Can anyone explain why alarmists believe ‘feedbacks’ after a period of temperature rise (for whatever reason) have to be so hugely positive, when it is self-evident that if this was true then life as we know it could not exist today?
Feedbacks have to be neutral or negative or we would, at best, all now be one celled organisms.
By definition ‘alarmists’ appear compelled to create a self-fulfilling paradigm, imaginary or otherwise. Climate alarmism is clearly irrational and bereft of science (IPCC climate models are not representative of sound ‘science’). The UN predefined the cause and infused the eco-marxist politics toward the fulfillment of various financial and political agendas. The interchangeability of terms ‘global warming’ to ‘klimate khange’ without a pause in political step reveals a eco-political irrationality.
Pascal Bruckner makes a case for the ‘why’ in his book, ‘The Fanatacism of the Apocalypse‘ Then perhaps take a range of human behaviours bordering at times on co-morbidity for example, the dysfunctional media feasting on threat as they peddle climageddon for all the $’s its worth with the backdrop, a audience of limbic biology hard-wired to register threat. Simultaneously, they are told they can save the World.
The rest as they say, is history. Fearmongering has after all been with us since the dawn of time.
(IPCC climate models are not representative of sound ‘science’)
They are not even representative of sound computer models.
Memo to the Klimate Muddlers: You should not start with the expected result, and then fiddle around with the algorithms and parameters to learn what may have caused that expected result.
The mechanism the Left uses to make anything flaky ( scientifically speaking ) become “truth” is to saturate the “thought market” so that nothing else gets a look in.
Whether they pay people to push the lie, or make it so that no one else gets a look-in, means that the sheep only get one point of view. Now add in the fact that according such appalling thinsg like “Common Core” In the USA whereby literally “5+4 = about 10” means you have a generation thats schooled in dim thinking.
Then add in the fact that school kids are taught by Common Core to value the group more than the individual, and you have Collectivism ( effectively Communism, if you will ).
I find it instructive that science seems to flourish in periods where the individual is encouraged to be an individual, not a collective. I believe the Renassance was one such a period of time, whereas now we are heading into a new Dark Ages.
This tells me why the big push by the “Looney Lefties”to get rid of Tony Abbott.
David Archibald, a visiting fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014)
A draft document out of Geneva gives details of the UN plan to rule the world.
But the Lima conference has been quickly followed by another in Geneva. The purpose of the latter conference was to produce the negotiating text for the climate conference to be held in Paris in December. The Geneva meeting was conducted in a rush with no opening statements, even by the head of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres. Ms. Figueres expectation of the climate treaty coming is that it will be “a centralised transformation” that “is going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different”.
Just how different is shown by snippets of the Paris negotiating text. Let’s start with this one from page 5:
“All Parties to strive to achieve low greenhouse gas climate-resilient economies and societies, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their historical responsibilities, common but differentiated responsibilities / evolving common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in order to achieve sustainable development, poverty eradication and prosperity for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, taking fully into account the historical responsibility of developed country Parties.”
Animal Farm was supposed to be a cautionary tale about communism. The UN has taken “All animals are created equal but some are more equal than others.” and turned into “All countries are common but some are more differentiated than others.”
How will the UN determine how much one country might be differentiated from another? That is explained on page 85:
“In reviewing and revising Annex I to the Convention, the total amount of greenhouse gases, expressed in carbon dioxide equivalent, emitted by a Party to the Convention since 1750 A.D. shall be added and divided by the current population of that Party. Based on the thus obtained per capita greenhouse gas emissions and population size of each Party to the Convention, the average global per capita emissions of greenhouse gases shall be used to evaluate the status of the greenhouse gas emissions of a Party to the Convention. Each Party to the Convention whose per capita greenhouse gas emissions exceed the global average per capita greenhouse gas emissions shall be proposed to be inscribed in Annex I to the Convention, and the remaining Parties shall not be proposed to be inscribed in Annex I to the Convention.”
Why 1750? Are the sins of the fathers are to be visited their sons even unto the 11th generation, which is us? Climate treaties used to be based on 1990 as the start date because that was convenient to the Europeans as the fall of communism in that year had curbed their coal consumption. The European countries were going to be the easy treaty compliers while the US was punished. That was the plan at the beginning. But now it is changed to 1750.
The significance of Annex 1 is that if you are on it, you will be paying for the whole circus – US$100 billion per annum for kleptocracies. What if you don’t want to be on Annex 1, because you know that global warming is nonsense or something? What might happen is hinted at on page 8:
“Option 4: Decides that the developed country Parties shall not resort to any form of unilateral measures against goods and services from developing country Parties on any grounds related to climate change, recalling the principles and provisions of the Convention”
The option says that developing countries are not to have unilateral measures taken against them but who would bother doing that? The implied target is elsewhere. Countries that are allocated to Annex 1 but don’t cough up the cash might have unilateral measures taken against them by “developed country Parties”.
Australia signed up for the UN climate treaty in 2007. Canada pulled out in 2011 and Russia and Japan have rejected new targets after 2012. Perhaps the US will keep us free – Ms Figueres has said that the US Congress is “very detrimental” to the fight against global warming.
So that is why the global warming scare is so hard to kill. The end game is world domination. With such a big prize – the biggest possible, facts aren’t even inconvenient. They are not part of the process. It has been a long slog but gird your loins for a battle that might last into mid-century. Lima was COP 20 and Ms Figueres is prepared to take it to COP 40.
Something to look forward to in Paris in December.
A feedback can be positive but less than one in order the total effect to be bound. If a positive feedback is less than one “the signal”, e.g. an increase of forcing, is attenuated at each cycle through the system and finally disappears. In general, if we have feedback (loop amplification) k and forcing f, we would have total effect e = (1/(1-k)) * f . E.g. by having a positive feedback of 0.5, our original forcing will be doubled. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_theory
Obama says ‘no greater threat to planet than climate change’”
¯ For once I utterly agree with Obama! — but not for the reasons POTUS states.
¯
With his political push exerting pressure not only internally in the US but also externally on other nation’s politicians, the UN, other NGO political advocates, Greens, and ‘climate scientists’ around world; this statement will add more inertial energy to proponents and propagators of the pseudo-science of ‘climate change'(nee CAGW aka AGW).
The united front of scientific misanthropy will feel blessed from on high that this near-science is again vindicated by POTUS, ensuring that the gravy-train keeps going. They will assert more energy in ensuring this Malthusian message stays loud or probably get loader for the disbelievers.
While environmental propagandists will celebrate peace, love, and Earth Day, here’s some information about co-founder and emcee Ira Einhorn — that not all eco-pacifists practice what they preach.
We can only hope for colder than average weather (but not too extreme, or it will be used as ammunition)
Last winter in Paris was pretty mild really, cold days, no snow to speak of. Spring has been astonishingly nice so far, sunshine galore, 15-25 degrees….
I think it was last year where it snowed in Paris in May, or something similarly bizarre (can’t remember the date, but I know everyone was far from impressed). The traffic is bad enough normally, snow in winter makes it worse, but snow not in winter…well… the French know how to complain…
I get your point. It scares no one any more than it scares me to see what’s happening in the name of saving mankind from the threat of climate change.
They’re hell bent on destruction of the technology civilization depends on — abundant electricity and fuel to keep a society utterly dependent on mobility, able to keep moving.
What with Ruaridh inspiring more budding poets, the gifted Speedy and Laurel and Hardy here, I can see we’re going to be all right once there’s no more climate to comment on.
Rereke I found a good page on The shipping law blog that answers most of your question but answers regarding the exact length to which the structures are categorized seems a bit ambiguous, probably the correct wording while searching is the Quay…..
If a jetty is made progressively bigger, at what point does it become a pier?
In England it you stick some stalls on it selling “kiss me quick” hats, sticks of rock (a dentist’s worst nightmare) and colored lights at night. When you have a fun fair, and a theater with variety shows, then it becomes a premier pier.
We have a jetty up our way (at Long Jetty) that is 351 metres long and has just celebrated its 100th year. It is supposed to be the longest jetty in NSW – Does this make it a jetty without pier?
Yes, this will be interesting. I note that the proposed date of close is ‘by 2050’ – plenty of wriggle room there to change things if global warming does not go to plan or reverses. Thirty five years of wriggle room in fact.
The most interesting thing will be to see how information presented so far in the media coverage lines up with the actual media release/statement by the company.
The time span (35 years) and the feel-good vagueness of the fuzzy sentiments in the press release (as published in Saturday’s papers) show that (no detail, no base load numbers)
The trigger for this press release was the recent listing of AGL by the Greenies as one of the “big polluders” – AGL saw this as bad for its’ brand. The sad part to that is that AGL obviously thinks that a significant section of the public will believe the “polluder” label
What I do not really understand that companies like AGL, BP, employ a lot of engineers, geologists, chemists, so why on earth would their managements want to follow the global warming myth when most of these people would know better? Is it coercion or greed?
As an oilfield geologist, I can say it’s neither coercion or greed, at least in my case. I like my job, and I also know that these “green-wash’ decisions are made at management levels which are totally abstracted from the realms of ‘ordinary’ employees, and are designed to keep the shareholders happy. It doesn’t stop them drilling for oil/gas, and it doesn’t really impact day-to-day operations.
The oil price however… that does have an impact. I see Schlumberger is going to fire another 11000 employees, on top of the 8000 or 9000 already fired. Whilst some may say “serves them right for working for ‘big oil'”, I happen to think that in most cases, people have families and loved ones they support financially, so losing ones job is hardly good news.
James, I guess that what you are saying is the top managements of these large companies these days are mainly accountants and lawyers and politics is the number one game as long as the balance sheet is good for the shareholders. The announcement by AGL about shutting down its coal stations by 2050 is a case in point, no obvious feasible alternative for 24/7 baseload power, apart from nuclear, so what is the logic apart from politics.
Robert O, nail on head with nuclear. AGL and like are probably betting the farm on the Skunk Works getting their fusion reactor operational. Why would an ALP led state instigate a royal commission into the nuclear fuel cycle? Clearly, against national policy. In order to instigate a commission you must already know the answer.
Agree, agree, agree.
One of the major failures of modern industries and lack of long/ medium term thinking results from a preponderance of bean counters and silver tails being the major decision=makers.
Can anyone recall when BHP made it’s last good decision?
As everyone knows, “Sabre Dance” is from the final act of Aram Khachaturian’s ballet Gayane.
It is Khachaturian’s best known and most recognizable work.
Today (15 April, 2015) is the 71st birthday of Welsh guitarist Dave Edmunds—he of Rockpile and Love Sculpture fame, he who scored a Number 1 U.K. hit with “I Hear You Knocking” in 1970.
Edmunds forged a successful solo career with a string of middle-weight hits, including “Queen of Hearts,” “Girls Talk” and “Slipping Away.”
But what a lot of people don’t know is that Edmunds is an incredible guitarist, initially making his six-string mark with Love Sculpture’s blistering version of “Sabre Dance” in 1968.
Edmunds still performs “Sabre Dance,” and we figured we’d share a recent (OK, recent-ish) live version of the tune below.
Because of the nasty environment on Mars I think they will send sophisticated robots instead of humans. Hubots are coming.
‘According to Hanson Robotics’s website, the humanoids can actually see your face, make eye contact with you, and understand speech to ‘engage you in witty dialogue’.
‘Such reactions are a major feat of engineering, according to chief designer David Hanson, the founder and and president of Hanson Robotics.’
Really enjoyed the made for television Äkta Människor – Real Humans – S1. Brilliantly executed, Moments of humor, pathos and tenderness. Hub Battle Land and the lovable rascal Silas. The basic premise of the series IMHO is not about hubots, but about us…what kind of people do we want to be? There are subtle parallels to be drawn with the refugee and minority questions..can’t help thinking of the young girl allegedly sexually assaulted on Manus, terrified of being sent back there from Darwin..the lack of a response.
Maybe the Kurnell, Sydney, desalination plant could send you some water Bob, after all it is maintained at a cost of millions a month with no output of water now. Former Premier Carr of NSW was the consultant to the Arab suppliers, and a Macquarie Bank consultant at the same time while occupying an office suite in the NSW Government office block in Sydney alongside Labor Government cabinet ministers. Bob apparently convinced other states to invest in desalination plants after Professor Flannery predicted that rain would not fall enough to fill the dams.
Flannery also predicted that the Sydney Opera House would be swamped by 2000. I was in Sydney last weekend and the Opera House was high and dry.
The best ever? It has been said of Laver, Sampras, Nadal and, especially, Federer, but you have to wonder if Djokovic is the best ever … so far. Not only is he a talented all round tennis player, but he is probably the mentally toughest player to walk onto a court. I hope I didn’t put a hex on him for today’s final!
Tennis aficionados might have noticed that this year’s Aust Open trophy was presented to Djokovic by none other than Roy Emerson. You might also have seen Emerson photographed with George Bush Snr as they enjoyed the recent Houston tournament (in the image, check out the spook on the left ‘talking to the hand’).
If you’re a tennis buff – and your travel budget is greater than mine – you might consider a week of tennis at Roy Emerson’s tennis camp in one of the best towns in the best country on the planet – Gstaad, Switzerland.
Just to give the pretence that this post is in some way related to the subject matter of this blog, the Swiss are very conscious of preserving the beauty and purity of their natural environment. Unlike the Germans, the Swiss did not damage their economy with a knee-jerk rejection to nuclear power after Fukushima. You will recall that the Germans are shutting theirs down, but are buying nuclear generated power from across the border. In fact, I recall reading somewhere that one of Germany’s neighbours is building a new nuclear power plant just over its border with Germany, primarily to sell electricity to the latter.
