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The Electro-pyre conflagration escalates. The cost of electricity on Thursday in two states of Australia reached a tally of $932 million dollars for a single day of electricity. Thanks to David Bidstrup on Catallaxy for calculating it. As Bruce of Newcastle says “ “Three days and you could buy a HELE plant with the money wasted.” That’s a power plant that could last 70 years, and provide electricity at under $50/MW. (Forget all the high charges for 30 years to pay of the capital (in red below), we could just buy the damn thing outright, paid off in full from day one.)  Cost of old coal plants in the USA. From the report by Stacy and Taylor, of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) Burned at the stake: $500 per familyIn Victoria, per capita, that means it cost $110 for one day’s electricity. For South Australians, Thursday’s electricity bill was $140 per person. (So each household of four just effectively lost $565.) In both these states those charges will presumably be paid in future price rises, shared unevenly between subsidized solar users and suffering non-solar hostages. The costs will be buried such that duped householders will not be aware of what happened. Coles and Woolworths will have to add a few cents to everything to cover their bills, and the government will have to cut services or increase taxes. No one will know how many jobs are not offered or opportunities lost. This is the road to Venezuela. If Hazelwood had still been open, the whole bidstack would have changed, quite probably saving electricity consumers in those two states hundreds of dollars. Eight million Australians could have had a weekend away, gone to a ball, or bought brand new fishing gear. And this is just one single day of electricity. If Liddell closes, things will get worse, no matter how much unreliable not-there-when-you-need-it capacity we add to the system. Indeed, the more fairy capacity we add, the worse it gets. NSW will soon join the SA-Vic club. This is what happens when an electricity grid is run by kindergarten arts graduates who struggle with numbers bigger than two. This is utterly and completely a renewables failThe socialist Labor-Greens are already trying to blame it on coal, but we ran coal plants for decades without these disasters. Right now, no one is investing in coal because of bipartisan stupidity. What company would pay the maintenance fees on infrastructure so hated by the political class? The coal plants are being run into the ground. Maintenance is even being delayed to keep the plants running through peaks like this. No country on Earth with lots of unreliable renewables has cheap electricity. How many times do I have to repeat it? This is my mantra for 2019. In Australia when we had mainly coal and no renewables our electricity was cheap and reliable. Now we are still mainly coal, but all it takes is a poisonous small infiltration of subsidized unreliable renewables to destroy the former economic incentives, the whole market, the system: our lifestyle. The Liberal Party needs to grow a spineThis is surely a crisis. As long as the Liberals are a Tweedledum version of the Labor party, they can’t solve this and deserve to lose. New renewables installations must be stopped immediately — put on hold indefinitely — until they no longer need forced subsidies, until the RET is gone, the carbon taxes, the hidden emissions trading scheme and we have a proper free market. Then new renewables can be permitted to compete with all generation alternatives, though all new generators will also have to be responsible for paying for extra transmission lines, back up batteries, and any other frequency stabilization required. On net a generator must be able to guarantee that when the people call on it, it can provide, lets say, 80% of total nameplate capacity. When that day comes (thirty, fifty, years from now or maybe never) I will be happy to support renewables. Until then, we are global patsies handing over glorious profits to energy giants, renewables companies, Chinese manufacturers, and large financial institutions. Lets have a plebescite: How many Australians would rather have a weekend away with their family or make the world 0.00 degrees cooler in 100 years in a symbolic display to assuage the Gods of Storms? Happy Australia Day! h/t to Ian B *Added the word unreliable post hoc. It’s more accurate. We are talking about Wind and Solar, not Hydro. h/t Claude.
January 26th, 2019 | Tags: AEMO, Electricity Cost, SA (South Australia), Victoria | Category: Global Warming |  Print This Post | | ***UPDATED: Melbourne has been 42C or more around 50 times since 1855. That’s one in three years. Thanks to Bob Fernley-Jones for the correction. They were only 250 million watts short: Loy Yang, powering Victoria, and soon probably “taking the blame” too. Rachel Baxendale, The Australian h/t Des Moore More than 200,000 Victorian households had their power cut off yesterday in a bid to protect the state’s energy system from shutting down, as the Andrews government was forced to admit there was not enough power to keep up with soaring demand in sweltering summer heat. Homes were blacked out, traffic lights across Melbourne were switched off and businesses were forced to close for up to two hours after the Australian Energy Market Operator enforced rolling power outages to make up a 250 megawatt shortfall in supply. The State Energy Minister (Lily D’Ambrosio) said there would “absolutely” be no blackouts this morning and the rolling blackouts started 90 minutes later. Welcome to the USSAustralia where we hope to make your 150th Birthday Party 0.001 degrees cooler but we can’t predict our electricity grid for the next hour and a half. Dark ages — get used to it: Greens leader Richard Di Natale blamed an over-reliance on coal for the heatwave and backed Ms D’Ambrosio’s calls for people to stop using their dishwashers and washing machines and to turn up the temperature on their air-conditioners. Senator Di Natale said Australians experiencing power outages were being unreasonable if they complained about not being able to use home appliances… That’s right, the man who thinks solar panels will protect your children from storms wants you to “be reasonable”. We were told renewables would be cheap, would save the world, and power the nation. Now we’re told the lights will go out, we shouldn’t expect to run the dishwasher or air-conditioner at 7pm every day, and burning hundreds of millions of dollars for an afternoons electricity is just “part of the price”. I have seen your future and your future is load shedding:Once we were going to lead the world, now we are happy to be failing like everyone else. Ms Zibelman said load shedding was common practice around the world. “All countries that I’m aware of, and again, I have been in the business for 30 years, and over periods of time you run into these systems like you have, where you have generators that go off and you have to do load shedding,” she said. “We can’t afford … 100 per cent reliability over all hours and all circumstances, but we do like to plan that for what we see these extreme weather events that we have enough reserves available. That’s really what we’re working towards.” Victoria used to be able to “afford” reliable energy, until they got lots of cheap wind and solar power. Now business can’t afford to set up in Victoria. Australia used to be able to maintain coal plants too: AEMO blamed the failure of two generators at the Yallourn coal-fired power station and another at Loy Yang A, all in the Latrobe Valley, for reducing supply by 1800MW. For forty years Australia had cheaper and more reliable energy than this, and it was powered by what four letter word? Melbourne has been this hot or hotter about
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50C temperatures have occurred all over Australia before
Australians have been recording temperatures of over 50C since 1828, right across the country. In 1896 the heat was so bad for weeks that people fled on emergency trains to escape the inland heat. Millions of birds fell from the sky in 1932 due to the savage hot spell.
