Weekend Unthreaded

 

I’m very much looking forward to speaking in Munich (EIKE Nov 23), Oslo (Nov 26), and London (Nov 28). Details coming!

9.9 out of 10 based on 27 ratings

166 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

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    StephenP

    Where are you speaking in London?

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      London is with GWPF at their HQ not far from Parliament, Weds 28th, evening. I will post all the details and links. But save a space in your diary if you can…

      All events are evening 6 – 8pm starts.

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      • #
        AndyG55

        Go for it, Jo. 🙂

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        Roy Hogue

        When will you be speaking in or around Los Angeles?

        I suppose that’s expecting a lot but a guy can dream, can’t he?

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        • #

          I would love to visit LA and anywhere in the US. So many friends to see. :- )

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          • #
            David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

            Why not drop in on your way home?
            Cheers,
            Dave B

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            In the city that thinks it’s California’s destiny to save the world single handedly from the evil climate change bogeyman I wonder what your reception would be. But my door would be open anytime.

            By the way, just got notice in my bill that Edison is wanting to raise rates on consumers to fund renewable energy projects. I didn’t want you to feel alone.

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            • #
              AndyG55

              “just got notice in my bill that Edison is wanting to raise rates on consumers to fund renewable energy projects.”

              I wonder much they would get if they made it an OPTIONAL extra, say 20% of the bill

              I bet that very few so-called “greenies” would pay that extra by choice.

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      • #
        StephenP

        Thanks for the info. Unfortunately Murphy’s Law means that is the one day I cannot attend.
        However, will it be possible to see it on YouTube in the same way as Jordan Peterson had his talk at the Cambridge Union, where gave a really robust answer to the question about global warming?

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  • #
    Graeme No.3

    Judging by the weather forecast you had best pack some winter woolies.
    Have a great time but don’t go hiking in the Pennines or Grampians.

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    • #

      Judging by the latest information, I think we should all be stocking up:

      Sept. 27, 2018: The sun is entering one of the deepest Solar Minima of the Space Age. Sunspots have been absent for most of 2018, and the sun’s ultraviolet output has sharply dropped. New research shows that Earth’s upper atmosphere is responding.

      “We see a cooling trend,” says Martin Mlynczak of NASA’s Langley Research Center. “High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”

      Though obviously it’s going to be hot down yonder.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      I’ve been working in Ararat the past month and can attest to some very cold mornings and daytime temps mostly due to heavy cloud cover, there’s been some very nice days but nothing like prolonged warm weather.

      Graeme did you mean the Pyrenees or are you coining a new phrase? 🙂

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      • #
        Annie

        The Pennines are the ‘backbone’ of Northern England…you don’t want to be stuck on a trans-Pennine motorway in a blizzard. The Grampians are in Scotland.

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          Thanks Annie.

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        • #
          Peter C

          Grampians also in Western Victoria (for overseas readers). Named for the original Scottish Grampians. I surprised that they have not been renamed , but the origin of the Aboriginal name is apparently obscure.

          Named Gariwerd by one of the local Australian Aboriginal languages, either the Jardwadjali or Djab Wurrung language,[3][4] the ranges were given their European name in 1836 by Surveyor General of New South Wales Sir Thomas Mitchell after the Grampian Mountains in his native Scotland. After a two-year consultation process, the park was renamed Grampians (Gariwerd) National Park in 1991, however this controversial formality was reversed after a change of state government in 1992.[5] The Geographic Place Names Act, 1998 (Vic) reinstated dual naming for geographical features,[6] and this has been subsequently adopted in the park based on Jardwadjali and Djab Wurrung names for rock art sites and landscape features with the National Heritage List referring to “Grampians National Park (Gariwerd)”.[2]

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grampians_National_Park

          During the winter months the Grampians can give rise to atmospheric waves which are of great interest to glider pilots.

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      • #
        Sambar

        Hey Yonnie up here in the low part of the high country it’s been cold for a couple of weeks. Cold enough to have to light the heater on some nights. Not a peep from the weather presenters about this. Today, Sunday the 18th Nov it’s going to be thirty degrees, announced by the presenters as 4 degrees above the long term average. That global warming will get you every time

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        • #
          Annie

          We have had the stove lit most mornings lately, 4C this morning but it’s been colder too and only two or three mild.

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          • #
            Sambar

            Annie, Today has been like Goldilocks porridge, not to hot, not to cold, just right. A few insects about so time to test the waters. The trout are on the fly and time to dine like royalty this evening. I can smell them on the barbie even though I have just got home and need to clean them. As they say, anticipation is everything. What a great day in my favourite mountain stream, a few fish, a couple of keepers and a run in with a bloody big wriggly. I should learn but the first few of the season always take me by surprise. Still, a very ancient pump works surprisingly well. Funny that. Old , blind, out of breath, legs get tired but the adrenalin response is just as heart rattlin as always. What a day to be alive !

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            • #
              Annie

              It sounds good Sambar. Once the day was going it was great. I did get a bit warm while clearing up the broad beans in one bed. They were pretty sad but reached to the top of my head with a good crop, so they had done their duty. I’m no good with some crops (too old and tired!) but I do aim to get in some tomatoes and courgettes (zucchinis to Aussies!).
              No stove lit today as it might just be warm enough not to need it!

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              • #
                Graeme No.3

                Annie:

                A lot of chinese/japanese crops are quite resistent to cold weather. Mostly Brassica leaf types but a change from lettuce. Mizuna is a mild mustard leaf and grows strongly. Pick leaves off as it grows. Everybody I’ve had taste it likes it.

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              • #
                Annie

                I might try something like that. My Brussells sprouts bolted…quite nice used like sprouting broccoli but the Savoy cabbages were attacked by aphids…yuk. Red Swiss chard was very successful…the chooks loved it when I took the protective netting away. Time to put in French beans too.
                I don’t grow lettuce any more and failed to get any pumpkins started.

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    • #

      How come my post was deleted?

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      • #

        OK, it wasn’t but wasn’t visible when I was logged out.

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        • #

          OK, why is such an innocuous post in moderation?

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        • #
          toorightmate

          How clever – invisible posts.
          I wouldn’t want to hit one.

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          • #
            Another Ian

            They must be the ones that jump out at you?

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          • #
            AndyG55

            “I wouldn’t want to hit one.”

            Don’t text-walk then 😉

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            • #
              ROM

              I think NZ was the original source of this one as they were amongst the first to introduce the highly flexible plastic white post markers on each side of a major road so as to give motorists a guide both at night and in bad weather as to where the edge of the maintained road was located.

              The inbuilt but still limited flexibility of those plastic white posts was a safety measure as well as not having to be replaced every time one was hit as was the case with the older timber white painted road marker posts.

              Anyway a major problem soon appeared with these flat flexible white plastic and highly visible road marker posts.

              The hoons soon discovered that you could get a very satisfying and loud “whop” when you hit one to those posts at speed and the post buckled over as the vehicle passed over it.
              Even more satisfying was to drive at some considerable speed down the line of posts located every 50 or a hundred metres apart and get a series of very satisfactory whop, whop, whop as the vehicle hit and flattened each post.

              Needless to say the plastic posts despite being quite flexible didn’t stand up to very much of this repeated Hoon level treatment.

              A politically incorrect group of road employees eventually solved the problem permanently.

              They belted in a length of white painted steel railway line in place of a plastic post every few hundred metres in the row of plastic road marker posts where it couldn’t be identified from the flexible plastic posts by grog swilling yobbos and horns.

              The success of this strategy could subsequently be verified in the odd local wreckers yard for a month or so afterwards..

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    • #
      Greg in NZ

      Only last month the UK Met prophesied there’d be no ™Beast from the East™ this winter because of runaway catatonic sumpthink, yet Beast Junior is set to arrive in the next few days from the frigid east – just prior to Jo’s arrival. Your own Bureau prophesied south-eastern Australia would be warmer and drier this spring – insert expletive here – instead, yet more freezing snow and cold rain is on the way this week. And as for our little pointy islands halfway to Antarctica –

      https://www.metservice.com/mountain/aoraki-mount-cook-national-park

      “snow lowering to 600 metres… Southerlies rising to gale” for the next few days with wind chill dropping to -20˚C (that’s 20 below freezing for any red-thumbers who think an imaginary extra 2˚ is going to be the planet’s death knell) and only 4 weeks to the longest day / solstice / beginning of summer. Then again, I saw my first pohutukawa tree in flower yesterday – admittedly only the one tree amongst hundreds – yet it gives one hope we may have a lovely, long, pleasant summer like we did last year. Oh, and the States have been enjoying freezing and snowing and power outages and road closures from Texas to New York and it’s not even Thanksgiving, brrr…

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      • #
        William

        You must be mistaken about SEA temperatures Greg, according to the BOM, November has been two degrees above average in Sydney this Spring. Which I suppose is why I am still seeing people wearing jumpers and coats. I guess everyone is just wearing their winter gear to protect them from the hot sun.

