Weekend Unthreaded

I’m travelling this long weekend (again). Things may be slower here….

My email replies will definitely be delayed.

8.3 out of 10 based on 17 ratings

162 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

  • #
    Richard Ilfeld

    Alexander Downer looks to have been a part and parcel of creating the fantasy that the
    Russians colluded with Trump to steal the election. In his past, If I understand he sketchy reporting,
    he also managed to channel some 25MillionUS from the Australian government to the Clinton Global Initiative,
    supposedly to do good in the world. It was also a leaked conversation with the Aus PM that raised immigration
    hackles early in the Trump Campaign. Does coordination with the underbelly of the US government extend to climate?
    Is the international cabal trying to push us back to the 18th century in the guise of anticipating the 22nd more
    connected that just a bunch of intellectual fellow travelers, or is there active coordination? Does any thinking person
    believe truly that it is concern for climate that motivates the need these folks have to take control? For centuries the crowned heads of europe manipulated the world based on little more than family feuds. The game was the game of Thrones. I guess it’s still on. Who will end up running Australia, or do they already? Heh Heh. This is more fun, and more possible, than tinfoil hats.

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    • #
      PeterS

      Who will end up running Australia? I could put forward a couple or so realistic possibilities but one thing is for sure – it won’t be Australians.

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    • #
      el gordo

      There is no organised conspiracy of deep state complexity, Downer is an innocent who played into the hands of the Democrats.

      Donald’s biggest mistake after becoming President was his failure to announce that ‘carbon dioxide doesn’t cause global warming and as a consequence ….’

      If he had uttered those few words and backed them up with science (no precautionary principle) then the world would now be a different place.

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      • #
        PeterS

        Saying CO2 doesn’t cause global warming is just as a fallacious scientific statement as saying it does. We simply do not know. It can be argues very sensibly without the hysteria that CO2 probably does have some impact on climate change but we don’t know how much and in which direction. People like Trump and Bernardi are taking the sensible option not to say such things and focus on the real issues, like withdrawing from the Paris Accord, something I’ve never heard others say here, including Abbott. Stick to what we do know. The Paris Accord is nothing more than a tax grab and a vehicle that can be used to subjugate nations.

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        • #

          PeterS 40 years of monthly temperature vs CO2 concentration data clearly shows that CO2 has not caused global warming. Conversely the empirical data does show that the temperature level sets the rate of change of CO2 concentration. Furthermore the temperature is controlled by the motion of the planets and the Moon with respect to the Sun and the Earth. For detailed analysis see: https://www.climateauditor.com

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          • #
            PeterS

            You can’t say CO2 has absolutely no effect on climate change, be it warming or cooling. Sure it is indeterminate using our present knowledge and understanding and given the evidence it’s probably very small but saying CO2 or for that matter any gas has no effect no matter how small is unscientific.

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            • #
              Ian

              PeterS No point in pursuing your argument as those reading it either will not or cannot understand what you write. For example one commenter stated “Furthermore the temperature is controlled by the motion of the planets and the Moon with respect to the Sun and the Earth. ” They are not necessarily the only factors. That rises in temperature precede rises in CO2 is well known. However what is less well known is that this happens in the Southern hemisphere but in the Norther hemisphere where increases in CO2 precede temperature rises (Shakun et al Nature 484 49-54 April5 2012)

              The material below is from Skeptical Science (https://skepticalscience.com/skakun-co2-temp-lag.html)

              A popular myth amongst climate ‘skeptics’ is that historically atmospheric CO2 levels have risen after temperature increases began, and therefore it’s actually temperature increases that cause CO2 increases, and not vice-versa as basic climate science and physics would have us believe. To this point, the standard response to this myth has been that initial temperature increases have historically been caused by the Earth’s orbital (Milankovitch) cycles, which in turn warm the oceans, causing them to release CO2, which in turn amplify the global warming. Thus while the initial warming hasn’t historically been caused by CO2, CO2 has amplified the warming for thousands of subsequent years, and thus is still the principal control knob governing Earth’s temperature.

              An intriguing new paper by Shakun et al. (2012) takes a more in-depth look at this particular myth. Many headlines have declared that Shakun et al. have demonstrated that CO2 has historically led (rather than lagged) global warming – the reality is a little more nuanced than that, but that is the basic take-home message. In Figure 1, the red line (Antarctic temperature) and yellow dots (atmospheric CO2) illustrate our previous unerstanding, while the blue line (global temperature) is the nuance added by Shakun et al.

              What did Shakun et al. Do?
              The key to this myth is that it’s based on Antarctic ice core records, which are not necessarily an accurate representation of global temperatures. In recent years there have been many studies collecting data from ice cores in Greenland, sediments drilled from the ocean floor and from continental lakes, and so forth. Most of these proxies don’t extend as far back in time as the Antarctic ice cores, but many do extend back to the last glacial-interglacial transition which began approximately 18,000 years ago, as Figure 1 shows.

              By comparing the atmospheric CO2 increase (note that since CO2 is well-mixed in the atmosphere, a single ice core record can be used as an accurate representation for CO2 – Shakun et al. used the Antarctic EPICA Dome C ice core for CO2 data) to these many different temperature records, Shakun et al. are able to discern whether the CO2 increase led or lagged temperature changes in various different geographic locations, and for the planet as a whole.

              Does CO2 Lag or Lead?
              This is where it really gets interesting, because the answer is yes – CO2 lags and leads. In the Southern Hemisphere, Shakun et al. found that the temperature rise happened first, whereas in the Northern Hemisphere, the CO2 increase was first (Figures 3 and 4).

              What’s Going On?
              What appears to have happened, based on global climate model simulations run by Shakun et al., is not all that different from our previous explanation of the supposed CO2 lag – just a bit more nuanced.

              As we already knew, the Earth’s orbital cycles trigger the initial warming (starting approximately 19,000 years ago), which is first reflected at the highest latitudes

              This Arctic warming melted large quantities of ice, causing fresh water to flood into the oceans

              This influx of fresh water then disrupted the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), in turn causing a seesawing of heat between the hemispheres. The Southern Hemisphere and its oceans warmed first, starting about 18,000 years ago.

              The warming Southern Ocean then released CO2 into the atmosphere starting around 17,500 years ago, which in turn caused the entire planet to warm via the increased greenhouse effect.

              In short, the initial warming was indeed triggered by the Milankovitch cycles, and that small amount of orbital cycle-caused warming eventually triggered the CO2 release, which caused most of the glacial-interglacial warming. So while CO2 did lag behind a small initial temperature change (which mostly occurred in the Southern Hemisphere), it led and was the primary driver behind most of the glacial-interglacial warming.

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              • #
                Ted O'Brien.

                Ian. The Earth is a planet, you know!

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              • #
                el gordo

                Ian you are not credible, going back 100,000 years its quite apparent that CO2 always lags temperatures.

                But lets not quibble over trifles, do you think the Little Ice Age was a Bond Event?

                http://www.euanmearns.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Satellite_UK_241210_mid.jpg

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              • #
                Ian

                el gordo
                “Ian you are not credible, going back 100,000 years its quite apparent that CO2 always lags temperatures.

                But lets not quibble over trifles, do you think the Little Ice Age was a Bond Event?”

                Couple of points.

                .First. My credibility or lack it isn’t relevant as I didn’t write or do the research on the material in my original comment which it is based. So as they say, don’t shoot the messenger. However I do give the researchers explanation of why of why CO2 both lags and leads temperature

                Second. With regard to the Little Ice Age I don’t know what a Bond Event is. However the thinking is the LIA was caused by massive volcanic eruptions.

                Have you been to the Chateau at Duras in the Lot-et Garonne in France? On the walls of the kitchen are written contemporaneous observations of the weather in the 1600s. These observations cover several decades and they certainly show the weather was entirely in keeping with a LIA

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              • #
                el gordo

                You put up Skeptical Science and immediately lost credibility because it favours the Klimatariat.

                Anyway, getting to the chase, its important for humanity to work out if the LIA was a Bond Event because if it wasn’t then its due now.

                Large volcanic eruptions clearly have an impact over a couple of years, but once the dust settles its back to normal. So we are looking for some other mechanism to drive temperatures down.

                The Medieval Warm Period (1000-1200 AD) was a time of material progress in Europe, but something happened in the late 13th century which set the world on a cool run for roughly 500 years.

                I would appreciate your input because a Bond Event maybe imminent.

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            • #

              Some extra CO2 in the brew…but this is just another major interglacial, like the Eemian and Holsteinian before it. And all the stronger interglacials of the Quaternery. This one a bit cooler at peak than the previous two, maybe. No surprises here.

              The action starts when there’s a Bond Event, or a long-term decline from interglacial highs. Won’t be too long now, but we might squeeze another thousand years of warmth out of our Holocene. We’ll limp along somehow.

              That’s life in a two million year ice age!

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        • #
          el gordo

          Peter I beg to differ, climate change mass delusion is the most important issue of our time.

          As Bevan illustrates, CO2 had nothing to do with the slight warming of late last century and Cory should say that.

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          • #
            PeterS

            Where did I say I refuted that understanding? I agree with you. I think you better re-read my posts yet again. Also read my post #32.1 below. I think we are sort of talk at cross purposes.

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        • #
          Pauly

          PeterS,
          There is a difference between acknowledging that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the effect that specific gas has on the temperature of the atmosphere over the wide range of conditions found on this planet, and any significant influence on climate.

          The emissivity of CO2 as a gas was determined decades ago by Hoyt, and nothing new has been added by climate science. However, most climate scientists focus on correlation of CO2 to temperature. I’ve only seen one paper focus specifically on causality:
          https://file.scirp.org/pdf/IJG20100300002_69193660.pdf

          The paper at the above link makes a conclusive statement about the direction of causality: temperature increases always precede CO2 increases across all time intervals considered. Jo has written previously of the well known lag between temperature changes and CO2 changes in the ice core records. The “best” rebuttal I’ve seen was one paper that only looked at specific slices of the ice core records (cherry picked?) that suggested there was minimal lag over the intervals studied. I’ve yet to see any IPCC papers conclusively show causality goes the other way. That pretty much seals the deal for me.

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          • #
            el gordo

            Excellent paper.

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          • #
            PeterS

            That’s missing my point. As I said above you can’t say any gas let alone CO2 has no effect on temperature be it warming or cooling. To say it has no effect no matter how small is unscientific.

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            • #
              el gordo

              Three strong El Nino over the past two decades has produced a hiatus or plateau in world temperatures and my client CO2 has no case to answer.

              http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_May_2018_v6.jpg

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              • #
                PeterS

                Again you miss my point. Re-read my earlier posts.

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              • #
                el gordo

                ‘Saying CO2 doesn’t cause global warming is just as a fallacious scientific statement as saying it does. We simply do not know.’

                CO2 is a harmless trace gas which is highly beneficial to life on earth, sadly it does not cause global warming.

                Without a discernible ‘positive feedback’ the lukewarmers lose.

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            • #
              Greg Cavanagh

              If a thing can’t be measured, it’s as good as non-existent. I don’t mind people trying to measure it, but so far it’s inconclusive.

              The known effect of CO2 is in a test tube environment. But the effect everyone talks about in the atmosphere is theoretical based on those test tube results. The actual temperature variation in the atmosphere due to CO2 has never been measured.

              The only gas in the atmosphere that we can measure the change in temperature, is water vapour. All others are hypothetical only.

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        • #
          Kinky Keith

          Peter,

          There is a reason that Will Janoschka repeats the same message over and over; it is the reality.

          Atmospheric temperatures are primarily a factor of Earth’s gravitational pull and the daily dose of solar energy.

          Human Origin CO2 is an irrelevant factor which has assumed the mantle of “Devil Gas” simply because no politician is game to counter the claim that it is a potent green house gas.

          Religions evolve in the presence of such beliefs.

          KK

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          • #
            el gordo

            Ah yes, faith and trust in the powers that be, the Klimatariat high priests.

            Just putting in a plug for the Blue Team and if there are no naysayers then its written in stone.

