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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Statistics
All of you wise people have a happy and merry Christmas season.
150
And a Happy Hannukah as well
121
Okay then. I’ve been waiting all week to read Tony’s write up on “registered capacity.” Since any power generation equipment I’ve ever worked with deals with rated capacity the fact that they had to make up a new way to define capacity for the wind mills and solar panels says a lot about how lame they are in comparison to traditional power generation methods.
220
Some comments on education
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/12/05/common-core-by-any-other-name-would/
40
Nonstop laughs! 🙂 And to top it all off, her voice is magnificent. At first I would have sworn she was Julie Andrews.
Unfortunately the complaint is too real to be funny. My wife was a teacher for quite a while and has some horror stories she can tell and they’re from before the complete takeover of education by progressive thinking. I can’t imagine what teaching is like now.
90
Another indication of cooling. The seasonal corrected CO2 is still not up to 400PPM despite the solar max.
ftp://aftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/products/trends/co2/co2_mm_mlo.txt
An oldy but a goody.
Variations in CO2 Growth Rate Associated with Solar Activity.
Dr Theodor Landscheidt
http://www.john-daly.com/theodor/co2new.htm
120
Darn .. we must send a message to China, India etc…
… to GET PUMPING that CO2 out !!
102
China did agree to keep increasing it for 16 years. So that has to help.
Co2 helps plants to detoxify air so it is the best way to solve the problem in the photo here.
http://pickeringpost.com/story/the-greens-lost-in-a-c02-fog-/4119
40
Thing is, that smog is mostly caused by industry and heating, cooking etc that could be FAR better done with clean USC coal-fired electricity.
Building the USC power plants will helpfully allow China to greatly reduce their sulphur based stuff and other particulate matter.
CO2 is a clear, odourless gas. That stuff sure isn’t CO2!!
112
My point is that CO2 will help to get rid of that stuff. Agreed it is not CO2 but is a sign that more is needed.
90
Siliggy,
I’m blocked with this message on my screen.
What gives? That’s not my IP address and it’s not pickeringpost.com either.
20
The link works for me Roy.
I even tried different search engines.
20
I’m still blocked this morning. I did a whois search on that IP and it belongs to an ISP in San Francisco called CloudFlare. Can’t make anything of it, not even whether it’s my connect to CloudFlare or CloudFlare not able to connect to whatever is next in line. From where I am the routing is all over the map just to get to CloudFlare. If you’ve ever run the tracert utility on an IP you’ll be surprised at how indirectly stuff is routed over the Internet.
By the way, here’s a neat site that will run an IP address or URL through the whois database and give you all the info they have on it. http://cqcounter.com/whois/
00
Sorry Roy, but I’m only guessing that somehow you’ve been caught up in an attempted blocking of hacks into Pickering’s site.
As Pickering wrote; “As a result there have been relentless and continuing attacks on the site. This has been time consuming to combat.”
Maybe a call to your ISP or somehow contacting Pickering directly might shed some light?
Jo has my email address if I can assist.
00
Max,
After thinking about it I realized it’s got to be CloudFlare being rejected by whatever the destination is for the next hop. I can get to pickeringpress.com but it’s just a WordPress page where I could log in to something hosted by WordPress.
It’s probably not worth a fight to get access or figure out why I’m rejected. This is the first time anything like this has popped up. I find missing pages now and then but never this kind of rejection. I know a lot of sites will reject me if I haven’t come in through the front door so there’s a cookie saying I’m legitimate when I look for a specific page but without that cookie I’m rejected. But the message is never this detailed, just “Access Denied”. If you and others can get to the page in the link then I’m betting I’m not blocked by Pickering.
Do you suppose global warming has anything to do with the problem? Maybe some cables somewhere are overheated or some equipment rack has been weakened by all this extra heat and it broke. 😉
00
Oh Roy, of course. Why didn’t I think of the most malicious man-made miracle molecule ever invented – Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide (could be anthropomorphic as well). It uses it’s little oxygen arms to oxidize metals and the remaining carbon atoms then join up to create new conductive tracks on circuit boards.
Ohh, it’s evil what it conspires to do. Soon, it’ll take over the internet. 😉
10
That’s probably as good an explanation as any. I never would have realized that CO2 could oxidize anything but for your insight.
Some sharp thinking there. 😉
10
Sorry Roy. I dunno.
At that link Larry Pickering seems to advocate post natal abortions for Greens. I think they should instead be given community service tasks like picking up the dead birds around wind turbines.
30
We don’t even need to feed them. That work has the advantage of taking care of their “board” as well… provided they use solar cookers.
30
Siliggy
Someone else put up this link a few days back. Another very good oldy but a goody, well worth a read
http://www.co2web.info/ESEF3VO2.htm
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Thanks Ross. Only had time to read the first few parragraphs but they make so much sense I will be back to read it all.
10
Thanks Ross…have made a note to read later on a larger screen.
00
The Tim Song (Health Warning for lovers of poetry)
Said Tim, don’t be mislead
for I’ve tried to make it plain
that even though your skies are dark
it ain’t never gonna rain.
CHORUS
Oh, it ain’t gonna rain no more no more,
It ain’t gonna rain no more
How the hell can Tim Flannery tell,
It ain’t gonna rain no more
The night was dark and dreary,
and the air was full of sleet.
The BoM man rode out the storm,
and said “that’s one record we’ll delete.
CHORUS
Tim said “the seas are rising fast,
we’ll need to build an ark”.
But 30 years later they were the same,
So People just said faark.
CHORUS
We’ll all be fried Tim said,
before 5 or 10 years is past.
But then he changed the starting date,
that’s one claim I want to last.
CHORUS
He was no real chemist.
who claimed the oceans would be no more.
If only he thought H-2-O
Was really H-2-S-O-4
CHORUS
Now Tim is on the payroll no more
for he was on a Commission,
But people didn’t like him being so wrong.
and thought he’d been too long in that position.
CHORUS
Now the sun rises in the East,
and never in the West.
said the BoM we’ll homogenise,
and set your mind at rest.
CHORUS
140
Brilliant poem Graeme No.3.
The 4th verse is the icing on the cake – please cc it to Flim Flam & Penny Wong, the latter who (a lawyer who knows SFA about Climate) lived up to her surname as “Minister for Climate Change & Water” in the Rudd Govt, ie released a media release in November 2009 (~ 5 years ago) that Global Eustatic SL would rise by 1.1 metres by the year 2100.
“the seas are rising fast,
we’ll need to build an ark”.
But 30 years later they were the same,
So People just said faark.
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Sorry Graeme No.3. – change that comment to “great lyrics” – it is a song not a poem silly KG. Now what tune will you apply? It’s your decision since you are the composer of this masterpiece.
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I think you will find that “it ain’t going to rain no more” already has a tune. Was first recorded in the 1920’s and various versions since (although Nick Cave’s version departs somewhat from the original).
30
The night was dark and stormy.
Slippery was the grass.
Down came a billygoat,
Sliding on his undercoat.
60
The Peruvian gab-fest on climate change is underway.
BBC has a report of Peruvian glaciers melting at an alarming rate and thus threatening the survival of 30m people.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30359091
To a skeptic, this simply demonstrates another confected attempt to promote the holding of another mega-meeting of thousands of “never mind my large carbon-footprint, I’m on about saving the planet” people from around the world to combat some kind of existential threats to humankind in the very country or region holding the meeting?
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Not much of a “report”. When glaciers recede it’s a perfect time to see natural variability in glaciers. For example, scientists have studied receding glaciers in Antarctica and have noted the the current extent is still greater than during the MWP. The same should be done in Perú. I live here and have heard zero alarm about the glaciers. Nothing.
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30m people.
OMG Surely that’s a typo.
It should be 30B people – yes – that’s right 30 Billion people.
After all – Catastrophic Man Made Global warming threatens future generations.
Do it for the children and the grandchildren….
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Is that little bit of snow at the bottom of a hill the glacier? It’s tiny.
00
Sometimes I wonder at the way people read into an official report just what they want to read, reports which are obviously written to reflect a political outlook. At the same time, the real truth cannot be hidden because data is just that, data. The trick is in the way the document is worded, so that, in effect, the truth can be hidden in plain sight, because, in nine cases out of ten, the readers see what they want to see.
This happened with the State of South Australia, and their most recent electricity report, a 34 page pdf document, which you can (eventually) access at this link.
What needs to be kept at front of mind here is that this is for the WHOLE of the State, and the thinking is that amounts to quite a lot, you know, a whole State. South Australia consumes only 5.2% of power consumed in the whole of Australia. In fact the whole State of SA consumes barely a third to a half of the power consumed just in Melbourne, and even less than that consumed in Sydney. So this is a really tiny amount of power, so where they make wind power out to be quite a large contributor, it is in fact a percentage of what is only a very small amount of power.
In that report, there’s a lot of blah blah blah, but when you distil it down, there are some anomalies, and let me just leave it at that, as there’s no way known I’ll say, umm, anything else.
You guys read it if you wish, and I (and probably some others) will answer any questions.
However, scroll down to page 21 where there is a heading Existing generation, and for ease I have taken a screen shot of the page and turned it into a more readily accessible image at this link.
Note the heading as Registered Capacity. This stands for the generators which are actually generating electrical power and delivering it to the grids in SA.
It’s there specifically for just one of those types of power generation, Coal, and notice the total there in MegaWatts, 770MW.
You see, what they have done here is to keep as actually Registered the 4 generators at the Playford Plant, a 240MW coal fired plant with 4 X 60MW units. Now, the thing about this is that Playford closed down more than 2 years ago, and has not delivered one watt of power in that time. It was 48 years old when it closed, old, clapped out, and having done its job. There is some small text under the table there which says that Playford can actually be run up again at 901 days notice.
Oh! Good luck with that. A 50 year old absolutely ancient plant and they tell us it can be readied for power delivery on 90 days notice. It will never happen.
Also, the Northern Plant, 520 MW (2 X 260MW) now also long in the tooth, at 30 years old has only one reliable unit still in operation. The second unit can be run, but they have to have a lot of notice to do that. The one unit that still does generate runs virtually all year round, and any maintenance is a long range thing, as that second unit needs to have plenty of notice to take over.
So no, as is obvious, that percentage figure for Coal is made to look quite large, (Nameplate, or Registered) while at the same time, delivering very little power.
Now, let’s look at Wind Power. See the total there of 1203MW, well, that is the NAMEPLATE of what is, (umm, artfully) listed there, and the small print says that they have not included the totals for Snowtown North and also South. Now, keep in mind here that both of those plants have been delivering power to the SA grid since early March. So, umm, where did all that power go so that it does not get mentioned as being consumed.
What this effectively does is to use the lower figure for Nameplate, and the overall total power delivered (including both those Snowtown plants) making the percentage on the left lower, and the one on the right, power delivered higher, indicating that wind is really contributing a lot from a little, if you can see that. The power delivered is indeed quite a fair whack, so it inflates that delivery percentage.
The total for Rooftop PV is a guesstimate only based on the (Industry supplied) Capacity Factor of almost 15%, and in SA, I would say they would be hard pressed to manage 10%, so again, it inflates the percentage of power supplied by Rooftop power.
More later, as there is more to say on the rest of the document, but again keep in mind that this is only for 5.2% of Australia’s power consumption.
Tony.
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If Muja (in W.A.) is anything to go by, the “mothballed” plant is as good as scrap meta and toxic waste.
80
And here’s me thinking I had actually proof read the comment prior to posting it.
(Oy, you in there, dinner’s on the table.)
90 days is correct. Either way, that’s an absolute joke.
Tony.
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BTW: “901” must be a pyto. Report says 90 days.
Some recent figures in splatsheet format. (Nothing planned for Playford B for the next 10 years.)
60
Is this like “Spike Milligna” – the well-known typing error?
70
Black Body Alchemy Part 2.