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        • #
          ROM

          A more likely explanation for the BOM’s readings its that they are employing midgets to read the temperatures in their Stevenson screens.

          Midgets of course would have to look upwards at a high angle to read the mercury level and the numbers behind the mercury tube to ascertain the temperature reading and so that way the BOM by the clever use of the displacement of mercury and numbers through reading at high angle from well below the screen , the parallax problem, produces global warming / climate change verfication temperatures.

          [ Don’t laugh! ]
          Anthony Watts and is team of screen surveyors during his survey of weather recording screens and etc in the USA came across a number of situations where concrete blocks had been installed at the bottom of Stevenson screens so that short statured weather meteorologists could read the mercury and numbers directly behind the mercury meniscus at eye level.

          The real problem was that short statured meteorologists rarely bothered to use those concrete blocks to get the mercury meniscus at eye level to read the numbers so as to avoid what are now seen as significant errors created by displaced parallax readings.

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    • #
      RickWill

      Maybe a good idea to pack some firewood in case the power goes off.

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  • #

    Massive carbon Tax protests in France.
    “One dead and 47 injured in fuel tax protests in France”
    https://news.sky.com/story/death-and-injuries-in-fuel-tax-protests-in-france-11556493

    ” Ruptly” Live feed.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-G3kD7fnLM

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    • #

      The BBC getting the story straight as usual.
      compare text from two parts of the same page.
      “It said 106 people were injured”
      and
      “dozens were injured”
      From “One protester has died and dozens were injured as almost a quarter of a million people took to the streets of France angry, at rising fuel prices.”
      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46233560

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      • #
        robert rosicka

        Our political masters keep telling us that Co2 emissions are the greatest threat to our survival without any evidence just platitudes and hand waving , meanwhile average Joe on the street is finding it harder and harder to pay for ever increasing electricity and food bills .
        Then the government slap an extra tax on fuel for his own good but wonder why he riots in the street .

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        • #
          Hanrahan

          They have just slapped an extra tax on our beer too. I ‘spose that’s for our own good too. We must have the dearest beer in the world.

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      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      Here’s the ABC version. The reason for the protest is given, rather softly, in the last sentence.
      Cheers,
      Dave B

      https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-18/french-road-blocks-protest-fuel-taxes/10508062

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      • #
        robert rosicka

        Interesting to know that Macron like Turdbull was a Banker .

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        • #
          Dennis

          Another ex Goldman Sachs?

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          • #
            Dennis

            Maybe not, but close enough;

            After graduating from ENA in 2004, Macron became an Inspector in the Inspection générale des finances (IGF), a branch of the Finance Ministry . Macron was mentored by Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the then-head of the IGF. During his time as an Inspector of Finances, Macron gave lectures during the summer at the “prep’ENA” (a special cram school for the ENA entrance examination) at IPESUP (fr), an elite private school specializing in preparation for the entrance examinations of the Grandes écoles, such as HEC or Sciences Po.

            In 2006, Laurence Parisot offered him the job of managing director for Mouvement des Entreprises de France, the largest employer federation in France, but he declined.

            In August 2007, Macron was appointed deputy rapporteur for Jacques Attali’s “Commission to Unleash French Growth”. In 2008, Macron paid €50,000 to buy himself out of his government contract. He then became an investment banker in a highly-paid position at Rothschild & Cie Banque. In March 2010, he was appointed to the Attali Commission as a member.

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          • #
            Dennis

            This is enlightening, behind the scenes in “climate change” politics and crony capitalism …

            https://new.euro-med.dk/20161004-how-rothschilds-goldman-sachs-owned-barroso-and-his-eu-and-no-one-protested-until-now.php

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        David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz
        Looks like the ABC can’t get it’s protester count self contradictions homogenised with the BBC 1/4 Million.
        “thousands gathered on motorways”
        and
        “An estimated 50,000 demonstrators were participating in the protests”

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      • #

        Macron is the (hopefully brief) trend in leadership impostures.

        We saw it in Oz with Turnbull and Mike Baird. Someone with a past and future in banking is inserted into the top job with concerted applause from media on the left and right. Within a short space of time they have pushed through an agenda (bad for you, good for pushers) and their real and raging unpopularity matters no more than their initial staged popularity. With a Macron you might get some immediate and needed fiscal and labour reforms which justify his insertion…but the agenda does not stop there, of course. (When you follow Hollande, you know you have to come with a heavy mop-and-bucket.)

        Though Gillard is hardly a bankster I think she belongs with this group. Few want to remember how even the likes of Jones and Bolt boosted her as a hope of the side. Once in place it mattered less what Jones and Bolt said or thought of her. The main thing was to get her into place. And can we ever forget Miranda Devine’s relentless boosting of blobby green bankster globalist Turnbull? So much for bought and sold conservatism when Rupert says sell.

        I’m still rather sentimental about democracy and I don’t think Barry’s Grange Hermitage or Abbott’s raw onions and winks were a justification for who, and what, came after them. It’s not that Barry or Tony were God’s gift. It’s just that every elected leader feels just that little bit less free to act on behalf of that vaguely but fondly-remembered electorate. If you’re not globalist enough, if you’re only 90%, there’s always that minister who’s 100% and a darling of both ABC and Murdoch…for as long as it takes to start a light rail or send power bills soaring.

        Something big is afoot politically in this world, and it has nothing to do with local electoral choices and traditional political parties. I scarcely know what to call it, but I can smell it. Others are smelling it too. I hear the words freedom, openness and inclusiveness. And green. Lots and lots of green talk. But the face of Trotsky, that ultimate globalist, keeps popping into my mind’s eye.

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      theRealUniverse

      ‘Massive carbon Tax protests in France.’ In stark contrast to the eco-loons in the Extinction protest in London.

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  • #
    Lionell Griffith

    The natives are restless. Unintended consequences are spreading. Clearly, interesting times are in process.

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      Graeme No.3

      Lionell:
      Thanks, I always thought it was genuine as “May you live in interesting times, and may you come to the attention of the authorities”.
      Still, with the sun going quiet we are coming into interesting times. It remains to see how long it will take to get the authorities to wake up.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        I reckon this is only the start…

        Although the French have a tendency to go bolshie at the drop of a hat … mind you, the Jacobins were a nasty lot….

        That said, at least they *do* protest …. unlike apathetic & dopey australians …. I guess if the beer got cut off…..that would get peoples attention…

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      robert rosicka

      Last time the Plebs had enough of their Overlords in France it didn’t end well .

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  • #
    OriginalSteve

    The Chill Of The Solar Minimum Is Coming, Says NASA Scientist

    https://www.disclose.tv/the-chill-of-the-solar-minimum-is-coming-says-nasa-scientist-348039

    The sun is going into the deepest Solar Minima of Space Age with research showing the absence of sunspots for most of 2018, while the ultraviolet output of the sun dropped sharply and the upper atmosphere of Earth is responding.

    Close to the Edge of Space, the Atmosphere is Losing Heat Energy
    Martin Mlynczak of the NASA Langley Research Center said:

    “We see a cooling trend. High above Earth’s surface, near the edge of space, our atmosphere is losing heat energy. If current trends continue, it could soon set a Space Age record for cold.”

    The SABER instruments which are on-board the NASA TIMED satellite revealed the results after monitoring the infrared emissions from CO2 along with NO, nitric oxide. Both of the substances play a huge role in the energy balance of air which is between 100 to 300 kilometers above the surface of the planet according to spaceweatherarchive.com. SABER makes an assessment of the thermal state of the gas at the top of the atmosphere; this is the layer that researchers have given the name of “the thermosphere”.

    There is good and bad to the Solar Minimum
    Mlynczak, the associate principal investigator for SABER said:

    “The thermosphere always cools off during Solar Minimum. It’s one of the most important ways the solar cycle affects our planet.”

    The atmosphere shrinks when it cools, which means the radius of Earth’s atmosphere decreases, which in turn means the aerodynamic drag on the satellites lying in orbit in low-Earth is also decreased, leading to their life being extended. There is both good and bad news to this effect with the bad being that natural decay of junk in space is delayed, leaving the environment around Earth cluttered for longer.