In 1939 outer Sydney reached 122F or over 50C — recorded at Windsor Observatory — a place that had had a Stevenson screen for around 40 years at that stage. Without fanfare, the Ballarat Star in January 1898 notes that there was a “genuine heat wave” in Blanchetown SA in November the year before. Temperatures of 120 and 121 are recorded on four days that month.
All these measurements are wrong?
click to enlarge.
Contrast that with last week when towns in the outback reached 48 and 49C and the Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Michael Efron said — “They are pretty incredible temperatures.” Seriously. It’s hard to believe that after a quadrillion megatons of emissions we are nearly as hot as we were in 1896? It’s as if hundreds of measurements of similar temperatures across four states of Australia and on many occasions from 1828 to 1939 don’t even exist.
The worst heatwave was probably January 1896 when the nation was “like a furnace”.
From a post in 2012: All these measurements are wrong too?
Extreme heat in 1896: Panic stricken people fled the outback on special trains as hundreds die.
It is as if history is being erased. For all that we hear about recent record-breaking climate extremes, records that are equally extreme, and sometimes even more so, are ignored.
In January 1896 a savage blast “like a furnace” stretched across Australia from east to west and lasted for weeks. The death toll reached 437 people in the eastern states. Newspaper reports showed that in Bourke the heat approached 120°F (48.9°C) on three days (1)(2)(3). The maximumun at or above 102 degrees F (38.9°C) for 24 days straight.
By Tuesday Jan 14, people were reported falling dead in the streets. Unable to sleep, people in Brewarrina walked the streets at night for hours, the thermometer recording 109F at midnight. Overnight, the temperature did not fall below 103°F. On Jan 18 in Wilcannia, five deaths were recorded in one day, the hospitals were overcrowded and reports said that “more deaths are hourly expected”. By January 24, in Bourke, many businesses had shut down (almost everything bar the hotels). Panic stricken Australians were fleeing to the hills in climate refugee trains.
It got hotter and hotter and the crowded trains ran on more days of the week…
To get a feel for how widespread and devastating it was, read through just one report in one paper (there are scores more).
The Warwick Examiner, Jan 29, 1896. Click to enlarge.
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Thanks to Chris Gillham, Lance Pidgeon, Ken Stewart, Warwick Hughes, and all the BOM audit team.
Photo: Jo Nova
January 24th, 2019 | Tags: Australian temperatures, Evidence, Extreme weather, Heatwaves | Category: Global Warming, Meteorology | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Where is your carbon footprint when you need it?
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This week the same people who advertise their virtue with climate cloaks are advertising their status with a Bombardier 7500.
Don’t call them hypocrites, it’s completely consistent. Both are pretentious attempts to peck up the order.
More And Bigger Private Jets Landing at Davos as Leaders Discuss Climate Change
Erin Corbett, Fortune
Perhaps its all because of jet envy.
At least 1,500 private jets are slated to arrive in Davos. The number is up from last year’s estimated 1,300, according to the Air Charter Service, which also found that this year’s jets are larger and more expensive.
Why more and bigger jets?
“This is at least in part due to some of the long distances traveled, but also possibly due to business rivals not wanting to be seen to be outdone by one another,” Andy Christie, the private jets director at ACS said in a statement.
Would you like a helicopter with that?
Keep reading →
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Look out, another knot of tortured researchers just went past. All this time we’ve been pouring money into planting trees and stealing land from farmers because we were sure that trees would cool the world. (Just like solar panels do, yeah?) But life is so complicated — for years now some researchers have been quietly wondering if more trees were actually going to warm the planet instead, but they didn’t want to say much. It turns out that while trees absorb the sacred CO2 (that’s cooling!) they also emit methane (that’s warming!), and terpenes (cooling) and isoprene (warming and cooling!) If that’s not complicated enough, then there is the albedo effect. Trees are dark, they absorb more sunlight than bare ground and snow. So depending on where they are planted, that makes for “warming”. Then some VOCs or volatile organic compounds also seed clouds.
So what’s the net effect? Who knows, it’s not like there are whole industries dependent on it…
Now they ask?
How much can forests fight climate change?