About 2 months ago I posted a short article on the Weekend Unthreaded about a curious theoretical property of Black Bodies.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/weekend-unthreaded-52/#comment-1587639
Using just the axioms of Black Bodies:
1. A black Body absorbs all the radiant energy incident upon it
2. The radiation output of a black body is a Plank function.
3.A black body does not store energy
I proposed that it follows that a Black Body can absorb input radiation from several low temperature sources and output radiation with a higher temperature.
There were several objections to that proposal. Some said that it was just wrong and others suggested that I had not considered the geometry of the input sources.
I also propose that Black Body absorption (as understood ) does not exist in Nature, and hence there is a misunderstanding in Physics.
I should however bring to your attention some experimental evidence.
Anthony Watts says that a light bulb (metaphor for a Black Body) will indeed shine brighter if exposed to the energy of its own reflection.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/27/new-wuwt-tv-segment-slaying-the-slayers-with-watts/
The post by Anthony Watts is a video and takes some time to watch ( I give him credit for showing his experimental method in full). To save readers the trouble I will briefly explain his experiment.
Watts experiment derives from his argument that a group called the Slayers (of the Sky Dragon) discredit the sceptical movement by publishing false science. Alan Siddons wrote an article in which he said that a light bulb would not shine any brighter if it was placed next to a mirror ( and hence exposed to its own radiation reflected back).
Watts initially tries placing a thermocouple on the surface of a frosted light bulb, and measuring the temperature in an open space and then in front of a mirror. Not observing any temperature change he tries a new approach.
In his second experiment he starts with a flood lamp with a frosted surface facing a thermal camera. Recording a temperature 210F he then places a mirror in front of the flood lamp (obscuring the view of the camera) and after an interval of some minutes he removes the mirror and then records a temperature of 218F!
So there you have it! Black Body Absorption theory proved! Alan Siddons wrong. Green house Theory saved!
I would point out several problems with the Watts experiment:
1. His thermal camera is insensitive to the light energy of the flood lamp which has a temperature of 5000c (approx). He is measuring only the temperature of the frosted glass surface of the flood lamp.
2. Since the frosted surface of the lamp only diffuses the light radiation, some of the radiation of the filament (5000C) is absorbed by the glass but a lot of the light temperature gets through and is reflected by the mirror back to the surface of the flood lamp. Naturally it gets a bit hotter.
My analogy in terms of the Greenhouse effect is this. Suppose we were to place a mirror in space and reflect more sunlight onto the surface of the Earth. Would it get hotter? YES.
Anthony was informed of this problem but chose to delete my comment.
Therefore it seems that the Black Body Paradox is still present. Is there a misunderstanding in Physics?
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Peter C
Your property (axiom) 1 contradicts your property 3.
How can it absorb without storing? That is just silly.
40
Not necessarily,
The Black Body Heats up as as result of the energy input and outputs the energy immediately as a radiation with the Plank Function.
10
Again another logic fail. This takes time “the black body heats up”. So this cannot be ” immediately “. Please tell us all what the surface area of a massless object is for the Watts/M^2 calculation of the radiation output also.
20
Peter C
Try these instead.
1 All black body’s have mass and surface area.
2 Heating up a mass requires energy input in Joules to be greater than output. (A Joule is Watt for 1 second.)
3 Like stepping half the distance to a wall each time, Equilibrium is an unreachable destination. (Planck’s law describes the electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body in thermal equilibrium)
20
But you do reach the wall. Try it sometime. I had a Calculus instructor who visually demonstrated that when we were beginning to cover geometric series. So while in theory you get really, really close to the wall but still have that 1/2 of whatever your last distance was remaining, in reality you smack into the wall and go no farther. Likewise with an infinite series one can make the initial assessment that the sum will just continue increasing and increasing yet, provided the series is convergent, it will have a sum that can be expressed as a finite value. There are quite a few Chemistry instructors who would disagree that equilibrium is an unreachable destination as well.
00
Yes after many exponential decay time constants or half lives (which ever way you look at it) equilibrioum is close enough to reached.
This however shows very clearly that your claim…
“The Black Body Heats up as as result of the energy input and outputs the energy immediately as a radiation with the Plank Function.”,
is not correct!
Also it is so wrong that saying it is not a “real world example does not hide the fact that it is just wrong.
Black bodies DO store energy during the time between a change of condition and equilibruim being aproximately reached.
So the claim “3.A black body does not store energy”, is just flat out wrong in both the real world and any realistic fantasy.
00
You need to learn to read brother. Show me where I made the claim: “The Black Body Heats up as as result of the energy input and outputs the energy immediately as a radiation with the Plank Function.” since you are responding to my comment.
Give you a clue, I didn’t make any such claim now did I?
Attention to detail, either you have it or you don’t.
00
Ok,
Let’s consider real bodies instead of a theoretical black body.
Instead of axiom 3 (no heat storage), consider instead a body in thermal equilibrium with two or more radiant heat sources and no losses by conduction or convection.
Maybe thermal equilibrium cannot ever be reached in theory as the temperature might continue increase by imperceptible amounts. However in real experiments thermal equilibrium is reached when the temperature is no longer going up.
Theory says that the temperature of the black body is higher than the temperature of any of the input heat sources. Anthony Watts thinks that he has demonstrated this outcome.
00
“Theory says that the temperature of the black body is higher than the temperature of any of the input heat sources.”
No theory I have ever seen says that. Especially when one source is the sun.
Can you give a link to or reference to this theory.Must admit I have not read the whole Watts up link but will now when time is available.
10
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/10/weekend-unthreaded-52/#comment-1587639
00
Peter C
That is a link to a Jo Nova unthreaded weekend.
Can you give a link to or reference to this theory.
“Theory says that the temperature of the black body is higher than the temperature of any of the input heat sources.”
It seems more like you mis-understand the theory and proceed to argue with your own wrong asumption.
00
Should have been the end of it right there. If any heat was actually being reflected back the thermocouple should have registered a change. Unless he doesn’t understand thermocouples well enough to pick the proper type and junction for the temperature range and response rate he is working with.
How far was the mirror from the bulb? Was the heat reflected by the mirror or was it the fact that the mirror itself heated up and was now functioning as a radiator? If the latter, which I suspect, I could do the same thing with I suspect a higher temperature increase by using a plate of flat black metal.
And what does any of this have to do with the original premise that the bulb would not shine any brighter? Apples and oranges. He’s pissing around with temperatures when I would have been using something that measured lumens not temperature.
50
Well, What’s Up with That?
40
Couldn’t tell you other than my suspicion that he was damn well going to prove he was right regardless of how poorly his experiment was conducted.
Since we use thermocouples daily where I work and we are checking everything from ambient temperatures to the delta between the input and the output of components such as radiators, alternators, etc. I certainly wouldn’t have used a single thermocouple for temperature. I’d have drilled a hole in the mirror and inserted an exposed junction thermocouple there, one on the side of the bulb facing the mirror, one on the side facing away from the mirror, one in the air between the mirror and the bulb, and one the same distance away from the bulb on the side facing away from the mirror.
Could have tracked the change in temperature at the mirror face, on both sides of the bulb, and monitored the ambient temperature between the mirror and bulb and the ambient at the same distance from the opposite side of the bulb. Would have provided a hell of a lot more data with which to make a meaningful assessment of what is taking place over time than what he did do.
Cheesy, half baked experiments like this to prove a point usually backfire. While I’ve no doubt many of his fans won’t question it, for many of us it just makes him look foolish. Especially when, as I said previously, the person he was trying to prove wrong was talking about something measured in lumens, not degrees.
He has done a lot to expose the whole “AGW/whatever it’s called now” garbage for the garbage that it is but we all have egos to deal with and I’m beginning to think his is starting to get the better of him.
60
Peter C,
The filament will either get hotter or the power input must fall or both. Fact is that the globe will get as hot as it needs to such that the power emitted equals the power input. Very basic physics, if you prevent the cooling of the light globe then it must get hotter. This is all bounded by the law of conservation of energy. If you wrap a light bulb in alfoil does it get hot, – you bet it does, you might even shatter the glass.
10
I have tried an experiment like that. I have a vacuum flask, with silvering removed. I was measuring the rate of cooling when it was filled with hot water.
When I wrapped the outer surface with alfoil it became very hot. I put that down to the low emissivity of the foil reducing the radiant heat loss.
00
Peter C
Patent that! You can be a millionaire soon.
00
There is something missing with all of this.
The “back radiation” can only penetrate the ocean’s surface by a few microns. The “skin” of the ocean is the evaporative layer and is always cooler than the water immediately below. Thus the transfer of heat will always be from the warmer water below to the cooler skin, to the cooler atmosphere.
You will not warm the ocean with back radiation. The cycle is the other way around: warm ocean >> cooler atmosphere.
The experiment comes nowhere near to replicating this.
00
I just discovered a philosopher of whom I had never heard. His blog is quite unusual and refreshing.
70
A good find, Rod. I have just lost another ten minutes of my productive day … sigh.
60
For those who missed it:
Some creative deployment of Climate Protection money by the Japanese: Build new coal-fired power plants.
“ROR“, as they say in Japan. 😉
100
There is a simple question that I have never heard asked of, or answered by, those who argue that CO2 is causing global warming and will, if not reduced, cause Catastrophic Global Warming.
I am sure it has but I have simply not come across it – can anyone help me with the official AGW / CAGW / IPCC response to such a question ?
And in case this seems a rather naive question – I apologise in advance….
CO2 levels of 400ppmv are nothing unusual on earth which has seen them as high as 10,000ppmv in the past when temperatures were far higher and on occasion far colder than today.
Temperature levels of 2 to 3 deg C higher than they are today in recent history are not unusual as Earth experienced this in the last few thousand years during the Medievil, Roman and Sumerian (?) warm periods. That has never been attributed to atmospheric CO2 levels so far as I am aware.
Paleo records show, despite Al Gore’s claim of the opposite, that CO2 levels rise in response to temperature rises on earth with an approximate ~ 700 year lag and not the other way round. This is due to out gassing from oceans as a slow response to increased water temperature.
We also know that the slightly higher CO2 levels in the last 50 years or so have resulted in a massive increase of vegetative growth across the globe which has added somewhere around 20% to the global mass of ‘greenery’ and reduced atmospheric CO2 in the process through sequestration.
The multiple part question then is:
If, as is claimed, CO2 increases will cause runaway and catastrophic global warming how is it that with CO2 levels of 10 to 20 times higher in the past that the earth is habitable today rather than very, very hot?
What is the climate mechanism that managed to recover earth from these massively high levels of CO2 rather than the CO2 frying our planet ?
Assuming you know what that mechanism is or was – Why do you assume and believe that this mechanism no longer exists ?
As said at the beginning I am sure such questions have been asked and I would dearly like to know the ‘official’ AGW / CAGW / IPCC response and explanation.
Thank you in advance,
Roger
100
Based on their past performance I would speculate that the answer the “experts” would give you is that those high levels of CO2 in the past were natural and it is the human created CO2, which behaves differently than natural CO2 don’t you know, that will cause the climate to go into runaway warming.
So, also based on the past performance of the “experts”, I can’t decide whether or not a sarc tag is needed for the above.
40
It would seem given the last 18 or so years that the 35 to 40 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration, which we assume the alarmists attribute to human produced CO2, is different from “natural CO2” in that it seems to have no effect on global temperature.
However the alarmist sect of climate “science” (and others) seem to have a little problem with distinguishing between emissions of the human stuff and the increase in atmospheric concentrations, presumably, of the “pollutant”. So the question they haven’t asked is where has over half of the human stuff disappeared to or more radically is any significant amount of the human stuff up there above Earth’s surface at all?
60
I cannot help you with the official AGW/IPCC response.
My own answer to the question that you have posed is that CO2 has either no effect on Global Temperature or it has a slight cooling effect!
70
Peter C,
I also suspect that CO2 may have a cooling influence – but no idea what that might be.
To my mind the sun is the driver of earth’s climate and that is then moderated and controlled by a complex system of natural phenomena amounting to a global thermostat.
