIFA’s 200-plus member associations gathered in Moscow on Wednesday and voted to award 2026 World Cup hosting rights to the United States, Canada and Mexico.

      From Drudge.

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    pat

    WUWT has had a couple of threads on this “debate”.

    now there’s the MSM coverage!

    12 Jun: The State Journal West Virginia: Scientists debate human involvement in climate change during panel
    by Jake Jarvis
    CHARLESTON — Four of the top voices in climate change science came to West Virginia Tuesday night for a special panel discussion to probe how much humans are to blame for global warming.
    The law firm of Spilman, Thomas and Battle hosted the panel, called “Conversations on Climate Change,” at the University of Charleston.

    ***The event began with a warning about what it was not meant to do: It was not meant to debate the existence of climate change. That, the emcee said, is irrefutable. The four speakers were to present their own case for how much, if any, human activity and carbon dioxide have to do with climate change.

    The panel played host to a who’s who of climate change discussion. It featured two academics from Pennsylvania State University, Michael Mann and David Titley, both of whom stressed that carbon dioxide is causing the earth’s climate to change.
    The panel also included Patrick Moore, a former Greenpeace Canada president who has since become a vocal critic of climate scientists, and Judith Curry, a former Georgia Institute of Technology academic who resigned because of “academic political pressures” for her skepticism of popular climate change science.

    “These thousand-year floods that you’re hearing about — of course West Virginia was one of those states over the past few years that experienced a flood that shouldn’t happen more than once in a thousand years,” Mann said. “And yet, they’re happening more frequently, and that’s because climate change is impacting these extreme weather events in ways that actually we didn’t understand a few years ago.”
    In June 2016, at least two dozen people died in major West Virginia flooding, after which the federal government declared 12 counties to be a disaster zone.

    Besides those weather events, Mann said people should look to glaciers and ice sheets. He said there’s a tipping point at which, if an ice sheet gets warm enough, there’s nothing that will be able to prevent it from cracking off and melting into the ocean.
    Titley, a retired admiral in the U.S. Navy, said climate change poses a huge threat to the country’s national security. If the ocean levels rise too much, large coastal cities will become uninhabitable and will force mass migrations of millions of people, he said.
    Both Mann and Titley stressed a point about climate change predictions: Most of the early predictions were too conservative about how quickly the earth would warm, and new predictions should be taken seriously.

    For Judith Curry, one of the two climate science skeptics on the panel, the idea that an increase in carbon automatically increases the earth’s temperature is too simplistic. She said earth has many complex systems and there could be other factors playing into climate change that we don’t yet understand.
    “The madhouse that concerns me is the one that has been created by some climate scientists,” Curry said. “The madhouse is characterized by rampant overconfidence in an overly simplistic view of climate change, enforcement of a politically motivated and manufactured consensus, attempts to stifle scientific and policy debates, activism and advocacy for their preferred policies, self-promotion … and public attacks on scientists who don’t support the consensus.”

    Moore, the former Greenpeace official, attributed climate change to natural changes in the earth and suggested that humans should even be happy there’s more carbon dioxide in the air because it helps plants grow.
    Moore displayed several graphs during his part of the presentation, but Mann said many of them were old ones that used data and methods that would not be acceptable in scientific publications today.
    https://www.wvnews.com/news/wvnews/scientists-debate-human-involvement-in-climate-change-during-panel/article_5edde257-c0ad-5125-a00a-3b5875ea6a3f.html

    ***Metro News was one of the event’s partners. no academic titles for Judith Curry, nothing on Moore…or Titley! great journalism…not:

    13 Jun: WV Metro News: Alex Thomas: Climate change discussed at Charleston forum
    Four experts in the environmental field participated in a forum Tuesday regarding mankind’s impact on the Earth’s climate and if mankind has impacted the temperature increase observed around the world…

    ***MetroNews was one of the event’s partners.

    Michael Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University, said it is important to talk about climate change as well as the related scientific research.
    “Climate change is real. It’s caused by scientific activity, the burning of fossil fuels, it’s already presenting some real challenges to us,” he said. “There’s a worthy debate over what we do and how we solve this problem, and I hope we can have that conversation.”

    All four panelists agreed with the existence of climate change, but the disagreement was in regards to if and how human activity has affected temperatures and other weather patterns.