Also, the Swiss are especially adept at managing their natural environment, while at the same time providing infrastructure and facilities for people to use it and enjoy it. For example, a mountain might typically have a cable car service and a tourist facility on the peak, graded and signposted walking tracks, access for different sports, and timber harvesting, but at the same time have protected forests and wildlife preserves in which human activity is restricted but not prevented. Compare that with our leftist driven model, in which it is sought to shut everything down and close everything off.
Switzerland has direct democracy, which is why their governments govern for the people, rather than governing to implement their own self-serving agenda and to grant privileges to a select few, as is the case in socialist Australia.
With respect to the Swiss system of citizen-initiated referenda on legislation, could you tell us what happens (as detailed as possible) when the Swiss Govt is faced with a referendum vote it doesn’t like, please ?
If I could begin by saying that in a true democracy the question of ‘what the government doesn’t like’ is moot, because, unlike in Australia, for example, government is not an agency unto itself, by which I mean government cannot pursue an agenda that is not the people’s agenda. The leftist EU governments HATE Switzerland for this very reason.
Before proceeding, I should state that I am far from an expert on the Swiss system of government, and, as I do not speak German, French or Italian, I am not able to properly study their system of government.
Second, Switzerland is a true confederation, meaning that the federal council has limited power and subsists on monies provided by the cantons (states). As an aside, if the coalition had created a confederation in Iraq – Sunni, Shiite and Kurds – it would have made the country much more stable, but leftist government don’t like distributed power. Centralised power is less accountable and easier to manipulate.
In answer to your question, the issue of the government having to comply with a demand of the people that offends the socialist governments of Europe is alive at this very moment. Last year, the Swiss Peoples Party (what the Left call right-wing but normal people call mainstream, and the Left call anti-immigration but normal people call a responsible attitude to immigration) sponsored a measure to restrict immigration from the EU, a measure that violates current Swiss-EU ‘freedom of movement’ agreements. The government is still negotiating this issue with the socialist governments of France and Germany, so we will have to wait and see.
I believe there was some controversy recently about banks’ client confidentially. The US has been economically threatening Switzerland to reveal customers’ names. I can’t recall whether it was subject to referendum or whether the Swiss parliament refused to debate the matter. Anyway, I believe they got around it by saying that client details could be revealed where a law had been broken – specifically, tax law.
I know I have not provided the in-depth information you are seeking, but time and language are against me. I, too, would love to fully research this subject. Suffice to say that the government has no choice – the people tell it what to do and it has to find a way to do it.
To conclude, Finland has recently introduced a form of direct democracy. I do not know the details, but, if a government has voluntarily given up its prerogative powers, it is ASTOUNDING. Can you imagine our government giving up its power to ignore us and abuse us! Here is some info on Finland. Unfortunately, the actual mechanism is not described. Note that many of the stories in Swissinfo tend to be left-leaning. For example, the failure of the Ecopop referendum is described as a ‘weak’ result for ‘anti-immigrants’ but the measure was actually put forward by the green Left as a sustainability issue rather than an ‘anti-immigration’ issue. In fact, the Swiss Peoples Party – the mainstream party that advocates for responsible immigration policy – opposed the Ecopop measure. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, the Swiss Peoples Party’s 2014 initiative on restricting immigration was passed by the Swiss people.
One (of many) reasons I asked the original question is that I am aware that Brussels (yes, I know Switzerland is not a member of the EU) reacts to popular votes and referenda results it doesn’t like by simply re-putting the question, or even just ignoring the inconvenient result. Our powers-that-be or wish-to-be here in Aus HATE even discussing the Swiss system; much preferred is vague talk about suspending democracy until the “crisis” is over
The population of Switzerland is just over 8 million (2013). How this is divided geographically into cantons and how each canton is equally represented in the Swiss Parliament is an area I’m currently looking at. But the much smaller population and even smaller geographical area render their political system easier to implement there than in Aus
I’ll opt to wait and see about Finland. Politicians voluntarily relinquishing power is a very, very alien concept: despite my strongest wishes, I suspect it will eventually not be as it seems
The US tried it on with some Swiss Banks, effectively suggesting that withholding information about American citizens alleged or potential law breaking could be considered as an act if war. I believe several Swiss Banks went bust as a result of the loss of faith that resulted with their customers. Other countries that have been trying it on haven’t got so far. There are limited agreements on disclosure now in place with some European countries but eg. The French Socialists are holding out for full disclosure back through history & getting nowhere apparently.
Barry, got to disagree with you re Djokovic. In the history of men’s tennis a total of only three grand slams have ever been won. Rod Laver, from Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia won two of them. The greatest tennis player that ever lived. The only other one was won by an American, Don Budge. A journalist once foolishly said to him, something to the effect of, it would have been a lot easier to do in his day, to which Budge had a devastating reply along the lines of, then why didn’t more people do it!!!
I remember years ago Fred Perry being asked to rank the best 10 players he had seen. (Perry won Wimbledon 3 years running 34-36).
He rated Bill Tilden** as the best, and then Laver. Some of his ratings were interesting, he didn’t rate himself at all, He rated Lew Hoad highly and Emerson and Budge. Björn Borg just made the top 10. And he dismissed McEnroe and Connors. I wish I had kept the article.
Of course Agassi, Sampras, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic weren’t around then.
**Tilden didn’t get to play many Tournaments after the ball boy scandal broke.
Agassi and Federer both have career slams, although neither won all four in the same year. Also, Federer had health problems in 2008 that probably denied him a couple more. Federer’s main weakness is mental strength. That is probably what makes Djok unbeatable today. Also, he is probably better at returning serve than Agassi was, which is quite an accomplishment. The reason I say that is that Agassi was always troubled by Sampras’s serve, but Djok seems to have little trouble with the big hitters, such as Raonic and Isner.
I’ve heard a lot about Budge but I have never before seen vision of his games. After I saw your post, I had a quick look at some video clips of his play. He had a topspin backhand, which was very unusual for that era. Without seeing more I cannot comment, but, as you have said, his record speaks for itself.
Speaking of backhands, wouldn’t you die for a backhand like Wawrinka’s!
If you enjoy tennis – and you obviously do – open the video menu on the atpworldtour.com website and in the column to the right you will find a link to videos of ‘classic’ finals. I’m sure you will enjoy watching highlights of Agassi, Sampras, Edberg, Becker and Stich at their best.
You are right, there would never be a scandal such as the Craig Thomson affair because the citizens would have put in a petition for a mandatory by-election. They also have a lot of referenda on important issues, and one sees a lot of rifles on trains as the citizens take them home after army training.
The argument is simple, CO2 has increased 50% since 1900. This coincides with the industrial revolution so man has produced the increase in CO2 which in turn produced the warming.
As a general question to everyone, if you could prove by direct measurement that there is almost no man made CO2 in the air, that would be the end of the story of man made Global Warming?
We’ll, er, um. Doesn’t the man made CO2 get absorbed by the oceans but replaced in the atmosphere by naturally occurring CO2. It’s like a balancing thing & we’re upsetting the balance. Yeah.
Yes. 98% of the CO2 is in the ocean. Half of it is swapped over every 12 years. So any ‘industrial’ CO2 disappears into the ocean. The total amount of CO2 in the air is fixed by physical chemical rules of equilibrium, Henry’s law. So we can generate as much CO2 as we like. It all just disappears.
Yes, I have read many reviews of C12/C13 ratios. Differential take up in plants is interesting. Just more to argue about.
C13 is about 1%. C14 is the one no one mentions, the one used in radio carbon dating as it is created and destroyed continually, so it tells you what is going on.
Yes, I have read many reviews of C12/C13 ratios. Differential take up in plants is interesting. Just more to argue about.
C13 is about 1%. C14 is the one no one mentions, the one used in radio carbon dating as it is created and destroyed continually, so it tells you what is going on.
Yes, I have read many reviews of C12/C13 ratios. Differential take up in plants is interesting. Just more to argue about.
C13 is about 1%. C14 is the one no one mentions, the one used in radio carbon dating as it is created and destroyed continually, so it tells you what is going on.
I am slowly coming to the realization that people do not understand radio carbon dating at all. No one. I wrote to Science ABC and they had no idea. It should be school boy stuff. Lord Monckton wanted me to write a paper, but it hardly seems worth it on a simple observation. Papers should be for profound new knowledge or reporting experiments and conclusions, not stating the obvious. Basically mankind cannot change the CO2 levels in the atmosphere and even so, you can prove almost none of the CO2 is from fossil fuels. I would have thought that was the end of it, but people seem to want to argue about the consequences of something which is not happening.
Unfortunately, the AGW hypothesis is not based on science, but politics and religion which are hard to quantify. In science if the results are at variance to the hypothesis, it is either discarded or modified. Science is littered with thousands of failed theories, but in this case it’s still supported by governments, Presidents, the MSM… One would have thought that after 18 years of no significant increase in global temperature, based on accurate satellite data, not land-based data affected by changes to sites, the UHI effect, homogenisation etc., the AGW hypothesis would have been discarded, but no it has morphed into Climate Change. That is a two way bet, if it gets colder, or hotter, it doesn’t matter as it is all due to CO2 anyhow and that will be the outcome of the Paris meeting.
Yes, religion and opportunism by the UN plus all the carpetbaggers and the huge industrial group which is cleaning up at $1Bn a day.
This morning news.com.au reports that Australia has a ‘please explain’ note from the UN on ‘direct action’. China is complaining we as a developed country are not carrying our load. The Chinese, a ‘developing country’ responsible for half the world’s CO2 output do nothing while they are increasing their CO2 output each year by more than our entire output. Is there no end to this farce?
The key element of AGW is the A. It can be proven simply that A has nothing to do with recent CO2 increases. So whether GW occurs or not, we anthropoids have nothing to do with it. The UN can rage about its pocket money on behalf of the Carbon Cartel, but it is all sound and fury, signifying nothing except greed.
As we get closer, 97% milestones get further away.
Here is three:
1. Goal Post Migration Alert! Father of 2°C Target Schellnhuber Postpones CO2 Emissions Peak 10 Years: From 2020 To 2030! (notrickszone)
2. Sustainable Postponements…Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute Pushes “Ice-Free Arctic” Back To 2050! (notrickszone)
3. Two degree Celsius climate change target ‘utterly inadequate’, expert argues (sciencedaily.com)
– Global-warming limit of 2 °C hangs in the balance (nature.com)
not satisfied with killing off most of its audience already…
CNN Facebook
What do you want to know about climate change? CNN’s John Sutter is going to spend the rest of the year telling the story of one number — 2 degrees — and he needs your help do it! World leaders agree that if the world warms more than 2 degrees Celsius, we’ll see disastrous consequences. Ask your questions here and they’ll inspire Sutter’s reporting. This is a rare opportunity for you to shape the way CNN covers a critically important topic. Thanks for participating! #2degrees https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10153569174821509/
the back & forth between Sutter and the public in the comments makes this programming decision even less appetising.
Have you ever looked at something and thought that, hey, this sounds reasonable enough.
Something similar happened when I looked at President Obama’s pledge for the Paris COP21 Climate Change Conference for the UNFCCC later this year.
I wondered why he selected a 28% emissions reduction when other Nations are being more ambitious than this, some as high as 40% and more.
I wondered why he selected 2025 as the target year.
I wondered why he based this reduction on totals from 2005, and that answer was easiest, because that was the year of highest emissions in the U.S.
I wondered if it related back to the original Kyoto Protocol, which asked for reductions to a level 5 to 7% lower than what they were in 1990.
It all seemed so reasonable on the surface.
I started to do a Post, thinking I could do it in a (relative) snap, and have it ready fairly quickly, but I wasn’t holding much hope that it would have any punch, because it all actually looked ‘doable’.
Then it all fell into place.
It ended up that I have spent more on this than anything I have done in the last seven years of contributing to my home site.
It actually got a little frightening really, and the more I looked, the more I found, coming to a belief that this is something that just cannot really be achieved.
That year of 2005 was the year of highest emissions, and working in percentages makes it look less complex than it really is, so I had to work backwards, and forwards, using the real numbers and not just percentages.
When you work it out, his pledge to reduce emissions by 28% based on the 2005 figures, it actually means that emissions must drop to a level ….. 16% lower than what they were in 1990, more draconian than Kyoto.
The pledge is based around the work done (obviously for him, and with Paris in mind) by the EPA, and they have a series of documents, amounting to more than 1,000 pages, and no, I didn’t trawl through them all, just the relevant ones I wanted for my information.
So, that one Post I planned got longer and longer, and the time till publishing stretched out as I did more and more research, and it ended up becoming not reasonable as I first thought, but actually quite horrifying. It ended up as two long Posts of quite detailed analysis, and then the task was to try and explain it in a manner which could be more easily understood.
Part One is now at my site, and Part 2 will be published on Monday at 8.31PM, (Australian Eastern Standard Time) which is Monday 6.31AM U.S. Eastern Standard Time.
I have an Intro Post with some short text and the links to each Post in that Intro.
Part of that 28% reduction has already been achieved, but there is still 22% to go, in ten years to the target, and see how reducing it to percentages like that, which is only around 2% a year makes it sound reasonable.
Well, it isn’t.