            Will Kininmouth, Salby, Peter Ridd, Marohasy, Evans and John Abbott.

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          • #
            PeterS

            Indeed the sun is the primary cause of global warming and cooling. I say again, saying that any gas has no impact on temperature is unscientific. It will always have at small impact, perhaps so small that it’s insignificant but to say it has zero impact is wrong. I believe the evidence supports the idea the major factor driving the variability in the global temperatures is linked to sun spot activity and hence is linked to the sun’s magnetic field reversals that happen at roughly 11 years apart.

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            • #
              Kinky Keith

              Peter, you seem to be misquoting me.
              I didn’t say it has no effect and the scientific reality is that to say that CO2 “has a small impact” is misleading.

              IF the claim that the Earth’s atmospheric temperature was going to rise by 1.5 C degrees over the next 50 years, then, considering all greenhouse gases, human origin CO2 would be responsible for 0.0018 C degrees of that.

              That’s the science.

              To make an issue over human origin CO2 which is indisputably 0.12% of the total effect, and ignore all other factors, is bad science.

              The reality is that world temperature is more likely to continue the recent trend down, but assuming that the 1.5 C is going to occur you have to ask the question; why are we spending trillions of borrowed dollars to hold temperature rise back by 0.0018 C.

              It’s nuts.

              KK

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              • #
                Kinky Keith

                p.s.

                Mary F. brought this to our attention back in 2011.

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              • #
                Kinky Keith

                For those who didn’t see the original posts in 2011, the IF points to the proviso that the comment was made while assuming that the greenhouse gas mechanism is the only mechanism available to disperse energy back to space:
                we all know it isn’t, don’t we.

                Think heat transfer by contact/collision which would still enable movement towards equilibrium.

                Essentially you could replace CO2 with any other gas and get the same result.

                And No!

                I don’t mean that rise of 1.5C.

                KK

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            • #
              el gordo

              …. ‘perhaps so small that it’s insignificant’ …

              A lukewarm response, you should spend more time looking for negative feedbacks.

              ‘…the sun’s magnetic field reversals that happen at roughly 11 years apart.’

              Good point and its worth keeping in mind that Jupiter, Venus, Earth and our yellow star are in alignment every 11 years. Correlation doesn’t prove causation, but it does seem like an amazing coincidence.

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      • #
        Russell

        el gordo, ”There is no organised conspiracy of deep state complexity” John F Kennedy and others prior to him warned about a secret government. If you look at the influence the likes of the CFR and Trilaterals have had in American governments for decades, it’s a bit naive believing government isn’t controlled by outside influences. Look into the 1954 Reece commission investigation into the foundations, John Perkins – confessions of an economic hitman, Carroll Quigley – Tragedy and Hope or the work of Antony Sutton. There have been many researches and whistleblowers that have exposed a shadow government, surely the AGW hoax shows government doesn’t answer to the people?

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  • #

    Has anyone done a drill down / follow up on South Australia’s Battery pack? Anyone shouting from the rooftops for the merits of the Grid saver, or is it a green field of crickets?

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    • #
      Robber

      The SA battery seems to deliver up to 30 MW (but never any more) for just a few minutes, up and down, during morning and evening peaks. I believe that it has become part of FCAS. AEMO operates eight separate markets for the delivery of Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS). FCAS are used by AEMO to maintain the frequency on the electrical system, at any point in time, close to fifty cycles per second as required by the NEM frequency standards.

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      • #
        Graeme#4

        Or is it just NEON using their 30 MW allocation to make money by buying and selling?

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      • #

        I guess the mission has been scaled down somewhat from the original glowing press reports… Or am I misreading the past?

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        • #
          Chad

          The headlined mission of “outage backup”. may have changed, but they are still spruiking tha apparent vital contribution to those FCAS services,….to the point where several other “big batteries” are planned in other locations.
          The original “Hornsdale Power Reserve “. battery contribution to SAs power grid can be monitored at the AEMO site. http://nemlog.com.au/gen/region/sa/ But you have to look hard to find it !
          Meanwhile, those tiny interventions are prooving quite financially beneficial to AEON, the owners, by charging it at low cost periods , and discharging when the prices peak.
          See here. http://nemlog.com.au/nem/unit/HPRG1/

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        • #
          yarpos

          You would have to say what version of the past you are referring to. Much has been said, much is alledged to have been said, much of it by nongs with no real understanding of what they are talking about.

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          • #
            Graeme#4

            Care to offer your own version of the “truth”, since you appear to claim, without being specific, that others don’t know what’s going on.

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  • #

    The very odd rules are that Australia can export coal (see dollar record 2017 figures) and uranium (3rd largest producer, 10% world production 2016) but is only allowed to burn its coal in ageing facilities subject to phase-out and is allowed no nuclear energy gen.

    So we are encouraged to be a massive global supplier of minerals nonetheless condemned for our own domestic use. From this I conclude that we have found a way to keep our atmosphere completely separate from the atmospheres of those who burn our coal. Either that, or folly, duncery and corruption are still rife in this naughty world.

    And I wonder if Alexander Downer could enlighten us on any US uranium making its way into Russian hands via a Clinton connection. As for Bill…judging by the fee, that must have been a hell of a speech he gave in Moscow around the time of the Uranium One deal. Great job, Bill. And Hill…Algeria will not forget you.

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    • #
      PeterS

      It’s a simple case of hypocrisy mixed in with greed. Both major parties are willing to sacrifice us to the altar of climate change but still export coal and Uranium in massive quantities for the royalties. At some stage though the two opposing directions will lead to a total collapse of our economy for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the gradual destruction of our base load power systems, which is an essential part of our very existence in so many ways. If left to continue there will be lots of catastrophes but none of them will be the fault of any climate change. For example, imagine if we get to the stage we rely on renewables so much that weather conditions in much of the nation causes a loss of power over vast regions. Apart from the inconvenience most of us will experience, industries will have to cease operations. Coal and Uranium exports will stop. If this repeats often enough the countries we export to will start looking elsewhere. There are many other examples of the knock on effect. Pretty much every other nation understand this and is the reason they are building more coal fired and/or nuclear power stations for a reliable power source. Forget the cost. It makes absolutely no difference if the power generated from solar and wind was as low as 1c/kWh. No one would care about the cost if the power generated was zero from renewables. They would gladly pay $1/kWh for coal sourced power just to survive.

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  • #
    jim2

    I sent Jo and email asking this question, but no response. Does anyone have a link to the funding page for the “cold climate” investment fund?

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  • #
    Mark M

    They might want to keep the matches & disposable plastic lighters away from the Jonova resident red-thumber …

    This is the biggest climate story right now:

    Dramatic surge in China carbon emissions signals climate danger

    With China’s CO2 pollution on the rise, is it time to panic?

    China’s carbon emissions growth has accelerated since the beginning of the year, leading to warnings that the country could be headed for its largest annual increase in climate pollution since 2011.

    Led by increased demand for coal, oil and gas, China’s CO2 emissions for the first three months of 2018 were 4% higher than they were for the same period in 2017, according to an Unearthed analysis of new government figures.

    Analysts have suggested the country’s carbon emissions could rise this year by 5% — the largest annual increase in seven years, back when the airpocalypse was at its peak.”

    https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/05/30/china-co2-carbon-climate-emissions-rise-in-2018/

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    • #
      Sceptical Sam

      Perhaps one of the red thumbers might be so good as to enlighten me as to why Mark M’s comment upsets them so much?

      I seriously don’t get it.

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      • #
        GD

        Perhaps one of the red thumbers might be so good as to enlighten me as to why Mark M’s comment upsets them so much?

        I reckon GetUp! sends out schoolkids every night to red thumb Jo’s blog. They’re cheaper per thumb than dole bludging Greenies.

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    • #
      ROM

      No worries!
      According to the Paris Accord, China as a “developing nation” [ with the second largest economy on the planet; sarc/ ] and therefore free under the Paris accord to name its own program and timetable to reduce green house gas emmissions aka “Carbon”, doesn’t have to do anything about its “Carbon” emmissions until its self nominated year of 2030.

      As a developing nation China is also in line to get some of that $100 billion dollars annual levy that the developed countries , Australia included , are supposed to cough up each year to help “ameliorate” the “dangerous rise” in the “Carbon” that is “going to” dangerously affect the undeveloped countries such as the Seychelles and Pakistan and Upper Volta and etc , a dangerous rise in greenhouse gases primarily “Carbon”that according to the Paris Accord, the developed countries are solely and totally responsible for.

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  • #
    Another Ian

    “Trump’s Paris Decision One Year Later: Looking Better and Better”

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/06/trumps-paris-decision-one-year-later-looking-better-and-better/

    Note the address change for WUWT

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    • #
      PeterS

      Ironic how the only party here in Australia with the same policy as Trump’s to withdraw from the Paris accord is the ACP yet that party doesn’t even get a mention in most polls and ends up being lumped with “other”. Interesting though see their odds at Sportsbet of forming government are better than those of the Greens and ON. Is this a ray of hope that the ACP is finally being taken seriously? I hope so. Looks though that Labor is going to be the winner by a landslide. Still it’s still early days.

      Next Election – Sworn in Government
      Labor 1.40
      Coalition 2.50
      Australian Conservatives 101.00
      Greens 201.00
      Pauline Hanson’s One Nation 251.00

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  • #
    Mark M

    97% Zombies of the failed Stratospheric Doomsday Global Warming – Update:

    1952: Zombies of the Stratosphere
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYUS0qN1NFU

    2011: Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists!
    Rising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report …
    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/aug/18/aliens-destroy-humanity-protect-civilisations

    2018, May 30: How Do Aliens Solve Climate Change?
    “The universe does many things. It makes galaxies, comets, black holes, neutron stars, and a whole mess more.
    We’ve lately discovered that it makes a great deal of planets, but it’s not clear whether it regularly makes energy-hungry civilizations, nor is it clear whether such civilizations inevitably drive their planets into climate change.”
    https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/05/how-do-aliens-solve-climate-change/561479/

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  • #
    TdeF

    Ah. Western Australia Day long weekend. Strangely not celebrated anywhere else in the world. In Melbourne we get Melbourne Cup day and the day before the Grand Final Eve day. You know it makes sense.

    We also get the Queen’s birthday on June 11th, even though it was never any Queen’s birthday and not celebrated in WA. You have to love random holidays, except for farmers who work every day. Canberra should have a Harvest Festival day on June 30th when the financial year ends.

    I am still boiling over the government proposal that electric cars cause no CO2 output at all. Perhaps we could cut out the middle man and just have cars with sails? We could be the world’s greatest Sailing nation. Or put out the For Sale sign.

    Then the novel idea that the real culprit in Global Warming are all the animals from termites to elephants who burn up cellulose and produce methane. Now the problem is not just the humans. It is all life on earth. Termites are killing the Great Barrier Reef. Apparently.

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    • #
      TdeF

      On yesteday’s electric cars do not produce CO2, the impact statement is here. Buried in this is the greatest insanity presented with tables and graphs and profound statements.

      PROPOSED VEHICLE EMISSIONS STANDARDS
      Aust Gov
      9th February 2017
      Regulation Impact Statement for consultation – Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development
      Table 2: Estimated CO2 benefits and costs of selected technologies (ABMARC 2016)
      ..
      a. Engine Technologies CO2 Reduction
      LPG engine 12%
      Petrol engine with Multi Point Fuel Injection 2.6%
      Petrol engine with Stoichiometric Direct Injection 10.0%
      ..
      Electric vehicle (300 km nominal range) 100.0%

      So you see, as far as the people writing this serious impact statement are concerned, electric cars run on sunlight and wind and batteries. No CO2 at all is produced. It’s all done with magic.

      This is the great attraction of a magic machine like a Tesla, it does zero harm to the environment according to your government and the experts paid big money to write these reports.

      In actual fact, if transmission losses are really 50%, the Tesla has 4x the level of emissions of a hybrid petrol/battery car and three times that of a basic petrol Toyota Corolla.