    The Thermosphere Climate Index
    Mlynczak introduced the “Thermosphere Climate Index” recently so as to be able to track what has been happening in the thermosphere. The TCI is a number shown in watts revealing the heat NO molecules put out into space. When the index is high during Solar Maximum it is hot and when the Solar Minimum is low it is cold. At the moment it is extremely low. Mlynczak went on to say SABER is showing 33 billion Watts of infrared power from NO. He pointed out this was smaller than seen in active phases of the solar cycle by around ten times.

    Researchers Used SABER to Calculate the Index Back to the 1940s

    The Thermal Climate Index has been calculated back to 1940 despite the fact SABER has only been orbiting for the last 17 years.”

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  • #
    David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

    Morning all,
    There’s some good news in this story – they’ve found that CCS is “unviable”.

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-poised-to-sign-off-on-long-awaited-energy-plan-20181117-p50gou.html?btis

    Cheers,
    Dave B

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  • #
    el gordo

    There are those who spread untruths and others who accept the catastrophe narrative without question. There is no excuse for ignorance in the modern era, they are all guilty.

    https://judithcurry.com/2018/11/14/the-catastrophe-narrative/

    Comments are lively.

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  • #
    scaper...

    It’s okay to be white.

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  • #
    Tdef

    The incredible larrikin Larry Pickering says “see ya all”. Vale Larry.

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  • #
    robert rosicka

    Strange how the Greens defend one of their own candidates over past indiscretions but would scream blue murder if a Lib or Nat candidate was accused of the same thing .
    Greens wanting to join with Labor in the Victoriastan election and turn our state into a Socialist dream state , god help us all .

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-18/greens-eye-off-minority-government-in-victoria/10507796

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  • #
    Hanrahan

    Julian Assange has been charged. But with what? No one’s saying.

    He is not a US citizen nor has he ever lived in the US AFAIK so it’s hard to imagine treason or sedition being relevant. Also, the US maintains it is perfectly proper for them to spy on everyone, friend or foe – doesn’t matter. Tapping the phone of their own President talking to other national leaders? – no probs. The first amendment rights of the press have just been upheld again when the courts upheld Acosta’s appeal.

    I have asked about this a number of times but I’m talking in a vacuum. Does anyone know what he may be charged with?

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    • #
      ivan

      The judge ruled that is was a narrow 5th amendment issue

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    • #
      theRealUniverse

      The USA can now charge anybody on earth under ‘US’ laws. They are the world cops after all, they ‘own’ us through the UN.

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        Robert Swan

        I think you have that wrong. Any country can do it. Australia, for example, can indict anybody in the world if they are believed to have broken Australian law. Whether it goes anywhere depends on extradition treaties and the like. It’s nothing new, and seems to be the opposite of a “world cop”.

        The big government types, speaking in glowing terms of “international law”, are a much bigger worry.

        Puzzled that you believe the US controls the UN.

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      RossP

      I read somewhere a few days ago that this issue for Assange is a “non issue” Some idiot journalist was doing a cut and paste from a much older article (years old) and got it all wrong. So all a storm in a teacup ( I think).

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  • #
    Neville

    Their ABC is certainly making the most of the two opposing rallies in France and the UK.
    The French rally is grass roots and formed from online sites and is definitely anti Macron and are very annoyed because the Macron idiot wants to further tax fuel to help “fight climate change”.
    The UK rally is just part of the lunatic left of Labor/Greens loonies urging the Govt “to do more to fight climate change”.
    BTW France now emits just 0.9% of human co2 emissions and the UK 1.1%.
    IOW the Macron idiot and the UK Labor/Greens loonies don’t even understand simple first grade sums.
    Here’s a list of countries co2 emissions and Australia is now about 1.2% and Germany about 2.1%. China and India combined are rapidly heading towards 40% of global emissions and the USA has been flat-lining and are now at 1990 co2 levels.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

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      Graeme No.3

      Well, Germany’s total emissions haven’t declined since 2009, so it looks like 29,900 wind turbines doesn’t work. Perhaps we could try something radical as per TonyfromOz’s suggestion about upgrading our coal fired stations and reducing their emissions. A genuine drop in CO2 emissions (for what that is worth) with cheaper and more reliable electricity supply. NAH! Our pollies know the public want higher electricity bills with blackouts.

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      • #
        Neville

        Graeme 3 you’re right and Merkel is now extending their brown coal mines so they can have more reliable base-load power.
        That’s after decades of promoting BS and fra-d and wasting 100s of billions of Euros on clueless S&WIND energy. Why is it so?
        And all to have zero return on money wasted and certainly zero change to temp or the climate.
        Barking mad seems to be the way to go.

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    Mark M

    Has a Piece of the World’s Oldest Computer Been Found?

    A lost piece of the world’s oldest analog computer (the Antikythera mechanism an ancient Greek device designed to calculate astronomical position) may have been discovered.

    On social media David Meadows and Michael Press have rightly pointed out that the year-old discovery is only making news because of the sensational claim that it belongs to the Antikythera Mechanism.

    It is difficult to say precisely what this new piece is; it might be part of the original Antikythera Mechanism or part of a second similar device.

    The presence of the bull engraving suggests that it may have predicted the position of the constellation of Taurus but it is difficult to say.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/has-a-piece-of-the-antikythera-mechanism-the-worlds-oldest-computer-been-found?ref=scroll

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      Graeme No.3

      Yes, there has been a lot of Taurus about the mechanism in the last few years.

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      theRealUniverse

      “If you ask someone who invented the computer they might say Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.” The journalist doesnt have a clue either, the digital computer was invented by IBM. Well before Gates and Jobs. Modern analog systems around WW2. (dont quote me dates check Wikipedia)

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        AndyG55

        Stretching the memory.. Babbage, I think, was responsible for the first electronic computer.

        Or that might have been a cog driven one.??

        No time to do the research.

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        Graeme No.3

        Back in the 1840’s Babbage invented the Analytical Machine which he didn’t build. A small section was built by his son after engineering attained the necessary accuracy. A few years ago in England that was extended and found to be a valid (if slow) method of solving mathematical problems.

        John Vincent Atanasoff was an American physicist and inventor who invented the first electronic digital computer in the 1930s at Iowa State College. Challenges to his claim were resolved in 1973 when the Honeywell v. Sperry Rand lawsuit ruled that Atanasoff was the inventor of the computer.

        During WW2 Turing and associates developed and built the Colossus for code breaking. It remained a secret for many years.

        Did J. Presper Eckert, Jr., John William Mauchly, and their associates at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania invent the first electronic digital computer (called the ENIAC) during the years 1943-1946, or was the ENIAC based on the prior invention of a small, special-purpose machine? The UNIVAC I (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I) was the first commercial computer produced in the United States. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the ENIAC.
        That brought IBM into the market, although their chairman thought that it was limited to about a dozen machines.

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          Another Ian

          What about the anti aircraft predictors of WW2?

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            TdeF

            I suspect they were electronic but analog not digital. Analog is a lot easier as you build circuits with response times to match the analog systems they are tracking. Still much faster and more accurate than people. It was simply impossible to calculate trigonometry digitally let alone quickly or to any accuracy. Even in the 1970s if you pressed COSINE on a HP calculator you waited 15 seconds. The development of the dedicated Floating Point processor chip was a massive change in the speed of computation as opposed to database or data processing. Even now it is a big distinguishing difference and cost in CPUs.

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              TdeF

              Besides the big computers only had a few thousand valves, so a few thousand bits. Divide by 8. How would you like 100 bytes of memory? It’s not enough even to perform multiplication.

              No, the tracking systems were simple circuits built to simulate real life. As such they made excellent predictors. You could build a time based formula into a circuit’s behaviour.

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          William

          And Lord Byron’s daughter Ada wrote the first program for Babbage’s Analytical Engine, which makes her the world’s first computer programmer.

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          TdeF

          I also suspect that the computers of the day did little computing. For Bletchley Park it was probably simulation of the enigma and pattern matching of the output. They didn’t have the memory so the paper tape spun in an endless loop until matched. Trial and error at thousands of combinations a second. That’s not really computing but then most database and dataprocessing is simply recording or information retrieval, not computation.

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            TdeF

            Or more like it, one combination of the wheels simulated per second. Trial and error at what would have been unimaginable speed. A long way from computation.

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        TdeF

        Depends on what you mean by digital. Turing’s Colossus in England at Bletchley Park used valves to decrypt Hitler’s messages which used 7 rotors in the Enigma machine. It’s all about hole/no hole, 0/1 binary computing. That was digital in the sense of electronic, not mechanical. No moving parts. The CSIRO in 1949 had a similar device ENIAC/CSIRAC. Semiconductors came much later, in the 1960s with Fairchild and Texas Instruments but the early computers were mechanical, like Babbage, even the abacus. The real break through to allow computing on a single chip or CPU was the move from 4 bit to 8 bit devices by Intel to allow computation on a single chip, the 8080 to replace the 4040. The funny thing is that no computer is actually digital, in the sense of base 10 arithmetic.