Personally I suspect / believe the evidence is there to suggest that we are already in a cooling phase despite the best efforts of the IPCC to disguise that.
As an aside, given the furore over BOM temperature records and ‘adjustments’ to those etc ….. there was an interesting post at WUWT a few days ago by Willis about sea buoy temperature records off the Californian cost which show a small but steady decline in air temperatures in recent years.
Curiously, after ‘processing’ by BEST (Berkely Earth Surface Temperature) those recorded temperatures show a slight increase in air temperature over the period — quite the opposite of the actual data. Nothing unusual in that as it is apparently a standardised practice in climate science to adjust any instrumental temperature records which show a drop in temperature to ‘correct’ them to show a rise in temperature.
It always amuses me, here in the UK, when the urban heating effect (UHI) is taken at around 1 to 1.5 degC and seemingly treated as such by our own Met Office. TV weather forecasts, taken from the Met Office forecasts routinely predict overnight temperatures of 3 – 4 degC or more Colder in rural areas outside the major conurbations.
I think I will write to that great railway engineer Pachauri at the IPCC and ask the original question of him.
70
1/4 of the TOTAL of CO2 emissions since The Industrial Revolution have occurred since 1998, yet temperatures remain flat.
I have thrown this question to quite a few alarmists now, however nobody has ever responded:
Where is the “signature” for CO2 “forcing” in the temperature record, considering that there is no statistically significant difference in the warming rates between the late 1800’s, early 1900’s and 1975 to 1998 (from a quote by Phil Jones of East Anglia in response to a question during a BBC interview).
80
I have noticed out in the wider blogosphere that whenever “the pause” or “the hiatus” is mentioned the standard alarmist response now is:
It’s so much fun to quote prominent climate scientists such as James Hansen, who all acknowledge “the pause”, and show just who the “deniers” are 😛
100
A baseball pitcher stands taller than all other players…
.. because he is on a slight mound.
11
“What is the climate mechanism that managed to recover earth from these massively high levels of CO2 rather than the CO2 frying our planet ?”
—-Plants— and Animals
Life that is plants changed the composition of the earth’s atmosphere drastically.
Plants sucked down CO2 and released O2 in the far distant past. When the plants died they formed coal which we now burn and there by return the CO2 back to the atmosphere from whence it came.
The other sequestering is in the oceans as CaCO3 – Limestone.
Ocean-dwelling organisms such as oysters, clams, mussels and coral use calcium carbonate (CaCO3) found in seawater to create their shells and bones. As these organisms die, their shells and bones are broken down, settle on the ocean floor where they are compacted.creating limestone.
For some odd reason the Warmists do not view humans as ‘natural’ but without humans burning coal and oil and natural gas and replenishing the supply of CO2 in the air more than 95% of the plant varieties, C3 plants like trees, will die out and so will the many animal species dependent on C3 plants. Studies on wheat, a C3 plant shows that during the day the CO2 level is consistently sucked down to 300 ppm… But no further. Night time CO2 measurements vary a lot more than day time measurements. Although C3 plants can survive at 220 ppm CO2 they do not thrive and may not have enough energy to produce seed. (Studies about this have been removed from the net.)
Royal Society UK – Carbon dioxide starvation, the development of C4 ecosystems, and mammalian evolution
30
Thank you for the above and I agree that these are some of the key mechanisms that sequester carbon dioxide and remove It from atmosphere.
What I am really looking for is the official, CAGW, explanation of how if increased levels of CO2 will, as they claim, cause ‘Runaway Global Warming’ what mechanism (a) Prevented this from happening when levels were 10,000 ppmv, and (b) managed to reduce temperatures.
Without a valid and provable explanation for that, in my mind the whole CO2 hypothesis is falsified. It is already falsified by the failure of earth to increase in temperature with rising CO2 levels over the last 18 years and more, but the absence of a valid explanation as to what prevented ‘runaway global warming’ in past millennia is historical proof that the theory is false.
That is why I am interested to see if anyone is aware of any formal position or explanation from the AGW/ CAGW/ IPCC as to why earth is habitable rather than fried by those historic CO2 levels.
It seems to me that earth has a very complex systems of mechanisms, many driven by solar radiation of one form or another, and those with the physical attributes of earth function as natural thermostat which is able to regulate earth’s temperature between certain parameters. Again that seems to me the most likely reason that there has never been the ‘runaway global warming’ predicted by the climate lobby.
Levels of 10,000 ppmv were not only found in the very hot periods but also in some exceptionally cold periods as I seem to recall, and hopefully someone will correct me if I am wrong. I think that the very high levels of CO2 were also present during the early stages of ice ages but then fell and were low in comparison to the onset of cooling at the time that earth recovered and warmed. Btw, I am not suggesting that points to CO2 causing the cooling and that lower levels led to temperature recovery – although that should not be discounted without evidence to prove one way or another.
Another massive CO2 sink are the oceans where apart from their sheer size the volume of dissolved CO2 is temperature dependant. That explains why CO2 levels, as shown by the paleo records, rise after temperatures do and the lag of ~ 700 years behind temperatures is explained by the huge volume of the oceans and the time it takes for their temperature to change.
What I am looking for is the explanation as at the beginning. I wonder if the IPCC have ever given one ? I am beginning to suspect they have as it would likely destroy their whole case.
00
Seriously? Or just convenient so that your claim cannot be checked?
by whom and why? And no copies exist anywhere else in the whole world and therefore no one else has put them up. Or is there a conspiracy of suppression?
And does this paper count?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19017126
00
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/?nk=57e6dd71e96bf91fdd379858ed3e0dfd
On legally binding targets at Peru:
“But the European Union has claimed that voluntary targets will not provide the necessary long-term certainty to make the cuts in carbon dioxide emissions needed to prevent dangerous climate change. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has now made a similar argument, saying a deal without legally binding commitments would be nothing more than aspirations.”
Huh?
60
“Aspirations”. Is that a diplomatic euphemism for “hot air”?
40
Flatus, perhaps?
00
Flatulus. !
11
Clever. She means get everybody** to agree on limits and we will join in.
** e.g. China, Russia, India, Canada, Australia, Japan, Sth. Korea, the USA Congress etc. etc.
Or to put it another way – Until then No way, José!
50
I think (hope)it is good political strategy.
What she really said is “Biggest emitters must carry biggest burden on climate, says Julie Bishop”.
In other words, to pronounce in Lima that the whole damned thing is a scam is just inviting derision. Instead of declaring it a sham, pronounce something that they will all agree with, and at the same time shoot Old Bummer with a ball of his own poop.
In light of the fool Old Bummer made of himself in Brisbane, I think the translation is “the biggest emitters i.e. US, China, etc should be legally binding. Poor little Australia of course is not one of “the big emitters” at some 1.4%.
40
Will be interesting if Julie makes progress on the CO2 accounting issue.
In my opinion, bushfires in Australia is a natural phenomena. If one discounts bushfires our emissions is less than 1%.
30
Scaper,
We are already in negative territory, the rise from 360 PPM to 400 PPM has ben mediated by an increase in sequestration through photosynthesis of about 6 % ( of all emissions). But even in ’90 we sank 20 times more CO2 than we emitted because Australia is the second biggest Nett CO2 sink in the world. Our emissions are 5% of our sinking capacity but sinking capacity is up 6% to 21.2 times our emission an increase in sinks of 1.2 times our emission.
Australia has acheived Nett zero emission and is now sinking China’s so where’s our cheque?
40
Hopefully this is the endgame: by pushing major polluters into contemplating action, they will cast their eyes on the science, decide it is neither robust nor reliable and ditch the whole thing; on the other than she could destroy western civilization as we know it.
00
Oops forgot to put scare quotes around ‘major polluters’…
00
The report is actually on The Age site:
All you rusted-on Liberal Lubbers want to interpret this as a game of chicken, where Bishop is bluffing. But what if you take her words at face value?
This is consistent with the hypothesis that the agenda and policies are the same regardless of who you vote for. The deal is already done. Your preferences are not relevant. Facts and scientific method are also not relevant.
I’m just waiting for Abbott to clearly state “there will be no legally binding CO2 emissions reduction deal with Australia under a government I lead”, and then we’ll know the fix is in. The logical necessity has become the political impossibility.
So just to recap: Warmist Boffin-for-hire Professor Ross Garnaut is now soft on binding reduction targets, while Liberal Party foreign minister Julie Bishop is tough on binding reduction targets.
If you want more zany upstarts in parliament like Clive Palmer, Pauline Hanson, Jaquie Lambie, etc, then this is a great way to usher in a new era of government amateur hour. Running as Labor Lite is making dark horses and egotists look preferable.
Xenophon absolutely has his finger on the pulse of the voter, dissent is in the air, demand for a 3rd feasible brand is high, and Xenophon’s new “boy band” NXT is cashing in.
How much more of the Liberal’s lunch is Xenophon going to gobble?
00
And another thing about the Lima chit-chat. The “legally binding commitments” to CO2 emissions reduction will be (according to Associated Press) intended “to keep global warming within 2 degrees C (3.6 F) of pre-industrial times, the overall goal of the U.N. talks.”
Well I have good news and bad news for politicians of planet Earth.
The good news is that according to my climate model, which predicts the pause when the UNIPCC couldn’t, the warming over pre-industrial levels will be no greater than 1.75 Celsius even under a Business-As-Usual emissions scenario!
The bad news is that I don’t believe my own climate model yet. 🙂 It still has OLR problems, there’s no cloud feedbacks, no water vapour feedback, etc. It’s a work in progress.
00
Part Two.
Okay then, directly under that Generating Capacity table, they show the Capacity Factors for the umm, power plants in SA, and this is an important thing in the context of the further things I have to say.
Note the big ones, Northern, Osborne and Pelican Point, the main Base Load providers. Note how now, Ladbroke is also coming on big as well. The others are small providers, only as needed, but they are important in the later context here.
Note that all that is said about Wind is the one liner in the text above the chart there, how they are all, umm, higher than last year, without showing a single one of them as they do with the fossil fuel plants.
Now, scroll down to the next image, the power import export chart.
Note how the import of power from Victoria has steadily increased over the last seven years, coincidentally as all those wind plants have come on line.
Hmm!
Note how now the total import of power from Victoria (all of it brown coal fired power) now comes in at 2000GWH. That’s 14% of all power consumed in the State. All of that power is virtually all the time, during periods of peak power consumption, you know, when power is actually being consumed.
Look at the export of power there, steadily decreasing, and all of that is wind power. Now, here’s where those smaller units (all natural gas fired) show us the smoking gun which tells you all that exported power is wind. They are certainly not going to run those smaller plants and export the power, and they are not going to export the big Base Load power. So, if wind was actually generating then the State MUST use that wind power, so if it was all being used, then there would be nothing to actually export. They just wouldn’t run the smaller peaking plants. So, all that wind being exported to Victoria is being exported when there is enough power to already total the consumption, so they’re not running the small peakers, and they cannot just turn off the base load plants, so all that extra wind is when there is less consumption, in other words in the hours between 10PM and 6AM, dumped into Victoria, when, hey, they don’t need it either, probably used by the hydro scheme plants, sold at a fraction of the cost it actually costs to generate, while they but the imported power at a premium.
Now, go down to section 5, Supply Demand Outlook and read point 5.1 very carefully, where in that first sentence, it says this:
Now then, why oh why are there plans in train for South Australia to construct, as per this document, a further 3,377MW of NEW wind power.
SA also breaks down its figures for power to Industry and in SA, Industry consumes 20% of all power. In the rest of Australia, that Industry total is around 32%. Industry needs access to reliable 24/7/365 power which is cheap. Industry has left SA.
So here we have a document which artfully shows what a Government would like you to believe, and yet, when it’s translated, the truth is actually all in there, just hidden in plain sight.
Sometimes, the truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
I’m sure there’s more I could find.
Tony.
150
Tony,
Another 2 or 3 Wind Farms, and South Aus will run out of wind!!!!!
50
With Jay Weatherill as Premier we won’t run out of (hot) air moving.