      Now can we please have a real Chief Scientist or out CSIRO telling this department that they are just science ignoramuses? Just because totally indulged and isolated Green Canberra is wind powered, does not mean they can tell the rest of Australia how to live without coal. Like Their ABC/SBS, they could get real jobs.

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        Evo of gong

        What I cannot understand is why everyone only talks about CO2 emissions without considering the amount absorbed by vegetation.
        According to Wikipedia’s list of Countries by CO2 emissions, Australia emitted 446,348,000 tonnes of CO2 in 2015 but the other half of the equation is: how much was absorbed by trees, and other vegetation.
        Australia has about 125 million hectares of forests (from Dept of Ag)
        Each hectare of forest absorbs somewhere between 5 to 10 tonnes of CO2 per year (obviously depends on type of tree, maturity and growing conditions) but taking the minimum value of 5 tonnes/hectare then Australian forests absorb 125 x 5 million tonnes of CO2 per year = 625 megatonnes/year.
        Then there is all the other vegetation, grasses, crops etc which means that Australia is sequestering considerably more CO2 than is being emitted by the use of fossil fuels.
        So where is the problem?

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        • #
          TdeF

          True, but the greatest source of free CO2 is in the oceans, 400x as massive as the thin air above. 98% of all free CO2 is dissolved in the vast oceans at high concentrations. This is so unrecognized that people argue that increased aerial CO2 actually increases the CO2 in the ocean. This is laughable fake science. A physical chemist knows that surface temperature and air pressure determines the amount of CO2 in the air and in the water, using Henry’s law.

          Most importantly, the amount of CO2 in the entire atmosphere is 1/50th of what is in the soda water we call the oceans. Then if CO2 goes up, it means the surface is slightly warmer. However the panic merchants argue that increased CO2 is warming the oceans! How in Australia can we have 350 people in the CSIRO working on CO2 driven climate change when they know it isn’t science?

          Or are they, unlike Prof. Peter Ridd, afraid to speak out and lose their jobs, their superannuation and be unemployed for the rest of their lives? None of this man made Global Warming is based on real science. In fact it is the complete opposite of science as facts are irrelevant.

          None of the predictions in thirty years have come true, but we are still facing huge destruction of our country, like another coal fired power station near Geelong being blown up when we know they take billions and half a decade to build. We also know that is why they are being blown up.

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          Bobl

          5T per ha? You gotta be kidding. It’s at least 50T per ha, Consider a mango plantation, the fruit alone not even considering wood or root growth is 15T which translates to 8T of carbon or 44/12 x 8 = 30T CO2 even a report by the alarmist Clinton foundation claims 85T per ha sequestration for mango plantations. Our forests sink not 600MT but over 6GT CO2, more than 10 times our emission and increasing. Ironically for each 2ppm rise in CO2 plant growth increases so from 1990 370pm to now 406ppm) our forest carbon sink alone increased 18% or around 1GT twice our man made emission meaning we are past nett zero and now absorb 500MT MORE.

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          • #
            Geoffrey Williams

            Bobl , if you are correct, and I accept your figures, then the situation regarding Australia’s carbon sinks verses man made emissions is quite staggering (at least 10:1) and it would seem that we have a huge surfeit.
            Geoff W

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          Chad

          Sure, our carbon sink is much greater than our “Man made” CO2 emissions….
          BUT, you are ignoring the “Natural” emissions of CO2 from those same forrests and plant life, decay, animal respiration, etc etc….Ref the balance of the “Carbon Cycle”.
          The warmist/alarmist argument is that Man Made CO2 is all additional to the Natural balanced carbon cycle.
          Personally, i find it hard to accept that carbon emissions and adsorbtion can ever be in “balance” , knowing how much they both can vary with changes in surface conditions, temperature, humidity etc etc.
          But dont overlook the Natural sources and sinks.

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        ROM

        It seems that the CEO of one of Germany’s major car hire firms doesn’t think much of electric vehicles [ EV’s ] after his firm’s experiences with hiring out EV’s.

        And his comments on new generators and the cost of rebuilding the grid [” it would devour a lot of money”-Who pays?? ] to cater for EV’s on a mass scale are all in line with what has been discussed here in then last few days.

        From Pieere Gosselin’s “NoTricksZone” blog .

        Sixt Car Rental CEO Sees No Future For Electric Cars…”Politically Serious Mistake”…”Devours Money“Serious mistake”

        According to the online German business weekly Wirthschaftswoche (WIWO) here, the CEO of Sixt car rental company, one of the largest in Europe, recently said he doesn’t believe in electric cars and that “it is a serious mistake politically.”

        One main obstacle, Erich Sixt told in an telephone interview with with WIWO, is the supply of raw materials needed to manufacture car batteries, noting that the cobalt supply is mostly in the hands of China.

        “Devour money”

        CEO Sixt also mentioned other obstacles, among them the needed infrastructure to recharge the vehicles, which he says “would devour a lot of money”.

        Scant demand

        He also told WIWO that the range for electric cars was “a catastrophe”, adding that customers rarely ask for e-cars and that those who do, do so out of curiosity. Often things go awry for the those renting the cars:

        Some call the rental outlet for help because they end up getting stuck on the autobahn after Garmisch-Partenkirchen.”

        As our dumbass politicians in Canberra, maybe they are just too arrogant or too busy backstabbing each other. They just don’t want to seem to ever want to learn anything much from the hard earned experiences of others who are years in front of them in new technology and developments in many fields of human endeavour.

        From our politicians attiudes and pronouncements so far it would seem that the troubles the Germans are having with the range and other problems of EV’s don’tand would not apply here in Australia after the political fairy godmother waved her government issued and subsidised fake leather covered battery powered wand in a blessing on EV’s here in Australia..

        We then have to assume our electricity is many times more powerful per Watt and per Volt than the German electricity in that we can use EV’s right across Australia’s vast distances according to the latest pronouncements on the laws and regulations for the promotion of EV’s and the severe penalising of ICEV’s in the not very distant future by our politicians.

        The “vast” distances that EV’s have to travel in Germany can easily be compared to the literally vast distances here in Australia with Germany being roughly half again as large in area as Victoria.

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    Yonniestone

    The idea of reopening Alcoa’s Anglesea Power station has just been wiped https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/controlled-explosion-to-reduce-anglesea-power-station-to-rubble-20180530-p4zicb.html plan B then?……….oh wait.

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    • #
      TdeF

      It is also why the Alcoa Point Henry Aluminium smelter closed in 2014 after 51 years of operation. This is Green government shutting down all manufacturing. All smelting produces CO2 as they use carbon to remove the Oxygen from Al2O3 as CO2. I hope the good people of Geelong love the loss of jobs and the new low CO2 atmosphere.

      Australia produces 2% of the world’s industrial CO2, which means 98% of CO2 comes from overseas. Why are the people overseas punishing us with Carbon taxes, Carbon credits and obliging us to pay them for our thoughtless manufacturing? Shouldn’t we be taxing every molecule of CO2 out of China or Europe? Why are we sending them $3Billion a year?

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        TdeF

        I’ll bet the people of Portland are waiting with breathless anticipation for the closure of the Aluminum smelter. You see aluminium is 90% electricity in cost. It cannot be made profitably in the country with the world’s highest electricity prices. I wonder how many hundreds of millions are being paid annually to pretend to smelter lead (Port Pirie), Aluminium and Steel (Whyalla).

        January 2017 “The four-year agreements with the governments and AGL will better position Portland Aluminium against market fluctuations and help maintain more than 500 jobs at the smelter.”

        The hidden cost of Green electrons are the additional billions needed to pay people to pretend to smelt metals in Australia. Brought to your by your Green governments. They probably save money when the power goes off and the cash continues, except all the aluminium pots freeze solid. This utter farce is killing us. More secret payments of our taxes to hide the massive damage being done by the government policies of lowering world CO2.

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        • #
          TdeF

          True. No CO2 from the Hydro power stations. However you cannot hide the fact that making lead, steel, aluminium and even concrete releases vast amounts of CO2. This is chemistry. You cannot get around chemistry. So in a Green world without aluminium, steel and concrete, we would have no aircraft, no transport, no cities, no life.

          It is all based on fake facts, fake science and fake politics. The Greens just want money and power. Watermelons.

          After 30 years of waiting and with the very expensive benefit of hindsight, we can say that none of it is true. All those world will end in ten years promises have expired. As every reader will know, their favorite beach is unchanged at all. The weather varies from year to year but fundamentally no climate is changed anywhere. Even the heating they are talking about is undetectable on a thermometer after thirty years. All fake.

          Why aren’t our Chief Scientist (and his department), our CSIRO, our Universities saying so? Why really was Dr Ridd fired? Are they all to gutless to speak up now that the left of politics controls the media and the institutions?

          Really, was the Australian newspaper correct when they reported that 39% of all US universities do not have a single Republican voter on staff? Our universities too have fallen and our scientists dare not speak out. You cannot even run a course on European history, as it is Colonial White Supremacy. Only on blogs like Jo’s can you read the self evident truth, coal is great, Europe has improved the world, democracy works. The real National Socialists Workers Party runs the Universities. Book burnings are next.

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    pat

    1 Jun: ABC: Latrobe Valley power companies to give closure notice in exchange for mining licence extensions
    By Guy Stayner
    Latrobe Valley power companies have agreed to give the state five years notice if they intend to close as part of a deal with the Victorian Government enabling their licences to be extended.
    Under the deal, AGL and Energy Australia have been granted extensions to their mining licences, but will have to cease operations at the end of the new agreements.
    AGL has been granted an 11-year extension and will now be able to mine coal at Loy Yang until the end of 2048.

    Energy Australia has been granted an extra six years and will now be able to mine at Yallourn until the end of 2032.
    In exchange for the extensions, power companies have agreed to give at least five years’ notice of any intention to close a power station.
    This would prevent a repeat of the sudden closure of the Hazelwood power station last year that threw hundreds of Latrobe Valley lives into turmoil.
    Victoria’s Resources Minister, Tim Pallas, said the decision gives certainty to the industry.
    “These extensions support our energy security and provide certainty for workers and communities across Victoria,” he said.

    Greenhouse gas concerns
    Environment Victoria said the mining extension could make it harder for Victoria to achieve its legislated targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
    “It potentially opens the door to Yallourn and Loy Yang pumping hundreds of millions of tonnes more greenhouse pollution into our atmosphere,” Environment Victoria CEO Mark Wakeham said.
    But Mr Pallas said having adequate timeframes was important…

    “The five-year notice period is longer than what the Commonwealth has sought through the Finkel Review and gives local workers and their families confidence to plan for the future,” he said…
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-01/latrobe-valley-power-companies-win-mining-licence-extensions/9826064

    read all for further clarification:

    1 Jun: LaTrobeValleyExpress: Plants to give closure notice as part of mine extension
    Latrobe Valley power station owners have agreed to give five year’s notice of their intention to close as part of a deal with the state government to extend their mining licences…
    http://www.latrobevalleyexpress.com.au/story/5442819/plants-to-give-closure-notice-as-part-of-mine-extension/

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    pat

    2 Jun: ABC: Coral scientists look to commercial opportunities for large-scale reef restoration to prevent extinction
    Landline By Jess Davis and Charlotte King
    VIDEO: CORAL REEFS AROUND THE WORLD ARE DYING

    In a concrete hatchery on the north-west coast of the Philippines, a group of researchers is huddled together in the night, witnessing a rare moment of sexual reproduction.
    Red circles of light pinpoint the darkness as torches are waved over a row of square plastic buckets filled with seawater.
    “If you shine a white light at them they get shy and they don’t have sex,” said Kerry Cameron, a Southern Cross University PhD student from Coffs Harbour.
    “This is mood lighting to set the tone.”…

    The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, under the umbrella of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, is funding his experiment, and has paid for the ABC to be here…READ ON
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-02/coral-restoration-may-save-barrier-reef-from-extinction/9810840

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    pat

    am still waiting for someone to clarify why the withdrawal can’t go into effect the day after the 2020 presidential election, even if Trump doesn’t win, as he remains in power during the transition period:

    31 May: CompetitiveEnterpriseInstitute: CEI on Paris Climate Decision Anniversary: Trump Should Tell the Senate to Vote It Down
    This Friday marks the one-year anniversary of President Trump withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate treaty…
    Despite the strong language of Trump’s statement, CEI is concerned that the president has not solidified his decision, given his choice of a slow withdrawal. CEI experts argue President Trump should submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification—which President Obama should have done in the first place—and recommend it be voted down.