My considered guess is that it cannot be achieved, and hey shouldn’t the more important thing here be that while the U.S. plans to reduce emissions by this amount, and do it by 2025, shouldn’t there be more worry about China, which has stated that they will not achieve peak emissions until 2030, and then might consider reducing them at that time. The same might also apply for India and other Nations as well.
I know it’s a long read, and the important part doesn’t come around until Monday, but it ended up becoming a really interesting exercise.
There are quite literally thousands of wind farms plants in the U.S. but only 15 of them are of a greater Nameplate than 500MW.
With this pledge to reduce emissions, that means cutting a monumentally huge chunk of electrical power generation, and all of it from the coal fired sector, (the obvious and only target here) because they can’t replace it with CO2 emitting Natural gas fired plants.
So, that obviously means new wind plants to replace that lost coal fired generation.
To replace that lost coal fired power, the U.S. starting right now, will need to bring on line (not thought bubble, not plan, not start construction, but actually begin delivering power from the finished plants) one new wind plant of 500MW Nameplate every, wait for it ….. every twelve days between now and 2025, working seven days a week.
Funnily enough, TonyFromOz, 500 megawatts nameplate windpower per 12 days for the US’s 319 million population is pretty close to Germany’s per capita per day installation rate of .12 person watt days wind power installation rate.
So the 500 megawatts of installed capacity wind power every 12 days is achievable, because that is what Germany is doing. The US just has to want to do it to achieve their CO2 reduction targets.
So you can rest easy. This one is judged “achievable”
And then keep doing it as the things will die in about 15 years. So it becomes a merry-go-round of expense. Probably really good if you’re in the business of building them or keeping them going.
BilB, when you quote figures can you please provide a source.
Also, you need to keep in mind that no matter what the figures say, the inescapable fact is that Germany will always be attached to the nuclear and fossil-fuel umbilical – until fusion becomes viable, that is.
Also, you need to consider the social cost of your renewables fantasy – more specifically, the impact on the poor – and the fact that your Utopian ideal simply results in German manufacturing and jobs being outsourced to other countries.
But most of all, BilB, you need to admit to yourself that you cannot create an alternative reality simply by wishing it were true. Good intentions are fine, but reality cannot be ignored.
The source, Barry,is Wikipaedia which shows that Germany has been averaging 3.5gig of new capacity per year in recent years.
But the other ittle eyeopener for ou is that (eia.gov source) hd levelised cost of energy per megawatt in the US at present is
Advanced NG combined cycle ……66
Coal advanced……………….123
Nuclear…………………….108
Wind Turbine a .35 cf.30yr.sl….87
That covers every aspect of the operation. Now you can toss the figures around and argue different aspects but at the end of the day wind power is deliverable, affordable and a vital part of the renewable US energy future.
Spitzer86, modern wind turbines have a 20 year searvice life and another 20 years after a refit at a 20% of original cost. That is taken into account in the eia.gov figures.
for the life of me, I just cannot figure you people out.
You’re all actually proud of the fact that wind power can only deliver its power at a 30% (at best) Capacity Factor, Solar PV can only manage 13% Capacity Factor, and Concentrating Solar can only manage a 28% Capacity Factor. You’re all actually proud of these forms of power having such a short lifespan. You’re all actually so proud of their horrendously high cost that you make up bogus figures to attempt to make them look cheaper.
All this when 60% of every watt of power being generated is required ABSOLUTELY on a 24/7/365 basis, which is a 100% Capacity Factor.
Take away that method of power which actually can deliver that requirement and you have nothing. The Country just grinds to a halt.
Without that 100% requirement being covered, you even have no rooftop solar power as that also requires that 100% absolute power coverage to work, just to supply the homes which have panels.
Just where do you hope to get this 100% power from?
Surely you must be researching something like that.
Ignorance will be no excuse when the power goes off.
Please go and actually do some research. Please.
Don’t just mindlessly believe your agenda driven string pulling masters on this. Go and look for yourself.
And don’t ask us for links. Go and look for yourself. Persevere with it.
ALL of Germany’s wind power is currently delivering its power at a 14.5% Capacity Factor, so please, if you are going to quote wind power as your viable alternative, please don’t refer us to Germany.
Hmm, If you are keen on wind and solar power, and if you think that they can replace every other form of generation, then I suggest you avoid needing a dialysis machine.
Just got home and I see others have already responded to BilB.
BilB, when you quote costs for generating electricity from solar and wind, you cannot quote the figure they are capable of producing power at, because they produce power for only a percentage of any given day and they produce maximum power for a much smaller percentage of the day. You have to quote the cost for the megawatts they actually deliver.
But there is also another cost to add in. Solar and wind cannot reliably provide power all of the time, so they have to be used in parallel with fossil fuels or nuclear. So, if you are costing a wind power installation, for example, you have to add in the cost of building a complete parallel system running on nuclear energy or fossil fuels.
BilB, I imagine you desperately want it to be otherwise, but these are realities you have to accept. Your wishes will not come true just by creating a fantasy in your own mind that they are true. Children do this, not adults.
Also, BilB, you need to be a little bit skeptical about the figures people are quoting for renewables. This may surprise you, but most leftists lack principles and will therefore lie and exaggerate in order to advance their ideological agenda. So, BilB, don’t believe everything they tell you.
True, the sun does not shine all of the time and the wind does not blow all of the tme. No points for stating the blatantly obvious.
I’m a pragmatist, Barry, not a purist. I have no problem with using gas for cooking and backup power generation. Aha,….using fossil fuels…someone jibed. Not necessarily I replied and then demonstrate that the average Australian individual throws out 1 tonne of waste renewable material each year (packaging etc). So for a family of 4 that material gasified equates to 6,000 kwhrs electricity, or 50% of the average household electricity consumption of 12,000 kwhrs. In my example, spelt out meticulously in discussions with BON, the parallel system is the gas line which goes past my house, or the gas bottle on the outside wall.
You might also want to keep informed on the Aluminium-ion battery. One kilowatt hour capacity per kilogram and a 7500 charge cycle life. Renewables technologies just keep getting better.
The figures I quoted in my earlier comment came from a study that was attempting to crucify wind energy, not a leftist exageration at all.
That covers every aspect of the operation. Now you can toss the figures around and argue different aspects but at the end of the day wind power is deliverable, affordable and a vital part of the renewable US energy future.
That being the case, BilB, how do you explain it that two of the biggest wind farms in southern California are sitting there with many turbans idle and much of the infrastructure rusting away? Is it perhaps a combination of unreliability of the machinery itself and the fact that it’s not as profitable to the operators as they thought?
To be bluntly honest, I would put my money in solar before I would have anything to do with wind. And just as bluntly honest, I wouldn’t have anything to do with solar either. When the subsidies for solar disappear, so will the suppliers and maintainers. And the subsidies will disappear. The subsidies for wind will go the the same way.
Bottom line — never hitch your wagon to a fad. Never!
Solar is proving to be worthwhile for some applications. But these are able to justify themselves economically so they will probably succeed. They need no government incentive.
I know of no application for wind power that can say the same. It’s a vital part of only one thing — future trouble when it can’t handle the load tall story that was sold to the public.
You could however barely do it with Nukes. If you started today and worked double time – given how long Keystone has been in approval though one would have to guess that you are right – won’t happen in my lifetime.
Thankyou Tony. I remember seeing you toying with the 28.5% and determinedly trying to avoid getting sucked in. Well I guess it just kept gnawing at you and there are a few folk who just won’t let themselves give up when they know there is something there. It seems to have indeed turned into the marathon you’d feared and all to tell whether it’s doable or just Barry on some bender.
It’s as well other world leaders should know what’s behind it so they dong just get swept up in the euphoria of Paris. Some briefing paper for Tony’s Paris team shouldn’t go amiss.
Oh for another President like the youngest U.S. President ever.
Such a pity that he never sought the nomination for a second term, which he was fully entitled to do.
Even when he ran as an (semi) Independent candidate one term later, he still polled just under 28%, finishing second, carrying six States, and 88 EC votes, and relegating the incumbent President to third place. This was the most successful third party or independent result in U.S. Presidential history, and the highest placed non major party candidate in U.S. history.
Tony.
Post Script – I’ll bet some of you are scratching your heads.
It would certainly be interesting if the lot collapses. But I fail to see how any of it can be attributed to CO2 rise. If the industial revolution didn’t happen these ice sheets would still be on the verge. Only thing is, we wouldn’t know about it!
I always have a good chuckle when I see these things.
The basic message here is:
1. We weren’t sure of a lot of the physical mechanisms in play on the Antartic mainland.
2. So we flew over the ice, taking ultrasound readings, and mapping the change of depth in the ice cover.
3. And we found that the glaciers were moving.
4. And other areas of ice were melting, especially in those areas where there is some volcanic activity.
Now, of course they jump directly to climate change as being the culprit, because that is a condition of their employment, but they really should try to demonstrate in what way, what they have just observed, is significantly different to the state of Antarctica, a couple of hundred years ago.
For heaven’s sake – IPCC says the ice sheet will increase then it says the ice sheet will decrease, then, shock horror, the western ice sheet will decrease (undersea volcanos will do that). I didn’t watch far enough but I’m willing to bet there were tears.
With due consideration for the new Union Labor Government in Victoria refusing to honour a binding contract for needed new roadworks infrastructure, and complaining that the previous Coalition Government should not have signed the contract in an election year (ignoring that there is a caretaker period before elections and the contract was signed well before that period), ignoring that major project contracts have many stages including design, environmental impact, documentation, calling for expressions of interest, calling tenders, assessing tenders, arranging Commonwealth and State financing and then signing a contract with the successful tenderer, it angers me that our governments, notably the socialist left, squander so much of our money, play politics with no consideration for financial consequences. The Premier claims that the state election was a referendum on the project. What nonsense, the contract had been signed and now penalties apply that will be around one billion dollars, ignoring Labor creative accounting distraction tactics.
There are many examples of squandering by governments with members who have obviously had no business experience, most if not all could not tell us the difference between revenue and profit. Who are not interested in cost-benefit analysis of their projects and grants.
Consider the financial impact of climate change spending on government budgets and tax revenues and/or borrowing to spend.
Tony says that the Victorian election was a referendum on the EW link. Pro EW link lost, Govt’s must of course keep their promises so EW link canceled. simple.
Stop trying to undermine the PM and make him look a fool [snip]! 🙁
[While what you wrote may have been tongue in cheek, it breaches this blog’s standards. – Mod]
Hi Jo. Perhaps you could encourage your readers to join this course in practical comedy at UQ. So far the method of engaging with ‘deniers’ seems to be to call us names, set up straw man arguments, and delete comments and questions which undermine warmist arguments. Let’s not make it too easy for them!
You can bet your breaches those two will be up to something. Classifying the participants, inferring all sorts of stuff about them, treating them accordingly and writing up some pseudo-scientific psycho paper at the end of it I shouldn’t wonder.
Just remember if you participate, be prepared to be treated as a specimen.
MSM is making much ado about nothing re the following:
BP promises more transparency on climate change issues
The Guardian-16 Apr 2015
Activist investors score victory at BP annual meeting
Financial Times – Apr 17, 2015
Church of England celebrates progress in BP climate change policy
ChristianToday-17 Apr 2015
Pension funds score victory with BP climate change resolution
IPE.com-17 Apr 2015
17 April: BidnessEtc: Micheal Kaufman: Key Takeaways From BP plc (ADR) Annual Shareholder Meeting
BP shareholders also voted on the issue of climate change. They pushed for the company’s management to provide more detailed information related to the risks and opportunities, that the company may face as a result of climate change. BP could become the first major oil company to regularly update investors on how the company’s operations and strategies affect climate change.
The proposed plan, put forward by large investors and NGOs, received almost unanimous acceptance as nearly 98% of the participants voted in favor. Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said:
***“This resolution is about disclosure, it’s not about setting targets.”
Ahead of the voting on climate change proposal, major investors expressed their support for the resolution. ***Norway’s sovereign oil fund, with a 2.16% stake in BP, said on Wednesday that it would support the resolution…
A similar resolution will be put to vote at rival Royal Dutch Shell plc’s (ADR) (NYSE:RDS.A) annual shareholder meeting on May 19. The two European companies could lead the charge on new climate change policies, keeping their investors informed about the company’s effects on the climate… http://www.bidnessetc.com/40142-key-takeaways-from-bp-plc-adr-annual-shareholder-meeting/
23 March: Euractiv: Could Oslo’s decision to divest from coal inspire bigger cities to do the same?
When Oslo sells the coal investments in its pension portfolio next month, it will set a historic precedent: the first capital city in the world to divest itself of that most polluting of fossil fuels…
***But does Oslo’s decision really mean much, given that Norway’s own pension fund – the gigantic Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) – continues to invest in fossil fuels?…
***Erik Lae Solberg, Oslo’s vice mayor for finance, admits his city’s decision to sell 40m krone (£3.3m) worth of coal investments in the Oslo Pension Fund isn’t much. But it sends a signal, he says, that Oslo does not want to contribute to the most climate-damaging fossil fuels, and that the city has a wider goal to be climate-friendly.
***“We’ve seen that coal is clearly the energy source that is most harmful,” Solberg said…
Still, it is a conundrum for Norway, a major producer of oil (and, to a lesser extent, coal), which channels its excess petroleum revenues into its own pension fund.