30
Tony,
Have you seen the Google RE<C report? http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change
Google engineers state that current renewable methods can not successfully provide for modern world while achieving the 350ppm CO2 goal. It's a good article if you can get past the "Climate scientists have definitively shown that the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere poses a looming danger" drivel.
50
“When discussing these matters, Roger Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, uses phrases such as “fantasy island” and “emissions impossible.”
In 2011, he called Australia’s 2020 emissions reduction goal “fanciful at best.”
Much of Australia’s electricity comes from coal.
Replacing sufficient amounts of this electricity would require the construction of 56 nuclear power plants, or 12,000 solar power facilities, in less than a decade.”
– Donna Laframboise @nofrakkingconsensus: When Emissions Disappear, So Do Jobs
30
Offshore wind farms are no public benefit
By Barbara Durkin
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-environment/226050-offshore-wind-farms-are-no-public-benefit
The Obama administration and Department of Interior (DOI) have announced their planned Jan 29, 2015 auction of hundreds of thousands of acres of North Atlantic ocean area to wind developers under President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.
While U.S. energy policy should address the needs of citizens for reliable energy sources that are commercially reasonable and reasonably safe, offshore wind has historically failed to deliver these public benefits to Europeans.
UK’s offshore wind energy projects’ results should serve as the catalyst for termination by the administration of its proposed ocean auction to wind limited liabilities corporations. U.S. rate and taxpayers are unacceptably exposed by this administration’s blind eye to the UK’s failed offshore wind program. Neither the ocean area the federal government holds in trust for U.S. citizens, nor U.S. citizens themselves, should be exploited by an industry that historically fails to deliver public benefits.
Germany’s flagship BARD Offshore I is a 400MW wind project intended to supply the energy needs of 400,000 households. But Bard Offshore 1 remains out of operation according to industry source Offshore Wind Biz (June 2014) citing: “frequent technical problems with the converter substation,” “a smoldering fire,” “failure of the system,” “five unplanned outages since the beginning of 2014” and “transmission problems.”
WindPowerOffshore (September 19, 2014) reports the Danish company Vattenfall is going to dismantle the Yttre Stengrund in Swedish waters after only 13 years of operation. “Only one in (5) turbines is currently operational.”
Europe’s offshore wind energy endeavors reveal the challenges of the harsh and corrosive marine environment. GE deployed the Cape Wind prototype GE 3.6 MW wind turbines at Arklow, the wind farm offshore of Ireland. GE subsequently “discontinued” the Cape Wind 3.6 MW wind turbine even while Cape Wind, the wind farm planned for offshore Massachusetts, was under permit review by the DOI. That review advanced Cape Wind as a “reliable” energy source.
Cape Wind changed specifications to Siemens 3.6 MW during their power purchase contract negotiations with the national grid. But Siemens is not boasting offshore wind success, according to the Wall Street Journal [1/08/14]:
“Siemens, the world’s largest manufacturer of offshore wind turbines, and its partners concede they underestimated the challenges behind offshore wind. The financial fallout from these challenges was highlighted on Thursday, when Siemens said it booked €128 million ($171 million) in new charges related to connecting offshore wind farms to the power grid. It blamed unexpectedly high costs for shipping, installing and starting up grid components.”
A Spiegel International article ‘Turbine Trouble: Ill Wind Blows for German Offshore Industry’ says, “Operators of offshore wind farms depend on sufficiently high electricity prices to refinance their investments.” This runs contrary to public interest. Citizens need commercially reasonable energy sources that are reliable, while offshore wind energy technology is historically not reliable, yet its price is high.
The stunning and sobering candor of an executive of the “world’s largest” manufacturer of wind turbines, Vestas, would be comical if not for the serious context — billions in public funding along with the sacrifice of the thousands of ocean acres that DOI intends to grant to wind LLCs.
In 2011, Anders Søe-Jensen, then president of the offshore division at Vestas said, “It’s a bit like buying an old crappy car. It’s starts cheap, but spends most of the time in the workshop costing you a fortune, so you didn’t drive much, and your cost per driven mile is staggeringly high. It’s the same with the cost of energy when you look at capital expense and operating costs with overall production.”
While President Obama’s energy goals should be to deploy energy sources that are commercially reasonable, reliable, and reasonably safe, based on the best science, offshore wind has miserably failed to deliver public benefits to Europeans.
U.S. citizens are entitled to a fair return for the use of the nation’s oceanic resources. It’s not too late for President Obama to call off the January 29, 2015 DOI North Atlantic auction that would exclusively serve the interests’ of wind developers.
40
Cape Wind was first proposed prior to the turn of the Century, and a proposal was first submitted in 2000. The cost at that time was $850 Million.
The cost has had three changes since then, and it currently stands at $2.6 Billion.
The only reason that they have recently started work on construction is to qualify for the Wind Production Tax Credits, the Federal Government subsidy, which, if not extended, finishes this year.
14 years and still not delivering power, in fact still barely out of planning.
And hey, weren’t these plants supposed to become cheaper as time went by.
Tony.
90
While his qualifications for president are questionable it is things like this that lead me to believe that his qualifications as a shell game operator are exceptional.
70
There have been a couple of report on UK wind power, none of which could provide any semblance of reliability of supply nor efficiencies or anything else much except any thing to do with wind power was going to cost the poor old taxpayer one hell of a lot of dosh for basically no perceivable benefit of any sort..
So another report on UK Wind power with the added analysis for the creation of that great dream of the wind power exponents, a over arching comprehensive all nations, European interconnector grid because as anybody knows or at least they think they know in the wind energy executive suites, the wind is always blowing somewhere so a European interconnector grid could distribute that wind generated energy across Europe.
It seems that the wind energy executives are a whole lot more ignorant about where and when the wind doesn’t blow than they would care to admit.
But of course if it fails so what. the tax payers will get the bill and the executives can retire or move onto the next industry to see what carnage and tax payer rip offs they can create there.
______________________
From “The Scientific Alliance” this time
Wind Power Reassessed:
A review of the UK wind resource for electricity generation
[ Selected from the Summary ]
This study uses wind data extracted from airfield weather-observation reports to calculate the likely performance of wind fleets across Europe, but concentrating mostly on the UK.
Airfield weather reports are in the public domain, use a standard reporting format, are taken at a standard observation height, and in many cases use instrumentation provided and operated by national meteorological offices.
The study covers a span of 25 degrees of longitude, and ten of latitude and includes 43 ‘monitoring’ sites over a period of nine years; over 6.5 million wind-speed observations are included.
The objective has been to explore the scale of onshore wind fleet output variability, and intermittency, the benefits of European interconnectors, the improvement possible with increased storage, and many other matters.
The following conclusions are demonstrated for a UK wind fleet of 10 GW nameplate capacity:
i / Power output changes continuously and commonly by as much as 300 MW over each half-hour period; output changes as high as 700 MW within a half hour period are not uncommon.
This variability can be compensated by fossil fuelled or pumped storage generators operating in response mode, but this will increase grid operating costs, and divert this valuable response capability away from more usual grid stabilisation duties.
ii / The model wind fleet reveals many instances of high wind-speed power cutouts; this phenomenon does not appear to be a problem with the present wind fleet and may only occur with larger, higher hub height machines.
iii / Claims that there is always somewhere in the UK where the wind is blowing are correct, but only sufficient to generate 2 % or less of full wind fleet output.
The power output mode is approximately 800 MW, 8 % of nameplate capacity.
The probability that the wind fleet will produce full output is vanishingly small.
iv / The capacity credit for the model wind fleet is shown to be 2,300 MW. The sensitivity of this result to various model parameters is explored.
v / Power output for the model wind fleet can be characterised by the following statements:
• Power exceeds 90 % of available power for only 17 hours per annum
• Power exceeds 80 % of available power for 163 hours per annum
• Power is below 20 % of available power for 3,448 hours (20 weeks) per annum
• Power is below 10 % of available power for 1,519 hours (9 weeks) per annum
v/ Of the 3,448 hours when the power output of the UK wind fleet is below 20 % of maximum, 2,653 hours (77 %) occur in events when that condition continues
for 12 hours or more.
vii / Of the 1,519 hours when the wind fleet power output is below 10 % of maximum, 1,178 hours (78 %) occur in events when that condition continues for 6 hours or more. Thus production gaps are commonplace in wind fleet operations.
Many of these low power events occur during periods of prolonged, cold weather.
viii / Slightly more of these low power events seem to occur in autumn, but are otherwise evenly spread amongst the seasons.
ix / If this wind fleet were required to offer a guaranteed production output equal to the capacity credit during winter periods (when wind production is highest),
this study shows it would require an energy storage facility holding perhaps 150 GWh, which is the equivalent to that held in 15 ‘Dinorwigs’.
x / Given these observations, the model wind fleet would require a conventional generation fleet of equal nameplate capacity to be built and operated alongside
it to mitigate the wind fleet deficiencies.
Data for a model Irish wind fleet, based upon airport weather reports, reveals a wind fleet with slightly higher performance than that for the UK.
A model of wind operation across the northern European plain and covering Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Germany shows much poorer performance. Both fleets suffer intermittency and variability problems similar to those of the UK.
Unifying all three fleets by installation of European interconnectors does little or nothing to mitigate the intermittency of these wind fleets.
For the combined system, which has an available power output of 48.8 GW:
• Power exceeds 90 % of available power for 4 hours per annum,
• Power exceeds 80 % of available power for 65 hours per annum,
• Power is below 20 % of available power for 4,596 hours (27 weeks) per annum,
• Power is below 10 % of available power for 2,164 hours (13 weeks) per annum.
European interconnectors may have other uses for grid management, but they will have little impact upon the mitigation of wind fleet intermittency and variability.
10
If you haven’t heard yet.
For those in the U.S., one more Democrat goes down to defeat.
Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana was defeated by Republican Bill Cassidy in the runoff election.
The news keeps getting better and better. 🙂
70
In support of the COP 20 meetings currently taking place in Lima, Peru, NASA GISS produced some lovely graphics to emphasize the global warming problem. These were reproduced in the UK Daily Mail. Before looking at my frisking, see if you can answer the following:-
1. A graphic compares the Arctic minimum sea ice extent in 2012 with 1980. Why not use the latest 2014 data for comparison?
2. A graph shows the rise in global carbon emissions from 1960 to 2013. Why not show this alongside their own surface temperature anomaly graph to demonstrate the “cause” next to the “effect”?
3. A simple graph shows sea-level rise based on satellite data. Why is it only from 1997, when the satellite data starts in 1993?
120
Because the “signature” for CO2 forcing does not exist in the temperature record. Alarmists are particularly silent when this question is posed to them.
If CO2 does anything, it is so small that it cannot be measured.
120
I agree that there is no evidence of CO2 emissions causing warming. CO2 emissions have been rising practically every year since WW2. However the rate of rise in has varied in line with global growth rates. Post 1960 there have been three distinct periods. There was quite rapid growth up until the oil embargo of 1973. From then until 1998 emissions growth rates were significantly lower. After that emissions growth has been much greater. Even the credit crunch of 2008 has not slowed global emissions growth all that much as nearly all the global growth is from the emerging economies, which were not impacted nearly as much as the developed economies.
Global warming occurred in the period 1975-1998, with little or no warming before or after.
40
Phile Jones of East Anglia was asked an interesting question re. warming by the BBC:
In other words, no “signature” for CO2 forcing in the temperature record.
50
In Belgium there is nearly 3000MW of nameplate solar panels. There are some nice graphs at Trust, yet verify showing actual output during the day. Unsurprisingly it output far lower than nameplate; varies greatly from day-to-day; and has a sharp peak in the middle of the day.
80
I trust that you checked the output at midnight too?
20
Tried to, couldn’t read the gauges in the dark.