    CEI’s energy and environmental policy experts released the following statements ahead of the anniversary:

    CEI Senior Fellow Chris Horner:
    We hope President Trump will consummate the announced withdrawal, preferably more durably than the continued pen-and-phone tit for tat—each such unilateral act being subject to a unilateral reversal. He should resolve this attempted end-run around our Constitution by doing what the French, Germans, Italians, and others did: send it to the elected body that has the express, constitutional role for approving these types of commitments. Otherwise, all of the administration’s regulatory gains could be for nothing, and American taxpayers will be left on the hook.
    https://cei.org/content/cei-paris-climate-decision-anniversary-trump-should-tell-senate-vote-it-down

    no longer boasting Trump has made no differene!

    31 May: ClimateChangeNews: Karl Mathiesen: Trump has damaged the Paris Agreement, say its architects
    One year on from Donald Trump’s announcement he would withdraw the US from the UN climate pact, leading figures assess the “dire consequences”

    (PHOTO WORTH SAVING? SCREENSAVER?) CAPTION: Trump announces he will leave the Paris climate deal in the White House Rose Garden on 1 June, 2017 (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)

    That “reprehensible decision” has had “dire consequences”, Laurent Fabius, the former French prime minister who presided over the Paris talks in 2015, wrote on the Profiles of Paris website this week.
    Todd Stern, Barack Obama’s lead climate envoy who forged compromises with China to make a deal possible, said: “It is really damaging for the United States to be on the way out.”
    The US position is “undermining” continuing negotiations on the implementation of the Paris deal, Stern told a meeting held by the World Resources Institute (WRI) to mark the anniversary of the Trump announcement – and the reaction has been a “mixed bag”.

    Initially, it brought statements of resolve from many countries to uphold the agreement. It also spurred a large coalition of US cities, counties, states and businesses to declare “we are still in”, despite federal policy…

    Stern said he had visited the last two UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, speaking with dozens of national representatives.
    “In the absence of the United States, you have a phenomenon of a fair number of countries, I think, trying to pull back a little bit on some of the things that were agreed to, some of the compromises that were reached in Paris,” he said.
    “Some of [the ways to raise ambition] are under threat in the ongoing negotiations, quite frankly, because the US is no longer displaying that level of leadership,” said Selwin Hart, who ran the UN secretary general’s climate change team during the Paris talks and is now Barbados’ ambassador to the US. “It is absolutely imperative to have the US at the table. Were it not for the leadership of the Unites States… we would not have had the Paris Agreement.”…

    Over the past year, some of the state department diplomats that worked on the Obama team have remained in post. They maintain a constructive, although diminished, presence at the talks…
    Now there is new leadership at the state department, with Koch brothers ally Mike Pompeo taking over. Trump’s new national security advisor, John Bolton, is a long-time critic of the Paris deal. The new dynamic in Washington DC will be closely watched.
    Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat who worked with Fabius to broker the Paris deal, told Climate Home News upcoming meetings between Chinese and European ministers would be crucial for damage limitation.
    “Now who is teaming up or balancing or discussing with China?” she said. Unless the EU can replicate the US’ diplomatic heft in partnership with China, said Tubiana, “I think we are losing totally the game”…

    Under the rules of the deal, Trump cannot leave the agreement until the day after the next US presidential election in 2020.
    Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Chris Horner said in a statement Trump should send the agreement to the US senate and recommend they reject it…ETC
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/05/31/trump-damaged-paris-agreement-say-architects/

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      Graeme No.3

      pat:

      The biggest difference made by Trump is the ‘shortfall’ of $2 billion after Obama promised $3 billion and threw $1 billion into the gurgler. Those in the EU who want Paris to continue will have to pay up or those countries drooling at the thought of lots of money for nothing are going to be upset, and settle for commercially sane methods of generation.

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      Bobl

      The deal required that some 55% of the Co2 emissions were represented (ratified ) for the deal to come into effect, USA , Russia have never validly ratified the deal… there is nothing to pull out of.

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    pat

    anyone who has Foxtel should tune in to Hannity Show – lots of breaking news on Spygate.

    one to keep (still unfinished?):

    31 May: Sara A. Carter: PANDORA’S BOX: Trump/Russia May Expose Extent of “Five Eyes” Allied Spying
    A comprehensive timeline of events of the Russia investigation
    https://saraacarter.com/pandoras-box-trump-russia-may-expose-extent-of-five-eyes-spying/

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      Mary E

      Interesting article. Looks almost like Trump was set-up to take a fall before he was even elected – just in case? Wonder who else they’ve collected “evidence” against and why. To heck with the Russians spying on the US and blackmailing its leaders – seems the US intelligence agencies are doing that very thing themselves against their own leaders.

      Politicians in elected office are bad enough – but secret spook “politicians” with no means to impeach or unseat are worse.

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    pat

    1 Jun: The Hill: London ‘bridges’ falling down: Curious origins of FBI’s Trump-Russia probe
    By John Solomon
    http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/390228-london-bridges-falling-down-curious-origins-of-fbis-trump-russia-probe

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    pat

    hilarious. only political attendee is an Obama guy! what a joke. anyone who doesn’t realise Trump Derangement Syndrome relates entirely to the withdrawal from Paris is missing the real story:

    1 Jun: Axios: Amy Harder: Exclusive: Pope convenes Big Oil, investors to talk climate change
    Pope Francis is hosting a gathering next week at the Vatican with executives of major oil producers and investment firms to talk about how the companies can address climate change, according to several people familiar with the event.

    Why it matters: It’s one of the most significant developments showing how corporations are working with other world leaders on climate change amid President Trump’s whole-scale retreat on the issue…

    (expand article)
    Here’s a list of some of the participants in the private conference, with more expected:
    •Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, world’s largest asset manager.
    •Bob Dudley, CEO of BP.
    •Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil.
    •Eldar Sætre, CEO of Equinor, oil and energy producer partially owned by the Norwegian government (formerly Statoil).
    •Ernest Moniz, former U.S. Energy Secretary under then-President Obama.
    •Lord John Browne, former CEO of BP and current executive chairman of L1 Energy, an oil and gas investment firm.
    •Ben Van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, was invited but declined because he had an obligation elsewhere, according to an official.

    The big picture: The Pope, BlackRock and big oil companies are increasingly focusing on climate change as cleaner sources of energy have become more competitive, the impacts of a warmer world have become more apparent, and public pressure to address the issue mounts. This meeting reflects this convergence…ETC

    •Efforts to reach the Vatican by phone and email were unsuccessful
    https://www.axios.com/exclusive-pope-convenes-big-oil-investors-to-talk-climate-change-1527810398-44c1f3bb-37ed-4b98-a0a5-b6b65a3bffea.html

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    Graeme No.3

    The Age of the EV will be soon. All that is needed is a lighter weight battery holding more power. That will be here REAL SOON (New Scientist 1978, 1983, 1988, 1991 etc.)
    Also thousands of fast recharging points.
    Also lots of cheap readily available electricity with the Australian Government and the SA, Vic., and Qld. governments all doing their best to get rid of by closing down coal fired stations and banning gas production.

    WOW! Not only does the Left Hand of Government not know what the Right Hand is doing, neither hand knows what it is doing itself.

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      PeterPetrum

      I think I know what their right hands are doing, but I can’t say it on Jo’s site.

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    pat

    1 Jun: ClimateChangeNews: Climate Weekly: Trump’s Paris anniversary
    By Megan Darby
    Today is a grim anniversary: one year since Donald Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden and declared he would pull the US out of the Paris Agreement.
    There is ***no denying it undermines the carefully crafted pact, say its architects. A study published in Climate Policy estimates US withdrawal makes it 6-9% less likely the world can hold global warming below 2C, even if it re-engages after 2025…

    Perhaps not coincidentally, irrepressible optimist Christiana Figueres chose this week to launch Profiles of Paris (LINK), a collection of stories from the people who made the pact happen – and still believe in it.
    For the climate nerd, it is a treasure trove of insider anecdotes…

    Solar Sahel
    Here is one reason to be cheerful: a major initiative (LINK) to power Africa with desert solar.
    The Green Climate Fund is teaming up with the African Development Bank and Africa50 investment fund to mobilise 10GW of clean electricity…

    Canada, petrostate
    Justin Trudeau’s green sheen was well and truly tarnished this week…

    Not-so-emerald isle
    Ireland may look green from space, but it is way off track to meet its greenhouse gas reduction targets…

    Divided OECD
    The US blocked a joint communiqué from OECD’s annual ministerial meeting, AFP reports (LINK), over differences on trade and climate change.
    Instead, the French chair published a statement (LINK) backed by a “consensus minus one” among its 34 member states.
    Everybody apart from the US called for “a robust set of rules” to implement the Paris Agreement, fossil fuel subsidy reform and measures to accelerate green finance…

    Holy rollers
    The Pope is back on his climate activism beat, Axios reports, this time meeting with oil executives and major investors…

    Urgenda lawsuit
    The Dutch government was in court on Monday (LINK) to appeal against the 2015 ruling in a famous climate lawsuit…
    http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/06/01/climate-weekly-no-bed-roses/

    visiting Figueres’s “Profiles of Paris” is a MUST – if only to view the pics of her gang of CAGW/Paris collaborators.

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    Another Ian

    Re the life of fossil fuel equipment

    “Another Allis-Chalmers tag. This one from an old AC generator still in operation at a New Orleans water pumping station. I have been told it dates from the original construction of the plant in about 1927. Ninety one years of operation. And they are not giving up on the old girl yet. Our company has been asked for a proposal to inspect the generator and related switchgear with the intent of ensuring it will continue to run. ”

    A comment at

    https://www.redpowermagazine.com/forums/topic/112687-allis-tag/?tab=comments#comment-1197864

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    pat

    31 May: WUWT: Climate Rent Seekers Target Your Insurance Premiums
    by Eric Worrall
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/05/climate-rent-seekers-target-your-insurance-premiums/

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    So then, this was an interesting exercise.

    You all know I made a Submission to the Queensland Government 50% Renewables by 2030 Inquiry. (the fact that no one on that Inquiry read it is by the by) The last thing I said in that highly detailed 18 page Submission was this:

    If I might close on a personal note here, in 2030, I will be in my late 70’s. I most probably will have long forgotten this submission, as will perhaps everyone on the panel, and even everyone in Queensland. However, I can guarantee you this. In 2030 Queensland will not have 50% of its power sourced from Renewable power, no matter who says it is achievable.

    As you may know, I’m currently doing a Series on daily power generation from every source here in Oz.

    My interest was piqued when I was doing the daily calculations for coal fired power, and I do that work on a State by State basis, and then add the averages together to give me an overall average for coal fired power generation for the day.

    So, what I did was this, as a side exercise to see how much power was being delivered from coal fired sources in Queensland.

    I went to the AEMO site for power consumption, also on a State by State basis. From that, and for the State of Queensland, I add up the actual power consumption total at the top of each hour, from midnight to midnight, and then divide that out to give me an average for the whole day.

    Then I can do the same for coal fired power generation on the same basis, adding up the totals at the top of each hour, and dividing that out to give me an average power generation.

    I’ve finished the totals for this (working day five days) week, and the results are as follows.

    Day – Consumption – Coal Fired Generation – Percentage from Coal fired

    Monday – 6287MW – 5950MW – 94.64%
    Tuesday – 6253MW – 5950MW – 95.15%
    Wednesday – 6162MW – 6050MW – 98.1%
    Thursday – 6197MW – 5900MW – 95.2%
    Friday – 6164MW – 6000MW – 97.5%

    The average for that five day week

    Five Days – 6213MW – 5970MW – 96.1%

    So, the State is currently generating 96% of its actual power consumption from coal fired sources alone, and they say hand on heart that they can get that down below 50% in the next 12 years.