Trees are supposed to slow global warming, but growing evidence suggests they might not always be climate saviours.
Gabrielle Popkin, Nature
As usual, the debate is based on logic and death threats:
At the same time, some researchers worry about publishing results challenging the idea that forests cool the planet. One scientist even received death threats after writing a commentary that argued against planting trees to prevent climate change.
It doesn’t matter if the planet dies, editors don’t want to look stupid:
“I have heard scientists say that if we found forest loss cooled the planet, we wouldn’t publish it.”
Yay, free speech!
To greener types, it doesn’t matter if trees warm the world on net, because they cool the world as well. And if that makes sense to you, the UN has a job waiting for you:
Although the analysis relies on big assumptions, such as the availability of funding mechanisms and political will, its authors say that forests can be an important stopgap while the world tackles the main source of carbon emissions: the burning of fossil fuels. “This is a rope that nature is throwing us,” says Peter Ellis, a forest-carbon scientist at The Nature Conservancy in Arlington, Virginia, and one of the paper’s authors.
Australians should — in theory — care more about this than almost anyone. We are one of the countries that did count carbon storage. If it turns out that land clearing cools the planet, Australia is stuffed (carbon accounting-wise): Our emissions per person fell 28% since 1990, but the largest single factor there was “land use” — meaning we stopped clearing and let regrowth take over some farms and paddocks. Then we shafted the farmers who owned the land and couldnt use it.
The 1997 climate treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol allowed rich countries to count carbon storage in forests towards their targets for limiting greenhouse-gas emissions. In practice, few nations did so because of the agreement’s unwieldy accounting mechanisms and other factors.
The albedo effect:
Researchers have known for decades that tree leaves absorb more sunlight than do other types of land cover, such as fields or bare ground. Forests can reduce Earth’s surface albedo, meaning that the planet reflects less incoming sunlight back into space, leading to warming. This effect is especially pronounced at higher latitudes and in mountainous or dry regions, where slower-growing coniferous trees with dark leaves cover light-coloured ground or snow that would otherwise reflect sunlight. Most scientists agree, however, that tropical forests are clear climate coolers: trees there grow relatively fast and transpire massive amounts of water that forms clouds, two effects that help to cool the climate.
This chemistry is so complicated, if only we had climate models that worked, we could figure out how much all this mattered:
Keep reading →
January 23rd, 2019 | Tags: CO2 emissions, Emissions (CO2), Forest, Methane | Category: Biology, Flora, Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Another family friendly picnic day in Australia where nice people spend their leisure time advertising an industry worth more than $476,000,000,000.
A bunch of Australians do free corporate advertising
They would kick themselves if they knew…
Blue Mountains residents to make ‘human sign’ for climate change action
The message will say: Renewable energy, make the switch now, 100% renewables… imagine.
Blue Mountains residents will stand side by side to form the word “SWITCH” which will then be photographed from the air.
Imagine if this was an advert for Coke, or Exxon? It would be so much better. Coke and Exxon produce something that people want voluntarily.
One hundred years from now, people will look back and marvel at the Great Renewables Marketing scam known as “climate change”.
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The terror. Sit down I tell you. The ABC tells us that you should “Grab a latte while you still can”.
Coffee beans |Image wiki Hesham Raouf
In full, the true catastrophe is that if the models that are always wrong get something right, some wild coffee relatives, but not actual coffee crop plants, might go extinct. We don’t use them for coffee but you never know, we might one day use them as breeding stock. It’s that serious.
And we can’t save the seeds because apparently liquid nitrogen is too expensive. Wail. Gnash. Fawn.
Since bulk liquid nitrogen is cheaper than spring water, I rank this one as a Prime SkyWhale Class Scare, it’s all hot-air and scary for the wrong reason. You are meant to be afraid of the end of coffee, but what’s really frightening is that science journalism is dead instead.
By Belinda Smith and Nick Kilvert, ABC Australia
Most coffee species at risk of extinction due to climate change, scientists warn
The set up:
You might also want to sit down before reading this. And maybe grab another latte while you still can.
Of the 124 wild coffee species worldwide, UK researchers have declared at least 60 per cent of them in danger of dying out.
There might be science there:
In a paper published in Science Advances today, the researchers warn we need to beef up existing conservation plans, because the ones we have in place now are “inadequate”.
Stick to Climate 101 reporting rule: Good things die, Bad things go viral.
But with deforestation and a changing climate, which brings unpredictable rain, pests and fungal diseases, coffee farmers will be hit hard.
A 2016 report by The Climate Institute found worldwide coffee production could be cut in half by 2050.
We’re already seeing declining production and quality in some traditional coffee-growing regions, said Robert Henry, a plant geneticist at the University of Queensland who was not involved in the research.
Need some condescension?
So why not store coffee beans in a seed bank? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
“It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to conserve coffee using conventional seed storage methods,” Dr Davis said.
This is because seed bank storage freezers, even at -20 degrees Celsius, don’t cut it when it comes to preserving coffee beans.
They need to be chilled by liquid nitrogen — a costly process.
Price of liquid nitrogen: allow for doubling since 2007 and it’s still $1 per gallon. Less than coke.
If the government stopped funding renewables for 24 hours they could save wild coffee seeds.
Let’s check. Here’s what excess fossil fuel emissions have done to coffee production
Looks like coffee has been relentlessly increasing. It has doubled since 1977. Another 100 years of this kind of climate change and we will be drowning in the stuff. Get out your life jackets.
