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It’s a nervous wait til summer. The Australian grid appears to be in slightly better shape than a couple of months ago, but it’s still so shaky manufacturers admit they are developing contingency plans to move operations interstate if a blackout hits, or they get attacked by a bout of high prices:
Something that doesn’t happen in competent countries with reliable electricity:
Victorian manufacturers prepare for power crunch
Angela McDonald-Smith and Mark Ludlow, AFR
Manufacturers are drawing up contingency plans to shift operations out of Victoria this summer as fears of blackouts and sky-high electricity prices for the March quarter keep nerves on edge.
While worries about blackouts in Victoria have eased in the past three months, Coca-Cola chief executive Alison Watkins said on Friday the company was prepared to beef up manufacturing in other states should the worst-case scenario eventuate in Victoria and generation fall short of demand.
Just another burden and inefficiency on business.
As power gets more expensive and unreliable the Victorian government is blaming coal:
Victoria’s Energy Minister, Lily D’Ambrosio, reiterated her concern that the increasing failure of ageing privately owned coal power generators was […]
In NSW fires continue to burn, and with more hot weather is forecast. Some farmers are burning off for themselves, not waiting to be saved by a bucket of rain from a plane. There’s a total fire ban in NSW, so this is very much illegal, highly risky, and 5 months (or 5 years) too late. Desperate and dangerous. A dire situation.
As a signpost on the Road to Madness, its time the whole nation heard of Maxwell Sculz
Here in Westernistan Australia, in 2011 Szulc cleared a firebreak on his own land, and the government put him in jail. He didn’t start any fires, or put anyone at risk — he cleared a 20 wide break through scrubby regrowth on his own land, and they sent him to jail for 15 months. No heritage trees were destroyed, no rare orchids went extinct. It had all been cleared back in 1983 and regrown. His property was next to state land and he wanted to reduce the fire risk. He’d been ordered in court to fill in forms and ask permission. But it was his land, he felt that was wrong, so he cleared it. His action was both as a […]
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9.1 out of 10 based on 21 ratings
Jennifer Marohasy dives on Beige Reef near Stone Island with Walter Stark, and Emmy Award winning cinematographer Clint Hempsall.
The aim was just to record what was there… don’t believe your lying eyes.
Fortunately, this science is not peer reviewed.
Jennifer’s blog and the IPA.
9.7 out of 10 based on 92 ratings
The Bureau of Meteorology did what to February?
Wow, just wow. Look what the Bureau of Meteorology has covertly done to February? Something like one third of a degree has been added to the average Australian summer maximum anomalies over the past few years according to the “expert” data from the worlds-best-practise equipment.
In the BOM Whopper Part 1 we revealed that in the BOM’s latest round of unannounced adjustments there were big increases in the rate of Australian summer warming. It turns out a lot of the summer rise comes from changes to February. Mysteriously, there were large changes to the national average of the last three years. Let that sink in.
These changes were incomprehensible because while the averaged “whole nation” got warmer, there were no changes to the data in any of the 104 individual stations.
It’s all rather spooky… but what it isn’t, is scientific.
The two main points in Bob Fernley Jones’ work:
There are big increases to measurements recorded in the last three years? Why? Yet again, the adjustments are down in the early years, up in the latter years, and overall, the rate of warming, surprise, increases thanks to man-made adjustments. He […]
Roger Pielke Jnr in Forbes:
Everything You Hear About Billion-Dollar Disasters Is Wrong
First NOAA did the billion dollar disaster graph and forgot that it was just a artificially truncated proxy for inflation. Then after they got caught, they adjusted for inflation, but are still forgetting, somehow, that more people live in the US, and GDP has risen, so there are more assets to be destroyed. The storms have a larger target and more chance of “scoring”.
Here’s the ominous, grant-raising NOAA Count of U.S. billion-dollar disasters, 1980 to 2016.
Tried to graph disasters, accidentally graphed their own incompetence
Luckily there’s one man left in academia who hasn’t been sacked yet. Roger Pielke is helping NOAA out again and has calculated a meaningful graph instead.
Obviously, carbon emissions have gone to hell in a Saturn 4 Rocket, but in the USA it hasn’t made any visible impact in the last third of a century:
Cost of disasters, floods, storms, Roger, Pielke Jnr. Data: data from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (GDP) and Arizona State University (hazard losses).
Is it just incompetence, or is the NOAA team really succeeding (but as a Public Relations Agency […]
Fires in Spring? It’s normal for fires to peak in Spring in NSW
Greg Mullins is a former Fire and Rescue NSW commissioner and a councillor on the Climate Council, he implies in the Sydney Morning Herald that this is abnormal and that fires are starting earlier:
If anyone tells you, “This is part of a normal cycle” or “We’ve had fires like this before”, smile politely and walk away, because they don’t know what they’re talking about.