***The government has so far resisted parliamentary calls for Norway’s $860bn nest egg, GPFG – the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund – to divest from fossil fuel. A government-appointed panel recently recommended that the fund not divest from fossil fuels, but rather set up a new climate-related exclusion criterion on a case-by-case basis… http://www.euractiv.com/sections/climate-change/could-oslos-decision-divest-coal-inspire-bigger-cities-do-same-313139
12 March: Bloomberg: Matthew Carr: Norway Bets Cutting Pollution Abroad Is an Easier Battle
The nation may pay about 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) for emission cuts in European Union nations, or if that negotiation fails, buy permits elsewhere under a planned global climate deal. Norway currently expects its own greenhouse gas levels to be about the same in 15 years, so will meet its 40 percent reduction goal by paying for curbs abroad…
“Carbon trading can speed up the global transition away from a fossil economy,” said Jens Froelich Holte, a political adviser at the Norwegian ministry for climate and environment.“Trade creates benefits and this is as true for carbon as it is for other commodities,” he wrote in an e-mail Feb. 16…
Norway’s plan may boost EU carbon prices, which fell 81 percent since 2008, said Tim Yeo, chairman of the U.K. parliament’s energy and climate change committee. Higher prices will in turn influence investment decisions, he said by phone Feb. 25…
***Norway, which is not an EU member, is the bloc’s second-biggest oil and gas supplier, and participates in Europe’s carbon market for certain industries including oil and natural gas production. Norway’s emissions from those industries rose 80 percent since 1990, with the total from all uses up 4.6 percent.
By buying from Europe, Norway leaves less space for others in the bloc to emit, Yeo said…
Trading alone won’t save the climate, according to environment groups. Over-reliance on carbon markets “is more than lazy, it’s counterproductive to the basic task of cutting emissions,” said Rasmus Hansson, the only Green Party member of parliament in Norway…
The global climate agreement should allow cuts under a commitment by one country or group of countries “to be claimed towards the commitment of another,” the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Feb. 25 in a statement outlining its preferences…
New environmental rules may spur U.S. states to introduce cap-and-trade policies to protect the market share of their power industries from incursions by neighbors, according to a report published last week by Resources for the Future, an environment policy think tank in Washington…
If other countries choose not to trade, they will either adopt weaker climate targets or pay more to meet their goals, Daniel Rossetto, director of Climate Mundial, which advises on carbon trading, said Feb. 20 by phone from Maputo, Mozambique.
Norway’s plan “throws down the gauntlet to every other nation,” he said. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-12/norway-bets-pollution-abroad-an-easier-battle-carbon-climate
14 April: Redd-Monitor: Chris Lang: Norway hands over US$80 million to increase deforestation in Guyana
Norway has transferred US$80 million to the Inter-American Development Bank as part of the Norway-Guyana US$250 million REDD deal. Perhaps surprisingly, if Guyana spends the money it will involve the destruction of a large area of rainforest.
The money is part-funding for the 165 MW Amaila Falls hydropower dam, deep in Guyana’s forest…
Norad clearly needs to take a closer look at the Amaila Falls project. The reservoir will flood an area of more than 2,000 hectares of forest. But more serious in terms of the impact on people and forests is the construction of a new access road that will open up previously remote forest…
The access road will lead to increased logging and mining with serious impacts for the indigenous Patamona people who live in the area. In June 2014, the Amerindian Peoples’ Association and the Forest Peoples Programme produced a report looking at the treatment of indigenous peoples’ rights under Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy…
Allegations of corruption surround the project. The price tag of the dam has rocketed from US$325 million in its early stages to US$915 million. It would be Guyana’s most expensive project ever.
The company with the contract to build the hydropower plant, the access road and transmission lines is China Railway First Group. In October 2014, Norway’s Council on Ethics recommended the exclusion of China Railway Group from investments by Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global “due to an unacceptable risk that the company is involved in gross corruption”. China Railway First Group is a subsidiary of China Railway Group. http://www.redd-monitor.org/2015/04/14/norway-hands-over-us80-million-to-increase-deforestation-in-guyana/
link to the following from Redd-Monitor homepage:
16 April: Redd-Monitor: Chris Lang: Everybody knows how not to cut down trees, so why is REDD so difficult to implement?
Since 2009, CIFOR has been carrying out research into 23 REDD projects around the world, as part of its Global Comparative Study on REDD+. Three years into the research, CIFOR realised that REDD was “barely moving ahead”, as William Sunderlin, principal scientist at CIFOR, puts it…
VIDEO: In his presentation, Sunderlin summarises the results of the survey as follows:
“There is serious ground for concern about how and whether the REDD concept can persist and evolve.”…
“REDD is simply unable in most cases to pay the opportunity costs of forest land conversion.”…
TRANSCRIPT: William Sunderlin on the challenge of establishing REDD+ on the ground
CIFOR, 15 April 2015
In 2007, after decades of failure in various approaches to stopping deforestation and forest degradation, there was much excitement about REDD. Implicitly it held a lot of promise.
***As the Norwegian prime minister at the time said, “Everybody knows how not to cut down trees.”…
Any mention of the $100 million former PM Gillard granted to the University of South Australia in Adelaide in return for an honorary doctorate? Or the $300 million she granted to a UN education fund where she is now a board member?
Unfortunately, any word against Gillard makes you a misogynist, and that’s the end of the argument.
No one can say that Gillard and her Labor minions were stupid, they certainly knew exactly how to manipulate the media, and their supporters to effectively silence drown out any opposition. A lot of fanatical Labor drones go on about Tony Abbott and his religious beliefs, and how they will destroy Australia, yet Kevin Rudd was (is) equally devout – apparently Labor supporters have no problems with that…
In 2006 KRudd was interviewed on ABC Compass, as was PM Howard and other political party leaders. KRudd said that he was a “Christian Socialist” and his hero was a German (deceased) Catholic Priest Socialist. PM Blair of the UK is also a Christian Socialist.
In classic Union Labor denial and deceit KRudd later called himself a Fiscal Conservative.
Gillard also denied her past, founder of the Australian Socialist Forum. Later merged with The Fabian Society when she had her sight on deputy leadership of Union Labor.
Her ridiculous speech was written by imported spin doctor John McT who rehearsed it with JEG before she delivered it in Parliament at the wrong time, when she was defending Peter Slipper who was accused of badly treating a male employee from his office staff. McT was the spin doctor for UK Labour who used the same tactic against the opposition leader there. He also branded PM Tony Blair an education PM while the standards of UK education crashed. Gillard was given the same brand.
The feminists applauded JEG for speaking out, but I doubt that they were aware that her political theatre spin was man created.
While the leftists rage about the $4 million granted to the University of Western Australia, ask them about the hundreds of millions of dollars, probably close to one billion dollars or more since Federation, that the Australian Labor Party has granted to their union movement comrades every time Labor is in government, federal and state.
In a book written in the 1990s, I cannot remember the title, author and former senior Commonwealth Government of Australia finance department executive during the Labor years 1983-1996, Dr.Des Moore wrote that Labor had “laundered” close to one hundred million dollars of taxpayer’s monies via grants to unions that were mostly returned to the ALP as direct donations or election campaign funding/advertising.
Apparently a dodgy but legal method of transferring our money to unions. The unions apply for the grants and the infamous rubber stamp approves them.
During the Keating Labor years there was a union picket line blocking entry to a pulp mill in Burnie, Tasmania. On talk back radio I listened to a man who was preparing an entertainment street theatre for the workers on picket duty, he referred to having received a “quick response arts grant” from the minister responsible. To add to the incredible story he also admitted that his theatre group was formed at the New South Wales Government Chullora Railway Workshops, but when the Coalition closed it down in favour of putting the railway work out to tender to private enterprise the group moved to South Australia to another government location.
By the way, during the 1980s executives from the Chullora Workshops told a gathering of manufacturing business managers from the Bankstown District that the absenteeism at their union dominated workplace was sixty percent per day.
In the early ’80’s I had a chap working for me who had come out from Poland and was immediately employed at NSW Railways. He didn’t speak english, and the only duties he was assigned was taking the numbered disc off the nail on one board and putting it on another (to indicte he was on duty). Reverse procedure at knock-off. He got so bored that after 3 weeks he used to go back to the boarding house and watch daytime TV to improve his english.
Come Xmas Eve everyone seemed to be on duty, but they disappeared to the pub, leaving him alone. An Inspector arrived and asked “where are the boys?’ Ted started to say they were around somewhere when the Inspector said ” I know they’re at the pub, but which one”. When told off he went to join them.
There was a furniture business run out of the Railway’s Carpentry shop. Guess who supplied the delivery trucks? Hint: they were the same ones that delivered the old(?) sleepers for landscaping. (The main operator was annoyed when the NSWR set a limit of 800 sleepers per employee per year; he had to buy their quota from hundreds of “workers”).
I knew a chap working for the NSWR who changed position to Campbelltown, mainly because of a rather complicated private life*. He reasoned that Campbelltown was Country but their Inspectors never came there, and obviously neither did the City ones. He claimed to work as hard as anyone there – about half an hour a day. He made a lot of phone calls via the railway phones.
* not certain of details but his ex-wife was shacked up with some thug who was waiting for his brother to finish his prison term, so they could ‘deal with him’ for living with the brother’s ex-girlfriend.
A farmer and member of the Country Party (now Nationals) and local mates in Cootamundra, New South Wales (farms in that area) placed the railway depot under surveillance in the 1970s. They discovered that employees used government diesel fuel, had private vehicles serviced at government expense and generally treated the depot as their supplier of goods and services. The accounting estimate was $2 million a year of corruption, stealing of taxpayer monies. All railway employees had to be members of the union.
Having observed the corruption over 40 plus years of working, not a union member, 25 years of senior management reporting to a public company board and shareholders, I find it hard to accept that our nation has been raided by corrupt leftists. And that now the ABC/SBS/MSM all but ignore the Royal Commission into trade union governance and corruption. And that Union Labor Greens & Other Senators voted against government legislation to make trade unions accountable in line with public companies.
And that the Senate of many members who are there because of preference deals, primary votes less than 10 per cent, equal number of Senate seats regardless of population of states, are able to block government legislation.
A mate, who worked there as a fitter & turner, in the steam workshop, some years after steam was eliminated, told me of another trick. So many were getting injured, clocking on for the day at the workshop, then climbing the high fence into a certain cement pipe factory for the day on piece work, they built a gate into the fence. Can’t have the “workers” getting hurt now can we.
He thought that was wrong, so he built a complete racing motorbike in the workshop. Everything, including all engine gearbox parts & housings were cast, machined, & even forged at our expense.
The only things he had to buy were the tyres. The purchasing officer involved reckoned that even railway auditors might baulk a motorcycle racing tyres ordered by the steam workshop.
Sounds like the Australian Submarine Corporation, where a former chief had various pieces of equipment manufactured by the employees, using materials paid for by taxpayers. Feeding troughs (ironically?), and an exhaust system for a motor boat, at the very least – not to mention a room adjoining his office which was refurbished to store and display maps…
The production of batteries for the submarines is a micro story, expanded copper mesh, alternative suppliers not welcome, BHP Group controlled supplies of metals. Union approved, of course.
Tony Abbott gets a bagging for knockin back a beer.I’ll be blowed! Was he singing “onward Christian soldiers” at the time? He’ll need some drug and alcohol counselling for sure!
How is this significant for Nyngan? Did it provide income for locals? Will it provide ongoing work…? No mention of that either…
On another matter, France is having problems with its EPR at Flamanville in Normandy. The French nuclear power sector was arguably the world-leader in tis area at one time, but now, it claims that it is slipping badly, from a technological standpoint, as well as an economic one, although I don’t think anyone ever claimed nuclear power is dirt cheap…
Transport of the solar panels and other materials was awarded to a local (Narromine) transport business however the Sun does not shine at night in the Nyngan district and there are many cloudy days every year. The question is: would shareholders have invested if electricity prices were equal to coal fired power station pricing, in other word with no taxpayer subsidies, so called renewable energy surcharge tax.
Can anyone of the electrical engineers who visit this site answer a few simple questions?
What happens if the grid supplying our power goes out of balance?
If more power goes into the grid than is taken out without remedial action, do the transformers and other equipment fry due to a high voltage surge?
On the other hand if power in drops without appropriate load shedding does the system collapse or do we just experience brownouts or blackouts?
It seems to me that with increasing unreliable wind and solar power being added and with the shut down on reliable conventional power (coal, gas, hydro if the green had their way), and the best available long term power source (nuclear, which is not likely to be around in Australia for decades while the Helen Caldicotts and greens of this world have so much influence) the probability of the above scenarios will become increasingly likely in the not too distant future.
Do we really have to go down that road before the man in the street recognises that they have been let down badly by the politicians, the media and unethical “scientists” with their noses deeply into the taxpayer funded trough?
The supply frequency drops as load rises and rises as load falls. That frequency is related to speed of rotation of the generators. Someone described it very well recently as like trying to keep your car going at exactly the same speed as you drive along going up & down hills. You need to keep adjusting your foot on the gas.
It’s actually very unlikely that the grid will collapse. There are trips that will operate automatically to disconnect generators when the supply rises above about 52 Hz.
Dropping below about 48.8 Hz. you’ll start getting to get towns blacking out, from being disconnected to protect the generators.
There are however generators kept spinning ready & contracted to connect automatically when the frequency drops below certain levels. Nice explanation here:-
A grid failure is more likely to result from failure of some of the many automatic protection mechanisms to operate or bad planning or unforeseen equipment failure scenarios .