Global Coffee Production, Graph, FAO
.Ho hum.
Scary like the SkyWhale
Skywhale image by Nick-D | Coffee beans Image Hesham Raouf
h/t Dave B, Bill, George.
January 18th, 2019 | Tags: ABC, Media bias | Category: FakeNews, Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Third World Science with First World Funding
Is James Cook University a grants machine or a research institute?
James Cook University reviews ex-student’s ‘fishy’ findings, by Graham Lloyd, The Australian
Oona Lönnstedt has been prolific, writing alarming papers on microplastics, acidification, and reef degradation. But her work looks like a trainwreck. One paper has been withdrawn, in another it was “found that Lonnstedt did not have time to undertake the research she claimed.” She’s been found guilty of fabricating data on the microplastics study. Now Peter Ridd has pointed out that the photos of 50 Lionfish appear to contain a lot less than 50 fish. Images have been flipped, spun or “manipulated” so the same fish appears more than once.
James Cook has done what any ambitious, money-hungry grant troughing institute would do, a very slow investigation of allegedly corrupt behaviour and a very quick sacking of the honest researcher who threatens to expose them. Any respectable Science Minister would freeze all grants to James Cook until this situation was resolved and reversed.
Send your thoughts to The Hon Karen Andrews. Contact her here: karen.andrews.mp AT aph.gov.au. There is a crisis in Australian science. Who is going to fix it?
 50 Lion Fish (or not). Click to enlarge. |
 Fishy copies of Lion Fish. Click to enlarge. |
All Peter Ridd had to to was line up the shots in order they were taken. Peer reviewers didn’t do that.
The real problem here is not about fish or plastic but about the science industry
Walter Stark, a marine scientist with 50 years experience, and a proper skeptical scientist, explains how our current academic ecosystem rewards alarming results:
Starck says generations of researchers have been schooled in a culture wherein threats to the Great Barrier Reef are an unquestionable belief from which all evidence is interpreted.
“She (Lonnstedt) got into the ocean acidification and global warming and the effect CO2 was going to have on the behaviour of marine animals and she started publishing,” Starck says.
“Immediately the publishers lapped it up. As a graduate student she managed to get as much published in one year as most professors do in a decade.”
Imagine, hypothetically, that our academic grant machine was actively promoting the fakest science anyone can get away with when it comes to climate research. Where are the brakes? What stops fake science?
Not peer review. Not journal corrections. Not most of the media. (Where is the ABC? They report the alarm, but not the allegations?)
Confirmation bias is a much bigger problem and much harder to spot than fabricated data. Who is even trying to put those brakes on?
There’s a pattern here
Lönnstedt first got into trouble with a 2016 paper on microplastics that showed that little fish ate tiny bits of plastics preferentially, and then their growth suffered and they were eaten by bigger fish. The Central Ethical Review Board in Sweden investigated was so concerned and declared it was research misconduct. UU’s Board for Investigation of Misconduct in Research called it fabrication. That paper was published in one of the two highest profile science journals there is — called Science. So much for peer review at top journals? The microplastics case has been called “outright fraud” and by Science itself.
When Science demanded the data (that she should have archived) alas the only copy was on her laptop, which was stolen just after the request came through. How in-convenient?
No data? Doesn’t matter
It still took months before Science responded:
Dr Roche told the HES that Science should have retracted the report as soon as the authors failed to provide the raw data, “rather than waiting for the results of a lengthy investigation that only came months later”. But it was a “positive sign” that Science had published a letter criticising its policy, he conceded.
Peter Ridd wonders why we give still her the benefit of the doubt?
Ridd said given that Lonnstedt had been shown to have deficient data in other research, and given that there seemed to be evidence of modified images, it would not be wise to give the benefit of the doubt in this case.
Ridd contacted the co-authors of the lion fish study and the weak excuses flowed forth:
“Based on our understanding, it was not her intent for the collage to represent a picture of all of the lionfish she used,” they said. Rather, she was providing it as evidence “that she had lionfish in the laboratory”, the co-authors said.
Yes, sure. Because we were wondering if she had any Lionfish at all, not whether her 50 Lionfish were 50 different fish.
Her co-author Doug Chivers says there is now a dilemma because Lonnstedt has gone off to Sweden and isn’t doing science anymore and doesn’t want to answer questions. Jo Nova says this is pretty simple, tell her she can pay back her salary or respond in full. She was paid to reveal all her methods and data. She hasn’t finished the job yet.
As I said about James Cook Uni’s treatment of Peter Ridd:
This taints all research the institution puts out. How do we know that any news they announce is the whole truth — we must assume every result is put through the political filter and inconvenient conclusions or implications are removed.
Which other employees of James Cook are concerned about this issue? If they don’t say, is it because none of them care or that those who do feel too intimidated to say so. (Since they are too scared to even use their official email accounts, we can assume they won’t be issuing press releases.) Either way, it’s systemic, it’s institutional and it’s not science.
Uppsala found Lonnstedt “fabricated” results. Look at how that uni responded:
A biology journal is investigating concerns about a 2014 paper by a marine biologist who was found guilty of misconduct last year.