    Yeah!

    Good luck with that.

    They could ‘artfully’ say that Queensland is regularly delivering 1100MW into NSW, so that doesn’t count, but the actual power is still being generated IN Queensland, not in NSW.

    For the life of me, I can’t figure out how they can get away with not actually finding out the facts.

    Tony.

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      A clever little warmster will have waited till Friday morning to declare on Jo Nova that there has been a proven reduction in Qld coal power generation of 2.9%. Most recent figures to date!

      By Saturday morning our clever little warmster will be discussing sustainability, climate refugees, coralageddon or some such piffle in the comment section of The Conversation.

      They don’t make you a professor for nothing these days. Well, they do…but you still need the ability to jump on to a factoid like a starving seagull beaking a freshly dropped chip.

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      beowulf

      Tony

      For future reference this may (or may not) be of interest to you in your grid watch activities.

      Liddell is planning a major shutdown in August/September. They are currently advertising for pressure welders and valve fitters etc.

      They seem to be spending a lot of money on an asset they say is stranded.

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      • #

        They may need to start a little early.

        Unit Two at Liddell ‘fell over’ at 3PM Friday, taking its 400MW away in an instant. Natural Gas stepped into the recovery and replaced that loss, right quick, as the remaining coal fired Units still operating ramped up to cover the loss before the expected peak at 5.30/6PM, being so much cheaper than any other form of power generation.

        Tony.

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          It’s rather a disloyal thing to be saying around State of Origin time…but thank God for the banana-benders and that regular 1100MW into NSW.

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      yarpos

      ” and they say hand on heart that they can get that down below 50% in the next 12 years.

      Yeah!

      Good luck with that.”

      to be fair Tony, they didnt say without cost, damage and chaos did they?

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      tom0mason

      To get it down to 50% simple, just cut-off 60-75% off the peak demand.
      Would that be a problem for anyone?

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    tom0mason

    The way I see it….
    The bottom line is that at the end of the LIA CO2 levels were very low compared to what is needed for life to flourish. The CO2 level for this period were an anomaly! Why should we wish to return to it?

    As the planet has warmed out of the LIA due to increase solar radiance, CO2 levels quite naturally rose. As the oceans warmed and land defrosted CO2 was released, and the planet began to re-green those previously frozen area. This re-greening was nature playing catch-up with the warming and rising CO2 level. (IMO The greening lagged the CO2 increase.)
    For more than a hundred years this re-greening sucked-up the increasing CO2, resulting in a maintaining, or very slightly increasing the global CO2 levels. As vegetative growth reaches saturation levels globally (and we’re not there yet) then the CO2 levels rise a little faster than the biosphere can use it, hence the current minor uplift in CO2.
    All that humans have done is add a minuscule amount to the CO2 levels, and thus, in a minor way, added to the accelerated re-greening of the planet.

    IMO CO2 level at 280 to 350ppm are not the place to be, this planet should be 600 to 1000ppm to make life so much easier, and (probably) kill-off all UN funded hunger relief programs.

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    pat

    behind paywall:

    The Economist: Too hot to handle: Climate change is making the Arab world more miserable
    Expect longer droughts, hotter heatwaves and more frequent dust storms
    The Economist – 31 May 2018
    the German Max Planck Society and the Cyprus Institute…

    same old story in 2016!

    Climate change could make North Africa and Middle East ‘uninhabitable’
    CNBC – 4 May 2016
    Researchers at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have found that the region – already incredibly hot in the summer – could become so warm that “human habitability is compromised.” …

    An epic Middle East heat wave could be global warming’s hellish curtain-raiser
    Washington Post – – 10 Aug 2016
    Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia recently predicted a similarly grim fate for the Middle East and North Africa…

    Too hot for human life?
    Deutsche Welle – 3 Dec 2016
    Jos Lelieveld, a scientist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, explains why parts of Africa and the Middle East are heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world – and could soon be uninhabitable…

    this could explain The Economist reviving the story:

    27 May: Cyprus Mail: Climate change in the East Med underlines need for renewables
    By Charles Ellinas
    Probably the most important climate change conference in our area so far was held in Cyprus last weekend and inevitably fossil fuels featured prominently in the list of concerns highlighted by the participants.
    The chairman of the conference, organised by the Cyprus Institute, was Laurent Fabius, former prime minister of France, and the COP21 architect and chairman who led the preparation of the Paris Climate Change Agreement. There was participation by specialists, scientists, presidents of international environmental organisations and politicians working on this topic from 35 countries…

    Based on BP’s Global Energy Outlook, currently, 85 per cent of global primary energy is supplied by fossil fuels, with only three per cent by renewables, sun and wind. Fabius said this is worrisome. The transition to cleaner energy is not progressing fast enough…

    With no change, by 2040 global primary energy is expected to increase by about 35 per cent in line with a population growth of 1.7 billion to 9.2 billion, and with 2.5 billion people to be lifted out of poverty through rising prosperity of emerging economies. Based on this, carbon emissions are expected to actually increase by 14 per cent by 2040…

    The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) called for a six-fold increase in the rate of implementation of renewables. And there lies the challenge. It proposed a ‘renewable energy roadmap’ in which deployment of energy efficiency measures, low carbon technologies, including renewables, hydro and nuclear, provide 66 per cent of global primary energy needs by 2050, with fossil fuels expected to provide the remaining 34%…

    Energy transition
    But achieving this energy transition can be challenging…
    But there is hope. Spurred by innovation, increased competition, and policy support in a growing number of countries, renewable energy technologies have achieved massive technological advances and sharp cost reductions and they will continue doing so.
    However, a world of clean, reliable and safe energy is not around the corner and full decarbonisation by 2050 will cost trillions of dollars – there is no cheap option…

    The global power generation sector is on the way to be decarbonised, largely because low carbon technology is ***cheaper than the fossil fuels it replaces. But this is not yet the case in our region…
    https://cyprus-mail.com/2018/05/27/climate-change-in-the-east-med-underlines-need-for-renewables/

    30 May: Cyprus Mail: Cyprus to undertake coordinating, regional role in addressing climate change
    Cyprus will be faced with more intense heat waves, droughts and perhaps even new diseases, Professor Costas Papanikolas, President of the Cyprus Institute (CyI) told CNA in an interview, stressing the importance of the recent International Conference on Climate Change, organised recently by the institute in Cyprus.

    In his interview, Papanikolas said that Cyprus, being the only EU country in the Middle East, can and should undertake a primary coordinating, regional role in addressing the fallout from climate change, with the CyI being at the core of this effort. Papanikolas said that this was the primary outcome of the International Conference on Climate Change…
    https://cyprus-mail.com/2018/05/30/cyprus-to-undertake-coordinating-regional-role-in-addressing-climate-change/

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      pat

      17 May: Cyprus Mail: CNA News: Leading scientists at Climate Change conference in Nicosia
      The International Conference on Climate Change in the Mediterranean and the Middle East: Challenges and Solutions begins on Friday in Nicosia, with the participation of scientists from 35 countries.
      The conference, organised by the Cyprus Institute under the aegis of President Nicos Anastasiades, with support from the European Commission in Cyprus, will address the scientific basis of climate change in the region and its various impacts and challenges on issues of health, water, food, tourism and migration…

      Michel Jarraud (Secretary General Emeritus of the World Meteorological Organization) said that the Conference is a very timely one, noting that there is now overwhelming scientific evidence that climate is changing because of human activities.

      Professor Jos Lelieveld, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany and Professor of atmospheric chemistry at the Cyprus Institute, said heat extremes and water shortages are the specific difficulties related to the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern climate change.
      While climate change typically leads to more rainfall in most of the world, the Mediterranean is faced with increasing dryness, he stressed…
      “There are major challenges indeed, as the region is a climate change hotspot. The conference will debate problems related to the climate crisis, and at the same time also provide mitigation options and propose solutions for adaptation,” he concluded.
      https://cyprus-mail.com/2018/05/18/leading-scientists-at-climate-change-conference-in-nicosia/

      pure comedy:

      31 May: Scientific American: Should Climate Scientists Fly?
      Wrong question; instead of scapegoating individual researchers, we should blame the centers of power, including corporations and political leaders
      By Sarah E Myhre
      (Sarah E Myhre, PhD, is a paleoceanographer at the University of Washington and a national thought leader in the field of climate science communication. She is an unapologetic advocate for representative leadership and the importance of women’s rights. She is the founder of Rowan Institute, which is a leadership and communication nonprofit for a hot and dangerous planet)

      There is a great deal of public concern about when, and where to, climate scientists fly.
      “Why do you fly?” they ask us.
      “Where do you fly?”
      “If you think climate change is a crisis, how can you ever fly?”
      “Don’t you know,” they plead, “that the single most damaging choice to the climate system an individual can make is to fly in a commercial airplane?”

      Irony notwithstanding, it is indeed climate scientists who established the carbon footprint and flagged the damage done by flying. And in doing so, we (and I mean that term loosely, because of how nebulous and overlapping the fields of climate are) have characterized the true damage of hyper-consumerist and highly mobile lifestyles—lifestyles exhibited by most of us in the developed world, including myself and my friends, neighbors, family and academic community…

      The culture wants to know: Are we crisis actors pantomiming alarmism, whilst we profiteer and jet around the globe to our fancy meetings? Or are we noble ascetics who have purified and aligned our carbon footprint with our rhetoric? This dynamic—of finger-pointing, grandstanding, condemning and shaming—is an ongoing toxic hamster wheel, which further erodes and discredits the public trust in the good-faith actions of climate and earth scientists.

      No other clade of experts who hold expertise on a public health and safety crisis is held to this standard. Do we demand to know from pediatricians their vaccination schedule for their own children? No, of course not. Do we interrogate oncologists about whether they have ever smoked a cigarette? No, of course not. Then, why do we feel that it is within our purview to require the flight itineraries of climate scientists?…

      This is the dizzying wormhole of nuance and moral crisis through which climate scientists are interrogated. We are scapegoated by the entire culture. Scapegoating, of course, is the psychological technique of transferring guilt to a weak and easy target, so that the scapegoater herself is relieved of feelings such as shame or guilt. Climate scientists are an easy target both for political bad actors who want to discredit the science and for activists hoping to reveal the moral compromises made by seemingly ineffective public leaders…

      For example, how do I tell my brother that I can’t come see his new beautiful baby in California because I no longer fly for familial reasons? How do I tell the National Science Foundation that I cannot travel to attend an elite communication summer school because I will only fly once a year for work?

      I become deeply concerned when we begin to dictate who can, say, fly to their mother’s deathbed. Or who can fly to Hawaii for vacation. Or who can fly to which scientific meeting and where. My concern is not because of limitations on personal freedom. Frankly, I’d like fewer personal freedoms—for example, my freedom to buy AK-47s or my freedom to buy unchecked political influence. This isn’t about personal freedom. This is about the failure to indict the true centers of decision-making and power…

      There are very, very bad actors in this space of climate accountability. The problem is, these actors are some of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet, a cabal of mediocre and violent men who gatekeep our collective action on climate…

      This is why climate action is about moral courage. Yes, we must have the courage to align our personal actions with our understanding of the science, through decreasing and stopping our flying. But, more importantly, we must have to courage to speak truth to power, despite how this might change our public or professional standing. Climate action is one of the most fundamental social justice movements of our time. No more and no less, our choices now to act as brave stewards of planetary life, despite political realities and institutional denialism, will change the trajectory of the planet forever. It is worth it.
      https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/should-climate-scientists-fly/

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      pat

      18 May: Cyprus Mail: Andria Kades: Climate-change monitoring station to be set up in Cyprus
      General Secretary of the World Meteorological Organisation, Petteri Taalas told the Cyprus News Agency there is an urgency to start implementing the Paris Agreement and expressed hope that the conference in Nicosia would motivate the policy makers to take more action.
      Cyprus will have a role to play, by building up a new station to monitor the effects of climate change, he said.
      “We have to strengthen the scientific basis and we are discussing how to improve the observing systems of Cyprus. There is a plan to establish a new observing sighting in Cyprus to monitor the greenhouse gases.”