18 April: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Will Welsh eels scupper the craziest ‘green’ project ever?
The absurd Swansea tidal lagoon would cost a fortune to build and would produce the most expensive electricity in the world
If you wanted a single example of how far all those who aspire to govern us after this election can lose any touch with reality, a good place to begin might be page 56 of the Conservative manifesto. Here, in a section on “Energy”, we are told how the Coalition Government has “unlocked £59 billion of investment” to produce “low carbon” electricity to meet our commitments under Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act. All the projects listed are, of course, hugely subsidised, to produce power costing us all twice or three times as much as that from conventional power stations. But there at the end is a mention of “the Swansea tidal lagoon”.
I admit that, until recently, I had no more idea what this was about than 99 per cent of the population. But I was struck by the remarkable array of backers this scheme has attracted, from the Prudential insurance company and Ed Davey, our Lib Dem Energy and Climate Change Secretary, to George Osborne in his recent Budget speech, and the BBC, which has been giving it excitable puffs…
TLP insists that its £1 billion scheme will only work if it is allowed to charge for its electricity at 330 per cent of the normal wholesale price of £50 per megawatt hour (MWh). This would give it a subsidy of £118 per MWh, even more than that for offshore wind, making it easily the most expensive electricity in the world.
But even more interesting is how much electricity we would be getting for our money..READ ON http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11547082/Will-Welsh-eels-scupper-the-craziest-green-project-ever.html
We Aussies are catching up in the race to The Kingdom of Stupidity.
We are transplanting kelp to near Tasmania to see how it will cope with climate change (ABC News web site tonight).
Stay tuned to the ABC for the next super, duper Doozy.
I understand TCR is Transient Climate Response, and ECS is Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity. The former is, supposedly, how CO2 affects temperature in the short term, and the latter is, supposedly “what happens after all processes in the system have stabilized” (quote from Gavin Schmidt on Twitter, March 23rd).
AFAIK, there is no transient climate response: that is, CO2 is not the control knob, as Tom Nelson likes to say.
Moreover, how do we know if “all processes” stabilize, let alone whether “all processes in the system have stabilized”? How do we know that we even know most, let alone all, of the processes, let alone what they do and how they interact, let alone when they’ve stabilized? Might it not be a fundamental misunderstanding, perhaps underlying the problems with GCMs, that “all processes in the system” ever actually stabilize? How do we know that what is happening with climate right now is not the lack of stabilization of all processes that started 1,500 years ago? Or, if ECS is a reference merely to theoretical chemical processes and physical reactions, among gases and radiation, how do we know that’s what matters most?
I’d appreciate any thoughts or references. Thanks.
@ELC: Timothy Casey’s “Shattered Greenhouse” doesn’t cover weasel-word terminology such as TCR & ECS specifically, but it is a good explanation of how all this mess occurred in the first place. http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/
I have been watching to see if any reporting on Judith Curry’s testimony would be done by the main stream media. Nope. Nothing. Not a peep. Not on cable, air, or in the Sunday papers. Not even in criticism. They don’t want people to hear the truth. It is clearly willful dereliction on the part of journalism.
Let me add: There are several opinion articles on climate change in the Sunday papers, even one that claimed skeptical views were modern day Lysenkoism. But nothing about Dr Curry’s listing of the scientific facts before the Congress of the United States.
8 April: National Center for Science Education: Climate Bumper Sticker Contest!
The goal: to spread the word about climate change, climate change denial, and/or the need for climate science education.
(“Climate change is real,” “Teach climate change,” “My other car is a hockey stick” … yeah, we’ve already thought of those. Keep thinking!)
Send your entries to [email protected]…
Rules & regulations:
Be original. Run a Google search and make sure your slogan hasn’t been used or overused…
Winners will receive one of these prizes: 1) a signed copy of Michael Mann’s The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars…etc
•Submissions will be accepted between April 8, 2015, and May 31, 2015. http://ncse.com/climate/climate-bumper-sticker-contest
NCSE Advisory Council
includes:
Bill McKibben, 350.org
James Hansen
Bill Nye
Michael E. Mann – Penn State Uni http://ncse.com/about/supporters
from ABOUT NCSE: What does NCSE do?
The National Center for Science Education, founded in 1981, engages in a number of activities advancing two primary goals: improving and supporting education in evolution, climate change, and the nature of science, and increasing public understanding of these subjects. This work is supported primarily by membership contributions, with some additional assistance from private foundation grants. NCSE is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
19 April: Guardian: Damian Carrington: Carbon reserves held by top fossil fuel companies soar
Top 200 firms including Gazprom, ExxonMobil, BP and Anglo American hold four to five times more fossil fuels in existing reserves than can be safely burned
The carbon locked up in coal, oil and gas reserves owned by the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies has swollen by 10% in the last five years, despite warnings from the World Bank and others that most existing reserves cannot safely be burned.
The top 200 publicly traded coal, oil and gas companies now hold 555 gigatonnes of CO2 in their fuel reserves, boosted by their continuing efforts to find and develop new reserves. That figure alone is close to the total amount the world could ever emit while keeping global warming below the danger limit of 2C.
Far more fossil fuels – about 2650GT – are held by state-owned companies, meaning that in total there are four to five times more fossil fuels in existing reserves than can be safely burned…
The 200 companies, which still spend billions a year searching for new reserves, are the focus of a fast-growing divestment campaign, backed by the UN, which is persuading investors to sell off their fossil fuel shares…
The FFI data shows that the top 10 coal companies alone own over half the carbon in the list, while the top 10 oil and gas companies own two-thirds of the carbon in those fuels… http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/19/carbon-reserves-held-by-top-fossil-fuel-companies-soar
COMMENT by konnel: There’s an error in the sub-heading, mixes up the total reserves with the reserves of the top 200.
The table listing the companies by reserves really does show the futility of the Guardian’s campaign. The six super-majors – Exxon, BP, Shell, Conoco, Total & Chevron – which are the headline target for the divestment campaign hold a paltry 30Gt of the 2,650Gt total, or 1.13%.
It is at least acknowledged that the vast majority of reserves are held by state actors and not public companies but even still the article over-estimates the role of publicly listed companies as it includes mostly state owned companies like Rosneft, Gazprom and Petrobras. These three state controlled companies hold more than twice the reserves of all the super-majors.
The only possible way of keeping a significant proportion of the 2,650Gts of reserves in the ground is to make nuclear energy so cheap that it’s not worthwhile exploiting fossil fuels. Notions that countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela can be convinced to not exploit their natural resources are simply fanciful.
COMMENT by jonbryce: Rosneft and Gazprom are listed on the London Stock Exchange. Petrobras is listed on the Berlin Stock Exchange. They may be majority government owned, but you can still invest in them.
check the photo illustration, while having a laugh at this Fairfax EXCLUSIVE:
20 April: SMH: China and other big emitters challenge Australia over its climate change policies
by Adam Morton and Tom Arup
EXCLUSIVE
The world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, including China and the US, have questioned the credibility of Australia’s climate change targets and “direct action” policy in a list of queries to the Abbott government…
The questions have been lodged with the United Nations for Australia to answer in the lead-up to the December climate summit in Paris, where the world is supposed to sign a global deal to combat climate change.
It comes as Australia is facing questions in diplomatic circles for not sending a minister or its chief climate change negotiator to a meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in Washington DC, starting on Sunday.
To be opened by US Secretary of State John Kerry, the forum is meant to bring together ministerial representatives from 17 major countries in a bid to accelerate work on a climate deal. Australia is being represented by environment department head Gordon de Brouwer…
The international scrutiny comes as the government is increasingly facing claims at home that it is not serious about climate change…
***Mr Jackson (Erwin Jackson, deputy chief executive of the Climate Institute and a long-time observer of climate negotiations) said analysts have found that China’s actions to date were likely to deliver the biggest policy-driven cut in emissions ever seen…
“China can do more, but is doing far more than Australia by a country mile at the moment,” he said.
“China is introducing carbon pricing while the Australian government tearing up legislation. China is increasing renewable energy targets while the Australian government is reducing it.” http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/china-and-other-big-emitters-challenge-australia-over-its-climate-change-policies-20150419-1mnqt3.html
“Governments in China and India want to shift away from coal”????
simply repeating this meme won’t make it so, WSJ:
19 April: WSJ: Helen Thomas: European Utilities Can’t Rely on Hot Air
Efforts to overhaul Europe’s carbon market are glimmer of hope
Governments in China and India want to shift away from coal to less-polluting energy sources…
Meanwhile, electricity demand looks moribund. Europe’s focus on efficiency is undimmed. Combined with rising renewables capacity, that means economic growth may not translate into greater power consumption. In the past few years, notes SocGen, rising economic output per capita hasn’t resulted in higher energy demand per capita.
One faint hope surrounds Europe’s carbon market. Oversupply of carbon allowances means prices in the continent’s cap-and-trade system are below €7 a metric ton, far too low to induce switching to cleaner energy sources. Hence the current debate over a stabilization plan to remove excess allowances.
That could boost carbon prices, another component of power prices. But the politics in Brussels looks fraught, balancing environmental concerns with higher energy prices while reconciling the desire of countries like Germany to act quickly with concerns of coal-dependent nations like Poland. Already, early implementation looks unlikely, with any plan slated for 2021.
Only a big move in carbon prices would help utilities anyway. The rule of thumb is that a €1 move in carbon prices adds €0.6 to €0.8 to power prices, according to Roland Vetter at CF Energy Partners. To make a meaningful earnings contribution, carbon prices would have to double, he argues… http://www.wsj.com/articles/european-utilities-cant-rely-on-hot-air-1429468546
all that hydro, & NZ still can’t meet its target??? solution, buy some carbon offsets!
Fairfax needs to get onto this story fast and advise China & the US to complain to the UN so they can write another EXCLUSIVE, attacking the NZ Govt!
20 April: IBTimes: Reissa Su: New Zealand Greenhouse Gas Emissions Still Above 2020 Levels Ahead Of Paris Talks
The net greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand have soared 42 percent with gross emissions, making the country the fifth highest per capita among 40 developed nations. The figures were recently released based on the new greenhouse gas inventory of the Ministry for the Environment.
The data has raised doubts about the government’s ability to reach its emissions reduction target of five percent from 1990 levels by 2020…
***To further help it reach its goal, New Zealand will need to delve into international markets for carbon offsets, reports Stuff…
(New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister Tim) Groser, who left for Washington last April 15 for a meeting on climate change, will be an observer at a meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate Change… http://au.ibtimes.com/new-zealand-greenhouse-gas-emissions-still-above-2020-levels-ahead-paris-talks-1440749
16 April: Stuff NZ: Michael Daly: NZ greenhouse gas levels ease but remain well above 2020 target levels
To get there though, it is expected to have to delve into international markets for carbon offsets…
While participation in international carbon markets and the planting of forests to remove carbon dioxide would help New Zealand reach its 2020 target, measures would also include domestic emissions reductions, MfE said. A fourth contributor to the target would be surplus units from the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period from 2008 to 2012. http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/67812544/nz-greenhouse-gas-levels-ease-but-remain-well-above-2020-target-levels
let’s just call the whole CAGW thing off and get Govts to move on to the more important things in life
LAW OF EXPERIMENT
First law—if anything can go wrong with an experiment or test, it will.
Second law–everything goes wrong at once.
Third law—experiments must be reproducible. They should all fail in the same way.
Fourth law–build no mechanism simply if a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful.
Fifth law—no matter how an experiment or test proceeds, someone will believe it happened according to his pet theory.
Corollary one–no matter what the result is, someone will misinterpret it.
Corollary two–no matter what results are anticipated, someone will be willing to fake them.
LAW OF MATHEMATICS
First law—in any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct beyond all need of checking contain the errors.
Corollary one–no one whom you ask for help will see the errors.
Corollary two–everyone who stops by with unsought advice will see it immediately.
Second law–if, in any problem, you find yourself doing a transfinite amount of work, the answer can be obtained by inspection.
Corollary one–if inspection fails to yield results, judicious application of one of the methods outlined in the text following may be in order.
1. Finagle’s constant is used as a multiplier of the zero order term.
2. The main body of these laws was formulated during the time finagle was trying to prove his fundamental discovery that if a string has one end, it has another.
3. Finagle’s constant may be characterized as changing the universe to fit the equation.
4. The bougerre factor is characterized as changing the equation to fit the universe. Named after bougerre, a French professor of mathematics, the more common designation, due to language difficulty, is “buggers”.
5. The diddle coefficient is characterized as changing things so that the equation and the universe appear to fit without requiring any change in either.
6. Dr. Finagle was, actually, a German by the name of von nagle who moved to Ireland where his associates misunderstood the pronoun ciation of his name.
Four Corners investigation into Academic Deception. Are academics being coerced into giving passes to overseas students for the “money”. Pity they didn’t do the same investigation into “CAGW” research!,
I see strange Parallels, or is it just me?
I hear negotiations are progressing for Owen Wilson to play Bjorn Lomborg in ‘Behind Enemy Lines V: Down on Green’… Perhaps they could entice Kevin ‘Bloody’ Wilson to play Tim Flannery….?
Hi Jo,
Hope you keep an eye on Notrickszone over the weekend
Pierre posted a warning the other day with advance notice of a union demonstration against Renewable Energy Targets in Germany scheduled for Saturday 25th? Given submissions due on ours soon, might focus some attention.
Andrew Neil and the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin were joined by leading politicians to debate climate change, energy prices and the countryside, in the first of a series of Daily Politics election debates.