    Judith Curry, president and co-founder of the Climate Forecast Applications Network, said she believes climate change is a natural occurrence that cannot be altered by human activity. She added the current view scientists have regarding climate change does not consider numerous factors.
    “You find what you shine a light on,” she said. “In other words, we’ve only been looking at one part of the element.”

    Mann said climate change is something that will affect weather patterns, noting the 2017 hurricane season and the June 2016 floods in West Virginia as examples.
    “It’s a reminder that climate change poses risks that are no longer subtle,” he said. “We are seeing impacts of climate change in our daily lives. It’s posing risks to us in our daily lives, and the cost of inaction, the cost of not doing something about it is going to be much greater than the cost of action.”
    Twenty-three people died in the 2016 floods in the Mountain State
    http://wvmetronews.com/2018/06/13/climate-change-debated-at-charleston-forum/

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      Kinky Keith

      These publicity hounds are NOT scientists.

      There is no link between atmospheric CO2 levels and the collective guilt being dumped on us.

      Most people would be shocked to learn that every time they pop a can of soft drink or unscrew a top they are liberating huge quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere.

      Should we “Stop Karbonated Beverages Now” or just begin to think and act sensibly?

      KK

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    pat

    the Grantham mask is well and truly removed. desperation must have set in:

    13 Jun: CNBC: Capitalism is killing the planet and needs to change, says investor Jeremy Grantham
    •”Capitalism and mainstream economics simply cannot deal with these problems. Mainstream economics largely ignore [them],” Grantham says.
    •”We deforest the land, we degrade our soils, we pollute and overuse our water and we treat air like an open sewer, and we do it all off the balance sheet,” he adds.
    by Fred Imber

    Jeremy Grantham, the longtime investor famous for calling the last two major bubbles in the market, is urging capitalists and “mainstream economists” to recognize the looming threat of climate change.
    “Capitalism and mainstream economics simply cannot deal with these problems. Mainstream economics largely ignore [them],” Grantham, who co-founded GMO in 1977, said Tuesday in an impassioned speech at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago. “We deforest the land, we degrade our soils, we pollute and overuse our water and we treat air like an open sewer, and we do it all off the balance sheet.”…
    “Anything that happens to a corporation over 25 years out doesn’t exist for them, therefore, as I like to say, grandchildren have no value” to them, he said…

    Grantham has been outspoken about his concerns over climate change for years. In 1997, he started the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, which gives money to entities that look to protect the environment. Grantham’s company also launched the GMO Climate Change fund last year, which invests in wind and solar companies.
    Throughout his presentation, Grantham cited a slew of data showing how climate change is impacting soil, grains, temperature as well as general human health.
    ***Those numbers, coupled with Grantham’s speech delivery, scared a lot of people in attendance at the conference.

    Grantham also pointed out that many of the problems with how capitalists deal with climate change stem from the very nature of corporations. “A corporation’s responsibility is to maximize profit, not to spend money and figure out how to save the planet,” he said.
    But Grantham added: “We’re racing to protect much more than our portfolios. … We’re racing to protect our grandchildren and our species, so get to it.”
    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/13/gmos-grantham-capitalists-need-to-wake-up-to-climate-change-reality.html

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    Hanrahan

    From the Daily Mail:

    More than half of Millennials expect to be millionaires someday, according to a new study
    New study finds that 53% of Millennials believe they will one day be millionaires
    Despite that, 25% say they’ll never marry and 30% plan on never having children
    Nearly 1-in-5 report that they they still rely on their parents for financial support
    They expect to retire at 56, though won’t start saving for retirement until age 36

    Tell ’em their dreamin.

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      I want my “gap” year: they only gave me 3 weeks.

      And if you listen to Auntie ABC she will tell you how easy we had everything.

      What we did have, thankfully, was the right to contribute and work and develop.

      That all changed in the mid seventies when politicians discovered that you could buy votes with taxpayer’s money and manipulate voters using the politics of envy and greed.

      Millennials have a right to feel hard done by when successive governments have failed to build a society that gives everyone the opportunity to find meaningful stable work and feel comfortable raising a family.

      KK

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      Forgot one the main points.

      Most millennials will become millionaires because the only way governments can deal with their huge debts is to try and Inflate it away.

      A litre of petrol Will be $500.

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Thirty or more years ago I started saying Australia will spend s lifetime paying the penalty for the way it had been treating its young people

      Since then it has got worse.