In December, Uppsala University concluded that Oona Lönnstedt had “fabricated the results” of a controversial 2016 Science paper(now retracted), which examined the harms of human pollution on fish. (Lönnstedt’s supervisor Peter Eklöv was also found guilty of misconduct and had a four-year government grant terminated.)
–RetractionWatch
ScienceMag says that “Lönnstedt has reportedly lost her funding from Formas, the Swedish Research Council, as a result of the report. “
Though it took three rounds of investigations before Upsalla Uni got this far. (See page 8 -9 of the NAS irreproducability report. ) Critics need to keep pressing.
JCU takes a whole year to form an investigation panel
James Cook says they are “committed to the highest standards of ethical research”. Concerns over Lonnstedt’s work were raised over a year ago in December 2017. It took until May for JCU to say it would establish an external panel of experts to investigate. And after a whole year they’ve managed to finalize the member list of that panel, though they haven’t even been formally appointed yet. Apparently the Great Barrier Reef may move before the investigation is finished. The Reef is under a dire threat but JCU is in no rush to get the science right. Or perhaps they are just waiting until there is a new Minister of Science who also thinks that science is just a grants-machine to produce PR excuses to screw more tax out of taxpayers?
Speaking of which, the Shadow Minister for Science is the Hon. Kim Carr. Is he going to point out that Karen Andrews isn’t doing enough on this, or does he approve of Fake Science? Contact: senator.carr AT aph.gov.au
Likewise, the shadow Minister for Climate is The Hon. Mark Butler MP: Does he care that we may be wasting money fighting irrelevant battles based on dodgy research? Contact: senator.butler AT aph.gov.au. If the climate matters, so does climate science.
James Cook University is a joke, and if they were serious about showing they care about ethical and rigorous research they would reinstate Ridd immediately and finish the investigation fast. Anything less is “business as usual” at JCU. Fake science.
The Lonnstedt investigation hasn’t been done yet. But if she cares about the reef, and JCU cares about science, she needs to explain herself, asap.
PS: I do hope people write to the politicians. As always, please be polite, no matter how angry and frustrated you may be. Please copy letters into comments as it may help others.
hat tip to John of Cloverdale, Scarper, Barry Woods, Steve Hyland and Pat.
January 17th, 2019 | Tags: Academics, Corruption (science), Ethics, Oceans, Ridd (Peter) | Category: Global Warming, Science | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Everyone “knows” fires are caused by climate change, but how many Australians know that when it comes to the huge Californian fires of October 2017 as many as 750 civil suits have been filed against Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E),the 150 year old utility in California? The fire bill is running at around $30 billion dollars. PG&E are facing financial ruin, calling in a Chapter 11, and going broke.
That’s bad news for people filing the claims, but it is also bad news for renewable energy.PG&E are a major holder of some $35 billion dollars in long term green energy contracts many of which are at above market rates. PG&E may not have to pay out those high prices which means the Green industry will be hurt too.
What goes around comes around. Bad science begets bad business. The Green Industry could have cared enough about the environment to speak out about reducing fire risks through managing fuel loads, and the fires would have been less damaging. Instead they were busy putting up windfarms to stop bushfires instead.
Meanwhile their friends are still doing their best to increase fuel loads in order to reduce CO2 (and stop bushfires).
PG&E Bankruptcy Threatens California Wildfire Suits, Green-Power Contracts
California fire investigators have determined that PG&E power lines sparked 18 wildfires in October 2017 that burned nearly 200,000 acres, destroyed 3,256 structures and killed 22 people.
California’s largest utility said Monday it was preparing to file for Chapter 11 protection before the end of the month as it faces more than $30 billion in potential liability costs related to its role in sparking wildfires in recent years. Electricity and natural gas would continue to flow to homes and businesses, PG&E said.
PG&E Corp.’s plan to file for bankruptcy protection has enormous repercussions for everyone from the homeowners suing the utility for California wildfire damages to the companies that furnish it with green energy. — WSJ
If only green energy was actually competitive, they could have just renegotiated with some other buyer.
Keep reading →
It’s not well known, but in the same way that climate change causes every hot weekend it also causes snow dumps, avalanches, and freak weather. The scientific link is just as strong and calculated the same way. Take a tendentious cross-correlation on free-range seasonal assumptions, and then pour Vodka in the Cray.
If only the Germans had built more windmills they could have stopped this.
Chaos in ski resorts, people trapped, road closed, flights canceled
Three metres of snow fell in the space of 48 hours in some parts of the country and more than a metre is forecast to fall today and tomorrow. — The Times (paywalled)
Heavy snow paralysed much of Europe for yet another day, cutting off mountain villages, sparking avalanches like one that crashed into a Swiss hotel, and killing at least four people.
At least 21 weather-related deaths have been reported in Europe in the last 10 days.
With three million dollars to spend today (like every day) the ABC found cute photos of white stuff on cuddly sheep and scooters to fit the deadly theme. Nice.
There is avalanche danger, blocked roads and floods in Southern Germany.
The Beast From The East comes back to Britain
The UK is headed for the coldest weekend of the year — The Express
A swathe of bitter air will pour in from the Arctic pushing temperatures to freezing or below across the entire country through the next 48 hours.
Scotland, northern England and even parts further south are on alert for wintry downpours towards the end of the week and into the weekend.
It could be the first widespread snowfall since the Beast from the East brought Britain to a near standstill last winter.
Campaigners have reiterated calls for elderly and vulnerable people to take extra care during cold weather.