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        Hanrahan

        The epitome of analog puters may have been the green satin doppler radar navigator in the Canberra bomber [soon after the war]. At its heart were two tone wheels spinning relative to speed along track and across track.

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    Neville

    So why are people so willing to believe in BS and Fra-d even when it costs them endless billions of $ for a guaranteed ZERO return?
    Here’s Matt Ridley’s latest opinion piece from the WSJ. Well worth a read.

    “MATT RIDLEY: WHY IS IT SO COOL TO BE GLOOMY?
    Date: 17/11/18 Matt Ridley, The Wall Street Journal
    “The world is in better shape than most people think, but we’re more inclined to focus on bad news than good. Psychology can help explain why”.

    “Has the percentage of the world population that lives in extreme poverty almost doubled, almost halved or stayed the same over the past 20 years? When the Swedish statistician and public health expert Hans Rosling began asking people that question in 2013, he was astounded by their responses. Only 5% of 1,005 Americans got the right answer: Extreme poverty has been cut almost in half. A chimpanzee would do much better, he pointed out mischievously, by picking an answer at random. So people are worse than ignorant: They believe they know many dire things about the world that are, in fact, untrue.
    Before his untimely death last year, Rosling (with his son and daughter-in-law as co-authors) published a magnificent book arguing against such reflexive pessimism. Its title says it all: “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think.” As the author of a book called “The Rational Optimist,” I’m happy to include myself in their platoon, which also includes writers such as Steven Pinker, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shermer and Gregg Easterbrook.

    For us New Optimists, however, it’s an uphill battle. No matter how persuasive our evidence, we routinely encounter disbelief and even hostility, as if accentuating the positive was callous. People cling to pessimism about the state of the world. John Stuart Mill neatly summarized this tendency as far back as 1828: “I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.” It’s cool to be gloomy.

    Studies consistently find that people in developed societies tend to be pessimistic about their country and the world but optimistic about their own lives. They expect to earn more and to stay married longer than they generally do. The Eurobarometer survey finds that Europeans are almost twice as likely to expect their own economic prospects to get better in the coming year as to get worse, while at the same time being more likely to expect their countries’ prospects to get worse than to improve. The psychologist Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania suggests a reason for this: We think we are in control of our own fortunes but not those of the wider society.

    There are certainly many causes for concern in the world today, from terrorism to obesity to environmental problems, but the persistence of pessimism about the planet requires some explanation beyond the facts themselves. Herewith a few suggestions:

    Bad news is more sudden than good news, which is usually gradual. Therefore bad news is more newsworthy. Battles, bombings, accidents, murders, storms, floods, scandals and disasters of all kinds tend to dominate the news. “If it bleeds, it leads,” as they used to say in the newspaper business. By contrast, the gradual reduction in poverty in the world rarely makes a sudden splash. As Rosling put it, “In the media the ‘newsworthy’ events exaggerate the unusual and put the focus on swift changes.”

    Plane crashes have been getting steadily scarcer, but each one now receives vastly more coverage.

    This is part of what psychologists call the “availability bias,” a quirk of human cognition first noticed by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in the 1970s. People vastly overestimate the frequency of crime, because crime disproportionately dominates the news. But random violence makes the news because it is rare, whereas routine kindness doesn’t make the news because it is so common.

    Bad news usually matters; good news may not. In the prehistoric past, it made more sense to worry about risks—it might help you avoid getting killed by a lion—than to celebrate success. Perhaps this is why people have a “negativity bias.” In a 2014 paper, researchers at McGill University examined which news stories their subjects chose to read for what they thought was an eye-tracking experiment. It turns out that even when people say they want more good news, they are more interested in bad news: “Regardless of what participants say, they exhibit a preference for negative news content,” concluded the authors Mark Trussler and Stuart Soroka.

    People think in relative not absolute terms. What matters is how well you are doing relative to other people, because that’s what determined success in the competition for resources (and mates) in the stone age. Being told that others are doing well is therefore a form of bad news. When circumstances get better, people take those improvements for granted and reset their expectations.

    Such relativizing behavior affects even our most intimate relationships. An ingenious 2016 study by David Buss and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin found that “participants lower in mate value than their partners were generally satisfied regardless of the pool of potential mates; participants higher in mate value than their partners became increasingly dissatisfied with their relationships as better alternative partners became available.” Ouch.

    As the world improves, people expand their definition of bad news. This recent finding by the Harvard psychologists David Levari and Daniel Gilbert, known as “prevalence-induced concept change,” suggests that the rarer something gets, the more broadly we redefine the concept. They found in an experiment that the rarer they made blue dots, the more likely people were to call purple dots “blue,” and the rarer they made threatening faces, the more likely people were to describe a face as threatening. “From low-level perception of color to higher-level judgments of ethics,” they write, “there is a robust tendency for perceptual and judgmental standards to ‘creep’ when they ought not to.”

    Consider air travel: Plane crashes have been getting steadily scarcer—2017 was the first year with no commercial passenger plane crashes at all, despite four billion people in the air—but each one now receives vastly more coverage. Many people still consider planes a risky mode of transport.

    We’re even capable of fretting about the bounty of prosperity, as “Weird Al” Yankovic highlights in his clever song, “First World Problems”: “The thread count on these cotton sheets has got me itching/My house is so big, I can’t get Wi-Fi in the kitchen.” Sheena Iyengar of Columbia Business School became a TED star for her research on the debilitating modern illness known as the “choice overload problem”—that is, being paralyzed by having to choose from among, say, the dozens of types of olive oil or jam on offer at the grocery store. North Koreans, Syrians, Congolese and Haitians generally have more important things to worry about”.

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      pat

      Neville – here’s Mr. Doom & Gloom himself:

      26 Nov Issue: New Yorker: Bill McKibben: How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet
      With wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels, large tracts of the earth are at risk of becoming uninhabitable. But the fossil-fuel industry continues its assault on the facts.
      (This article appears in the print edition of the November 26, 2018, issue, with the headline “Life on a Shrinking Planet.”)
      Thirty years ago, this magazine published “The End of Nature,” a long article about what we then called the greenhouse effect. I was in my twenties when I wrote it, and out on an intellectual limb: climate science was still young. But the data were persuasive, and freighted with sadness. We were spewing so much carbon into the atmosphere that nature was no longer a force beyond our influence—and humanity, with its capacity for industry and heedlessness, had come to affect every cubic metre of the planet’s air, every inch of its surface, every drop of its water. Scientists underlined this notion a decade later when they began referring to our era as the Anthropocene, the world made by man…

      I was frightened by my reporting, but, at the time, it seemed likely that we’d try as a society to prevent the worst from happening. In 1988, George H. W. Bush, running for President, promised that he would fight “the greenhouse effect with the White House effect.” He did not, nor did his successors, nor did their peers in seats of power around the world, and so in the intervening decades what was a theoretical threat has become a fierce daily reality…READ ON
      https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/26/how-extreme-weather-is-shrinking-the-planet

      as he doesn’t link to the early artice, and as it’s not easy to find it in full elsewhere, best I could find is the following. increase the font size:

      The End of Nature by B. McKibben (pages 2 to 6)
      https://psych.utah.edu/_documents/psych4130/McKibben_B.pdf

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        theRealUniverse

        “With wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels, large tracts of the earth are at risk of becoming uninhabitable. But the fossil-fuel industry continues its assault on the facts assault on the fiction.”
        This is total proof that the climate scare is nothing more than a direct assault on hydrocarbon fuels period. Nothing to do with science (which they KNOW is bullshyte). Stared by the ramp up in Rio 1992. Morris Strong would be singing in his grave, his final wish may become true, eliminate humans or make it VERY hard to survive as a modern industrial society.

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        Neville

        Yes silly Billy really does believe his delusional nonsense and even believes we can quickly fix/mitigate his so called CAGW.
        Yet just 30 years ago China was way behind the OECD countries life expectancy,but today the average life expectancy in China is 76 or about 6 years behind us.
        And today China generates 66.7% of their TOTAL energy from COAL and their big cities have almost the same life expectancy as the OECD.
        I think Billy boy is clueless and he would happily waste endless trillions of $ on HIS so called mitigation for zero change to temp by 2100 or for thousands of years. Barking mad doesn’t even begin to describe him.

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          AndyG55

          He’ll be right, so long as he goes along with what Rudd or Julia or some other clueless clown says, even though he has no idea what it was. 😉

          I’m sure there is someone behind the scenes to feed mindless thought-bubbles to his amoeba-sized brain. Perhaps phloop could help. 😉

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        tom0mason

        Yes Pat.
        The end is nigh, even more extremely nigher that it was, bring out our inner snowflake, weepy Bill McKibben.