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  • #
    Hanrahan

    Qld’s budget which came down last week showed it was dependent on coal royalties has just pumped $2.1 mill into a bioenergy project at Pentland, west of Charlie’s Trousers. Seems they are starting a new discrete cane farming district to feed an integrated ethanol plant. Last I read there is little or no “green” benefit in ethanol from food crops.

    It should be mandated that all their farm machinery be run on ethanol, no cheating by using tax free diesel now.

    A FLEDGLING and long-hoped for bioenergy project could be given the boost it needs by this week’s State Budget.

    Renewable Developments Australia is behind the Pentland Bioenergy Project southwest of Charters Towers.

    In Tuesday’s budget, the State Government announced $2.1 million had been allocated to help build the biorefinery.

    A fully integrated sugarcane farming, processing and ethanol distillation facility is part of the proposed development.

    For other similar ethanol plants, the sugar cane comes from third-party producers.

    However, it would be farmed on site if this proposal gets off the ground.

    The company says 190 million litres of high grade bioethanol would come from first generation processing.

    I just did a search and that would be one day’s oil consumption for Australia.

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    • #
      Ted O'Brien.

      Was through Pentland once. Nice country, but, to grow sugar, what will they use for water?

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    pat

    behind paywall.

    (Qld LNP leader) Deb Frecklington gives nod to green energy in Queensland
    The Australian-8 hours ago
    “An LNP government would mandate government-owned energy companies to support renewable energy generation,” Ms Frecklington will tell parliament in her first budget reply speech…

    4 Jun: Deb Frecklington MP: Deb’s plan to reduce electricity prices
    The Liberal National Party today unveiled key planks of its plan to bring down electricity prices in Queensland and support growth in the renewable energy sector.
    LNP Leader Deb Frecklington said Queenslanders deserved affordable and reliable energy to their homes and businesses.
    “They’re not getting that under the Palaszczuk Government because Labor has been using electricity as a secret tax and set state-based renewable energy targets that push up everyone’s bills,” Ms Frecklington said…

    Ms Frecklington said the LNP would boost competition in the energy sector and support green energy by:
    •restructuring government-owned power generators from two to three entities which will drive down prices through more competition, and;
    •mandating investment by our government-owned energy companies in renewable energy generation to pair dispatchable and intermittent supply in the same portfolio…

    Ms Frecklington said an LNP government would also mandate investment by our government-owned energy companies in renewable energy generation…
    “Under Labor, Queenslanders pay more for green schemes than any other state, but have the lowest amount of renewable energy.
    “The LNP would work with the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) on the right mix of electricity generation to ensure that power is affordable and reliable through a national approach…
    “We will support additional jobs and investment in Queensland’s renewable energy industry and reduce electricity prices.”…
    https://debfrecklington.com.au/news/v/3602/debs-plan-to-reduce-electricity-prices

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    pat

    2 May: QueenslandCountryLife: New Acland mine expansion back on track
    by MARK PHELPS
    A $900 million expansion of the New Acland coal mine near Oakey is back on track after the Supreme Court of Queensland overturned a previous ruling by the Land Court…
    Mine owner New Hope Corporation welcomed the judgment on New Acland Coal Mine’s Stage Three Project in a statement to the ASX.
    “We remain committed to securing approval for this project and in doing so being able to provide ongoing employment for the circa 700 jobs reliant on the project,” New Hope said…

    ***LNP leader Deb Frecklington welcomed the decision saying there were hundreds of jobs and several communities depending on the continuation of New Hope’s coal mining operation.
    “The Palaszczuk government should have respected the current legal process and not refused the application to amend the environmental authority for the New Acland stage 3 project,” Ms Frecklington said…
    https://www.queenslandcountrylife.com.au/story/5377180/new-acland-expansion-back-on-track/

    13 Jun: ToowoombaChronicle: Chinese bid for Darling Downs solar farm owners
    by Stuart Condie, AAP
    AN INFRASTRUCTURE giant, which owns the Kogan Solar Farm on the Darling Downs near Dalby, as well as another proposed solar farm nearby, could potentially be taken over by a Chinese consortium.
    Shares in APA Group soared following a $13 billion takeover proposal from a Chinese consortium led by CK Infrastructure Holdings…

    APA’s assets include gas pipelines and storage, wind farms and the Darling Downs solar farm…
    CK Infrastructure Holdings already owns Australian assets including Australian Gas Networks, Duet Group, and a 51 per cent stake in SA Power Networks…
    https://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/chinese-bid-darling-downs-solar-farm-owners/3440804/

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    • #
      Hanrahan

      What is intergenerational equity? I have no idea but apparently it is important enough to block a coal mine.