The weekend blast may be linked to the Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) which appeared in December. Temperatures suddenly rose over the Arctic up high above the jet streams. Often cold temperatures on the surface seem to kick in two weeks or so later.
A possibly lengthy winter blast will be driven by warming of the air over the North Pole encouraging a colder airflow into the UK.
The so-called Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW), which was the driver for last year’s crippling snowfall, set in at the end of December
Best wishes to our Northern Hemisphere friends.
h/t to GWPF
January 15th, 2019 | Tags: Arctic, Cooling & cold snaps, Europe, Polar Vortex, Snow | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Millions of dollars will be burning on electricity tomorrow
With normal hot summer days expected tomorrow price spikes are forecast.
It’s not that hot
These are hot, but not unusual days for the capitals — Adelaide is forecast to be 41C, the other capitals are tame: Melbourne 33, Canberra 39 and Sydney 30. Though small inland cities are baking – like Albury at 44C.
South Australia could burn $36 million an hour
For South Australia tomorrow the AEMO is forecasting the state will need 2,800MW for 2.5 hours at $12,000/MWh. That could be $35m per hour. Note that forecasts in electricity often vary quite a lot from actuals. Looking at the truckload of cash being offered (from a generators point of view) will presumably bring in some extra supply and lower that price.
Forecast prices for Jan 15th 2019 | AEMO
For Victoria, things are even worse
The AEMO is forecasting 9,000MW will be needed at $14,500/MWh for 3 hours. That’s $130 million per hour. Hypothetically, it would be an obscene $390 million dollars just to power the state just from 3 – 6pm. Enough to buy an entire gas fired power plant and have it sitting around all year waiting for spikes.
Forecast prices for Jan 15th 2019 | AEMO
For those peak hours, if it hits the price cap, spike pricing would be 400 times more expensive than baseload brown coal. The same $400m dollars could theoretically power the state for 50 days of non-stop electricity from brown coal stations like Hazelwood Power Plant (if only they hadn’t shut it). Though peak prices in midsummer are normally higher so it is not an apples to apples comparison. Note too: These are wholesale spot prices — there are other charges beyond this like the FCAS which will could rise tomorrow too. We are not even counting that.
It sounds outlandish but one two-day heatwave last year cost SA and Vic $400m dollars.
Could this week be the 2019 bonfire heatwave?
The AEMO has issued a LOR (Lack of Reserve) warning — Grade 2 for Victoria
There is a forecast LOR2 for Victoria in place at the moment. The AEMO says reserve available is expected to be 658MW but 978MW is needed. That’s 300 MW short. If the price is right (and it could not get more “right” without breaking the law) presumably there will be some new generation on offer. The availability and demand numbers can dance around a lot. This afternoon, the AEMO has issued two updates and curiously the situation has got worse with each update, not better.
But hey, it might be windier than they expect tomorrow, and then everything will be just fine.
UPDATE 10PM: Victorian LOR2 downgraded to LOR1. Expected reserve capacity now 1002MW. The required is 1090MW. The people in the control room must be very very busy.
TonyFromOz explains that all our available coal power is running flat out. The peak today (Monday) was 32,000MW.
Forerunner to tomorrow was the Peak today at 5PM. Total power generation (therefore total power consumption) was 32300MW. There are currently three coal fired Units off line, (one in each State still with coal fired power) so the total available coal fired power Nameplate is 19600MW. The total coal fired power being delivered at 5PM was 19200MW.
Add on natural gas fired power and the smaller Other sources, and the total CO2 emitting power on line delivering power at 5PM came in at 81.2% of that total. Hydro was at 12.2, and wind and solar power combined was delivering 6.6%.
And tomorrow, they say it will be even higher. Coal fired power is running at max already.
Hmm! Imagine if there was just one more coal fired power plant, umm, say even that ancient old clunker Hazelwood.
Take away coal fired power, umm, tell ‘em they’re dreamin!
Tony.
Bear in mind years ago the real system peak was 36,000MW. Now it appears we can’t do that unless we get lucky. It’s a good thing those car manufacturers and smelters shut down…
January 14th, 2019 | Tags: Electricity Cost, SA (South Australia), Victoria | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Look, another climate expert the BBC won’t be interviewing
Anastasios Tsonis is emeritus distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of more than 130 peer reviewed papers and nine books. He is just retired, and finally able to speak his mind. [Updated] …though he’s been a climate professor and a skeptic for some years, somehow the media didn’t beat a path to his door. He commented below that rather than staying silent til his retirement he has been skeptical for many years and was free to say so at his university (such a rare thing, how many other profs can we say the same about?). His University of Wisconsin site is here, and his statement here.]
The overblown and misleading issue of global warming
Washington Times
Anastasios Tsonis
The fact that scientists who show results not aligned with the mainstream are labeled deniers is the backward mentality. We don’t live in the medieval times, when Galileo had to admit to something that he knew was wrong to save his life.
Lives are not at risk, but careers sure seem to be. Not medieval times but perhaps modi-eval?
So how many of the 97% of climate science believers are actually skeptics? Even after they retire there are lots of reasons for them to stay quiet. [Obviously, not the case for Prof Tsonis].
He’s willing to debate
Science is all about proving, not believing. In that regard, I am a skeptic not just about global warming but also about many other aspects of science.