In NSW, our worst fire years were almost always during an El Nino event, and major property losses generally occurred from late November to February. Based on more than a century of weather observations our official fire danger season is legislated from October 1 to March 31. During the 2000s though, major fires have regularly started in August and September, and sometimes go through to April.
This year, by the beginning of November, we had already lost about as many homes as during the disastrous 2001-2002 bushfire season. We’ve now eclipsed 1994 fire losses.
Mosomoso: The fire season in NSW is spring — this is not early, this is “late season”
For those […]
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In 1946 fires burned in an “almost unbroken chain from Brisbane to Townsville”. They lit up the sky at night, pushed plumes of smoke 3,000 ft in the sky, that looked like “Bikini Atoll”. And this was July…
Qld 1946: Now that’s what I call Hazard Reduction
Believers of man-made-weather say that warmer drier conditions and longer fire seasons are preventing hazard reduction burns. Aside from the fact that a warmer world is not a drier world, and rainfall trends have gone up not down, this is a snowflakes excuse. Even if it were true, the answer is to get more serious about burning off when conditions are cooler.
Thanks to Siliggy, Lance Pidgeon for the pointer. This is what Queenslanders used to do when they were serious about stopping wildfires. Their view of dry brush was that it was waiting like tinder…
Fortunately yesterday, Armageddon didn’t come to the East Coast. But it might have.
800 Miles Of Fires Along the North Coast
The Courier Mail, Monday July 29th, 1946
Trove, National Library of Australia
By a Staff Correspondent TOWNSVILLE, Sunday. — Fires are burning to-night in an almost unbroken chain from the edge of Brisbane to Townsville, […]
Catastrophic fires are predicted tomorrow across the East Coast of Australia. Around 500 schools will be closed tomorrow. Some 400,000 people have been warned “to be ready. Thousands are evacuated. A state of emergency has been declared. 1,400 interstate fire fighters have gone to NSW to help.
For updates about New South Wales, check the NSW RFS website. For Queensland, see the QLD RFS website.
MyFireWatch has a live map updated regularly with outbreaks.
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How close and thick was that forest?
Shots from the ABC news Monday. To appreciate what happened, see the moving scene as people approach these ruins through tiny lanes surrounded by dense forest. (Full ABC segment below).
Bobin, NSW, Fire damage, ABC News
Look at the trees around this house at Rainbow Flat
The backlash begins
The opportunistic greens are already crying “climate change” while firestorms rage and lives are potentially under threat
Greens playing politics with fire, say Labor and Coalition
Greg Brown, The Australian
Greens leader Richard Di Natale sparked fury from both major parties when he said the nation’s emissions policy had caused the fires that killed three people and injured 100.
Greens policies increasing bushfire […]
Scenes of Armageddon in New South Wales today and people are calling it a climate emergency on twitter. Ban new coal mines! Blame Tony Abbott! (See #nswbushfires). So far there are three deaths, and 150 houses lost (at least). The latest report tonight from @NSW RFS is that at 12:30am, there were 74 bush fires across NSW, 43 still not under control.
@smhussey This was the view over Northern NSW last night.
Passengers flying out of the Gold Coast said they couldn’t get away from the flames. #NSWfires
Details:https://t.co/xiUiZn9Ygh CREDIT Zach Firth on Facebook
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Frightening at any time, especially so this early in the season. It wasn’t that long ago we would have still been undertaking small hazard reduction burns at this time of year. Not any more.#NSWbushfires #QLDbushfirespic.twitter.com/Wchw4NDl8U
— ÆnesidemusOZ ⓒ 抗 (@AenesidemusOZ) November 9, 2019
Wow. That is a lot of forest being converted into cloud in that satellite image.
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Too much fuel causes extreme bush fires, not climate change
67 years of hazard reduction in Western Australia shows exactly how to control wildfires. It’s just chemistry.
We leave all that fuel lying around then get surprised when […]
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8.6 out of 10 based on 20 ratings
The Red Brigade uniforms are mass produced and the same all over the world.
Big finds in Mozambique, Saudi trouble, and the anti coal movement are helping African oil and gas:
Why Africa’s Oil & Gas Sector Is Exploding
By Tsvetana Paraskova – Nov 05, 2019, OilPrice
Major oil and gas discoveries and subsequent investments in infrastructure projects are set to help the oil and gas industry in Africa to grow, also helped by improved governance and regulation, PwC said in its newly released Africa oil & gas review 2019.
“One of the most dramatic finds in Africa over the past decade is Mozambique’s natural gas estimated at over 180 tcf, which has already unlocked the first three large-scale LNG projects,” according to PwC.
These projects and additional exploration could make Mozambique the world’s third-largest LNG producer after Qatar and Australia by 2030, PwC says.
So seven XR groupies turn up outside an African oil and gas conference to show just how arrogant they are:
Extinction Rebellion calls Africa Oil Week delegates “climate criminals”
By Madison Yauger, GroundUp
In a media statement, the group said: […]
Eight full grown trees of carbon in every bottle of Eco-vodka
No seriously, yesterday Air Co launched a type of vodka made from air instead of potatoes. One bottle allegedly soaks up “as much CO2 as eight fully grown trees.”