        Good ol’reliable, like old faithful, Bill McKibben spouts more unsubstantiated steamy drivel to the snowflake generation like a messianic preacher (in direct competition with Katharine Hayhoe). Even the Democratic lemmings find his ‘doom!’, ‘more doomed!’, ‘more doomered than ever!’, hard to take. Still, like Katharine Hayhoe, it earns them a fat fee.

        ‘McKibben & Hayhoe’ are today’s Barnum & Bailey of Circus Climatostraphy.

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    yarpos

    Elections coming up next week in Victoriastan. Dear leader Andrews said in an elction promo that his solar proliferation initiatives would reduce energy prices (not downward pressure , but reduce)

    I wrote to my valued Labor candidate a few days ago asking how the mechanism driving these price reductions would work. I briefly described how I think it will do the reverse. So far nothing, but if it ever turns up I will post the exchange.

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        ROM

        Nobody in the west it seems, wants to get too cozy with Putin’s Russia.

        So the Russians are siddling up to the Chinese with a couple of massive gas pipelines bringing gas from the central Siberian gas fields to China along with other surface visible items of Sino / Russkie co-operation.

        However behind the scenes it appears from the whisperings of some senior Russian politicals that the Russians are very wary and getting a bit paranoid about the expansionist Chinese under Xi.

        Russia has that huge acreage extending from the former closed military city of Chita, east of Lake Baikal right across the top of Manchuria and down the length of the Ussuri River on the eastern side of Manchuria to the major Pacific Russian warm water port of Vladivostok.
        The population of this immense eastern Siberian region is in a quite dramatic free fall and the Russians are offering all sorts of incentives for their people to migrate to the region.

        For the Chinese the immense and so far untapped resources of every type so close to china’s northern borders must be a real bait for them to go for if they can figure out how to do so with out precipitating an all in armed brawl of a very significant size and effect.
        It doesn’t necessarily mean all out war but the possibility of a whole series of low visibility armed and heavy military conflicts until one or the other finally can be seen to be on top.

        ——Some time ago I posted here on Jo’s blog the potential for the whole or most of China’s Belt and Road project to begin to become seriously undone.
        That is beginning as we read about various Chinese sponsored and paid for and built by Chinese labor projects that have been sold to governments and small nation politicians where there is no way the nations , including a couple in south eastern Europe can ever pay for .
        So the Chinese as in Sri Lanka take over a major port or other facility as payment for the original project.
        That really gets the locals steamed up as we are seeing in Pakistan where a similar situation is beginning to arise as the Chinese want to take over a major Pakistani port as payment for a number of Chinese controlled and Chinese manned mining and rail transport projects and Sri Lanka where the Chinese have now established a major military Indian Ocean port.
        Which the Indians who so far have held their peace might decide is their patch of ocean and the Chinese had better get to hell back to the western Pacific if they don’t want yet another war with India.

        The Indians and Chinese have had at least two major wars and a whole bagful of armed clashes and armed standoffs along the northern Indian border since 1954.

        China is just repeating the whole Han Race xenophobia about other races that has existed throughout their story and was most evident again in the time of Mao Zedong in the early 1970’s particularly in west Africa where one of my brothers and his wife saw and experienced the Chinese xenophobic contempt for the locals when they built the TanZam railway [ To Chinese gauge rail not to the Tanzanian / British rail Gauge ] without employing or training any African workers and engineers.

        China has I think 26 independent nations on its borders and few of them have any long standing love for the Chinese, an attitude brought about by long historical Chinese military and economic imperialism and expansionism.

        So our media , our politicians and even our military intelligence don’t seem to take into account ,at least on the surface, that China has as a consequence of its own actions and its aggressive history , a whole gamut of nations on its borders who are not enamoured at all at the idea of China having a say in let alone controlling the future destiny of their nation[s].

        So my guess; Expect trouble, maybe big trouble arising from China’s current attitudes of standoverism and contempt for the interests of smaller nations and troubles to break out but quite possibly in areas and regions and under circumstances that nobody, including even the Chinese leadership having foreseen or have prepared for.

        Reports indicate that Xi might not be having it all his own way in China as he is being seen as seriously underestimating what Trump will do and how far Trump is prepared to go to get his changes through and to once again garner a high international respect for the USA, a respect that had changed to a hidden contempt in many circles overseas when the USA was under the Obama presidency.

        After all everybody and that’s everybody and his dog just expected the USA to keep on paying, for Americans to remain just being a patsy that could be kicked whenever they wanted to but would lick their hand even from the most despicable and incompetent political kleptocrats when required to do so ask those high and mighty and so superior to the Americans politicals bureaucrats national elites and etc who had a marked and growing contempt for America and Americans, so much so they gave no thought at all and made no alternative arrangements , they made NO provisions of any sort for the possibility and the possible time when America would quite suddenly find its mojo and would turn and bite and bite hard and would likely remain so in the new mood beginning to infiltrate across the USA and all its diverse peoples for a couple of generations to come..

        Hence the squealing and outrage at Trump’s America by so many when the Americans driven by Trump have quite suddenly stood up for themselves and snarled and are prepared to bare their teeth at anybody who thought the Americans were still a pushover and would remain so.

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          el gordo

          ‘China’s current attitudes of standoverism and contempt for the interests of smaller nations …’

          For christ’s sake get a grip, we are looking at a benevolent dictatorship which has forced the Alliance members to give a little thought to uplifting the poor.

          ‘On Sunday, the Morrison government made a commitment with Japan, New Zealand and the US to bring electricity to 70% of the population of Papua New Guinea by 2030.’ Guardian

          Beijing is not interested in gaining strategic advantage, for them its strictly commercial, whereby they have organised a leasing situation when countries can’t repay debt. Similar to the British leasing Hong Kong for 99 years.

          Our fear of the yellow hoard is xenophobic and a reminder that when you read history its best to be fair and balanced. The Europeans were slavers and America was built on the backs of slaves, China has no case to answer.

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    pat

    happy you will be spreading the good word to audiences outside Australia, Jo.

    make a note:

    Upcoming Events: 4 Dec 2018: Heartland Institute at COP24 in Poland Presenting Climate Science to Counter Conference Alarmism
    Data and new report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change presented in Poland will show humans are not causing a climate crisis…
    Heartland’s event, featuring two scientists and three experts on climate and energy policy in the United States and Europe, will be held at the Vienna House East Katowice from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. local time, 8:00 a.m. to noon ET.
    This event will also feature the public debut of a new 1,000-page report from the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) titled Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels. It is the latest in what is now a five-volume, 4,000-plus page series stretching back to 2009 critiquing the work of the UN’s IPCC.

    The event will be live-streamed from our event in Poland less than a mile away from the COP24 site. Watch it at this link or below…

    The Heartland Institute is attending COP-24 in Katowice with NGO-Observer credentials during the first week, reporting from the conference site on Monday, Tuesday morning (before Heartland’s science and policy event), and Wednesday.
    “Each year the verdict becomes stronger and clearer that the scientific evidence debunks global warming alarmism,” said James Taylor, senior fellow for environment and energy policy at The Heartland Institute. “While the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties frantically searches for reasons to justify its continued existence, The Heartland Institute is proud to present the science that debunks U.N. alarmism.
    “We will also be presenting examples of real-world evidence contradicting important U.N. climate claims,” Taylor said. “We will be delivering the truth that the only thing ‘settled’ about the global warming debate is that U.N. climate reports have little credibility. Skeptics present a far better scientific case.”