All scientists should be skeptics. Climate is too complicated to attribute its variability to one cause. We first need to understand the natural climate variability (which we clearly don’t; I can debate anybody on this issue). Only then we can assess the magnitude and reasons of climate change. Science would have never advanced if it were not for the skeptics.
The models were wrong. If they can’t explain the pause, they don’t understand the cause. (h/t HockeySchtick for that phrase.)
All model projections made for the 21st century failed to predict the slowdown of the planet’s warming despite the fact that carbon dioxide emissions kept on increasing. Science is never settled. If science were settled, then we should pack things up and go home.
My research over the years is focused on climate variability and climate dynamics. It is my educated opinion that many forces have shaped global temperature variation. Human activity, the oceans, extraterrestrial forces (solar activity and cosmic rays) and other factors are all in the mix. It may very well be that human activity is the primary reason, but having no strong evidence of the actual percent effect of these three major players, I will attribute 1/3 to each one of them.
Good on him for speaking out. Shame he didn’t feel he could when he was employed.
h/t Climate Depot and Pat.
***Edited headline to remove the incorrect “retires and”. Thanks to Prof Tsonis for commenting:
| Anastasios Tsonis |
Submitted on 2019/01/16 at 1:07 am
For the record, I would like to state that the header “PROFESSOR RETIRES AND BECOMES A CLIMATE SCEPTIC” is wrong and misleading. I did not wait to retire in order to express my opinions. I am expressing my views for many years and while I was employed. In fact, my article in Washington Times is a summary of my “Statement” posted in my website years ago. My university never interfered with my research. This is exactly what I meant in the article by “ignorant people abusing the internet”. I would hope that this mistake is corrected. Anastasios Tsonis |
When cheap solar is expensive
Badly installed solar PV makes Australia’s grid fragile
On August 25 last year there was nearly a system blackout when, improbably, three states of Australia were islanded by one lightning strike. Within seconds, trips were switching, two smelters were load shed to save the grid from collapse, and across the Eastern Seaboard of Australia frequency and voltages surged or fell everywhere. In Sydney 45,000 homes lost power for a couple of hours. Shops had to close. Trains were stopped. Passengers were stranded. Traffic signals were not working on major roads. There was chaos. Industrial users shut down in a mass of 725MW of load shedding.
The AEMO final report on that day has just come out and shows us just how fragile our grid is. This was not so much a freak accident, as an accident waiting to happen.
It turns out that another cost of cheap rushed solar panels is that many drop out with voltage spikes, suddenly going offline and leaving another hole to fill. The numbers are amazing — of panels installed in the last 2 years as many as one-third in South Australia dropped out when we needed them and about 1 in 6 failed in Queensland.
If smelters are offline, hundreds of thousands of dollars are burning, and millions is at risk…
…
Obviously the true costs of installing solar panels properly are higher than advertised. When we add up the lifetime cost of solar does it include loss of earnings of unrelated businesses?
August outages underline risks to the reliability of the national grid
Perry Williams, The Australian
The Australian Energy Market Operator said several generators failed to respond as expected including “counter-productive responses” that could have been limited or prevented if sufficient frequency control settings were enabled in each region.
While Tesla’s giant battery was praised for helping to stabilise frequency, four unnamed wind farms in South Australia reduced their output to zero because of incorrect settings while solar rooftop systems also crashed out and were unable to assist in boosting supply to either Victoria or NSW.
AEMO detailed how 15 per cent of sampled solar systems installed before October 2016 dropped out during the event. Of those installed after that date, nearly a third in South Australia and 15 per cent in Queensland failed to meet standards.
For the next hour frequencies rocked all the way from Queensland to Victoria
…
Spikes and struggles on the line between SA and Victoria
Crash Test Dummies are here
Australia’s shift to renewables is ramping up:
The rapid switch to renewables is having a profound impact on the grid, with solar generation jumping by 38 per cent in the three months to September while wind grew by 16 per cent, displacing gas from the grid’s power mix.
From the AEMO report: There has been a decline in system resilience.
Keep reading →
January 11th, 2019 | Tags: Basslink, Blackouts, Solar Energy (PV) | Category: Global Warming, Solar Power | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Australia Wins The Global Patsy Award 2019
The Brookings Institute released a report that claims everyone is better off economically by sticking to Paris, but check out the devastating graphs. Economically, everyone is a loser, but the three biggest losers are Australia, Russia and OPEC.
Australia is doing more, paying more, suffering more and yet will make almost no difference to the global emissions tally in anything other than a purely symbolic impress-your-dinner–guests kind of way.
If Australia left the Paris Agreement, even the left leaning Brookings Institute can’t find much difference in total global man-made emissions. Australia is forcing the renewables transformation faster than anywhere else, it will lose GDP, wages, jobs, investment, and the dollar will fall. All that, and no one could even tell the difference between Paris with Australia, and Paris without.
Clearly Australian negotiators at the UN are incompetent on a whole new scale. If they had Australian’s interests at heart, even a little bit, they would have done this study themselves, and gone to Paris with some realistic comparative data to argue that we are cutting too fast and paying too much. Finalists for most useless Global Negotiator of the Decade are Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop. Wayne Swan, treasurer of the year, deserves a mention.
Australians basically walked in to Paris and said “hit me”.
Don’t miss these fun graphs:
Bad news for the Australian dollar:
Change in exchange rates thanks to the Paris Agreement
Who needs Trade balance anyway?