The panel consisted of Labour’s Caroline Flint, Green Andrew Cooper, UKIP’s Roger Helmer. Lib Dem Ed Davey and Conservative Matt Hancock.
The five-strong panel began by each making a statement setting out their party’s energy and climate change policies.
Watch how it descended into a bit of an ideological shouting match but nonetheless UKIP Roger Helmer stood firm by his convictions and won through. A true fighter I believe for cheap, reliable and plentiful fossil fuel energy.
Can anyone explain why alarmists believe ‘feedbacks’ after a period of temperature rise (for whatever reason) have to be so hugely positive, when it is self-evident that if this was true then life as we know it could not exist today?
Feedbacks have to be neutral or negative or we would, at best, all now be one celled organisms.
200
“Because CO2”.
160
By definition ‘alarmists’ appear compelled to create a self-fulfilling paradigm, imaginary or otherwise. Climate alarmism is clearly irrational and bereft of science (IPCC climate models are not representative of sound ‘science’). The UN predefined the cause and infused the eco-marxist politics toward the fulfillment of various financial and political agendas. The interchangeability of terms ‘global warming’ to ‘klimate khange’ without a pause in political step reveals a eco-political irrationality.
Pascal Bruckner makes a case for the ‘why’ in his book, ‘The Fanatacism of the Apocalypse‘ Then perhaps take a range of human behaviours bordering at times on co-morbidity for example, the dysfunctional media feasting on threat as they peddle climageddon for all the $’s its worth with the backdrop, a audience of limbic biology hard-wired to register threat. Simultaneously, they are told they can save the World.
The rest as they say, is history. Fearmongering has after all been with us since the dawn of time.
231
Thanks for the link on Bruckner’s book Manfred.
Great summary – it’s a book I’ve had on my list to read.
30
They are not even representative of sound computer models.
Memo to the Klimate Muddlers: You should not start with the expected result, and then fiddle around with the algorithms and parameters to learn what may have caused that expected result.
Fiddling like that, can make you go blind!
140
So that’s why they are blind? I thought they were blind before they fiddled!
20
Their mothers should have warned them of that danger — fiddle not lest you go blind. 😉
10
The mechanism the Left uses to make anything flaky ( scientifically speaking ) become “truth” is to saturate the “thought market” so that nothing else gets a look in.
Whether they pay people to push the lie, or make it so that no one else gets a look-in, means that the sheep only get one point of view. Now add in the fact that according such appalling thinsg like “Common Core” In the USA whereby literally “5+4 = about 10” means you have a generation thats schooled in dim thinking.
Then add in the fact that school kids are taught by Common Core to value the group more than the individual, and you have Collectivism ( effectively Communism, if you will ).
I find it instructive that science seems to flourish in periods where the individual is encouraged to be an individual, not a collective. I believe the Renassance was one such a period of time, whereas now we are heading into a new Dark Ages.
30
This tells me why the big push by the “Looney Lefties”to get rid of Tony Abbott.
David Archibald, a visiting fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014)
A draft document out of Geneva gives details of the UN plan to rule the world.
But the Lima conference has been quickly followed by another in Geneva. The purpose of the latter conference was to produce the negotiating text for the climate conference to be held in Paris in December. The Geneva meeting was conducted in a rush with no opening statements, even by the head of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres. Ms. Figueres expectation of the climate treaty coming is that it will be “a centralised transformation” that “is going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different”.
Just how different is shown by snippets of the Paris negotiating text. Let’s start with this one from page 5:
“All Parties to strive to achieve low greenhouse gas climate-resilient economies and societies, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their historical responsibilities, common but differentiated responsibilities / evolving common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in order to achieve sustainable development, poverty eradication and prosperity for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, taking fully into account the historical responsibility of developed country Parties.”
Animal Farm was supposed to be a cautionary tale about communism. The UN has taken “All animals are created equal but some are more equal than others.” and turned into “All countries are common but some are more differentiated than others.”
How will the UN determine how much one country might be differentiated from another? That is explained on page 85:
“In reviewing and revising Annex I to the Convention, the total amount of greenhouse gases, expressed in carbon dioxide equivalent, emitted by a Party to the Convention since 1750 A.D. shall be added and divided by the current population of that Party. Based on the thus obtained per capita greenhouse gas emissions and population size of each Party to the Convention, the average global per capita emissions of greenhouse gases shall be used to evaluate the status of the greenhouse gas emissions of a Party to the Convention. Each Party to the Convention whose per capita greenhouse gas emissions exceed the global average per capita greenhouse gas emissions shall be proposed to be inscribed in Annex I to the Convention, and the remaining Parties shall not be proposed to be inscribed in Annex I to the Convention.”
Why 1750? Are the sins of the fathers are to be visited their sons even unto the 11th generation, which is us? Climate treaties used to be based on 1990 as the start date because that was convenient to the Europeans as the fall of communism in that year had curbed their coal consumption. The European countries were going to be the easy treaty compliers while the US was punished. That was the plan at the beginning. But now it is changed to 1750.
The significance of Annex 1 is that if you are on it, you will be paying for the whole circus – US$100 billion per annum for kleptocracies. What if you don’t want to be on Annex 1, because you know that global warming is nonsense or something? What might happen is hinted at on page 8:
“Option 4: Decides that the developed country Parties shall not resort to any form of unilateral measures against goods and services from developing country Parties on any grounds related to climate change, recalling the principles and provisions of the Convention”
The option says that developing countries are not to have unilateral measures taken against them but who would bother doing that? The implied target is elsewhere. Countries that are allocated to Annex 1 but don’t cough up the cash might have unilateral measures taken against them by “developed country Parties”.
Australia signed up for the UN climate treaty in 2007. Canada pulled out in 2011 and Russia and Japan have rejected new targets after 2012. Perhaps the US will keep us free – Ms Figueres has said that the US Congress is “very detrimental” to the fight against global warming.
So that is why the global warming scare is so hard to kill. The end game is world domination. With such a big prize – the biggest possible, facts aren’t even inconvenient. They are not part of the process. It has been a long slog but gird your loins for a battle that might last into mid-century. Lima was COP 20 and Ms Figueres is prepared to take it to COP 40.
Something to look forward to in Paris in December.
10
clive hoskin,
¯
Just so well said — excellent!
00
A feedback can be positive but less than one in order the total effect to be bound. If a positive feedback is less than one “the signal”, e.g. an increase of forcing, is attenuated at each cycle through the system and finally disappears. In general, if we have feedback (loop amplification) k and forcing f, we would have total effect e = (1/(1-k)) * f . E.g. by having a positive feedback of 0.5, our original forcing will be doubled. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_theory
11
“Because Socialism.”
20
I just noticed this.
Obama says ‘no greater threat to planet than climate change’
There you have it folks, right from the
expertexcuse me, the most scientifically ignorant man I can think of.400
Meantime, back in the real world:
Science is saying, ‘There is no greater threat to the planet, than politicians who bow down to academic zealots, who have no proof’
500
Rereke
Note the directions given at the end of
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/04/18/my-washington-journal/
50
Roy Hogue
“I just noticed this.
Obama says ‘no greater threat to planet than climate change’”
¯
For once I utterly agree with Obama! — but not for the reasons POTUS states.
¯
With his political push exerting pressure not only internally in the US but also externally on other nation’s politicians, the UN, other NGO political advocates, Greens, and ‘climate scientists’ around world; this statement will add more inertial energy to proponents and propagators of the pseudo-science of ‘climate change'(nee CAGW aka AGW).
The united front of scientific misanthropy will feel blessed from on high that this near-science is again vindicated by POTUS, ensuring that the gravy-train keeps going. They will assert more energy in ensuring this Malthusian message stays loud or probably get loader for the disbelievers.
I pray it snows hard in Paris!
180
As for the current occupant of the White House…
POTUS: Particularly Obnoxious Thoroughly Useless S*%)%@&#
With apologies to the ladies.
140
There is no greater threat to the planet than Oh Bummer.
180
And another thing….
April 22 is Earth Day —
What do Earth Day and Vladimir Lenin’s birthday have in common? Answer — They both reoccur every year on April 22. Coincidence?
http://spectator.org/articles/55727/happy-earth-day%E2%80%A6-and-lenin-day
While environmental propagandists will celebrate peace, love, and Earth Day, here’s some information about co-founder and emcee Ira Einhorn — that not all eco-pacifists practice what they preach.
http://michellemalkin.com/2013/04/22/a-grisly-earth-day-reminder-eco-pacifist-fraud-ira-einhorn-a-killer-in-p-c-clothing/
50
We can only hope for colder than average weather (but not too extreme, or it will be used as ammunition)
Last winter in Paris was pretty mild really, cold days, no snow to speak of. Spring has been astonishingly nice so far, sunshine galore, 15-25 degrees….
I think it was last year where it snowed in Paris in May, or something similarly bizarre (can’t remember the date, but I know everyone was far from impressed). The traffic is bad enough normally, snow in winter makes it worse, but snow not in winter…well… the French know how to complain…
20
tom0mason,
I get your point. It scares no one any more than it scares me to see what’s happening in the name of saving mankind from the threat of climate change.
They’re hell bent on destruction of the technology civilization depends on — abundant electricity and fuel to keep a society utterly dependent on mobility, able to keep moving.
20
Idle question prompted by the banner photograph: If a jetty is made progressively bigger, at what point does it become a pier?
150
After the jetty has been subjected to a pier review.. You line “em up, I knock ’em down.
400
What with Ruaridh inspiring more budding poets, the gifted Speedy and Laurel and Hardy here, I can see we’re going to be all right once there’s no more climate to comment on.
130
🙂 🙂 🙂
80
A jetty, an artful pier, much like a politician, an artful liar. The two are synonymous.
100
Manfred
¯
And in the British system of government an artful liar becomes a peer when elevated. See House of Lords or House of Lords but not this one!
🙂
60
Outstanding.
Any room among all this for The Artful Dodger?
70
😆
ROTFL
😆
50
Only those who are vulnerable to pier pressure would want to make it bigger.
100
There’s a peerless pier in Brighton. I’m referring to the one in Sussex where they have a Greenie MP.
40
Do you mean to say that it has no peer. Or should that be no pier.
10
Rereke I found a good page on The shipping law blog that answers most of your question but answers regarding the exact length to which the structures are categorized seems a bit ambiguous, probably the correct wording while searching is the Quay…..
80
Well done Yonnie, you win this weeks’ pop quiz, not that there is any prize or anything, other than a smily face -> 🙂
80
Alec Guinness in Barnacle Bill registered a pier as an ocean going liner.
50
According to the thoughts of Chairman Tim, the jetty will be totally submerged very, very, very, very soon.
120
So then it becomes a boat launching ramp…win-win… 😉
20
In England it you stick some stalls on it selling “kiss me quick” hats, sticks of rock (a dentist’s worst nightmare) and colored lights at night. When you have a fun fair, and a theater with variety shows, then it becomes a premier pier.
40
I guess if it was the best one around for miles, it would be without pier….
20
Sorry JoKaH, had I scrolled down would have seen your same pun as mine….you got in first…. 🙂
10
We have a jetty up our way (at Long Jetty) that is 351 metres long and has just celebrated its 100th year. It is supposed to be the longest jetty in NSW – Does this make it a jetty without pier?
20
Ah, but my question is, can you pier on a private jetty?
00
100 years old. Gee.
As Spike Milligan would say,
“Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday dear jetty.
Happy birthday to you”.
00
Why ask the question? Just keep extending your jetty it until you reach the destination.
20
Ho-hum. More of the same from the usual suspects:
Leonardo DiCaprio the ‘eco warrior’ flew on a private jet from NY to LA SIX times in SIX weeks
150
He probably heard that the solar aircraft has been grounded for weeks, carries one person and needs a Boeing 747 hanger to fit its wing span.
90
Guess the problem was the free in-flight wifi was draining the battery too quickly?
20
Just waiting on word from Tonyfromoz on AGL shutting down all of it’s coal fired power, including Bayswater.
130
Yes, this will be interesting. I note that the proposed date of close is ‘by 2050’ – plenty of wriggle room there to change things if global warming does not go to plan or reverses. Thirty five years of wriggle room in fact.
The most interesting thing will be to see how information presented so far in the media coverage lines up with the actual media release/statement by the company.
100
It might just be another corporate image strategy, like BP did with ‘Beyond Petroleum’.
70
Yes
The time span (35 years) and the feel-good vagueness of the fuzzy sentiments in the press release (as published in Saturday’s papers) show that (no detail, no base load numbers)
The trigger for this press release was the recent listing of AGL by the Greenies as one of the “big polluders” – AGL saw this as bad for its’ brand. The sad part to that is that AGL obviously thinks that a significant section of the public will believe the “polluder” label
80
Tony commented very concisely and sensibly about the AGL announcement on a previous post.
70
The Blackslider
TonyfromOz replied to that very question here.
And an excellent reply it was too.
70
ooops,
That should be The Backslider not The Blackslider, sorry!
20
What I do not really understand that companies like AGL, BP, employ a lot of engineers, geologists, chemists, so why on earth would their managements want to follow the global warming myth when most of these people would know better? Is it coercion or greed?
50
As an oilfield geologist, I can say it’s neither coercion or greed, at least in my case. I like my job, and I also know that these “green-wash’ decisions are made at management levels which are totally abstracted from the realms of ‘ordinary’ employees, and are designed to keep the shareholders happy. It doesn’t stop them drilling for oil/gas, and it doesn’t really impact day-to-day operations.