    SPEAKERS:
    Craig Idso, Ph.D., founder, Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
    Horst-Joachim Lüdecke, Ph.D., spokesman, European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE)
    Dennis Avery, director, Center for Global Food Issues
    James Taylor, senior fellow, The Heartland Institute
    Wolfgang Müller, general secretary, EIKE
    [More details to come.]
    https://www.heartland.org/events/events/heartland-institute-at-cop24-in-poland-presenting-climate-science-to-counter-conference-alarmism

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    pat

    the Sky News/Brent O’Halloran piece on Mongolia/CAGW/Red Cross, which I commented on yesterday in jo’s previous thread.

    early on, O’Halloran claims: average temperatures in Mongolia have risen 2.1C since 1940, more than double the global average.

    yet the examples in the piece are almost entirely about severe winter weather!

    first example. Mongolian man blames desertification for 300 of his goats freezing to death last winter.
    O’Halloran continues with how in the far north of the country, increasingly severe winters threaten the very existence of one of the world’s smallest ethnic groups:

    SKY NEWS VIDEO: 3min59sec: 18 Nov: Hobart Mercury: Mongolians plead for action on climate change
    Dramatic temperature changes and extreme weather events in Mongolia have been blamed for the deaths of thousands of livestock in recent years and is believed to be forcing hundreds of families each year to abandon their traditional nomadic farming ways. As world leaders prepare for the UN climate conference in Poland next month, Mongolians are pleading for international action.
    https://www.themercury.com.au/news/world/mongolians-plead-for-action-on-climate-change/video/1ae3b2f0a21c144714ab1d408f500595

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    pat

    “stunt” is the operative word. note no location is too remote for the MSM’s news agencies, if it’s in the cause of CAGW:

    PICS: 17 Nov: EuroNews: Climate change: giant postcard aims to highlight Europe’s shrinking glaciers
    By Chris Harris; with Reuters/AFP
    Organisers chose the Aletsch glacier — which scientists say is receding at an unprecedented pace — for the publicity stunt…
    Switzerland government’s Agency for Development and Cooperation were among the organisers of the stunt…

    all pics in the following attributed to AFP:

    17 Nov: TheLocalSwitzerland: AFP: Record-breaking Swiss Alps postcard sends message against climate change
    PIC: The display easily set the Guinness world record for the number of postcards. Photo: AFP
    A massive collage of 125,000 drawings and messages from children around the world about climate change was rolled out on a shrinking Swiss glacier on Friday, smashing the world record for giant postcards.
    The mosaic of postcards, measuring 2,500 square metres (26,910 square feet), was laid out in the snow on the Aletsch glacier in the Swiss Alps, at an altitude of 3,400 metres.
    The event aims to “boost a global youth climate movement ahead of the next global climate conference (COP24) in Poland”, next month, said the WAVE foundation, which organised the event in cooperation with Swiss authorities…
    The individual postcards feature children’s drawings in different colours and hues of white, which together spell out the messages: “STOP GLOBAL WARMING”, “WE ARE THE FUTURE GIVE US A CHANCE” and “#1.5C”…

    “Children and young people have a key role to play if (the 1.5C) goal is to be achieved, both as generations that will suffer from the consequences of climate change for a long time and as a force for concrete action,” the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) said in a statement.
    To commemorate the Guinness world record, “a postcard will be designed and printed to dispatch the young people’s words to the four corners of the globe,” SDC said. It said some of the postcards would be sent from the world’s highest postbox on the Jungfraujoch peak, which overlooks the Aletsch glacier, to participants in the COP24.
    https://www.thelocal.ch/20181117/record-breaking-swiss-alps-postcard-sends-message-against-climate-change-cop24-switzerland-environment

    17 Nov: TVNZ: AP: Kids’ postcards blanket Swiss alpine glacier in global climate change plea
    PIC: Kids across the world expressed concerns about global warming by joining forces to create a giant postcard on a glacier in the Swiss Alps. ***Source: Associated Press

    It’s a cry of help – from New Orleans to Hong Kong, from sub-Saharan Africa to India – ahead of an upcoming UN-backed climate conference in Poland next month…
    The Swiss development and cooperation agency and partners unfurled overnight a “compound postcard,” on top of the threatened Aletsch glacier…

    ???Organisers say the individual postcards delivered to the 3,400-metre height near Switzerland’s famed Jungfraujoch, aimed to set a Guinness World Record for the “postcard with the most contributions.”

    ***Guinness, though, said the attempt has not been registered. The current record is only 16,000…

    “They are asking us and their leaders to take action to preserve the planet Earth for them to have a future on it,” said Oceane Dayer, founder of Swiss Youth for Climate.

    Ever mindful of the impact, organisers are calculating the CO2 footprint caused by sending so many postcards – often through Swiss diplomatic posts – and preparing to double the offset, or compensation.
    Drones equipped with cameras buzzed overhead as bright sunshine bounced off the white mountainside.

    Organisers want to launch a ‘Global Climate Change Youth Movement’ to play into the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Katowice, Poland, known as COP24, next month…
    https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/world/kids-postcards-blanket-swiss-alpine-glacier-in-global-climate-change-plea

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    Neville

    Here are two Youtube videos from Dr Rosling. The first showing the world from 1810 to 2010. This is using all the data concerning HEALTH and WEALTH since the start of the Ind Rev or from POOR and SICK to HEALTHY and WEALTHY in just 200 years. See China and Asia catching up over the last few decades. Gotta love those fossil fuels!!!!

    Only 4 minutes of your time required to fully understand what has happened on the real planet earth since 1810. Of course the CAGW fantasists prefer their fantasy planet of doom and gloom, but who cares?

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

    In this TED talk Dr Rosling proves that the so called educated elite are more ignorant than Chimps at the Zoo. Just watch the first five minutes of his talk to understand why these delusional fools would easily believe their CAGW nonsense.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg

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    pat

    16 Nov: Reuters: How are the development banks supporting long-term climate goals?
    by Helena Wright
    (Helena Wright is a senior policy advisor at E3G, Third Generation Environmentalism Ltd)
    * Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
    Long-term thinking is key to ensuring money flows to projects that will make a zero-carbon world a reality

    2018 has been a year of record-breaking temperatures, heatwaves, and cyclones. This month, ahead of the U.N. climate negotiations (COP24), the Climate Vulnerable Forum takes place, where countries at risk of climate change are coming together to discuss climate ambition.
    The Virtual Summit is hosted by the Marshall Islands – a country that may be overwhelmed by rising seas under climate change…

    A group of over 40 vulnerable countries have already committed to reach 100 percent renewable energy by 2050 – a pioneering and ambitious commitment. Development banks have committed to supporting long-term 2050 decarbonization, and World Bank officials are speaking at the summit…

    This comes just a few weeks before the World Bank announces its post-2020 climate goals- an important opportunity to reaffirm its climate ambition. So how can development banks best support the transition to net-zero emissions?…READ ALL
    http://news.trust.org//item/20181116161217-3ib1j/

    18 Nov: Scoop NZ: Greenpeace Press Release: Marshallese call for developed countries to step up
    The Marshallese activists gathered in Majuro before embarking on traditional wooden vessels and paddling into the ocean, where the 50-strong flotilla massed around a 7x10m banner reading “Survive. Thrive. 1.5”. Pacific Island Represent activists in Fiji also made a human sign to spell out the words “Survive. Thrive. 1.5” in solidarity with the Marshallese.

    “Climate change is putting Pacific people’s way of life and the very existence of island nations in jeopardy. I am terrified to know that my three-year-old daughter will have to grow up in a world that’s heating up faster than ever before. She’ll be growing up with other Pacific islander children who may never know what it is like to live on the islands with the abundance they offer,” said Kelvin Anthony, Head of Pacific Net at Greenpeace Australia Pacific.
    “And even more terrifying is knowing that those who are responsible for putting our islands homes in harm’s way are only concerned about making profits from dirty fossil fuels. There is no choice but to act.”

    The leaders of the 48 nations most vulnerable to climate change, such as Bangladesh and the Philippines, will be present at the Climate Vulnerable Forum as well as the heads of state of a number of Pacific Island nations.
    ???The leaders of developed countries attending include French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern…

    Greenpeace will have a team of experts available for comments.
    http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1811/S00085/marshallese-call-for-developed-countries-to-step-up.htm

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    pat

    14 Nov: Woodstock Independent: Delays threaten solar farm plan?
    by Larry Lough
    Although the commission had not been scheduled to meet again until Dec. 3, developer SolAmerica is facing a mid-January deadline to apply for state tax incentives for its plan to build a solar farm on Ridge Road, south of Valley Hill Road, in Bull Valley.
    But first it needs a special use permit that would allow the 2-megawatt development on land zoned for agricultural use…

    Opponents of the project say the village is needlessly rushing the process.
    “I don’t see where their timeline has anything to do with Bull Valley’s ordinance,” said Janet Ring, one of dozens of vocal opponents of SolAmerica’s proposal for an 8,000-panel solar farm in what is now a cornfield – but among nearby housing developments…

    Although Bull Valley does not need a solar ordinance to approve the special use zoning permit, the planning commission has considered a new code on a parallel track with the SolAmerica request, which is one of several the company has submitted for solar installations in McHenry County.
    And even if the village approves the special use permit, that would only put the project into a lottery for state incentives. Without those incentives, the project dies, which would be fine with most of the people who have attended the zoning meetings, including about 30 who were at the Nov. 5 meeting…