At least our falling dollar will help to stop Australians importing so many goods.
Change in trade balance thanks to the Paris Agreement.
Spot the difference: If Australia left The Paris Agreement the world not even notice
Theoretically, this graph below shows how much global emissions would be reduced should the unthinkable happen and everyone actually met their Paris promises. The lowest red line is the glory of Paris “success” with Australia included.
The dashed line on top of that is Paris success if Australia bailed. Exactly.
Theoretically, this is how much emissions will be reduced if every nation sticks to the Paris agreement.
Despite the title on the graph above, this is not Global CO2 emissions at all which are around 750 billion tons. This, obviously, is the insignificant man-made part.
Go on, let’s add Global Emissions to the scale…
Everyone’s economy will shrink
Less energy means less economy.
Three regions will be the worst hit — Australia, OPEC and Russia.
Change in GDP relative to business as usual without all that virtue signalling.
Large drop in jobs coming
Whichever way you look at it, jobs are going. Just that in Australia they’re going faster. We apparently outdo the rest of the world til Russia (allegedly) catches up. Then some magical assumption happens in 2021. (Trump becomes our PM, perhaps?)
Whichever way you look at it, jobs are going.
Notice no country on Earth will get richer because of Paris
Australians are getting rid of evil capitalist wages faster than anyone, though apparently OPEC puts on a good finish in the race to the bottom.
Change in CO2 emissions, Paris Agreement, 2019. Graph.
The three biggest losers of wealth — Australia, Russia and OPEC
This graph says something.
Change in CO2 emissions, Paris Agreement, 2019. Graph.
Australians will be consuming less, are you looking forward to that?
Did I mention rubbery figures?
The researchers do some serious economic-number-mashing, converting everything into a carbon tax.
From the Brookings Institute press release:
[The researchers]… use a multi-region model of the world economy to analyze the economic and environmental outcomes that are likely to result from these [Nationally Determined Contributions] NDCs. To construct the modeling scenario, the authors convert the disparate NDC formulations into estimated reductions in CO2 emissions relative to a baseline scenario with no new climate policies. They then solve for the tax rate path on CO2 in each region that achieves the NDC-consistent emissions reductions in the target year, 2030 for most regions.
Then funny things happen where the carbon tax they calculate bears little relation to the actual emission reductions. Could it be because a tax on a universal molecule essential to life is a stupid economic idea? Some of the players won’t respond because energy needs are inelastic, and most of the players won’t respond because they are blue-green algae, or otters, or E.Coli. And some of the players who do respond pick windmills and solar panels for reasons which defy any economic or scientific analysis.
Comparing projected 2030 CO2 tax rates to the same year’s percent emissions abatement relative to baseline, the authors find that declines in CO2 emissions do not necessarily correlate with the CO2 tax rate. For example, under Paris, Japan’s emissions decline the most of all regions, but its CO2 tax is the fourth lowest at about $US 16 per ton. India and the United States share a common goal for percent reduction of emissions relative to baseline, but India’s tax rises to about $US44 per ton in 2030, about 70 percent higher than the $US 26 tax in the United States in its target year of 2025.
Rubbery figures meet Rubbery assumptions
The paper assumed a government-introduced $5-a-tonne carbon tax from 2020 — which neither the Coalition nor Labor has foreshadowed — to cut Australia’s carbon emissions by a promised 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.
Now lets pretend there are benefits from cutting CO2
Santa Claus says reducing an airborne fertilizer is a benefit they can put a hundred billion dollar figure on.
And this comes from the Brookings Institute – friends of Big Government. Imagine if sensible independent engineers wrote it?
Australia is irrelevant.
Whatever happens: It’s gonna cost you
At least Warwick McGibbon is honest telling us that economic pain is inevitable. Furthermore he admits that if you just care about jobs and wages not the climate, you’d quit Paris.
Warwick McKibbin, an ANU economics professor and one of the report’s authors, said Australia could not avoid economic pain by pulling out of the agreement.
“If we stay in, we’re better off because if we pull out, we’ll still be getting most of the economic damage — other countries won’t be buying our resources so much — but miss out on the benefits of curbing carbon emissions such as less pollution,” Professor McKibbin told The Australian.
“You don’t have to believe in climate change at all to support staying in Paris. That said, if you just cared about jobs or real wages but didn’t care about climate or pollution, you’d stay out.”
He sings an ode about beating the mythical pollution ogre. Even if CO2 actually caused much warming, Australian emissions are irrelevant, CO2 is a well mixed gas, and there is a very substantial benefit, thankyou, in raising CO2 on a dry agricultural nation.
Frank Jotzo, Professor at ANU in Climate Policy tweeted:
Paris Agreement modelling by @WarwickMcKibbin and colleagues: meeting 2030 emissions targets to yield net economic benefits to individual countries (before taking into account avoided climate change damages)
No mention by him that Australia got one of the worst deals globally. It’s not like he is supposed to be serving The Australian Taxpayer.
Academics, we can’t sell them fast enough.
Hat tip to Pat
REFERENCE
Liu, McKibben, Morris and Wilcoxen (2019) Global Economic and Environmental Outcomes of the Paris Agreement” (PDF), Brookings Institute.
January 10th, 2019 | Tags: CO2 emissions, Economics, Emissions (CO2), Paris | Category: Big-Government, Economics, Free markets, Global Warming | Print This Post | |
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