      20

      • #
        Kinky Keith

        One aspect of it might be to say that this current generation, whatever that is, has been using up all the resources.
        They should stop being so greedy and leave some for the next generation.

        Stuff like that ,, we wuz robbed by the previous generation.

        Where’s our compensation.

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        • #
          Hanrahan

          But coal will be a stranded asset for the next generation. It will have no value once wind, solar and batteries provide us with such cheap power that it won’t be metered.

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          • #
            Ted O'Brien.

            “Won’t be metered”. Watch out for that!

            Today’s Daily Telegraph front page tells us NSW schools are to get air conditioning. This surprises me, because while it is a very long time since I was at school, I thought that in 2018 most schools would already have it.

            I hadn’t time to read the story, but wonder if somebody is running a trick. Perhaps they intend to tell us that because school is in when the sun is out, this will relieve the problem of fluctuating supply, that being the new topic du jour..

            The next trick would be to bill that power out at the marginal cost. They must not be allowed to do that. The people who pay the subsidies must be allowed to share the lower cost power. That is if there is any.

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            • #
              Hanrahan

              Air conditioning wasn’t invented when I was at school, 🙁 and all those years were in the tropics. I don’t recall being heat stressed, I know we played rounders or whatever after school regardless of season. Skinny kids, as most of us were, are tolerant to heat. The worst was Monday morning when we were trying not to let others know that we were sunburnt lest they slap us on the back.

              So much for slip, slap, slop the only two bits of skin I’ve had cut out were benign.

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          • #
            Kinky Keith

            🙂

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  • #
    pat

    Frecklington’s hypocrisy is matched by Labor’s:

    8 Jun: Guardian: Coal comfort: Queensland budget to benefit from surging mining royalties
    Windfall of $1bn shows state remains reliant on resources even amid renewables push
    by Ben Smee
    The windfall will help the Palaszczuk Labor government pay for infrastructure spending and handouts in next week’s budget, and will likely speed up the state’s projected return to surplus.
    But it will also bring into focus the extent to which the state remains reliant on royalties from mining – one of the “pillars” of the Queensland economy – while the government also pushes forward with a transition to renewable energy sources…

    ***At the same time it continues to offer new coal exploration licences – releasing six new areas to the market last month – and last year approved a royalties framework designed to actively encourage the development of new coal tenements in the Galilee and Surat basins.
    The state treasurer, Jackie Trad, told Guardian Australia the resources industry was diverse and would continue to play an important role in the Queensland economy…

    The Griffith University economist Liam Wagner said coal contributed about 90% of the state’s total resource royalties.
    “There’s almost been a doubling of price since the lows of December 2015,” Wagner said. “I would say that an extra billion [dollars on top of budget forecasts] is highly likely.”…

    The Queensland Resources Council said it wanted “no surprises” in the budget. The QRC chief executive, Ian Macfarlane, said additional coal royalty revenue “would provide additional funding to reinvest in services and infrastructure for Queenslanders”.

    Macfarlane said plans to develop the north-west minerals province would help to drive an advanced manufacturing boom by opening up deposits including copper, which he says will be needed in increased volumes to build electric cars…
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/08/coal-comfort-queensland-budget-to-benefit-from-surging-mining-royalties

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    • #
      Hanrahan

      ***At the same time it continues to offer new coal exploration licences – releasing six new areas to the market last month – and last year approved a royalties framework designed to actively encourage the development of new coal tenements in the Galilee and Surat basins.

      Oh for a business brain in our government. With $3.0 + bill coming from coal royalties why aren’t they keen to reinvest some of that in the industry laying the golden egg by building the rail line from the mines to the ports? Haulin’ coal in a monopoly is good business [QRNational was raking it in before labor sold it] The miners don’t want to do this and if it’s publicly owned all miners can have access to it.

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    pat

    12 Jun: Guardian: Queensland’s plan for clean energy company stalls as coal cash surges
    Moves to set up state-owned CleanCo were to start in first half of 2018 but have been delayed
    by Ben Smee
    Recommendations to establish CleanCo and restructure the state’s existing generators were due in the first half of 2018. State budget papers reveal that timeline has been stretched…
    As reported last week by Guardian Australia, the state has benefited from a coal royalties windfall, caused mainly by a record surge in international coal prices.
    The state’s coalmines earned the government an estimated $3.8bn in royalties this year, well above forecasts, and are predicted to reach $3.5bn in 2018-19…

    As the treasurer, Jackie Trad, prepared to deliver her first budget, more than 1,000 members of the Electrical Trades Union marched on parliament, protesting against the use of backpacker labour, rather than local trades people, ***on renewable energy construction projects.