The oil price however… that does have an impact. I see Schlumberger is going to fire another 11000 employees, on top of the 8000 or 9000 already fired. Whilst some may say “serves them right for working for ‘big oil'”, I happen to think that in most cases, people have families and loved ones they support financially, so losing ones job is hardly good news.
90
James, I guess that what you are saying is the top managements of these large companies these days are mainly accountants and lawyers and politics is the number one game as long as the balance sheet is good for the shareholders. The announcement by AGL about shutting down its coal stations by 2050 is a case in point, no obvious feasible alternative for 24/7 baseload power, apart from nuclear, so what is the logic apart from politics.
30
Robert O, nail on head with nuclear. AGL and like are probably betting the farm on the Skunk Works getting their fusion reactor operational. Why would an ALP led state instigate a royal commission into the nuclear fuel cycle? Clearly, against national policy. In order to instigate a commission you must already know the answer.
20
Agree, agree, agree.
One of the major failures of modern industries and lack of long/ medium term thinking results from a preponderance of bean counters and silver tails being the major decision=makers.
Can anyone recall when BHP made it’s last good decision?
20
As everyone knows, “Sabre Dance” is from the final act of Aram Khachaturian’s ballet Gayane.
It is Khachaturian’s best known and most recognizable work.
Today (15 April, 2015) is the 71st birthday of Welsh guitarist Dave Edmunds—he of Rockpile and Love Sculpture fame, he who scored a Number 1 U.K. hit with “I Hear You Knocking” in 1970.
Edmunds forged a successful solo career with a string of middle-weight hits, including “Queen of Hearts,” “Girls Talk” and “Slipping Away.”
But what a lot of people don’t know is that Edmunds is an incredible guitarist, initially making his six-string mark with Love Sculpture’s blistering version of “Sabre Dance” in 1968.
Edmunds still performs “Sabre Dance,” and we figured we’d share a recent (OK, recent-ish) live version of the tune below.
(via guitaraficionado.com)
Enjoy.
90
Because of the nasty environment on Mars I think they will send sophisticated robots instead of humans. Hubots are coming.
‘According to Hanson Robotics’s website, the humanoids can actually see your face, make eye contact with you, and understand speech to ‘engage you in witty dialogue’.
‘Such reactions are a major feat of engineering, according to chief designer David Hanson, the founder and and president of Hanson Robotics.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3044955/Aye-robot-Amazingly-lifelike-humanoid-incredible-range-facial-expressions.html#ixzz3XhTrOu2b
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
50
Having the ability to make eye contact with Martians?
I guess that’s progress …
60
There are some fine restaurants on Mars.May well have to read Ray Bradbury and his “Martian Chronicles “
50
But for whom?????
30
Lotsa CO2 .Imagination in the culinary department needed of course.Carbon-based life forms not observed..
20
Really enjoyed the made for television Äkta Människor – Real Humans – S1. Brilliantly executed, Moments of humor, pathos and tenderness. Hub Battle Land and the lovable rascal Silas. The basic premise of the series IMHO is not about hubots, but about us…what kind of people do we want to be? There are subtle parallels to be drawn with the refugee and minority questions..can’t help thinking of the young girl allegedly sexually assaulted on Manus, terrified of being sent back there from Darwin..the lack of a response.
40
Can they read a teleprompter?
20
On the New South Wales mid north coast more rain that was claimed would never fall in enough volume to fill dams has been falling since about 3.00 am.
110
Can you send some about 500km north, my dam is looking particularly sad at the moment and I’m worried it wont last the dry season
30
Maybe the Kurnell, Sydney, desalination plant could send you some water Bob, after all it is maintained at a cost of millions a month with no output of water now. Former Premier Carr of NSW was the consultant to the Arab suppliers, and a Macquarie Bank consultant at the same time while occupying an office suite in the NSW Government office block in Sydney alongside Labor Government cabinet ministers. Bob apparently convinced other states to invest in desalination plants after Professor Flannery predicted that rain would not fall enough to fill the dams.
Flannery also predicted that the Sydney Opera House would be swamped by 2000. I was in Sydney last weekend and the Opera House was high and dry.
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That is only because they drain a lot of water out of the Harbour, twice a day. It must cost Sydney rate-payers heaps …
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The best ever? It has been said of Laver, Sampras, Nadal and, especially, Federer, but you have to wonder if Djokovic is the best ever … so far. Not only is he a talented all round tennis player, but he is probably the mentally toughest player to walk onto a court. I hope I didn’t put a hex on him for today’s final!
Tennis aficionados might have noticed that this year’s Aust Open trophy was presented to Djokovic by none other than Roy Emerson. You might also have seen Emerson photographed with George Bush Snr as they enjoyed the recent Houston tournament (in the image, check out the spook on the left ‘talking to the hand’).
If you’re a tennis buff – and your travel budget is greater than mine – you might consider a week of tennis at Roy Emerson’s tennis camp in one of the best towns in the best country on the planet – Gstaad, Switzerland.
Just to give the pretence that this post is in some way related to the subject matter of this blog, the Swiss are very conscious of preserving the beauty and purity of their natural environment. Unlike the Germans, the Swiss did not damage their economy with a knee-jerk rejection to nuclear power after Fukushima. You will recall that the Germans are shutting theirs down, but are buying nuclear generated power from across the border. In fact, I recall reading somewhere that one of Germany’s neighbours is building a new nuclear power plant just over its border with Germany, primarily to sell electricity to the latter.
Also, the Swiss are especially adept at managing their natural environment, while at the same time providing infrastructure and facilities for people to use it and enjoy it. For example, a mountain might typically have a cable car service and a tourist facility on the peak, graded and signposted walking tracks, access for different sports, and timber harvesting, but at the same time have protected forests and wildlife preserves in which human activity is restricted but not prevented. Compare that with our leftist driven model, in which it is sought to shut everything down and close everything off.
Also, the Swiss have a long-term plan for transiting trucks to be piggy-backed onto trains for the journey across the country. Mostly the trains will run through tunnels so as not to be visually or aurally intrusive.
Switzerland has direct democracy, which is why their governments govern for the people, rather than governing to implement their own self-serving agenda and to grant privileges to a select few, as is the case in socialist Australia.
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Forgot the link to the government site on direct democracy in Switzerland.
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With respect to the Swiss system of citizen-initiated referenda on legislation, could you tell us what happens (as detailed as possible) when the Swiss Govt is faced with a referendum vote it doesn’t like, please ?
[Serious question]
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If I could begin by saying that in a true democracy the question of ‘what the government doesn’t like’ is moot, because, unlike in Australia, for example, government is not an agency unto itself, by which I mean government cannot pursue an agenda that is not the people’s agenda. The leftist EU governments HATE Switzerland for this very reason.
Before proceeding, I should state that I am far from an expert on the Swiss system of government, and, as I do not speak German, French or Italian, I am not able to properly study their system of government.
Second, Switzerland is a true confederation, meaning that the federal council has limited power and subsists on monies provided by the cantons (states). As an aside, if the coalition had created a confederation in Iraq – Sunni, Shiite and Kurds – it would have made the country much more stable, but leftist government don’t like distributed power. Centralised power is less accountable and easier to manipulate.
In answer to your question, the issue of the government having to comply with a demand of the people that offends the socialist governments of Europe is alive at this very moment. Last year, the Swiss Peoples Party (what the Left call right-wing but normal people call mainstream, and the Left call anti-immigration but normal people call a responsible attitude to immigration) sponsored a measure to restrict immigration from the EU, a measure that violates current Swiss-EU ‘freedom of movement’ agreements. The government is still negotiating this issue with the socialist governments of France and Germany, so we will have to wait and see.
I believe there was some controversy recently about banks’ client confidentially. The US has been economically threatening Switzerland to reveal customers’ names. I can’t recall whether it was subject to referendum or whether the Swiss parliament refused to debate the matter. Anyway, I believe they got around it by saying that client details could be revealed where a law had been broken – specifically, tax law.
I know I have not provided the in-depth information you are seeking, but time and language are against me. I, too, would love to fully research this subject. Suffice to say that the government has no choice – the people tell it what to do and it has to find a way to do it.
To conclude, Finland has recently introduced a form of direct democracy. I do not know the details, but, if a government has voluntarily given up its prerogative powers, it is ASTOUNDING. Can you imagine our government giving up its power to ignore us and abuse us! Here is some info on Finland. Unfortunately, the actual mechanism is not described. Note that many of the stories in Swissinfo tend to be left-leaning. For example, the failure of the Ecopop referendum is described as a ‘weak’ result for ‘anti-immigrants’ but the measure was actually put forward by the green Left as a sustainability issue rather than an ‘anti-immigration’ issue. In fact, the Swiss Peoples Party – the mainstream party that advocates for responsible immigration policy – opposed the Ecopop measure. Furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, the Swiss Peoples Party’s 2014 initiative on restricting immigration was passed by the Swiss people.
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Here the link for the Finland info.
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Finland introduced the world’s first carbon tax in 1990 (sbs.com:Factbox)
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Thanks for the reply – much appreciated
One (of many) reasons I asked the original question is that I am aware that Brussels (yes, I know Switzerland is not a member of the EU) reacts to popular votes and referenda results it doesn’t like by simply re-putting the question, or even just ignoring the inconvenient result. Our powers-that-be or wish-to-be here in Aus HATE even discussing the Swiss system; much preferred is vague talk about suspending democracy until the “crisis” is over
The population of Switzerland is just over 8 million (2013). How this is divided geographically into cantons and how each canton is equally represented in the Swiss Parliament is an area I’m currently looking at. But the much smaller population and even smaller geographical area render their political system easier to implement there than in Aus
I’ll opt to wait and see about Finland. Politicians voluntarily relinquishing power is a very, very alien concept: despite my strongest wishes, I suspect it will eventually not be as it seems
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And they have 4 official languages, although most citizens would speak 2 or them and English.
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The US tried it on with some Swiss Banks, effectively suggesting that withholding information about American citizens alleged or potential law breaking could be considered as an act if war. I believe several Swiss Banks went bust as a result of the loss of faith that resulted with their customers. Other countries that have been trying it on haven’t got so far. There are limited agreements on disclosure now in place with some European countries but eg. The French Socialists are holding out for full disclosure back through history & getting nowhere apparently.
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Barry, got to disagree with you re Djokovic. In the history of men’s tennis a total of only three grand slams have ever been won. Rod Laver, from Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia won two of them. The greatest tennis player that ever lived. The only other one was won by an American, Don Budge. A journalist once foolishly said to him, something to the effect of, it would have been a lot easier to do in his day, to which Budge had a devastating reply along the lines of, then why didn’t more people do it!!!
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I remember years ago Fred Perry being asked to rank the best 10 players he had seen. (Perry won Wimbledon 3 years running 34-36).
He rated Bill Tilden** as the best, and then Laver. Some of his ratings were interesting, he didn’t rate himself at all, He rated Lew Hoad highly and Emerson and Budge. Björn Borg just made the top 10. And he dismissed McEnroe and Connors. I wish I had kept the article.
Of course Agassi, Sampras, Federer, Nadal and Djokovic weren’t around then.
**Tilden didn’t get to play many Tournaments after the ball boy scandal broke.
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Agassi and Federer both have career slams, although neither won all four in the same year. Also, Federer had health problems in 2008 that probably denied him a couple more. Federer’s main weakness is mental strength. That is probably what makes Djok unbeatable today. Also, he is probably better at returning serve than Agassi was, which is quite an accomplishment. The reason I say that is that Agassi was always troubled by Sampras’s serve, but Djok seems to have little trouble with the big hitters, such as Raonic and Isner.
I’ve heard a lot about Budge but I have never before seen vision of his games. After I saw your post, I had a quick look at some video clips of his play. He had a topspin backhand, which was very unusual for that era. Without seeing more I cannot comment, but, as you have said, his record speaks for itself.
Speaking of backhands, wouldn’t you die for a backhand like Wawrinka’s!
If you enjoy tennis – and you obviously do – open the video menu on the atpworldtour.com website and in the column to the right you will find a link to videos of ‘classic’ finals. I’m sure you will enjoy watching highlights of Agassi, Sampras, Edberg, Becker and Stich at their best.
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You are right, there would never be a scandal such as the Craig Thomson affair because the citizens would have put in a petition for a mandatory by-election. They also have a lot of referenda on important issues, and one sees a lot of rifles on trains as the citizens take them home after army training.
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The argument is simple, CO2 has increased 50% since 1900. This coincides with the industrial revolution so man has produced the increase in CO2 which in turn produced the warming.
As a general question to everyone, if you could prove by direct measurement that there is almost no man made CO2 in the air, that would be the end of the story of man made Global Warming?
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We’ll, er, um. Doesn’t the man made CO2 get absorbed by the oceans but replaced in the atmosphere by naturally occurring CO2. It’s like a balancing thing & we’re upsetting the balance. Yeah.
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Yes. 98% of the CO2 is in the ocean. Half of it is swapped over every 12 years. So any ‘industrial’ CO2 disappears into the ocean. The total amount of CO2 in the air is fixed by physical chemical rules of equilibrium, Henry’s law. So we can generate as much CO2 as we like. It all just disappears.
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Or put another way. A 50% increase in CO2 in the air is only 0.5% increase in total CO2. You would not notice it.
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Correction a 50% increase in CO2 in the air is only 0.02% increase in total CO2 since CO2 is currently only 0.04%
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I’ve just read ChiefIO’s latest about the C13 ratio mix in CO2. I found it very informative.