      Referring to the region, Taalas pointed out that the Mediterranean is one of those regions to suffer the most because of climate change…

      Noting that drought in Africa will be increasing and at the same time population in Africa will grow, he said that the potential for refugee flows is rapidly growing.
      “We expect to see four billion inhabitants in Africa by the end of the century and now we have one billion. So the potential for refugees is rapidly growing and this is a matter of concern,” he said…

      Filippo Giorgi from the International Center for Theoretical Physics said that the temperature in the Mediterranean region could rise by up to six degrees as a result of global warming. In the future, he said, summers in the region will be drier and hotter, while intensity of extreme events will go up.
      “There are consistent indications of much drier and warmer climate conditions for the Mediterranean in the coming decades, especially during the warm seasons,” he added.
      The conference is organised by the Cyprus Institute under the aegis of Anastasiades, with support from the European Commission in Cyprus.
      https://cyprus-mail.com/2018/05/18/climate-change-monitoring-station-to-be-set-up-in-cyprus/

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    pat

    followup reply to comment #23 is in moderation.

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    pat

    we must take back the world “environmentalist” from the CAGW mob. there are so many people around the world who are concerned about the environment, yet are fighting CAGW policies, it’s time the FakeNewsMSM stopped called CAGW activists “environmentalists”.

    you have to love how The Guardian quotes Nuon (Vattenfall) and Shell, declaring offshore wind farms “COULD have a beneficial long-term effect on wildlife”:

    1 Jun: Guardian: Dutch fishermen to sail fleet into Amsterdam in wind turbine protest
    Workers say they are taking action in response to vast amount of windfarms being constructed in their waters
    by Daniel Boffey in Stellendam
    The Netherlands may be the land of the windmill, but fishermen are planning a major protest on Saturday against the Dutch government’s latest wind turbine construction in the North Sea, with an armada of fishing boats sailing into Amsterdam.
    After alighting from at least 15 boats at the back of Amsterdam’s central station, it is understood that hundreds of fishermen will march to the capital’s Damrak canal, where they will upend bags of small fish deemed too small for sale by the EU, and cover them with red dye.

    Fishing community leaders say they are being crowded out of their waters and that the towering turbines damage fish stocks and deafen and displace the local porpoise populations.
    The Dutch government has announced plans to build three more windfarms off the Noord-Holland coast and north of the Wadden Islands, in addition to five new windfarms already agreed upon, at a cost of €20 billion (£17.5bn).
    It is claimed by local fishermen that 25% of Dutch fishing waters will be covered with turbines by 2025 and made out of bounds for larger fishing vessels.
    A Dutch energy network is additionally drawing up plans for an island of wind turbines on Dogger bank, a patch of shallow fishing waters 78 miles off the east Yorkshire coast frequented by Dutch, Danish and UK fishermen.

    Ministers are fighting off accusations they are rushing to develop wind technology without examining the consequences on the ecology of the shallow waters being targeted…

    Saturday’s protest is being organised by the Eendracht Maakt Kracht (Unity Brings Strength) action group, which was formed two years ago by fishermen who were unhappy with the level of activity from the two main unions.
    Job Schot, the chairman of the EMK group, said: “Dutch, German and British turbines are pushing us out of the southern part of the North Sea. About half a per cent of our fishing waters are covered by turbines at the moment, but it will be 25% within a decade, and in our prime fishing grounds. The government know where we fish.

    “They claim that the area around the windfarms creates some kind of paradise of biodiversity. It is exactly the opposite. The acoustic sound from the turbines discourages fish and if it carries on long enough they just don’t come back. There are lots of oysters and mussels around the turbines, but not fish. It’s a dead area.
    “The ramming of seabed kills everything within 6km. The porpoises are deafened and once they lose their hearing, they die. There has not been enough research, but we see what is happening every day.”…

    Recent research sponsored by NoordzeeWind, a joint venture of ***Nuon (owned by Vattenfall) and ***Shell Wind Energy, stated that offshore windfarms could have a beneficial long-term effect on wildlife, with new species being attracted to the turbine foundations and surrounding rocks…
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/01/dutch-fishermen-to-sail-fleet-into-amsterdam-in-wind-turbine-protest

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    pat

    30 May: UK Telegraph: Jillian Ambrose: SSE joins Big Six rivals by putting up energy prices
    The typical dual fuel bill for SSE’s 2.3m customers on standard energy tariffs will rise by around £76 a year from July…
    In addition to the rising price of wholesale energy, SSE blamed its “last resort” measure on “the cost of delivering Government policy initiatives designed to modernise and decarbonise Britain’s energy system”.
    By pointing to the Government’s own policies as a principal cause of the hike SSE has reignited a war of words between ministers and energy companies.

    SSE has consistently argued that Government’s policy costs – which include support for new energy projects and updating critical national infrastructure – should be paid for via general taxation rather than through bills, which can disproportionately affect lower income households.

    Energy minister Claire Perry branded the hike “unjustified” and “extremely disappointing”.
    Energy regulator Ofgem was forced to lift the level of its standard energy tariff cap, which is in place for socially vulnerable energy customers.
    The Government hopes to pass legislation that widens the Ofgem cap across all homes on standard variable tariffs by the end of the year…

    By the time the Government’s price cap is in place SSE expects to have spun off off its energy supply arm into a new listed energy company that will be merged with Npower. The move should help protect SSE’s position as a major network operator and energy generator.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/05/30/sse-joins-big-six-rivals-putting-energy-prices/

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    PeterS

    Trump keeps on keeping on:
    Trump Orders ‘Immediate Steps’ To Boost Coal, Nuclear Plants

    President Donald Trump on Friday directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to prepare “immediate steps” to bolster struggling coal-fired and nuclear power plants to keep them open.

    PM Turnbull, when are you going to follow his direction and bolster our coal fired power stations, or are you a coward and a fake?

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    pat

    some home-truths by Reuters, tho it ends on a “renewables” positive note (not excerpted):

    1 Jun: Reuters: New Zealand push on clean power comes with high political, economic risks
    by Charlotte Greenfield, Sonali Paul
    New Zealand has set out to burnish its clean, green image by becoming Asia Pacific’s first developed economy to stop using fossil fuels to generate power, although the pitfalls encountered by a Maori iwi, or tribe, may signal trouble ahead.

    The 3,000-member Ngaati Kea Ngaati Tuara iwi in Rotorua, when switching to renewables, found local geothermal sources were not hot enough to generate electricity.
    So, the tribe set up small hydro units for its meeting ground and dairy farm, but the units struggle to operate during floods and to produce enough power at peak demand, said project manager Eugene Berryman-Kamp. A battery could store energy for periods of high use, but there is currently “no appetite” to invest the more than $10,000 needed, he said.

    New Zealand, in its push to be free of power fired by coal and natural gas, would likely face similar problems scaled to national size and potentially billions of dollars in costs.
    “If we move too quickly, the risk is to the New Zealand consumer having to pay more for their energy and (this) could make New Zealand less competitive as a market,” said Marc England, chief executive of New Zealand’s biggest energy retailer and fourth-biggest generator, Genesis Energy.

    Other countries that have turned fully to renewables for power – such as Norway and Denmark – are connected to regional grids that can help back up shortages. New Zealand, in the remote South Pacific, would not have that option..

    New Zealand would need large batteries, extra wind and solar power, and might still need to use gas or coal to prevent blackouts. Such investments would send costs soaring and could alienate voters who elected Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern last year, in part due to her pledge to counter climate change…

    Critics say Ardern’s goals would require huge investments in renewable energy sources, grid expansion, and an overhaul of New Zealand’s biggest export industry, dairy, which relies heavily on coal, driving up power prices…
    Sapere Research Group advised Wellington its goals would require wholesale electricity prices to rise by up to 60 percent to around NZ$100 ($70) per megawatt-hour (MWh), making them some of the highest in the world.

    That would destroy a key advantage for agriculture and industry in New Zealand, where baseload power futures are currently running about 25 percent less than in Australian states New South Wales and Victoria, where soaring electricity costs have forced some manufacturers to shut.

    A backlash from industry and politicians has deepened partisan fault lines that Ardern’s center-left government, installed in October, is trying so smooth over. But the criticism has not stopped her from looking to establish a legacy by combating climate change…

    Fonterra Co-operative Group, however, the world’s top dairy exporter and one of New Zealand’s biggest energy users, gets around two-thirds of its energy from fossil fuels.
    Fonterra is trying to ditch coal, but a change is going to “require significant investment”, said Chief Operating Officer Robert Spurway.
    “It’s very important to us that we find ways to do this in an economically sustainable way so that we remain competitive globally,” Spurway told Reuters.

    Part of the problem is that while most of the population and industry is on the North Island, most of the hydro stations are on the South Island. That increases the outage risk because of the possibility of damage to the cables connecting the two islands.
    “The inconvenient truth in New Zealand is for decades we’ve used coal to back up hydroelectricity,” Genesis CEO England told Reuters. New Zealand’s biggest power plant, Huntly, owned by Genesis, was due to shut its coal units in 2018, but rival generator Meridian Energy agreed to pay Genesis to keep them open as back-up at least until 2022.

    Genesis said batteries are not yet an economic option to fall back on through extended droughts. New Zealand lakes have only up to eight weeks of water storage, while hydropower-dependent Norway has about two years’ worth…
    https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-newzealand-energy-analysis/new-zealand-push-on-clean-power-comes-with-high-political-economic-risks-idUKKCN1IX39X

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      PeterS

      When will people learn that intermittent power sources like solar and wind just doesn’t cut the mustard. Imagine if coal fired power stations were just as intermittent and were switched off for say 80% of the time. A country like Australia would not survive and all industries would close their doors. Voters of Australia stop this mad rush to renewables (and electric cars) by placing LNP, ALP and Greens at the bottom of the list when voting to send a clear message we had enough! Otherwise, just sit back, go to sleep and wait for the crash and burn.

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        Look at this.

        The average for power generation from every source on Monday was 22900MW. Coal fired power supplied 16600MW of that.

        On Tuesday, that average rose by 100MW. Coal fired power rose by 100MW.

        On Wednesday, that average rose a further 300MW. Coal fired power rose by 400MW.

        On Thursday that average rose a further 400M. Coal fired power rose by 400MW.

        On Friday, that average rose a further 300MW. Coal fired power rose by 200MW.

        So, for the week, the average rose by 1100MW, and, umm, coal fired power rose by 1100MW

        Coincidence?

        I think not!

        Tony.

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          Hanrahan

          Today SA wind has been producing abt 0.5% of demand. Naturally gas turbines are busy [I don’t know installed capacity] and they are paying through the nose for imports.

          There is no way back for our politicians without losing face, and Europeans are just as concerned about “face” as Asians so there is no way anyone will have a Eureka moment and change policy.

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            PeterS

            At least the Europeans still can rely on existing nuclear plants. They might be saying they intend to shut them down but they know they can’t without causing a collapse of the EU. It’s all talk the talk but no walk the walk. Here in Australia it’s different and unique. Our leaders are not only talking the talk they are walking the walk – right over the cliff and taking the rest of Australia with them. So are Australians going to sit back, act like mindless zombies and do nothing or are they going to wake up and send a really loud message at the next federal election the likes federal politics has never seen before? It’s all up to the voters.

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            Hanrahan

            This is ridiculous, The wind drops and SA is paying $212 and Qld generating what they can including extra hydro is paying $133 per MW.

            The rugby is just as ridiculous, seven tries in the first half, Tahs V Reds. Defence is ordinary.

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          tom0mason

          Well Tony ‘green thinking’ says the demand will have to be more stabilized.

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        Another Ian

        Didn’t it used to be that cheap energy was needed to get Australia into things that went beyond it ending up as a mined out quarry?

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      yarpos

      Doesnt matter if you cant make it work for 3000 people, they will make it up on volume. Stupid statement I know , but no more stupid than the wishful thinking based policies Adern churns out.