    The union says too few of those jobs are going to qualified locals. .
    “We have all levels of government promising a jobs bonanza for local communities, yet what we are seeing is jobs, jobs, jobs for unlicensed overseas backpackers bussed in by labour hire companies to work on these projects,” the Queensland ETU secretary, Peter Ong, said recently.
    https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jun/12/queenslands-plan-clean-energy-company-stall-coal-cash-surges

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    • #
      Hanrahan

      more than 1,000 members of the Electrical Trades Union marched on parliament, protesting against the use of backpacker labour, rather than local trades people, ***on renewable energy construction projects.

      My son, an electrician, got a job at Korea Zinc where they installed 1 million solar cells. His job was literally plugging the tail lead of each cell into the fixed wiring. It was deemed to be a job to be done by qualified tradesmen only.

      The unions may hate backpackers but generally they are good for the country and spend everything they earn while here. Regional towns welcome them.

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      • #
        toorightmate

        Employers don’t want bludgers and the ETU has no shortage of bludgers.

        20

      • #
        Kinky Keith

        A decade or two back there was a news item about two blokes shooting at each other in the outer suburbs.

        They both wanted to be the boss of the same union.

        Lots of money at stake there.

        10

  • #
    Hanrahan

    This is a bit OT for Jo’s forum but Tommy Robertson, an outspoken defender of children’s rights V moz grooming gangs, who was recently jailed for filming outside a court where such people were being tried, has been moved into a max security prison. Don’t be confused, max security does not refer to him. He is now surrounded by Islamists and there is a fatwa against him. This is not the first time prison authorities have thrown him to the religious wolves. The first time, a friendly screw whispered that he should attack the next one that entered his cell. Tommy ended up in solitary instead of a wing where chances of survival were slim.

    Apart from a rogue Norwegian seaman who snuck in, I am British/Irish and I now wish to disavow any association with the Brits. I guess that makes me Irish. 🙂

    If Trump is taken down, the west is lost.

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    • #
      Hanrahan

      This is from Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars.com, but it is an honest report:

      Fears for the safety of Tommy Robinson are mounting after it was revealed that he has been moved to a heavily Muslim-populated prison in the United Kingdom and has already been on the receiving end of death threats.
      Robinson was jailed last month for a “breach of the peace” while live streaming a trial involving a Muslim rape gang outside Leeds Crown Court.
      He was initially held in a low security prison with a low Muslim population.
      However, today it was revealed by Robinson’s manager Caolan Robertson that the activist has now been moved to another prison that has a large Muslim prison population.

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  • #
    Rod McLaughlin

    This is dynamite, if it’s true:

    http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/grenfell-and-the-problem-of-carbon-targets/21500#.WyIrLVMvxmA

    It claims that one of the causes of the Grenfell Tower tragedy was ‘carbon targets’.

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  • #
    Doc

    China cutting back on solar plant construction ‘to cheapen the energy price’.
    Trump cutting back on all handicaps brought in under the name of AGW.
    The EU not meeting the Paris Accords targets.

    Are our politicians, educated through the Australian education system most likely, really so illiterate that they can’t read or so ideologically blinded they don’t understand the rest of the world is crab walking away from the huge damage being done to their economies through the destruction of their energy systems by their Global Warming obsession? Worse for us, they are doing so before the damage to their economies becomes terminal, unlike us.

    Australia, temporarily excluding WA (which has the same fatal ambitions)has almost irreparably destroyed its power system by plant closures, dynamiting and poisoning the business model for any investor with funds to want to build a coal fired plant. Malcolm’s artificial waterfall cannot be cheap because the customers no doubt will cop the bill for the elevating of the water on top of the power used bill. Saying it will be done by xs wind and solar power merely means it will, by definition, be hugely more expensive.

    The day the Liberals were consumed by their progressives, ‘wets’, was the day the major users of energy, heavy industry, cement manufacture, smelting and aluminium plants were euthanased and that is the future for householders. There appears no chance (to not lose ‘face’)of enlightenment happening in our Parliament in the foreseeable future, to rescue us.

    10