    A state law that went into effect June 1, 2017, provides $180 million a year for construction of wind and solar farms and nearly $200 million in energy credits to urge solar developments in Illinois.
    Half of the credits are earmarked for community solar projects like the Bull Valley proposal, which are intended for people who can’t or don’t want to install their own solar panels but want to subscribe to a local solar project and, in return, receive credits toward their electric bill…
    https://www.thewoodstockindependent.com/2018/11/delays-threaten-solar-farm-plan/

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    pat

    Ravenshoe wind farm temporarily shut down after turbine fire
    The Cairns Post-13 Nov 2018
    A FAR North Queensland wind farm has been temporarily shut down while investigations into what sparked a turbine to catch fire at the site this week…

    16 Nov: Warrnambool Standard: Dundonnell wind farm to share transmission lines
    by Everard Himmelreich
    The 80-turbine Dundonnell wind farm near Mortlake has acknowleged community concern about the multiplicity of wind farm transmission lines and agreed to share part of its transmission infrastructure with another wind farm proposed for near the town.
    The developer of the $560 million Dundonnell wind farm, Tilt Renewables, said it had reached an agreement for 15 kilometres of the 38km transmission line from its Dundonnell site to be a shared transmission line.
    Shared transmission infrastructure will cost more than building a line for a single wind farm…

    Another 87-turbine wind farm, the Mount Fyans project, has been proposed by Tasmanian-based company Woolnorth, for 5kms north of Mortlake on the Mortlake-Ararat Road but has yet to receive planning approval…
    Tilt’s transmission lines from the 15-turbine Salt Creek wind farm it opened near Mortlake this year created consternation with some community members and politicians saying the large pylons were obtrusive and unsafe.
    Federal Member for Wannon Dan Tehan said many pylons for the 51km transmission line from the Salt Creek wind farm to the electricity grid at Terang had been placed too close to roads and were a traffic accident risk…

    One of the initiators of the project, Dundonnell farmer Will Lynch, said the farmers “wanted to do more with our land in a way that was sustainable and good for the environment.”
    When complete, Dundonnell has the potential to generate power for about 245,000 homes, or more than enough power for all of Ballarat, Warrnambool and Geelong.
    https://www.standard.net.au/story/5762698/dundonnell-wind-farm-to-share-transmission-lines/

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    pat

    PIC AT BOTTOM OF ARTICLE: 13 Nov: Cairns Post: Ravenshoe wind turbine goes up in flames
    by Andrea Falvo
    Ratch spokesman Simon Greenacre confirmed a turbine at the company’s Windy Hill Wind Farm had caught alight.
    He said the fire was contained within a turbine nacelle, the cover housing the generating components…
    https://www.cairnspost.com.au/news/ravenshoe-wind-turbine-goes-up-in-flames/news-story/c5c8b777a5609d7b4f842270256febfd

    17 Nov: BBC Scotland: Appeal lodged over wind farm near Langholm
    An appeal has been lodged against the refusal of a wind farm described as “overly prominent and overwhelming” by planning officials.
    Dumfries and Galloway Council rejected the 12-turbine Hopsrig project near Langholm.
    It concluded that the impact on the setting in the Eskdale valley meant the scheme should not proceed.
    However, developers argue that the project could go ahead with “appropriate conditions”…
    A Scottish government reporter will now look at the case before delivering a verdict on the plans.
    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-south-scotland-46234887

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    • #
      robert rosicka

      Only thing they did wrong was not to keep the fire going on the inside of a furnace stoked by continuous amounts of lovely black or brown coal (not racist) .

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    pat

    reminder, behind paywall:

    Wind farm company sued over bushfire caused by electrocuted crow
    The Australian-3 May 2017
    Victorian firm Maddens Lawyers filed the class action against Infigen Energy Ltd in the NSW Supreme Court after a crow electrocuted by a…

    updated, but behind paywall:

    14 Nov: Lawerly: Wind Farm Co. settles class action over bushfire caused by electrocuted crow
    by Cat Fredenburgh, Melbourne
    Renewable energy company Infigen Energy has agreed to settle a class action over the January 2017 bushfire that was sparked by a crow that…
    https://www.lawyerly.com.au/wind-farm-co-settles-class-action-over-bushfire-caused-by-electrocuted-crow/

    not for public consumption, it seems, though it’s an animal story of the kind MSM usually loves to publish!

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    • #
      Dennis

      https://stopthesethings.com/2017/03/13/born-lucky-stars-align-perfectly-for-pms-son-with-mammoth-bet-on-wind-power-outfit-infigen/

      The wind farm business that prospered from moving to Australia, the RET and the Paris Agreement.

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      • #
        robert rosicka

        There was no luck to it , old man was a greenie and did everything he could to favour renewable energy to help the son out .

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    • #
      RickWill

      Spare a thought for the crows!

      Two decades ago I saw a row of maybe 10 fruit bats that had been dry roasted in an instant while they were hanging from a 66kV power line. Their carcasses remained aloft for a number of weeks until they were mostly skeletons.

      In outback NSW there was regular failure of the 275kV high voltage supply. It always recovered on reclosure so took some weeks to work out what was going on. The fault occurred within a 30 minute window the afternoon but only Monday to Friday. A keen observer eventually linked a number of dead sulphur crested cockatoos to the failure. The dry roasting of several cockatoos coincided with hosing out a local abattoir into its waste water treatment pond. The birds would sit on the high voltage towers overlooking the pond waiting for their meaty treats. As soon as the waste began entering the pond the birds would all simultaneously fly down for a feed. A few birds spanning between conductors was enough to light them up.

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      • #
        Hanrahan

        California, in the area of the “camp” fire, had already begun upgrading their wires installing heavier wires, wider spaced and insulated. Maybe they should have spent their time on real matters rather than plastic straws, bags and a million “green” initiatives.

        The Oroville Dam spillway has largely been repaired but at massive cost. Could proper maintenance have prevented this? Prolly. But Cali has no money left over after protecting and caring for wetbacks. Politics always trumps reality.

        Even with these fires Moonbeam would prefer the federalies fund rehabilitation than to fund prevention himself.

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  • #
    Andrew McRae

    Dear comrades,
    when discussing any environmental, economic, or social topic, please ensure all of your vocabulary is ISO standards compliant.

    ISO-37100: Sustainable cities and communities – Vocabulary.
    (preview) https://www.evs.ee/preview/iso-37100-2016-en.pdf

    sustainability
    state of the global system, including environmental, social and economic aspects, in which the needs
    of the present are met without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

    It’s not at the level of “compelled speech”, but you have to wonder how this will be used.

    It’s almost a sensible definition, though not quite how I’ve defined it in the past. I thought that any process that can run unchanged in its inputs, activities, and outputs, for at least a planning horizon of time period t is considered sustainable within that time period. The longer the time period considered the more sustainable. Mentioning economic, social, and environmental aspects explicitly is fair enough. It does however boil down to a glorified version of “think of the children!”

    But the total fail here is defining it in terms of a future generation’s needs. How the hell are we to know what a future generation will need? I guess when you already rule Birmingham from Brussels you have no shame in trying to rule the people of the 22nd century from the unenlightened central planning ivory basement remote position of the early 21st century.

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    • #
      yarpos

      Fork! seriously? and ISO standard for doublespeak?

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      • #
        ROM

        Re the ISO standards on vocabulary

        [There are lies, damn lies and statistics.]

        Here are a couple of statistics;
        The lies can look after themselves.
        …………
        There are currently about 7,102 spoken languages around the world.

        There are 22,407 ISO based international standards;

        That makes it 159 million ISO publications if each language was to be fully covered by all the ISO standards .

        The American Congressional Library by way of comparison is the largest library in the world with 162 million items listed.

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    DonS

    Hi Jo

    So off the Munich, Oslo & London, spreading all that jet exhaust into the stratosphere, how guilty will you be feeling 🙂 I was wondering if they still have that thing where you can pay extra on your plane ticket to offset (make you feel good about) damaging the delicate environment? Don’t hear about it much anymore so maybe it quietly went away.

    I also saw you on Outsiders during the week. Having missed your last appearance I must say how impressed I was. After almost 10 years of reading your blog it was great to see that your verbal communication is as impressive as your written form. You were so good that you were able to finish whole sentences and points without Rowen Dean interrupting constantly, as he does with most of his guests on the show.

    If I were running Sky I would give you a show once a week to cover science. Not just the global warming scam but a show about the wider happenings. So many amazing things are going on in scientific research and yet all our media seem interested in is giving peanuts with BAs in English Literature unlimited time to tell us the end is nigh. No wonder kids are turned off studying science now.