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    PeterS

    GDPR resulting in Destroying German Internet

    It will be interesting to see how Trump reacts to this abomination by the Europeans. The GDPR if read carefully has the potential to be a significant negative impact on all countries, not just the EU.

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      yarpos

      I worked for a while in Europe (in IT). We used to spend an inordinate amount of time wringing our hands , talking about, consulting with people about Data Protection rules. Occasionally we actually did something but mainly it was meetings, coffee, travel and the odd conference. A lot like the IPCC really. After 5 years I struggled to see that we actually did anything more or differently as a result of it all.

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    Gautam Kalghatgi

    People on this thread might be interested in the peer-reviewed article in Applied Energy which discusses why EVs won’t be taking over the world. It can be downloaded free at
    https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1X6eN15eiesLPp

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    Peter C

    No Evidence for Heat Trapping by Greenhouse Gases

    I was telling a friend today that there is no laboratory evidence that greenhouse gases cause heat trapping and warming. What little experimental evidence there is eg Robert Wood’s hot box experiment shows the reverse.
    He was incredulous.

    If anyone knows of experimental evidence that Greenhouse gases can cause warming, would they post it here.

    Greenhouse in a jar or bottle experiments (eg Bill Nye and DR Maggie Aderin Pocock) do not count. They cannot be replicated using proper experimental methods.

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      Kinky Keith

      Good point Peter.

      If there ever had been an experimental method of showing that CO2 can trap heat it would have been made public by now.

      And, of course, relentlessly shoved down our throats.

      KK

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      PeterS

      As indicated by my posts for a long time I am not an advocate of the man-made CO2 global warming nonsense. However this Mythbusters video does show CO2 has an effect. Mind you the conclusion at the end is not supported by the experiment as I will show. Let’s assume the experiment is good enough for the purposes of our discussion. It took over 73,000 ppm of CO2 (according to posters who looked at the screen) to get temperatures to rise about 1 C. So using this crude experiment a doubling of the current CO2 level, which would take about 300 years at the current rate means the temperature increase would be roughly 0.005 C assuming a linear relationship, unless my maths is out a lot. So what’s the problem? We can safely pump out CO2 for a millennium before we can even begin to start worrying. Obviously by then we will be using a completely different power source, one we most likley haven’t even dreamed up yet. Of course this experiment may not be very accurate but it does illustrate even using their experiential data they contradicted themselves, and in conclusion the CAGW issue is a hoax.

      Mythbusters tests global warming theory – does CO2 warm air?

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        PeterS

        and busted!

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        Peter C

        Thanks Peter S,

        I watched that Mythbusters program years ago. My opinion at the time was that t their demonstration did not meet the requirements of a properly controlled experiment.

        I admit I have not watched it recently. Did you find them persuasive? If so could you summarize? II might revisit the program.

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          PeterS

          From what I can see the experiment was conducted correctly. I have no doubt about that. The point I’m making, which appears to be escaping everyone else here is all they have shown is it takes a massive increase in CO2 concentration form 500 to 73,000 ppm to raise the temperature a small amount of 1C. So their conclusion that CO2 is causing significant global warming is wrong. The amount of temperature increase with the normal CO2 increases we are experiencing is trivial and not even measurable. Now if that still is not a satisfactory explanation of where I’m at with this CAGW nonsense, which is a hoax and a scam, then you all are starting to sound as illogical as the global warming alarmists. Don’t forget, as I have said numerous times before I’m a retired scientist who knows and understand real science, predominately physics.

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            Peter C

            Thanks Peter S,

            I watched the Mythbusters! Fortunately it only takes about 3 1/2 minutes.

            This is another example of the Greenhouse in a bottle experiment, similar to Bill Nye and Maggie Aderin Pocock.
            http://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-10959197/science-explained-greenhouse-effect-in-a-bottle.

            Mythbusters only manage 1C warming from CO2. Bill Nye got about 2C and Maggie a whopping 5C.

            I have tried the experiment myself. I could not show any difference.

            Problems with the Mythbusters experiment;
            1. Plastic covered enclosures are crudely constructed. They are similar but not necessarily the same,
            2. Separate heat lamps for each enclosure. They use a photometer to check the light levels, which is an improvement on the BBC (Aderin Pocock),
            3. Thermometers are basic units. They read to 0.1C but they are not necessarily accurate to 0.1C. Thermometers are not calibrated neither to a standard instrument, nor to each other,
            4. After discussion about the relative tiny amounts of CO2 and CH4 in the atmosphere we are shown a device which purportedly can measure atmospheric concentrations of these gases, but we are not shown what concentration of the gas goes into each container! It is surely greater than a doubling of CO2 to 700-800ppm.

            The correct way to run a control on this experiment is to keep everything else exactly the same, but swap only the gases in the 4 boxes and then run the experiment again. That would take too long for the mythbusters attention span and it might not produce the correct result.

            Finally they are conducting the wrong experiment. Infrared radiation from the ground probably does warm the air (via H2O and CO2 absorption), to about 10m depth. That is likely how warm ground transfers heat to the overlying air and generates rising thermal currents. However the GreenHouse Theory says that radiation from the CO2 in the air Warms the Ground.

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          Kinky Keith

          Peter

          I think that this linked mythbusters is a newer version.

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        Hanrahan

        Obviously by then we will be using a completely different power source, one we most likley haven’t even dreamed up yet.

        Is that obvious, that we will discover something we have not yet dreamed of?

        OK I know there have been some incredibly stupid claims like “Why would everyone want a computer on their desk”” and “There may be a market for [some number] of computers, no more”. But they were speaking of something already known.

        I just don’t think there are still rocks we can turn over and find a totally new system to generate grid power, we already know of fission and fusion, we just know everything about them. Most here will disagree with me but the future will be defined by refinement of technology rather than those like the giant steps taken by the past geniuses. But I’m safe, I won’t be around when “it” happens if I’m wrong so you won’t be able to rubbish me. 🙂

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        Andrew McRae

        assuming a linear relationship, unless my maths is out a lot

        That’s why your maths “is out a lot”.

        The relationship of radiative flux to pCO2 is logarithmic [Refer to derivation of equations] and the relationship of temperature to radiative flux is a 4th root [refer to your high school physics text].

        So a fourth root of a logarithm is going to be very nonlinear, and the slope near x=1.1 is much higher than at x=3.0. Applying the analogy to CO2, a 100ppm increase makes much more difference when you start from 200 than when you start from 70000. It would imply about half of the temperature increase from 73000ppm had come from the first 500ppm.

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          PeterS

          I said it was crude to keep things simple. So you all believe that 73,000 ppm of CO2 will not have any impact on the temperate. Believe that if you like but science says otherwise. Even leading climate change sceptics admitted that CO2 does increase temperature but the amount is so trivial it’s not even measurable for the foreseeable future.

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            Peter C

            Believe that if you like but science says otherwise.

            What Science?

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            Kinky Keith

            PeterS

            A point unrelated to the temperature business.

            If CO2 levels ever got to 73,000 ppm we would be long dead.

            We humans survive in the current atmosphere because we breathe in 400 ppm of CO2 and breathe out, or expel 40,000 ppm CO2.

            The CO2 in our out breath is waste product removed from our bloodstream using the oxygen we breathe in.

            Should we have the CO2 levels you quote, we would not be able to reduce CO2 in our bloodstream and we would die.

            The present exchange rate of 400 to 40,000 works fine but a reverse exchange rate of 73,000 to 40,000 just won’t work.

            Possibly on an evolutionary scale we may be able to adapt but from here, a CO2 level of 73,000 ppm being used in a mythbusters episode seems to be unrelated to the real environment.

            Mythbusters is a great show to stimulate enthusiasm and inquisitiveness but they may be reinforcing a bit of incorrect science here.

            KK

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          Chad

          half of the temperature increase from 73000ppm had come from the first 500ppm.

          If that were the case, how come it was not detected in the Mythbusters experiment ?

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            Kinky Keith

            Hi Chad,

            I watched the full show back in 2009 but didn’t go through it recently from the Libs.I.

            Did they feed the CO2 in progressively and did they follow associated temperatures. Interesting.

            KK

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            Kinky Keith

            Chad, using my mobile. Red was meant to be green.

            Link not lib…

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        Graeme No.3

        PeterS:

        http://climatechangedispatch.com/atmospheric-pressure-drives-temperatures/

        and the associated video

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfuafZbpyII

        The calculations are easy and give accurate results, far more so than anything relying on CO2 can do.

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        Kinky Keith

        Peter,

        Do you have any university qualifications in physics.

        I had a brief look at the Mythbusters link you posted.

        It has the same format as their previous experiment on which I commented a few years ago. Perhaps they have improved some aspects of it but don’t take it too seriously.

        I couldn’t work out which boxes were the controls but can’t stomach watching the whole thing with that Berkeley, gender correct Professor, the little boy and that big boy in the beanie.

        KK

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          Kinky Keith

          Sorry, Peter and all.

          The linked mythbusters video is the original from 2009.

          It’s a condensed version and leaves out detail like the location of the controls which I recall were on the ends.

          This fact couldn’t be determined from the short version. Was there a reason for that? Perhaps the two end boxes had more access to cool air than the centre ones.

          If the high CO2 and methane boxes were in the middle we have a problem and PeterC has offered the solution for this.

          At the time this was viewed in full I was not impressed and find the editing in this short version worrying.

          KK

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    Another Ian

    Brussels sprouts plucked

    “BRUSSELS BEATEN: Populist Coalition Takes Office in Italy, Eurosceptic Savona Returns as EU Affairs Minister”

    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/06/01/brussels-defeated-populist-coalition-takes-office-in-italy-eurosceptic-savona-returns-as-eu-affairs-minister/

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    DOC

    With no claimed expertise in the science of Anthropogenic Global Warming but merely a person with an interest, both the original name (AGW)
    and the theory look like a case of a topic and a theory being developed to be used as a socio-political doctrine to enforce the world be
    moved in a particular direction. What better way to force the trajectory of the economies of the Western Democracies back to the swamp and
    under international control? Look at the powers since developed to control the citizens via government policy, litigation via the Courts even
    when no crime has been committed, destruction dissenting businesses and destruction of personal reputations to the death without remorse.

    The theory dispenses with its problems by ignoring them eg raised CO2 follows increased temperature, by writing them out of history eg the
    Hockey Stick eliminated the recent mini ice age, by selecting dates for reporting that lop refuting data , by declaring the radiation input
    from the sun is a constant, by declaring CO2 from volcanic activity is all dissolved in the oceans (keeps the atmospheric CO2 purely anthropogenic),
    and the list goes on and on. ‘Homogenisation’ seems always to raise temperatures (even when they fall(Marharosy). Models don’t reflect reality in the
    main, but they are the source of forecasting Armageddon by politicians and the BOM. The biggest Armageddon is forecast as coming (cooling) and totally ignored.

    The GW activists at all times avoid the actual desirability of warmth plus increased atmospheric CO2 in both extending the greening of the planet, the extent
    arable and in giving us the ability to feed the 6Billion people now on it (prior, in the ’60s they harped on about the future and feeding 3billion as it was supposed
    to be cooling).

    Whilest everyone is concentrated on the warming debate, its hows and whys and wherefors, nobody is debating how the world either paused its warming for
    20years, nor particularly, how it can cool as it has in a huge way in the past, under the theory of AGW. If the effect of solar radiation is fixed and
    the atmos. concentration of CO2 keeps rising in perpetuity – we are told it cannot be reduced enough to stop more that 0.05degrees by the end of this century
    – then the temperatures cannot fall by this theory. Already the activists have to explain the pause, and cannot. When the earth cools, possibly very soon (
    solar theorists) it will cool first and CO2 will fall much later by dissolving into the cooling oceans. How do we feed 6B people then? This part of the
    debate is more important than the rest of the theory put together. How can the world cool under AGW theory because the results are then dire? But it will!