20
You need to aquire the optional rechargeable battery pack for your solar-powered torch. 🙂
00
Here is are my predictions for the next three El Ninos up to 2025
The specific predictions are: 2015-16 –> 2024-25 with 2019-20 as a possible half cycle.
and here are my supporting arguments:
http://astroclimateconnection.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/evidence-that-strong-el-nino-events-are_13.html
50
For our amusement:
02 Jul 2013:
Scientists unveil new and improved El Niño forecasts
Their analysis used data from more than 200 measurement points in the Pacific, from the 1950s onwards, to study the interactions between distant sites that combine to cause the ocean to warm.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/07/scientists-unveil-new-and-improved-el-niño-forecasts/
November 6th, 2014:
Waiting for El Niño. Still. Again.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/still-waiting-for-el-nino-18286
00
20
Oh wow, how could that happen???
Some people believe that life on this planet adapts to fit the environment, the true believers in CAGW know that this can’t happen – life must perish!
/sarcoff.
50
Three days is “Short Term” for these researchers of tens of thousands of years old coral reefs
“Nine days” is apparently long term.
On the tenth day they ceased the experiment other wise there would not have been enough funds left to cover the expenses for the attending the tropical island paradise conference on coral reefs and climate change.[ sarc/ ]
20
“leading to higher acidity levels”
there’s a bit of garbage floating just there. !!
All rain, and most rivers are actually acidic (some rivers are around pH 5.6 !)
For millions of years the slightly acid rain and the even more acidic rivers have poured into the oceans…
.. yet the oceans remains steadfastly ALKALINE !
There is such a huge buffer of old carbonates that there is NO WAY a tiny increase in atmospheric CO2 will have any affect on ocean pH level at all !!
61
Warmists would not understand a buffered solution if they drowned in it.
CAGW is completely based on a lack of science education.
10
From The Southern Star Brisbane.
Note the emphasis on ‘research’.
I’m not against the main thrust of this article. Sure, green areas and gardening etc are good for people especially the elderly. But I think the research in this article lacks depth and breadth. I have emphasised and italicised the parts I feel are ‘suspect’.
20
edwina
December 8, 2014 .
From the article in Edwina’s post above;
So why do the people who advocate the greening of cities and wider green spaces in cities leading to ever more sprawling burbs and the consequences of that, always live in the densely populated inner city high rise apartment areas where everything, unlike the burbs is very conveniently right at hand and greenery is rarely seen and concrete reigns supreme?
Seems to be a constant refrain from those inner city elites that somebody else has to pay so that they can enjoy the good life when they want it and how they like it and the hell with everybody else’s wishes and hopes. and dreams.
Sigh!
Guess I’m just getting old and increasingly cynical about the mores and ethics of the self proclaimed upper crust including large lumps of what today purports to pass for some form of science in our society.
81
It’s highly ironic ROM.
So too that our first Green rep in the Fed govt, lower house, represents Melb CBD.
20
It is not the flowers that help your health and heart it is being out in the sun and manufacturing vitamin D. Walking and exercise helps too of course.
00
There is a fair bit of research that suggests greenery improves mental health. (Sorry, too lazy to find it). The findings suggest that it helps reduce stress and stress related diseases. How much more relaxed do you feel sitting under a tree in a park compared to another more ‘concrete’ environment. Also a fair bit of research suggesting gardening is good for both mental and physical health, and living longer.
From my experience the one thing about horticulture that is not good for your health is running a nursery Ha Ha
00
If it is Central Park in New York city not relaxed at ALL!
Felonies in Central Park averaged close to nine hundred a year from 1979 to 1986. From 1979 to 1986, thirty-five murders took place in Central Park.
On the other hand you could not convince me to go anywhere near NYC in the first place and I was born there!
00
And I thought the seas were getting warmer. Also, over the past fortnight Gold Coast surfers have felt the water to be colder than normal for this time of year.
40
Liberals are against zoos. But these winkers are treating the world as if it were their own big private zoo and they were its keepers. Flying turtles from Cape Cod to Texas because they are “cold-stunned” and stop moving and eating. THESE PEOPLE ARE BARMY.
Aquatic turtles hibernate during the winter! The money could have been better spent almost anywhere. O, the insanity!
60
We had better start investigating caves during the winter as well, I’m certain we’ll find some bears that have stopped moving and eating which we will need to fly to somewhere warmer where we can nurse them back to health…
40
The turtles are doing better than the Japanese.
Japan has had major snow storms with up to 116 cm (almost 4 feet) of snow in some areas. Snow is blocking roads, 20,000 homes were without electricity. and six people dead. Thousands are stranded or inconvenienced but you will see nothing about this in our MSM.
20
This is a masterpiece, carrying gigantic emotional value and force.
It is a unique sculpture, there is nothing else in the world like this. It is very alive, and very complicated at the same time.
‘The ornament is covered with nothing but encrypted information. People were passing on knowledge with the help of the Idol.
The Idol is the oldest wooden statue in the world, estimated as having been constructed approximately 9,500 years ago, and preserved as if in a time capsule in a peat bog on the western fringe of Siberian.
http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/features/is-this-the-worlds-oldest-secret-code/
30
Thanks, that goes into my Archealogy file.
This article from the same source is also interesting:
10
There’s a job vacancy going going near Broome that someone like ‘sillyfilly’ might be interested, as I am not qualified enough, a “Frack Free coordinator! Some of her peers are probably there already.
40
Reviewed 6 August 2014
A 3,000-Year Record of Solar Activity
What was done
According to Usoskin et al. (2014), the Sun “shows strong variability in its magnetic activity, from Grand minima to Grand maxima, but the nature of the variability is not fully understood, mostly because of the insufficient length of the directly observed solar activity records and of uncertainties related to long-term reconstructions.”
Now, however, in an attempt to overcome such uncertainties, Usoskin et al. “present the first fully adjustment-free physical reconstruction of solar activity” covering the past 3,000 years, which record allowed them “to study different modes of solar activity at an unprecedented level of detail.”
As a “unique” and “rare” event in terms of both magnitude and duration, one would think a lot more time and effort would be spent by the IPCC and others in answering that question.
Instead, IPCC scientists have conducted relatively few studies of the Sun’s influence on modern warming, assuming that the temperature influence of this rare and unique Grand maximum of solar activity, which has occurred only once in the past 3,000 years, is far inferior to the radiative power provided by the rising CO2 concentration of the Earth’s atmosphere.
Bonus graph:
Monthly Smoothed Sunspot count- compares Dalton minimum to now:
http://commdiginews.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/SILSO_Smoothed_ISN_Compare_C3-4-5_to_C22-23-24_640p.png
This is why decades of “massive winters” is coming. The sun.
20
Oops.
Missing link:
A 3,000-Year Record of Solar Activity
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V17/N32/C1.php
30
I will add this older paper by Ilya G. Usoskin
A History of Solar Activity over Millennia
00
Commical title from NewScientist
http://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/Question-Everything-New-Scientist/9781781251645?utm_source=email&utm_medium=books&utm_content=science&utm_campaign=Books_science_E2VM_dec1_AU
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They sold out of the book “How to Make a Hoax”.
10
There’s an interesting and thought provoking article on a blog i’ve not come across before ,that Bishop Hill have a link to on a side bar. the Blog is samizdata the article ‘were the only game in town’
00
If you aren’t already aware of it , this is another example of the depths of iniquity to which much of science has sunk to today.
I will let you do your own assessment of the [lengths] these so called scientists were prepared to [go to] just to satisfy their own particular ideology and regardless of the real situation or the lives and jobs of those tens and hundreds of thousands that were affected by their nefarious actions.
But these are the depths resulting from of the loss of any personal moral compass that so many scientists of today are descending to in a lot of so called modern science.
————————-
Various sources are available but this one will do .Misuse of science
[ Selectively quoted ]
Scientists are human and have their opinions. Although we may like to think of science as a purely objective search after truth, we have to be realistic. It would be all but impossible for a researcher to start an experiment without having some idea about the expected outcome. Objectivity then comes in the form of a willingness to accept evidence which points to a different answer. Nevertheless, in most cases there is likely to be a tendency towards confirmation bias: giving more weight to observations which conform to your expectations or opinions.
&
That is one form of human behaviour we can probably do little about. But there comes a point beyond which science itself is misused and compromised. Rather than having evidence-based policymaking, we end up with policy-based evidence picking. A good (or, should I say, bad) example appeared in the Times this week. The headline says it all: Scientists accused of plotting to get pesticides banned.
The fuss is over the (currently temporary) EU ban on neonicotinoid insecticides over allegations that they are at least partly to blame for recent declines in the population of bees. Environmentalist groups had been campaigning against this class of compounds for many years, despite little evidence of any connection under real life conditions. What tipped the balance was a report from the Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, an advisory group to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which reported on recent scientific work and called on regulators to “start planning for a global phase-out” of these insecticides.
However, the chairman of the Task Force, Maarten Bijleveld van Lexmond, and chairman of the IUCN, Piet Wit, were both at a meeting in Switzerland in June 2010 at which, according to a note leaked to the Times “…scientists agreed to select authors to produce four papers and co-ordinate their publication to ‘obtain the necessary policy change, to have these pesticides banned’. A paper by a ‘carefully selected first author’ would set out the impact of the pesticides on insects and birds ‘as convincingly as possible’. A second ‘policy forum’ paper would draw on the first to call for a ban…. ‘If we are successful in getting these two papers published, there will be enormous impact, and a campaign led by WWF etc. It will be much harder for politicians to ignore a research paper and a policy forum paper in [a major scientific journal].’”
This smacks of environmental activism rather than objective science, despite the protestations of the Task Force chairman, “…a founding member of WWF in the Netherlands,…that the Task Force was independent and unbiased.”
____________________________
The really sad part about this revealed attempt at a major scientific [activism] is that like just about every other major scientific [failure] of recent times unless you are very small fry in the scientific pond, absolutely nothing, not a thing will be done to take any disciplinary action against the scientific perpetrators [snip].
In fact almost the opposite has occurred every time.
They get honoured and rewarded by science institutes as per the self admitted fraudster Gliek and so many others
And they will continue right on with holding prestigious position of influence in politics and science.
In just about any other industry and political situation they would face trial and possible jailing plus lose just about all access to any positions of power and influence. They would be cast out in absolute disgrace.
Not so in modern science though it seems. They get rewarded with honors instead.
Science is starting to stink and it will get much worse until the good men and women in science and there are a great number of these, take the high road and demand that all those who in any way attempt to fraudulently abuse science be cast out without any recourse,
Then and only then will science start to earn and regain respect .
And Yeh, I guess I’m getting old and crotchety when I see the depths to which one of my great interests of my life, that of science, becoming deliberately corrupted and distorted and bent to fullfill the personal ideologies of a few arrogant, elitist, self important and basically fairly incompetent scientists who unable to do good science have turned to politics and used science as a prestigious tool to push and drive their own personal agendas as policy onto the public at large.
ROM – I have not looked into the neonicotinoids. I have no opinion. The quote of scientists aiming for policy action isn’t convincing in and of itself that the scientists are wrong (though it’s an unscientific attitude for them to display.) We need evidence this Delingpole post describes some of the studies showing that the neonics are not harmful. It’s helpful if you can put in those sort of links and info. Also “fraud” is a strong word. It needs substantiation. Hence I’ve snipped or replaced it [….]. “Smacking of activism” is not the same as colluding for criminal intent. – Jo
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I only thought of the legal angle after I posted my above comment
Having read through the quite severe legal tangles and problems that the Retraction Watch site guys got into plus another Retraction Watch type site being canned because of the legal attacks I have got your message and will try to fully comply.
Apologies for any problems this opinionated, argumentive old timer has caused you.
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Now I have been thinking:
If global warming is producing these freezing cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, then it is absolutely logical that if we experience some global cooling, the Northern hemisphere’s temperatures in winter will be warmer!!!!!
Can’t beat sound logic like this.
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“Harper and Abbott don’t deny climate change exists” say Van Loon & Paton!!! what qualifications do you need to write for Bloomberg?
btw, according to The Conversation profile, Naughten is now a Departmental Visitor in the Centre of Arab and Islamic Studies (CAIS), ANU; was formerly a Senior Economist in ABARE, the Commonwealth Government economic research agency.