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    • #
      yarpos

      Hopefully you get to sit up the front Jo, a couple of wines will help assuage the “guilt”

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      • #
        Annie

        No guilt here when we fly…just gratitude for the ability to keep in touch with family and friends.
        With a couple of glasses of fizzy…cheers Jo! 🙂

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    robert rosicka

    Hot topic on the news is the proposed Embassy move to Israels Capital , there are many good reasons to move and there is one reason to not ,and that one reason is on religious grounds and not wanting to upset a certain faith .
    I say move it to where it should be .

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    Aussieute

    Question for the gurus here.
    A couple of contacts have been shoving this down my throat for a while.
    An interesting concept … ignoring the climate change, Co2 agenda diatribe, and even the psycho “carbon negative” agenda as well

    If the video link below is possible, minus all the religious fervour, and is financially credible … yeah may be. The other two more like pipe dreams.
    This is how Co2 could be used to fuel our society.

    Can We Recycle CO2 Emissions to Make Carbon-Neutral Fuel?

    Carbon Engineering/

    Thoughts.

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    • #
      robert rosicka

      Aussieute why would you want to deprive plants of Co2 ? Ask your Warmy friends how much Co2 is actually out there especially from us humans and especially from us humans here in Oz .
      It’s not in abundance and is required for all life on this planet ,as a percentage of all the Co2 out there that we here in Oz are responsible for it’s a decimal point followed by many many zeros .

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      • #
        Aussieute

        Agree
        I’m looking to take the approach of getting facts against their seeming.
        I’m seeking facts to knock back their lack of logic.

        My take on all of this is

        Climate change is very real. This is where bureaucrats and their ilk seek to take $$ from the masses by scamming and legislation
        Changing climate is very real. It is a natural phenomena driven largely by the activity or inactivity of the sun.

        My question for thesis green dreamers is … How many electric cars, windmills and solar panels must Australians own and install before we prevent our first drought?
        Obviously no answer

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          robert rosicka

          Facts ok , of all the Co2 in the atmosphere only a small percentage is attributable to us humans .

          forget PPM and convert to percentage ,hey why not the cops do it for breath alcohol analysis after all .

          So 400ppm of Co2 equates to a tiny .04 % Co2 in the atmosphere.
          Of that .04 % only 3.18 % is mankinds contribution and Australia only counts very tiny amount of that .
          It works out in the end that Australia is responsible for an astounding figure of .00002 % of Co2 ,give or take a few zeros .

          This link from Tdef is worth a read .

          http://joannenova.com.au/2018/10/abc-climate-fiction-life-at-0-5-degrees-hotter-dead-plants-animals-ghost-towns-jellyfish-hell/#comment-2058030

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            Aussieute

            I am aware of all of that Robert and thanks for the contribution.
            I am seeking how to discredit that information as presented as quackery or of limited reality.
            My response is to take the information/”facts” as presented to me via those links, minus the quackery, and call that out for what it is. Is it physically possible and financially feasible without the dreamers demanding subsidies.

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            • #
              robert rosicka

              Try the handbook which is up top on the left ,and I think WUWT also has a guide as well .
              Most warmists are zealots and nothing you can show them or say will shake their faith ,no matter how obvious it is .

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            • #
              robert rosicka

              Sorry missed the last part of your question , imo it is feasible if cost is not a factor and if it’s isolated from the grid .
              Anything is possible in theory .

              Put it this way –

              If you wanted to power your house off grid you would need –

              Around 20 grand worth of batteries

              Big solar array

              Add a wind turbine and expensive switching and circuits

              On top of all that an emergency diesel generator for those days of no wind and no sun

              ROI on the above is not good at all and it’s doubtful it would ever pay for itself and remember that batteries don’t generate power .

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              • #
                Graeme No.3

                robert rosicka:

                I think that going off grid might be more costly than that. Certainly an acquaintance went off grid and it cost him just short of $50,000. Solar PV about 6kW.
                Admittedly he has a largish house and battery prices are supposedly falling – although I notice that Tesla has increased prices for the powerwall by 20% recently. Also his (diesel) generator has an autostart built into the controller (though he says it only runs a few hours a week). He is costing more solar in the system but to extend power to a barn.
                I think that a wind turbine is a waste of money. Small ones generate too little, large ones are too costly and there are the maintenance problems.

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              • #
                robert rosicka

                Agree wholeheartedly Graeme , a decent battery bank for a large high energy consumption house would be north of thirty grand alone .
                Given the life expectancy of the batteries at around ten years if lucky you would never ever recover your costs .
                But on the other hand you lived way out in the sticks and money was no problem I guess it’s feasible but and a big but ,for the average consumer hooked to the grid and not a millionaire the argument becomes pointless.

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              • #
                Chad

                Also dont forger, when you go off grid, not only are you committing to the most expensive form of electricity,.. (see the Lazard LCOE data ) …but also you are forcing the remaining grid users to pay your share of grid and distribution costs !
                Not a very socially sustainable action. !

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    Aussieute

    Been digging and may be looking in the wrong place so a question

    I have friends who have been imposed on by a wind power company and will have up to 10 bird killers on their property. Discussions have arisen as a result of their receiving $40k per windmill.

    So how much do wind power companies receive by way of subsidy from the RET on a per annum basis?

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    • #
      yarpos

      depends on how much they generate , its not a flat rate payment

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    • #
      yarpos

      look at the publicly available accounts of the Hepburn Springs windfarm, it will give you an idea where the money comes from

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      • #
        Aussieute

        They claim never to have received a subsidy for anything
        Not believing them

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        • #
          robert rosicka

          Windfarms can’t exist anywhere without subsidies, if it wasn’t for subsidies you wouldn’t be able to pay your power bill and the amount your power bill has gone up in the last few years is because of subsidies for wind and solar.

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          • #
            robert rosicka

            Grammar check has done it again , grrrrrrrrr .

            Should read you would be able .

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            Aussieute

            I agree
            I’m after some facts to back up what is currently only an assumption

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            • #
              ROM

              Ausie ute @ # 29

              The media are supposed to have fact checkers in permanent residence.
              Somehow it seems that none of the media, none of the so called scientists who claim to able to make fuel from CO2 have ever bothered their tiny brains in doing a bit of research on that lowly portal of information, the internet.

              The US Navy has been making jet fuel experimentally on one of their nuclear powered carriers for a few years now by extracting CO2 from sea water and then using catalysts to turn it into fuel that is quite compatible with the fuel standards for military jet engines.
              It was big news a couple of years ago but has now been displaced in the arm waving green slimes propaganda pages by the USN playing with bio-fuels, the” fuel of the future ” [ /sarc ] as you should know according to the green propaganda.

              Yep , no troubles to turn CO2 into quite high quality fuel for jet engines and even piston engines so long as you are prepared for a cost of over US $6 / us gallon for jet fuel which is about the cost of jet fuel tankered across the globe to the carriers every few days.
              Plus an energy source, a nuclear reactor about the size and output of a submarine / carrier reactor [ 4 to 6 of in each of the US super carriers ] to have the power to catalyse and refine that fuel in situ.

              ref; US NAVY PRODUCING FUEL FROM SEAWATER [ circa 2014]

              For a much wider range of items on this subject just enter search ;[ ” us navy fuel production from sea water” ]

              [ I’m using “DuckDuckgo” search which doesn’t track you so the search item might give different results with Google,]

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            AndyG55

            Also the mandate to use their electricity when they are actually producing some.

            On a level playing field, wind and solar WOULD NEVER EXIST.

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    Hanrahan

    Some folks have no sense of irony. On the Renew Economy nem watch site I am greeted with headlines:

    Australia is Doomed – Structurally and Politically
    You’ve Been Warned: This Report Will Infuriate Aussies happyhollermarketing.com
    Is the AU Doomed? – Aussies Should Watch Out
    It’s About To Get Worse With This Deal Going On allyuspa.com
    Are Aussies in Big Trouble? – The Economy Could Face Issues
    Do Not Read This Until You have Prepared Yourself mcgrealrobinson.com

    Now, somehow we have to convince them WHY!

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    tom0mason

    One for all your green friends to view…
    https://youtu.be/u1rj00BoItw

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    Bushkid

    How is it that at 2055 AEST, when the sun has long been well below the horizon, no less than 3 (three) solar farms in Qld are still listed on the AEM website as producing electricity? I know our weather up here is great, but solar farms still operational at nearly 9:00pm? Pull the other one!

    https://anero.id/energy/

    The really obvious thing, night after night, is that the thermal fossil fuel generators are fully operational, the hydro generators are running, but apart from the three suspect icons in N&W Q (Hughenden, Barcaldine and Longreach), there’s no solar and variable but usually precious little wind generation going on.

    If Bandt and his crew of dreamers get their way and ban all coal, everywhere for every reason, just what do they think will be powering their iPhones, electric cars and public transport i.e., trams and suburban trains?

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