    My point is, how do Frydenberg and the seemingly more sensible few politicians in our Parliament that might doubt this AGW theory salve their consciences
    that by ignoring the benefits of CO2 rises they will be responsible for the future deaths of billions of people unless they gird their loins to dump this
    crap and begin preparing the world for what is probably coming in the near future? Destroying the Western economies now in response to the agitators is in
    effect the single most destructive activity they could be doing when the cold future descends upon the globe. People can adapt to global warming, as they have done
    in the past, and as Lomborg insists. People cannot adapt to starvation, either for food nor for energy deprivation in the cold. People – voters – respond to what
    their supposedly learned gurus tell them. They believe in AGW because that is what they have been told, first by the agitating environmentalists and then by the
    politicians that have been about harvesting votes. The message cannot change without this debate being fully blown open and particularly the original source of
    this argument being exposed. It all smells very much of the internationalists’ attempts to take control of the activities of the globe along with all the
    other changes they are contriving on national boundaries and via intranational divisions, and humanity is of very little concern to them.

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      Hanrahan

      I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict there will magically appear a massive scandal involving the Democrat party and the Obama administration, and it’ll come to light with uncanny timing to completely blow out of the water any chance of them doing well in the mid-terms.

      I worry. An incompetent DOJ working 9 to 4 with a boozy lunch could/should have laid dozens of charges by now. And I don’t believe the “20,000 sealed indictments” story either.

      I’m thinking of Days Of our Lives and the sands in the hour glass. Donald, the sands are running out.

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    john

    WAPO blames conservatism for…get this…the demise of the Pueblo…

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2018/06/01/conservatism-took-hold-here-1000-years-ago-until-the-people-fled/

    Hmmm, maybe they should examine California for the disappearance of folks there….due to…. liberalism.

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    john

    Fresh on the heels of the big win of Chevron vs. corrupt enviro’s, Greenpeace will have it’s days in court…

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/05/31/lawsuit-against-greenpeace-raises-freedom-speech-concerns

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    pat

    31 May: WSJ: Kimberley A. Strassel: The Curious Case of Mr. Downer
    His story about the Papadopoulos meeting calls the FBI’s into question.
    The FBI’s media scribes have dutifully reported the bare facts of that “intel.” We are told the infamous tip came from Alexander Downer, at the time the Australian ambassador to the U.K. Mr. Downer invited Mr. Papadopoulos for a drink in early May 2016, where the aide told the ambassador the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Word of this encounter at some point reached the FBI, inspiring it to launch its counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign on July 31.
    Notably (nay, suspiciously) absent or muddled are the details of how and when that information made its way to the FBI, and what exactly was transmitted…

    When Mr. Downer ended his service in the U.K. this April, he sat for an interview with the Australian, a national newspaper, and “spoke for the first time” about the Papadopoulos event. Mr. Downer said he officially reported the Papadopoulos meeting back to Australia “the following day or a day or two after,” as it “seemed quite interesting.” The story nonchalantly notes that “after a period of time, Australia’s ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, passed the information on to Washington.”

    My reporting indicates otherwise. A diplomatic source tells me Mr. Hockey neither transmitted any information to the FBI nor was approached by the U.S. about the tip. Rather, it was Mr. Downer who at some point decided to convey his information—to the U.S. Embassy in London.
    That matters because it is not how things are normally done. The U.S. is part of Five Eyes, an intelligence network that includes the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The Five Eyes agreement provides that any intelligence goes through the intelligence system of the country that gathered it. This helps guarantee information is securely handled, subjected to quality control, and not made prey to political manipulation. Mr. Downer’s job was to report his meeting back to Canberra, and leave it to Australian intelligence. We also know that it wasn’t Australian intelligence that alerted the FBI. The document that launched the FBI probe contains no foreign intelligence whatsoever. So if Australian intelligence did receive the Downer info, it didn’t feel compelled to act on it.

    But the Obama State Department did — and its involvement is news. The Downer details landed with the embassy’s then-chargé d’affaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy assistant secretary in Mrs. Clinton’s State Department…READ ON
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-curious-case-of-mr-downer-1527809075?shareToken=stf66c22d0606b4f818caf1dc6535ba89d&ref=article_email_share

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    pat

    31 May: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: Climate change won’t heat the planet equally
    By Thomas Gaulkin
    Now, a new study published (LINK) in Geophysical Research Letters adds insult to injury. By mapping economic and social development to climate models’ “signal-to-noise ratio”—which compares normal local temperature fluctuation (noise) to overall increases to average local temperatures (signal)—the authors determined that the poorest populations on the planet will experience more perceptible climate change than the richest. In other words, in places with already fragile social and ecological systems, climate change won’t just be harder to deal with, it will actually be more noticeable, and worse…

    Not to be outdone, climate researchers at Oxford University offered their own insults this week. Analyzing vehicle use in Scotland, they concluded (LINK) that top-down efforts to transition society to electric vehicles and phase out vehicle emissions aren’t enough. Without radical changes to lifestyles and increased demand for less harmful transportation systems, the authors say, there’s no chance of hitting the targets set in the Paris climate agreement…
    https://thebulletin.org/climate-change-wont-heat-planet-equally11865

    31 May: The House (Parliament’s Magazine): Mary Creagh: We are going from being a world leader on climate change to being a laggard
    As she heads for the Arctic to witness first-hand the damage climate change is causing, Mary Creagh fears Britain is losing its place a world leader on decarbonisation. The chair of the Environmental Audit Committee talks to Elizabeth Bates.
    “It’s hard in this country,” she says. “We are not very good at saying how we are going to decarbonise transport. We are terrible at saying how we are going to decarbonise heating and we are not saying anything about heavy industry…
    “My concern is we are going from being a leader to being a laggard and that is a dangerous thing for us to be.”

    As a leading advocate for global environmental action you would think she would be concerned about the US President Donald Trump’s scepticism on the issue, particularly after he abruptly pulled the plug on the Paris climate change agreement last year.
    But for Creagh, there is another, much more dangerous threat on the horizon.
    “The harm that will be done by Brexit over the next 40 years is much more worrying than the harm that Donald Trump can do over the next eight,” she says.
    The Wakefield MP was one of only a handful of Labour backbenchers representing Brexit-backing constituencies to vote against Article 50, which pulled the trigger on the UK’s exit from the EU…

    On whether she would go against her party and support a second EU referendum, she is hesitant, citing election fatigue among the public.
    “There is definitely a weariness,” she says. “But I think what is clear is that Brexit is more complex, costly and time-consuming than anyone was promised. I think that the promises that the Leave campaign made have fallen at almost every hurdle. They don’t stand up to scrutiny…

    According to the committee chair the government’s latest strategy to tackle air pollution does not go far enough. “It is weak on ambition,” she says.
    “It only wants to halve the number of people living in areas with unsafe pollution levels by 2025, which in the lifetime of a child – if you have got a 5-year-old now or a 12-year-old now they’ll be an adult by the time these targets are met.”
    What is needed, she continues, is a comprehensive shift in the way people travel, reallocating road space away from cars to public transport, cyclists and pedestrians.
    “The only way we are going to cut air pollution is by fundamentally shifting people’s modes of travel to active travel. We know it’s good for us. We know that cities where people can move and people can breathe are places where people are happier, and where there is less air pollution.”

    She advocates “radical” and “creative” solutions, including rolling out pedestrianisation across London. “We have already done it on Trafalgar Square and the traffic goes elsewhere,” she says.
    And Parliament Square, the noise of which can currently be heard through her office window, is “the obvious next candidate”. “You go to other countries and they don’t have four lanes of traffic sitting outside their democratic buildings and it is very congested from a pedestrian point of view outside parliament.”…
    https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/environment/house/95605/mary-creagh-we-are-going-being-world-leader-climate-change-being

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    pat

    1 June: Science Mag Editorial: When facts are not enough
    by Katharine Hayhoe
    (Katharine Hayhoe is a professor and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA)
    Science is based on a shared respect for the scientific method—the principle that, by gathering and analyzing data and information, scientists and others can draw conclusions that are robust and generalizable across cultures and ideologies.
    Scientists furthermore assume that disagreements can be resolved by more facts. So when people object to the reality of climate change with science-y sounding arguments—“the data is wrong,” or “it’s just a natural cycle,” or even, “we need to study it longer”—the natural response of scientists is simple and direct: People need more data. But this approach often doesn’t work and can even backfire. Why? Because when it comes to climate change, science-y sounding objections are a mere smokescreen to hide the real reasons, which have much more to do with identity and ideology than data and facts…

    I am a climate scientist who has spent a lot of time trying to make climate science more accessible. I’ve authored National Climate Assessments and numerous outreach reports; I host a YouTube show called Global Weirding; I tweet; I’ve even promoted knitting patterns that display rising temperatures. Yet the most important step I’ve taken to make my science communication more effective has nothing to do with the science. As uncomfortable as this is for a scientist in today’s world, the most effective thing I’ve done is to let people know that I am a Christian. Why? Because it’s essential to connect the impacts of a changing climate directly to what’s already meaningful in one’s life, and for many people, faith is central to who they are…

    We all live on the same planet, and we all want the same things. By connecting our heads to our hearts, we all can talk about—and tackle—the problem of climate change together.
    http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/943.full

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      Kinky Keith

      The Standard Climate Model Scientist.

      Believe me, Trust Me, I’m a Christian.

      Is she for real???????

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        Greg Cavanagh

        If she’s a Christian, how does she reconcile that the Earth is doomed due to a runaway global warming, and believe in God who says that he’s in charge and everything happens according to his time table?

        She can’t believe God and not trust God’s word and salvation at the same time, can she?

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    pat

    2 Jun: National Review: The Papadopoulos Case Needs a Closer Look
    By Andrew C. McCarthy
    https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/george-papadopoulos-case-needs-closer-look/

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      Hanrahan

      Papadopoulos is a patsy, a mule. He was the conduit through which the existence of the dirty dossier was brought to light.

      He was fed news about dirt on Hillary a couple of times and then given a few thou spending money to do a presentation in London when a chance meeting with Downer was organised who he then told about the dirt and the DNC “hack”. Downer then told his FBI/CIA handlers as planned giving the dossier a veneer of credibility. The spooks could then confront Trump with this and THEN leak it to the NYT as if it was fact. Trump was told about it after all, that bit was true.

      The rest is history, as they say.

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        Hanrahan

        Australia should be making our own enquiries into Alexander Downer, his close association with the Clintons was not in Australia’s best interest.

        It is generally accepted that he signed over $28 mill of our money to the Clinton Foundation, which is more than Julia did and bad enough, but I have heard it was a much larger sum. How could such a donation to a private charity be in Australia’s national interest? We pay no US tax so can’t claim a tax offset.

        Downer is dead dodgy!

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    Peter C

    Agree,

    By what right or authority did Downer and Gillard make contributions of Australain Taxpayers money to a private Clinton Foundation? Judicial commission now please!

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      Greg Cavanagh

      An old article 2016. As usual the comments are worth reading.
      https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/taxpayers-75m-to-clinton-foundation/news-story/0d42d915182072cd3f208d7906f4bc02

      I was of the opinion that the Australian government gave a lot of money to charities, but I can’t find any evidence online in a 20 minute search.

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        Hanrahan

        We do donate aid to a number of nations but I always thought it was direct aid to perceived worthy causes, not to third party funds.

        Check out Charles Ortel, he is a forensic accountant who has been investigating the Clinton Foundation for years and claims it has never been compliant with the Not For Profit laws. He also says that it is the responsibility of donors to do due diligence on whether any NFP is compliant before claiming a tax deduction. If it is later found to be illegal any taxpaying identity would be forced to repay any tax benefit claimed. That won’t involve the Australian government of course.

        As to why we donated at all, follow the money. Both Downer and Gillard have had privileged lives after politics and Hillary was the most corrupt and powerful fixer in the world at that time. The bigger the donation, the bigger the reward.

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    yarpos

    Just looking at NEM dispatch , as one does, to see what todays oddities were.

    Was surprised to see the QLD>NSW interconnector pumping over 1GW, and was also wondering why Tassie power was so expensive operating independently on mature Hydro. Anyway, it was just at a refresh cycle and the NSW price went to $14,200. Spectacular stuff 🙂

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