At $65 a bottle, this will be a must have for fashionable snowflakes who have too much money and not enough taste buds.
This solves the hole in the market for all the people wanting low carbon Bloody Mary’s.
The vodka, which costs $65 for a 750 ml bottle, is made from only two ingredients, carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) and water. That’s unlike traditional vodka, which is typically made by fermenting grains such as corn, potato and wheat. Producing a typical bottle of vodka could create around 13 pounds of greenhouse gases, according to Fast Company, while Air Co.’s product is carbon negative, removing a pound of carbon from the air with every bottle produced.
More efficiently than plants?!
The process uses the same principles as photosynthesis in plants but does so more efficiently,” Constantine tells CNBC Make It.
Air Co.’s technology splits water into hydrogen and oxygen, then combines the hydrogen […]
In this world, the deniers are the ones who think humans will survive
There are people more extreme than Extinction Rebellion. Though in a quieter way. They’ve given up. They’re so convinced by the apocalypse — a world careering towards doom — that they only feel at home around others who share their fears. Many have lost relationships, and now often hide their beliefs from their family. Many have dropped out of protests.
Activism means growing opium poppies so they have painkillers to make the end-time easier instead of starving. Kind of like “preppers” but not that optimistic.
James Purtill the ABC journalist, admits he himself was too dark for his girlfriend. “We broke up”.
The doomers get evicted and isolated from mainstream believers because “they sound too much like deniers”. Just as the deniers (he means skeptics) say there is no point cutting emissions, so do the doomers: they figure death is coming, it’s too late, why bother? Indeed.
Unlike the XR-attention-seekers, these are the gullible but they’re introverted, nicer, not forcing their beliefs on anyone. After the fantasy leap to believe in experts and models, there’s a certain kind of logic to it.
More collateral damage of the […]
Image Paulbr75
Beachfront property in skeptical areas is worth 7% more than equivalent homes in “believer” neighborhoods.
Presumably believers think those homes are at risk of being washed away — at least that’s what the researchers think. But it could be that believers suffer an immediate social penalty — imagine turning up to the local dinner party and having to admit to the thought-police that you just bought a beachside mansion?
Then again, the real motivator might be that people will pay more to live next to a skeptic.
This brings the dilemma for skeptics — save 7% on the new house, but live surrounded by snowflakes, or pay more and get on better with neighbors?
Does climate change affect real estate prices? Only if you believe in it
According to a new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business, buyers could end up paying significantly more for a home.
For the large-scale study, researchers combined sea level data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), geographic data about climate change attitudes from the Yale Program on Climate Change, and proprietary data on millions of repeat real estate transactions from Zillow to examine […]
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Who remembers that 15,000 scientists signed some climate declaration in 2017? The same Prof Ripple, and Bioscience probably hope you don’t, because two years later there is the same rehashed, but with only 11,000 signatories. So 4,000 disappeared without a trace. There are however, the same comic indefendable graphs. Call it “extreme graphing” — every line needs to be diagonal. All “pauses” are disappearing. No fallacy remains unbroken.
To stop storms we apparently need to reduce the global population, stop mining “excessive” minerals, eat more veges, and we need to preserve biodiversity, reefs, forests and greenery at whatever it was in 1685 or whenever the sacred preindustrial year of Life On Earth is declared. You know the drill — coal and oil are demon spirits. Exorcise them now! Then rinse, repeat and …hand-wash your undies.
This is panic-science: hold the error bars, hide the adjustments and heap on the hype.
Climate crisis: 11,000 scientists warn of ‘untold suffering’
Damian Carrington, The Guardian
The world’s people face “untold suffering due to the climate crisis” unless there are major transformations to global society, according to a stark warning from more than 11,000 scientists.
“We […]
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9.9 out of 10 based on 15 ratings
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Georgetown Texas did the Fake Renewables Show and Dance — the one where they “buy” 100% renewables but are connected 24/7 to a grid maintained by the usual non-renewable baseload generators. No doubt they paid for the right number of gigawatt hours of renewables but it’s a mere electrical-accounting trick. They didn’t cut the cord, and they’re not paying for all the hidden costs they would incur if they did.
The real cost of the mythical “100% renewables” does not include a gas fired backup station (which they’re using) — but it does include a huge storage system, transmission lines, and frequency control. They’d need something like 60,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries costing about $2 billion dollars* and maybe a couple of dams too.
ENERGY TRANSITIONS How 100% renewables backfired on a Texas town
Edward Klump, E&E News reporter
Electricity from various sources commingles on the main Texas grid, and the city said it’s not claiming that electrons produced in West Texas are the same ones people consume in central Texas. Georgetown’s customers have been paying for all-renewable energy since April 2017, based on a standard in Texas, it said. Still, […]
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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