8 Dec: Bloomberg: Jobs Trump Climate as Bromance Ties Canada-Australia Carbon View
By Jeremy van Loon and James Paton
Harper and Abbott “both have governments that don’t seem to take the climate change threat very seriously,” said Barry Naughten, a former Australian government energy economist…
Their reticence on climate policy has prompted chiding from the world’s most prominent leaders…
“There’s a bromance between the two, and the conservative elements of both governments are dominant and aren’t that keen on action,” said John Connor, chief executive officer of the Climate Institute, a Sydney-based research group that advocates for low-carbon economies. “It’s a partnership of what increasingly look like pariahs, but quite an effective one.” …
For his part, Abbott warned against the demonization of coal at a mine opening in October, saying “coal is good for humanity.” …
Harper and Abbott’s stance could put them in a camp at theLima climate talks along with other fossil-fuel superpowers such as Russia and Saudi Arabia which have lobbied at UN talks to protect their oil industries from carbon regulations…
Harper and Abbott don’t deny climate change exists…
In the end, Harper and Abbott’s lack of enthusiasm for a comprehensive climate treaty may not matter, given the growing momentum for action reflected in the U.S.-China deal.
“The major global economies are now aggressively tackling climate change,” said Martijn Wilder, head of global environmental markets at law firm Baker & McKenzie. “Australia and Canada cannot stop what countries like China, India and the U.S. do.”…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-07/jobs-trump-climate-as-bromance-ties-canada-australia-carbon-view.html
5 Dec: Reuters: India says carbon emissions will grow as it drives to beat poverty
The world must accept that India’s per capita carbon emissions will need to rise rapidly if it is to eliminate poverty, the environment minister said on Friday, as delegates meet in Lima for key U.N. climate change talks…
“They (China and the U.S.) have accepted the differentiated responsibility and the need for time to be given for growth and China is four times ahead of us. So you calculate,” Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar told reporters in Delhi…
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/12/05/us-india-climatechange-idUKKCN0JJ1BS20141205
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7 Dec: UK Financial Times: US environment watchdog defends China deal and power sector plans
by Barney Jopson in Washington
Beijing’s weak environmental bureaucracy faces constant battles with local leaders who have historically been told to prioritise economic growth above environment concerns, political analysts say…
Her agency (EPA) is being sued by 12 US states that oppose plans to cut greenhouse gas pollution from the power sector, which accounts for 40 per cent of the country’s emissions. A total of 17 state attorneys-general have declared the proposals illegal.
The regulations are central to the US’s ability to meet its own commitments to emit 26–28 per cent less greenhouse gas in 2025 than it did in 2005.
But energy companies and industry groups say the EPA chief is forcing job-killing changes in the way the US generates its electricity by waging a “war on coal”. Their Republican allies have vowed to thwart her once they take control of Congress in January…
The EPA is not a bully pushing companies around, she said. It is more like an usher, using its rules to “signal” where the energy market is heading: to a “low carbon” system built on renewable power and other sources that do not belch out carbon dioxide.
“What EPA always tries to do is to make sure that the cost of pollution and the public health impacts that pollution results in — including carbon pollution — shouldn’t get lost in business decisions and shouldn’t get lost in our government decisions,” she said.
Ms McCarthy talked most enthusiastically about renewable energy. She noted that since Mr Obama took office, US use of wind power has tripled and solar generation has increased tenfold. Between them, however, they respectively produced just 4 per cent and 0.2 per cent of US electricity last year…
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/99dfd68c-7cd4-11e4-9a86-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3LG8KwuLc
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***”The spirit of constructive cooperation of the US-China agreement seems to have come to a full stop”! end the MSM CAGW rhetoric on US/China now, please:
8 Dec: South China Morning Post: Bloomberg in Lima: China rejects US-sought carbon pledge review at UN climate talks
Negotiators seek to remove draft provisions for targets to be subject to other countries’ scrutiny
China has rejected the scrutiny of efforts to limit carbon emissions, a key tool that the US says is necessary as more than 190 countries work to come up with a new deal to fight climate change.
Chinese negotiators sought at a climate conference in Lima, Peru, to delete provisions in a draft text that would have paved the way for other countries and non-governmental organisations to submit questions about its carbon-reduction plans, according to environmental groups that are official observers to the talks…
***”The spirit of constructive cooperation of the US-China agreement seems to have come to a full stop,” Liz Gallagher, senior adviser to the policy analyst group E3G, said on Saturday in an interview in Lima, where two weeks of UN climate talks began last Monday.
Chinese negotiator Su Wei did not immediately reply to an e-mail seeking comment…
“This is exactly the kind of risk that we face when hard lines are taken by parties,” Tasneem Essop, a spokeswoman on climate policy for the environmental group WWF International, said. “It’s early days … so we do hope that arties will soften their lines.”
Essop said her remarks referred to all nations. She also criticised what she called a “slash-and-burn” exercise by the United States, European Union, Australia, Canada and New Zealand to remove any reference to a review of the commitments they had made to cut emissions before 2020.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1657235/china-rejects-us-sought-carbon-pledge-review-un-climate-talks
(This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as China turns down US plea for review of carbon pledge)
NOTE: U.S., European Union, Australia, Canada and New Zealand removed any reference to a review of the commitments they had made to cut emissions before 2020. so will the MSM stop the CAGW rhetoric about Australia/Canada being the only villains?
Bloomberg doesn’t even have this story on their Sustainability page, where one would expect it to be:
7 Dec: Bloomberg: China Blocks Carbon Review Sought by U.S. at UN Talks
By Alex Morales and Alex Nussbaum
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-06/china-blocks-review-of-carbon-pledges-sought-by-u-s-at-un-talks.html
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Lewandowsky is back!
IOP science.
20
given the facts we know about Lima – this really is pathetic of ABC and Milne:
AUDIO: 8 Dec: ABC Breakfast: Christine Milne
Greens leader Christine Milne joins RN Breakfast from Lima to discuss Australia’s approach to global warming at the UN Climate Change Conference.
Reporter Alsion Carrabine
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/christine-milne/5950612
paraphrasing:
fran: australia is expected to come under pressure in lima. she told our reporter australia is already being sidelined.
milne: one of the main sticking points is the green climate fund…australia has given nothing…that will put bishop in quite a difficult situation when she arrives.
milne: u.s. is taking a very high profile on this, obama has taken it on personally, but they wouldn’t get a legally-binding agreement through the congress & senate.
abc’s carrabine: could that derail paris agreement.
milne: climate finance could derail it. philippines suffering from 3rd typhoon; it’s really bringing into focus connection between extreme weather events & climate change.
abc’s carrabine: green climate fund – how is australia being perceived?
milne: it’s been received very badly; people can’t believe a rich country like australia is behaving in such a mean way.
abc’s carrabine: we’ve already seen china rebuke australia for not donating to the green fund; if we hold out, do you think australia will find it more difficult to be taken seriously about emissions reductions?
milne: absolutely. the whole of the rest of the world is shocked. our recalcitrance is going to see us relegated to merely outsider status as the world moves rapidly to address global warming. it means that the trillions of dollars investments in the clean economy has to go somewhere and international finance will bypass australia. people will think australia has decided to just be a rust-bucket quarry and we’re in real danger of not being taken seriously and sidelined.
abc’s carrabine: will other countries declare their targets this week?
milne: some will. australia is holding back. we know china is capping coal; we know what the germans are doing; australia just continues to have a real dog-in-the-manger attitude.
00
Has anyone from WA had a word in Julie Bishop’s shell-like about CO2 not being a pollutant?
It’s about time.
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basic story is fertilisers may have doubled food production & population, but they’re really, really bad for the climate. might need to change what we eat & grow, according to fran kelly:
8 Dec: ABC Breakfast: Increasing concerns over nitrogen gas
There are calls for a greater focus on the production of nitrogen gas as delegates from around the world gather in Lima for the UN Climate Conference.
The so-called ‘forgotten’ greenhouse gas traps 300 times more heat than carbon dioxide and its production is increasing dramatically.
Guest: Sonja Vermeulen, Head of Climate Change and Food Security Research for the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/increasing-concerns-about-nitrogen-gas/5950458
Guardian has a completely different take on the matter. thinks African countries need tons more fertiliser, thank you:
5 Dec: Guardian: Natasha Gilbert: Costly fertiliser holds back a green revolution in Africa
Sub-Saharan farmers are being denied high yields because they cannot afford the chemical means to replenish nutrient-depleted soil
Soil isn’t sexy – but it could explain hunger in Africa
“In the first years, the soil was good but then it changed,” says Silver. Teo adds: “We don’t make much money. We can’t break even.”
The change was caused by years of farming without using sufficient fertilisers to replenish the soil’s nutrients. The result, as the Kataratambis now see, is poor crop yields.
In contrast with their counterparts in the global north and Asia, many farmers in sub-Saharan Africa rely on manure rather than chemical fertilisers. But the organic alternative cannot meet the demand.
In Europe, organic farming makes up only 5.4% of all agricultural land, according to Eurostat. Food and Agriculture Organisation data shows that, globally, less than 1% of agricultural land is farmed using organic methods.
Organic fertiliser can help freshen up Africa’s ailing, rusty-red soils, but there is not enough land available to produce manure in sufficient quantities, says Professor Ken Giller, a soil scientist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands…
“Sub-Saharan Africa has by far the lowest rate of improved seed and fertiliser use of any region … [leading to] increased hunger and food insecurity,” says Sarwat Hussain, a World Bank spokesperson. Ugandan farmers are among those that use fertiliser the least….
At the UN climate change conference in Lima, Peru, in December, politicians and scientists will discuss the impact on agriculture and the role of fertiliser.
African farmers are sometimes put off chemical fertiliser because of cost. The Kataratambis say they can’t afford to buy chemical fertilisers – consistently…
A bag of fertiliser could cost Ugandan farmers the equivalent of £40 – double the sum paid by their American or European counterparts. Much of the extra expense comes from import and transport fees, since chemical fertiliser is often manufactured abroad. Some economists claim international fertiliser companies are manipulating the market by charging certain African nations more than richer countries…
“It is a misconception to say Africa can grow crops using just organics. The rest of the world is fed using fertiliser,” says Jama…
Without fertilisers, Jama warns, some vulnerable countries, including Niger, will struggle to feed their growing populations in as little as three years.
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/dec/05/costly-fertiliser-holds-back-a-green-revolution-in-africa
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LOL, concerns over nitrogen gas….
….. which makes up some 78% of the atmosphere.
ROFLMAO !!
They will try anything, won’t they !!!
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And this is exactly why I detest the phrase “greenhouse gas” because the only thing that I have seen that can be proven conclusively regarding “greenhouse gases” is the propagation of foolish ideas. The lack of even the most basic grasp of the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere by people making statements such as the above illustrates just how clueless these people are. It also illustrates how trendy using the phrase “greenhouse gas” has become when looking for a cause to blame something on.
30
I read that to my husband and his response was – Is that real or a joke?
How can you have CO2 increasing dramatically which according to the warmists causes water vapor to increasing dramatically and have nitrogen gas increasing dramatically too?
Since the earth is continuously losing atmosphere, the atmosphere is not expanding, so does than mean Oxygen, Hydrogen, Helium, Xenon, Neon, Krypton and Argon are decreasing dramatically?
(Oxygen is 21% and Argon is 1% the rest are in trace amounts)
OH MY GOSH we are losing OXYGEN!!!
(I have actually seen that as a scare story BTW)
20
Don’t give them any new ideas.
10
Next there will be too much oxygen.
Then a think tank will conclude that there is just too much gas on our planet and the liquids and solids must reduce to make way for this additional gas.
10
Christine Milne is waxing lyrical about how ‘mean’ Australia is in not contributing to the ‘green’. Maybe she wants to see it as mean because she cannot be free-handed with other people’s money.
Austalians may be naive but we are not studid (I hope).
20
Feel in the mood for a bit of comedy?
Try this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mnk0tIqsbYM
10
How about a boring old dry lesson in some electrical engineering?
I am (again) looking at Solar PV to highlight how it cannot be used for anything other than incidental power.
Look at the image at this link showing the output of a (relatively) large scale array, this one at the University of Queensland, and this is a group of four arrays. The largest is at the Uni site at St Lucia, and they have 3 other smaller sites, Gatton, Stradbroke Island and heron island.
All up, the total Nameplate comes in at 1580KW.
Now the image I have linked to is for today, 8th December, and as you can see here, the day has not finished yet. (that is right now, as I write this, because any time after today, you’ll see the full image for the whole of the day.)
Now, what I want to point out here is the actual power generation of the array.
Note how power starts to be generated as soon as the Sun rises, but from a base of zero to the maximum (for this day) at around Midday, and it then falls away.
See each of those reverse spikes. That is a cloud flitting across the face of the Sun, and note how each time that happens, the array loses around half to two thirds of its generation, and that lasts for anything up to 10 minutes, dropping off and then rising again.
Okay then, now look at the complete drop out starting around Midday. The cloud built up and South East Queensland began to be hammered by another storm.
So then, now look at the image at this link. This is a screen shot of the current weather radar for that area. It the doppler radar centred at Mount Stapylton, near Beenleigh on that map, at centre image. The radar is set to the 128Km setting and the time when this image is taken is 1430. (2.30PM) It shows almost total cloud cover at St. Lucia, the University site, a little to the NW of Brisbane, a little up and to the left of the Centre of the image.
So, refer back to the array and note how at that time, power generation dropped virtually to zero and stayed there.
Now, Solar PV has a very low Capacity Factor, in other words power delivered versus Nameplate, and that CF is around an average of 13%, and lower as you move further away from the Equator.
Also, generation times in Summer and Winter also vary as well, even though the graphs may look similar, and as an example I have chosen the best generation images I can find for a Summer day and a Winter day.
Summer Day – 21Jan 2014
Winter Day – 19Jul 2014
Now see how both images look similar, and umm, dare I say it sinusoidal in nature. (well, half the wave anyway)
The Summer one, a clear Sunny day with no cloud shows generation starting at around 5.30AM and ending at around 6.30PM. Generation rises to its maximum of around 1210KW, and note that even then, that is only 76% of its Nameplate, on a bright clear Sunny day. Average power for the day would be around 855Kw, or 54% ….. of those daylight hours or around 29% for the whole 24 hour day.
The Winter one, again, a clear Winter day with no cloud shows generation starting at 7AM and ending at 5PM. Generation rises to its maximum of 950KW, 60% of its Nameplate, with an average power of 670KW, or 42% of daylight, or 17.5% of the whole 24 hour period.
Now perhaps you can gain an inkling how power delivery from Solar PV is in fact so low, even on the clearest of days.
Now,and here I’m talking Australia, those generation totals would be progressively lower the further South you move, so an array like this in Brisbane would generate (much) more than a similar sized array in Hobart, the lower the angle of the Sun resulting in lower generation, if you can see that point. An array of this size in Hobart may only generate the same as for the Winter best case in Brisbane. Also, the panels should be kept as pristinely clean as possible, because even the finest coating of dust drops the power considerably.
Also, the variability can also be highlighted by showing a cloudy day, and here I’m showing an image at this link for the same array, only 2 days after that Summer image, this one the 23Jan2014.
See now, how if you have a unit which gives your residence total self sufficiency from rooftop solar, in other words, a unit with battery backup to provide for 24 hour power, then you need a battery bank sufficient to cover 3 to 5 days, and 5 days should always be the recommendation.
Sometimes, the finer points of something like this need a little more explanation than an offhand one liner.
Hope it wasn’t too boring.
Tony.
For a Sine wave, Average = 0.707 of Peak.
40
Umm, sorry to mention this Moderators, as I understand how much work you do, but my Main Comment above is still in Moderation here, undoubtedly due to the number of links would be my guess. So, sorry about that.
Pretty dull and boring old Comment anyway.
Tony.
(It is now released) CTS
20
8 Dec: South China Morning Post: Bloomberg in Lima: China rejects US-sought carbon pledge review at UN climate talks
‘Negotiators seek to remove draft provisions for targets to be subject to other countries’ scrutiny
China has rejected the scrutiny of efforts to limit carbon emissions, a key tool that the US says is necessary as more than 190 countries work to come up with a new deal to fight climate change.
‘Chinese negotiators sought at a climate conference in Lima, Peru, to delete provisions in a draft text that would have paved the way for other countries and non-governmental organisations to submit questions about its carbon-reduction plans, according to environmental groups that are official observers to the talks…’
10
Rhyl says –
“Austalians may be naive but we are not studid (I hope)”
Fairfax would like us to believe we are stupid.
8 Dec: SMH: Tony Abbott feels the heat on climate
by Mark Kenny with Lisa Cox
Six out of 10 of Australians think Tony Abbott’s Direct Action plan in place of the carbon price is an inadequate policy to address global warming, according to the latest Fairfax Ipsos poll.
The finding, which shows voters distinguish between the politically charged former carbon price and climate change as a future risk, comes as Foreign Minister Julie Bishop attends international climate talks in Peru…
Ms Bishop is being chaperoned – at the Prime Minister’s insistence – by Trade Minister and global warming sceptic, Andrew Robb. Environment Minister Greg Hunt is not attending…
The phone survey of 1401 people taken between December 4 and 6, showed 57 per cent of respondents believed the Coalition’s proposed Direct Action policy was “too little” to deal with global warming.
Even a significant slice of committed conservative voters, at 30 per cent, agreed with that proposition…
Voters may have wanted Julia Gillard’s carbon tax deleted – perhaps principally because it was born of a broken promise – but more than half remain profoundly concerned about global warming…
The clamour for tougher policies reveals voters have not abandoned belief in the scientific advice and want their government to provide a sufficient policy response in line with international action.
Tellingly, given the future expenditure of at least $2.55 billion on the Direct Action’s emissions reduction fund, only 7 per cent of respondents thought the policy is “too much” to address climate change issues.
Among Greens voters, nine out of 10 say Direct Action is “too little” – a figure that drops to 76 per cent among committed Labor voters.
Six out of 10 Coalition voters rate their government as having the policy setting “about right” with 17 per cent of Labor voters agreeing…
The poll also shows that climate and environmental protection issues are stronger concerns among the populations gathered in the more highly educated inner-city areas, than they are outside…
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-feels-the-heat-on-climate-20141208-122sj7.html
ignoring who was & wasn’t phoned for this poll, setting aside for now what was and wasn’t asked in the poll, given ABC & Fairfax’s politicising and propagandising of CAGW 24/7 year in year out, how would you get informed opinions from the public anyway?
for some strange reason, here’s another Mark Kenny article in the SMH on the same poll, with its own ridiculous little poll at the end, and with a disgusting unrelated video thrown in for good measure!
8 Dec: SMH: Mark Kenny: Fairfax Ipsos poll shows climate change concerns heating up around Tony Abbott
VIDEO: (Fairfax Chris Hammer interviewing Fairfax Mark Kenny re the other poll! nearly 9 minutes of attacks on the PM.)
Caption: Tony Abbott’s trust deficit
Bill Shorten opens a significant lead as preferred Prime Minister as voters mark down the Prime Minister on key measures.
(NOTE SOME DIFFERENCES IN TEXT)
Six out of 10 of Australians think Tony Abbott’s Direct Action policy has left the country with an inadequate policy response to the problem of global warming, according to the latest Fairfax Ipsos poll…
In particular, it raises questions over the abolition of the carbon tax, which has been trumpeted as a signature achievement in its own right…
The clamour for tougher policies reveals voters have not abandoned belief in climate change science and want their government to provide a sufficient policy response in line with international action…
Sixty per cent of capital city respondents said “too little” was being done by the government, while outside the cities 11 per cent of respondents thought the current approach by Canberra was “too much”, compared with 7 per cent of all respondents…
The overall slide in support for the government may have been influenced by the sharp focus on climate change around the G20 in November, despite the efforts of the Prime Minister to minimise that attention.
***Poll: How important are Tony Abbott’s climate change policies to you?
CHOICES:
1. I could support Tony Abbott if he took stronger action on climate change.
2. I wouldn’t support Tony Abbott no matter what his climate change policy was.
3. I support Tony Abbott already.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/fairfax-ipsos-poll-shows-climate-change-concerns-heating-up-around-tony-abbott-20141208-122eus.html
00
Michael Mann Spins a Yarn
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20141205_Steps_taken_on_climate_change.html
‘Past changes in global climate have taken place over thousands of years. Now, humans are emitting so much carbon into the atmosphere that our climate is changing at a rate that is potentially unprecedented in millions of years. As far back as the paleoclimate record takes us, we find no evidence for a warming of the globe as rapid as what we are currently experiencing.’
20
Outright lie, see my other post here.
20
Thanx Backslider, clearly the man is in need of professional help.
10
Bob Carter knocked this one on the head, most conclusively, in about 2002.
20
Why does a scientist use the term ‘Carbon’? I thought that was a term invented by PR spinners to confuse the public. (It’s not a gas – it’s really soot, folks.)
30
Based on his behavior there are many who are not convinced that Mann IS a scientist despite his credentials. He certainly doesn’t seem to grasp or adhere to the scientific method.
The use of the word carbon which is an element, to refer to the compound carbon dioxide, is either by intent or ignorance. I will leave it to the reader to decide which is the more likely of the two.
40
SHORTERN FORGES AHEAD AS PREFERRED PM …
ipsos.com.au/shortern-forges-ahead-as-preferred-pm/
9 hours ago – Majority of Australians think climate change needs to be addressed. Labor remains narrowly ahead of the Coalition in the latest Fairfax Ipsos Poll. The national poll of 1,401 respondents, interviewed from Thursday 4 to …
however, when u link on above, u get the following, which does not mention CLIMATE CHANGE nor DIRECT ACTION. same fieldwork dates and sample size as in SMH posted above.
8 Dec: IPSOS: SHORTEN FORGES AHEAD AS PREFERRED PM
Fieldwork dates: 4-6 December 2014
Sample size: 1, 401 respondents
Sample: National, aged 18+. 31% of sample comprised mobile phone numbers
http://ipsos.com.au/shorten-forges-ahead-as-preferred-pm/
10
9 Dec: InfigenEnergyRenewableEnergyBlog: Ketan Joshi: WHAT WE GET FROM THE RET: EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS
Yesterday, Fairfax media released an Ipsospollexamining how the public feels about the current government’s measures to address the threat of human-caused climate change.
Though the polling focuses on policies like Direct Action and the now-axed Carbon Pricing Mechanism, we feel that renewable energy deserves some credit – a recent poll found that nearly 90% of the public supports Australia’s Renewable Energy Target (RET)…
http://www.infigenenergy.com/renewable-energy/blog/what-we-get-from-the-ret-emissions-reductions.html
i can’t find anything on the actual poll except an infographic which u can click on in the second Kenny SMH piece, with the single meaningless statement/question whatever:
Federal Government measures to address climate change are …
Too Much
About Right
Too Little
Don’t Know
IS THAT IT FAIRFAX/IPSOS? TWO BIG FAT FAIRFAX PIECES BASED ON THAT? TELL ME IT AIN’T SO.
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Regional cooling signal in Greenland.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/autumn-greenland-ice-sheet-mass-gain-at-a-record-high/
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Unadulterated proof that CO2 has nothing to do with global warming or cooling.
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V17/nov/a27.php
Its clearly transparent and benign.
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To those who genuinely want to understand what explains all planetary temperatures in their tropospheres and any surface:
Firstly, you need to understand how and why gravity forms a density gradient. Why don’t molecules keep on falling? The answer lies in the Second Law of Thermodynamics which tells us that thermodynamic equilibrium will evolve. When such equilibrium evolves it has maximum entropy, and that means there are no unbalanced energy potentials and so no further net movement of energy or matter across any internal boundary in, for example, a column of air.
This happens when molecules tend towards having the same kinetic energy when they collide. This is why temperatures even out in a horizontal plane where gravitational potential energy is the same for all. However, in a vertical plane molecules with downward components in their velocity gain kinetic energy between collisions. But when they next collide they must have the same kinetic energy as the one they collide with at a lower level.
So this state of thermodynamic equilibrium also has a temperature gradient because molecules at lower levels have greater kinetic energy in order to maintain the state of thermodynamic equilibrium.
You should never confuse this state with an isothermal state which evolves only in a horizontal plane. Likewise, the corollary of the Second Law that heat transfer is always from hot to cold also applies only in a horizontal plane.
This is a critical point, because when new thermal energy is absorbed at the top of a planet’s troposphere it will disrupt a former state of thermodynamic equilibrium. Gravity then attempts to restore that equilibrium by, in effect, dragging more molecules downwards and actually causing heat transfer from cooler to warmer regions below, and eventually into the surface.
This then is the extra energy which James Hansen thought had to be explained by back radiation. It is very obvious on Venus that such extra energy is required to warm its surface (by about 5 degrees) during its sunlit hours, but it also happens some of the time on Earth, because solar radiation does not fully explain our mean surface temperatures either.
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Dr Hamilton, This maybe of interest:
Robinson and Catling model closely matches data for Titan’s atmosphere
Peter Morcombe will be having dinner with Dr. Robinson in the near future so there maybe an update for those of us not up to plowing through 60 pages of math.
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Yes gai I am quite aware of that study and similar earlier ones by others, and I have carried out calculations myself for some planets. Their calculations are approximations because it is not pressure which causes temperature: rather it is density and temperature that cause pressure. Also they do not have an explanation as to how the necessary energy gets down into the base of planetary tropospheres in order to maintain and even raise such temperatures during a planet’s daytime. If you study what I have written, albeit brief, you may come to an understanding of this convective heat transfer. The assumptions of Kinetic Theory (listed in Wikipedia) may help because you need to think at the molecular level. But feel free to ask any questions pertaining to my explanation.
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I think I see what you are getting at.
Dr Happer in his presentation at UNC mentioned that the energy CO2 gets from the earth’s outbound IR is transfered via collision to surrounding molecules and not re-emitted in the troposphere. It is only when you get into the stratosphere that the atmosphere is thin enough that the time to re-emit energy is shorter than the time to the next collision. Ozone also emits in the stratosphere while water vapor emits below the tropopause.
This would mean that some of the inbound solar energy and some of the outbound IR energy would be absorbed by different molecules at different heights in the atmosphere. Ionization, molecular dissociation and chemical reactions as well as excitation can occur depending on the energy and the molecules involved. This means a state of thermodynamic equilibrium is not going to happen and you have molecules rising or falling or imparting energy via collision or remitting the energy. This would be what drives the temperature and density and pressure would follow.
The atmosphere is anything but a quiet place as the violence of thunderstorms and cyclones show.
I do have a problem with this part of your comment:
First observations by NASA showed that during the last solar minimum that was much more quiet than the normal 20th century minimums, and “Earth’s upper atmosphere is heated less by the sun and it is therefore less “puffed up.”
In thunderstorms it also works in the opposite manner (hot air rises). Warm water vapor rises towards the tropopause with the temperature of the surrounding molecules becoming colder and colder. At some point water vapor turns to water droplets forming clouds and the energy from the heat of vaporization is emitted. Eventually this cooled water falls to earth as rain.
Rider on the Storm shows just how violent these down drafts and updrafts of air can be.
You really can not leave water out of any discussion of the troposphere.
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Alex,
I hope you have been following discussions at the Hockey Shtick.
Seems you are on a similar theory.
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The 20th century saw a very active sun, but its all over now.
http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/open?pubNo=lrsp-2008-3&page=articlesu16.html
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NEW PAPER
‘A team of UK researchers has shed new light on the climate of the Little Ice Age, and rekindled debate over the role of the sun in climate change. The new study, which involved detailed scientific examination of a peat bog in southern South America, indicates that the most extreme climate episodes of the Little Ice Age were felt not just in Europe and North America, which is well known, but apparently globally.
‘Professor Frank Chambers, Head of the University of Gloucestershire’s Centre for Environmental Change and Quaternary Research, who led the writing of the Fast-Track Research Report, said:
“Both sceptics and adherents of Global Warming might draw succour from this work. Our study is significant because, while there are various different estimates for the start and end of the Little Ice Age in different regions of the world, our data show that the most extreme phases occurred at the same time in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. These extreme episodes were abrupt global events.
‘They were probably related to sudden, equator-ward shifts of the Westerlies in the Southern Hemisphere, and the Atlantic depression tracks in the Northern Hemisphere. The same shifts seem to have happened abruptly before, such as c. 2800 years ago, when the same synchronous but opposite response is shown in bogs in Northwest Europe compared with southern South America.’
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Possible link: Little Ice Age was global: Implications for current global warming
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“It seems that the sun’s quiescence was responsible for the most extreme phases of the Little Ice Age, implying that solar variability sometimes plays a significant role in climate change. A change in solar activity may also, for example, have contributed to the post Little Ice Age rise in global temperatures in the first half of the 20th Century. However, solar variability alone cannot explain the post-1970 global temperature trends, especially the global temperature rise in the last three decades of the 20th Century, which has been attributed by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.” (My emphasis)
Professor Chambers concluded: “I must stress that our research findings are only interpretable for the period from 3000 years ago to the end of the Little Ice Age. That is the period upon which our research is focused. However, in light of our substantiation of the effects of ‘grand solar minima’ upon past global climates, it could be speculated that the current pausing of ‘Global Warming’, which is frequently referenced by those sceptical of climate projections by the IPCC, might relate at least in part to a countervailing effect of reduced solar activity, as shown in the recent sunspot cycle.” (Again, my emphasis)
Translation:
a) I am really embarrassed about these findings, because I will be pilloried and may lose my funding, so I will bow to the wisdom of the IPCC, and hope that keeps the juju at bay.
b) If we stand on one foot, and put our fingers in our ears, we might be able to keep our jobs by finding a way for the sun to be blamed for it getting cooler.
People are running scared in academia, folks. They all got the memo.
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I call that the get out of
Jailpeer-review free card. It is found in some form or other in nearly every paper that shows CO2 is NOT the control knob of climate.I like the way Joan Feynman et al uses the get out of jail card to take a few digs at the CAGW crowd.
Solar variability and climate change’ Geomagnetic aa index and global surface temperature
E.W. Cliver •nd V. Bori•koff •
Air Force Research Laboratory, Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts
J. Feynman
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
Abstract.
…Our analysis is admittedly crude and ignores known contributors to climate change such as warming by anthropogenic greenhouse-gases or cooling by volcanic aerosols….
1. Introduction.
….In particular, various authors haven noted that solar irradiance proxies and global surface temperatures declined for an interval during the middle of the present century while the concentration greenhouse gases such as CO2, which cause global warming, rose monotonically.….
3. Discussion
… The implication is that the geomagnetic minimum between cycles 23 and 24 (in -.•2007) will not exceed that of the 1996 geomagnetic minimum(18.6 nT) which itself was slightly lower than the 1987 aa minimum (19.0 nT), and that the underlying trend in solar irradiance will and that the underlying trend in solar irradiance will continue to be fiat or downward. As of this writing it appears that the average aa value for 1997 will be even lower (-.•16nT) than that of 1996. Such a leveling off or decline of the long-term solar component of climate change will help to disentangle its effects from that of anthropogenic greenhouse warming….
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I’m sometimes late to these posts which is why Comment 12.5 hasn’t ruffled any feathers yet.
Still the question must be asked. Which will be the more powerful by 2100AD, the forecast cooling of reduced solar activity or the forecast warming of increased CO2? It’s still anyone’s game.
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Considering that 2015-2100 is a slice in time that would almost put us back to WW 1 if reversed, and 99% of the world didn’t have electricity or telephone, I don’t look ahead that far.
Boggles my mind to think what humanity will cope with even not considering climate at all.
Besides that, even my children will be long past their life expectancy by 2100.
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No it is not Andrew.
SOLAR ACTIVITY:
The little Ice age showed the type of weather and temperature drop we can get from reduced solar activity. This time the earth is starting cooler and at the Milancovitch cycle transition point for glacial inception.
A fall 2012 paper Can we predict the duration of an interglacial? gives the calculated solar insolation values of several glacial inceptions:
Current value – insolation = 479W m−2 (from that paper)
MIS 7e – insolation = 463 W m−2,
MIS 11c – insolation = 466 W m−2,
MIS 13a – insolation = 500 W m−2,
MIS 15a – insolation = 480 W m−2,
MIS 17 – insolation = 477 W m−2
NOAA’s calculations also show how close to the solar insolation during the depths of the Wisconsin Ice Age the earth now is:
NOW (modern Warm Period) 476 Wm-2
Depth of the last ice age – around 463 Wm−2 ( difference = 13 Wm-2)
Holocene peak insolation: 522.5 Wm-2 (difference = 46.5 Wm-2)
So no matter who you use as a reference, the earth is in the ball park for glacial inception in terms of solar insolation. Any hope that the Holocene would go long was shot down by Lisiecki and Raymo in 2005 in their rebuttal of Loutre and Berger, 2003. link
Since then no one in Quaternary Science has rebutted Lisiecki and Raymo. Also ALL glacial inceptions happened when CO2 levels were high. Not a fact to give one warm fussy feelings.
Dr. Robert Brown @ Duke Univ. and others have pointed out that at this point the climate is bistable with a warm and a cold phase. We are currently in the warm phase. Here is one of Dr. Brown’s comments about climate, chaos and bistable/multi-stable strange attractors.
This paper actually looks at Dansgaard-Oeschger events, bimodality of the system and tipping points.
RISING LEVELS OF CO2
This is the old traditional logarthmic response graph for CO2
https://i0.wp.com/joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/graphs/log-co2/log-graph-lindzen-choi-web.gif
It turns out that even that is over estimating the effect of CO2 because it is based on the wrong shaped equations for ‘line broadening’ aka the ‘wings’ where the current CO2 absorption (at 400 ppm) is supposedly taking place. These equations produce results that do not match up to the experimental data. The lines are not as broad as theory would have it as Dr Happer shows:
Slide 22: Lorentzian line shape nor Voigt line shapes are correct in the far wings!
Since the experimental data shows less broadening this flattens the exponential curve and essentially lowers the ‘Climate Sensitivity’ of CO2 for a doubling to 800 ppm to less than 1C===> 0C
David Burton put up an audio, a video (John Locke Foundation) and slides of Dr Happer’s presentation at UNC at this link
SLIDES: link
Slides 16, 22, 42, 43 and 44 are the critical slides.
Oh, and do not forget that the ‘Catastrophic’ part of CAGW is from water feedback. That is CO2 causes a little bit of warming, water responses by increasing and therefore the effect of CO2 is increased by a factor of three. Except real world data shows water is not responding to CO2. It is visible, UV and EUV that penetrate and warm the oceans and those parts of the solar spectrum are more variable than was first thought. Solar insolation maybe fairly constant but the distribution of energy among the various wavelengths is not.
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Good afternoon all. I was wondering if I could ask el gordo whether he’s been banned at the other place.
Thanks.
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Much appreciated.
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G’day Tony
Yes, it appears so. Reb introduced a moderating trick, whereby he snipped erroneous thinking and let groupthink through, so I gave up. I still visit your art classes and continue to improve. So don’t despair if the pseudo leftist scum (PLS) give you a hard time, they are on the wrong side of history.
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Okay, good to know, el g.
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East Coast Lows happen about three times a year, mainly in Autumn and winter. This is a low pressure trough in summer. Too early to call it a regional cooling signal.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-202.06,-36.62,2048
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Now this is what I call a regional signal.
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_seasonal.php?ui_set=nhland&ui_season=4
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