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Yes, I have read many reviews of C12/C13 ratios. Differential take up in plants is interesting. Just more to argue about.
C13 is about 1%. C14 is the one no one mentions, the one used in radio carbon dating as it is created and destroyed continually, so it tells you what is going on.
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Yes, I have read many reviews of C12/C13 ratios. Differential take up in plants is interesting. Just more to argue about.
C13 is about 1%. C14 is the one no one mentions, the one used in radio carbon dating as it is created and destroyed continually, so it tells you what is going on.
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Yes, I have read many reviews of C12/C13 ratios. Differential take up in plants is interesting. Just more to argue about.
C13 is about 1%. C14 is the one no one mentions, the one used in radio carbon dating as it is created and destroyed continually, so it tells you what is going on.
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I am slowly coming to the realization that people do not understand radio carbon dating at all. No one. I wrote to Science ABC and they had no idea. It should be school boy stuff. Lord Monckton wanted me to write a paper, but it hardly seems worth it on a simple observation. Papers should be for profound new knowledge or reporting experiments and conclusions, not stating the obvious. Basically mankind cannot change the CO2 levels in the atmosphere and even so, you can prove almost none of the CO2 is from fossil fuels. I would have thought that was the end of it, but people seem to want to argue about the consequences of something which is not happening.
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Unfortunately, the AGW hypothesis is not based on science, but politics and religion which are hard to quantify. In science if the results are at variance to the hypothesis, it is either discarded or modified. Science is littered with thousands of failed theories, but in this case it’s still supported by governments, Presidents, the MSM… One would have thought that after 18 years of no significant increase in global temperature, based on accurate satellite data, not land-based data affected by changes to sites, the UHI effect, homogenisation etc., the AGW hypothesis would have been discarded, but no it has morphed into Climate Change. That is a two way bet, if it gets colder, or hotter, it doesn’t matter as it is all due to CO2 anyhow and that will be the outcome of the Paris meeting.
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Yes, religion and opportunism by the UN plus all the carpetbaggers and the huge industrial group which is cleaning up at $1Bn a day.
This morning news.com.au reports that Australia has a ‘please explain’ note from the UN on ‘direct action’. China is complaining we as a developed country are not carrying our load. The Chinese, a ‘developing country’ responsible for half the world’s CO2 output do nothing while they are increasing their CO2 output each year by more than our entire output. Is there no end to this farce?
The key element of AGW is the A. It can be proven simply that A has nothing to do with recent CO2 increases. So whether GW occurs or not, we anthropoids have nothing to do with it. The UN can rage about its pocket money on behalf of the Carbon Cartel, but it is all sound and fury, signifying nothing except greed.
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The Road to Paris 2015
As we get closer, 97% milestones get further away.
Here is three:
1. Goal Post Migration Alert! Father of 2°C Target Schellnhuber Postpones CO2 Emissions Peak 10 Years: From 2020 To 2030! (notrickszone)
2. Sustainable Postponements…Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute Pushes “Ice-Free Arctic” Back To 2050! (notrickszone)
3. Two degree Celsius climate change target ‘utterly inadequate’, expert argues (sciencedaily.com)
– Global-warming limit of 2 °C hangs in the balance (nature.com)
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not satisfied with killing off most of its audience already…
CNN Facebook
What do you want to know about climate change? CNN’s John Sutter is going to spend the rest of the year telling the story of one number — 2 degrees — and he needs your help do it! World leaders agree that if the world warms more than 2 degrees Celsius, we’ll see disastrous consequences. Ask your questions here and they’ll inspire Sutter’s reporting. This is a rare opportunity for you to shape the way CNN covers a critically important topic. Thanks for participating! #2degrees
https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10153569174821509/
the back & forth between Sutter and the public in the comments makes this programming decision even less appetising.
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Have you ever looked at something and thought that, hey, this sounds reasonable enough.
Something similar happened when I looked at President Obama’s pledge for the Paris COP21 Climate Change Conference for the UNFCCC later this year.
I wondered why he selected a 28% emissions reduction when other Nations are being more ambitious than this, some as high as 40% and more.
I wondered why he selected 2025 as the target year.
I wondered why he based this reduction on totals from 2005, and that answer was easiest, because that was the year of highest emissions in the U.S.
I wondered if it related back to the original Kyoto Protocol, which asked for reductions to a level 5 to 7% lower than what they were in 1990.
It all seemed so reasonable on the surface.
I started to do a Post, thinking I could do it in a (relative) snap, and have it ready fairly quickly, but I wasn’t holding much hope that it would have any punch, because it all actually looked ‘doable’.
Then it all fell into place.
It ended up that I have spent more on this than anything I have done in the last seven years of contributing to my home site.
It actually got a little frightening really, and the more I looked, the more I found, coming to a belief that this is something that just cannot really be achieved.
That year of 2005 was the year of highest emissions, and working in percentages makes it look less complex than it really is, so I had to work backwards, and forwards, using the real numbers and not just percentages.
When you work it out, his pledge to reduce emissions by 28% based on the 2005 figures, it actually means that emissions must drop to a level ….. 16% lower than what they were in 1990, more draconian than Kyoto.
The pledge is based around the work done (obviously for him, and with Paris in mind) by the EPA, and they have a series of documents, amounting to more than 1,000 pages, and no, I didn’t trawl through them all, just the relevant ones I wanted for my information.
So, that one Post I planned got longer and longer, and the time till publishing stretched out as I did more and more research, and it ended up becoming not reasonable as I first thought, but actually quite horrifying. It ended up as two long Posts of quite detailed analysis, and then the task was to try and explain it in a manner which could be more easily understood.
Part One is now at my site, and Part 2 will be published on Monday at 8.31PM, (Australian Eastern Standard Time) which is Monday 6.31AM U.S. Eastern Standard Time.
I have an Intro Post with some short text and the links to each Post in that Intro.
Part of that 28% reduction has already been achieved, but there is still 22% to go, in ten years to the target, and see how reducing it to percentages like that, which is only around 2% a year makes it sound reasonable.
Well, it isn’t.
My considered guess is that it cannot be achieved, and hey shouldn’t the more important thing here be that while the U.S. plans to reduce emissions by this amount, and do it by 2025, shouldn’t there be more worry about China, which has stated that they will not achieve peak emissions until 2030, and then might consider reducing them at that time. The same might also apply for India and other Nations as well.
I know it’s a long read, and the important part doesn’t come around until Monday, but it ended up becoming a really interesting exercise.
Link to Intro: Kyoto Revisited – President Obama’s Pledge For Paris – Intro
And here’s a teaser for Part Two.
There are quite literally thousands of wind
farmsplants in the U.S. but only 15 of them are of a greater Nameplate than 500MW.With this pledge to reduce emissions, that means cutting a monumentally huge chunk of electrical power generation, and all of it from the coal fired sector, (the obvious and only target here) because they can’t replace it with CO2 emitting Natural gas fired plants.
So, that obviously means new wind plants to replace that lost coal fired generation.
To replace that lost coal fired power, the U.S. starting right now, will need to bring on line (not thought bubble, not plan, not start construction, but actually begin delivering power from the finished plants) one new wind plant of 500MW Nameplate every, wait for it ….. every twelve days between now and 2025, working seven days a week.
That will not happen.
Tony.
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Funnily enough, TonyFromOz, 500 megawatts nameplate windpower per 12 days for the US’s 319 million population is pretty close to Germany’s per capita per day installation rate of .12 person watt days wind power installation rate.
So the 500 megawatts of installed capacity wind power every 12 days is achievable, because that is what Germany is doing. The US just has to want to do it to achieve their CO2 reduction targets.
So you can rest easy. This one is judged “achievable”
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BilB,
yeah, and just think.
Only $62 Billion per year for the next ten years.
A snap, eh!
Tony.
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And then keep doing it as the things will die in about 15 years. So it becomes a merry-go-round of expense. Probably really good if you’re in the business of building them or keeping them going.
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BilB, when you quote figures can you please provide a source.
Also, you need to keep in mind that no matter what the figures say, the inescapable fact is that Germany will always be attached to the nuclear and fossil-fuel umbilical – until fusion becomes viable, that is.
Germany has simply outsourced its nuclear industry to other countries. The same applies to Austria.
Also, you need to consider the social cost of your renewables fantasy – more specifically, the impact on the poor – and the fact that your Utopian ideal simply results in German manufacturing and jobs being outsourced to other countries.
But most of all, BilB, you need to admit to yourself that you cannot create an alternative reality simply by wishing it were true. Good intentions are fine, but reality cannot be ignored.
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The source, Barry,is Wikipaedia which shows that Germany has been averaging 3.5gig of new capacity per year in recent years.
But the other ittle eyeopener for ou is that (eia.gov source) hd levelised cost of energy per megawatt in the US at present is
Advanced NG combined cycle ……66
Coal advanced……………….123
Nuclear…………………….108
Wind Turbine a .35 cf.30yr.sl….87
That covers every aspect of the operation. Now you can toss the figures around and argue different aspects but at the end of the day wind power is deliverable, affordable and a vital part of the renewable US energy future.
Spitzer86, modern wind turbines have a 20 year searvice life and another 20 years after a refit at a 20% of original cost. That is taken into account in the eia.gov figures.
06
BilB,
for the life of me, I just cannot figure you people out.
You’re all actually proud of the fact that wind power can only deliver its power at a 30% (at best) Capacity Factor, Solar PV can only manage 13% Capacity Factor, and Concentrating Solar can only manage a 28% Capacity Factor. You’re all actually proud of these forms of power having such a short lifespan. You’re all actually so proud of their horrendously high cost that you make up bogus figures to attempt to make them look cheaper.
All this when 60% of every watt of power being generated is required ABSOLUTELY on a 24/7/365 basis, which is a 100% Capacity Factor.
Take away that method of power which actually can deliver that requirement and you have nothing. The Country just grinds to a halt.
Without that 100% requirement being covered, you even have no rooftop solar power as that also requires that 100% absolute power coverage to work, just to supply the homes which have panels.
Just where do you hope to get this 100% power from?
Surely you must be researching something like that.
Ignorance will be no excuse when the power goes off.
Please go and actually do some research. Please.
Don’t just mindlessly believe your agenda driven string pulling masters on this. Go and look for yourself.
And don’t ask us for links. Go and look for yourself. Persevere with it.
Tony.
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Oh, and BilB,
ALL of Germany’s wind power is currently delivering its power at a 14.5% Capacity Factor, so please, if you are going to quote wind power as your viable alternative, please don’t refer us to Germany.
Tony.
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Hmm, If you are keen on wind and solar power, and if you think that they can replace every other form of generation, then I suggest you avoid needing a dialysis machine.
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BilB,
Wind power is neither deliverable or affordable.
Wind power turbines deliver on average across Australia about 20% – 30% of their nameplate which is about 18% of the essential electricity required.
They deliver that power at $155/GWH.
The balance of about 82% of essential electricity is delivered by coal/gas at $32/GWH.
My question to you BilB:
How is wind power deliverable and affordable if it more expensive and less efficient?
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Just got home and I see others have already responded to BilB.
BilB, when you quote costs for generating electricity from solar and wind, you cannot quote the figure they are capable of producing power at, because they produce power for only a percentage of any given day and they produce maximum power for a much smaller percentage of the day. You have to quote the cost for the megawatts they actually deliver.
But there is also another cost to add in. Solar and wind cannot reliably provide power all of the time, so they have to be used in parallel with fossil fuels or nuclear. So, if you are costing a wind power installation, for example, you have to add in the cost of building a complete parallel system running on nuclear energy or fossil fuels.
BilB, I imagine you desperately want it to be otherwise, but these are realities you have to accept. Your wishes will not come true just by creating a fantasy in your own mind that they are true. Children do this, not adults.
Also, BilB, you need to be a little bit skeptical about the figures people are quoting for renewables. This may surprise you, but most leftists lack principles and will therefore lie and exaggerate in order to advance their ideological agenda. So, BilB, don’t believe everything they tell you.
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True, the sun does not shine all of the time and the wind does not blow all of the tme. No points for stating the blatantly obvious.
I’m a pragmatist, Barry, not a purist. I have no problem with using gas for cooking and backup power generation. Aha,….using fossil fuels…someone jibed. Not necessarily I replied and then demonstrate that the average Australian individual throws out 1 tonne of waste renewable material each year (packaging etc). So for a family of 4 that material gasified equates to 6,000 kwhrs electricity, or 50% of the average household electricity consumption of 12,000 kwhrs. In my example, spelt out meticulously in discussions with BON, the parallel system is the gas line which goes past my house, or the gas bottle on the outside wall.
You might also want to keep informed on the Aluminium-ion battery. One kilowatt hour capacity per kilogram and a 7500 charge cycle life. Renewables technologies just keep getting better.
The figures I quoted in my earlier comment came from a study that was attempting to crucify wind energy, not a leftist exageration at all.
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That being the case, BilB, how do you explain it that two of the biggest wind farms in southern California are sitting there with many turbans idle and much of the infrastructure rusting away? Is it perhaps a combination of unreliability of the machinery itself and the fact that it’s not as profitable to the operators as they thought?
To be bluntly honest, I would put my money in solar before I would have anything to do with wind. And just as bluntly honest, I wouldn’t have anything to do with solar either. When the subsidies for solar disappear, so will the suppliers and maintainers. And the subsidies will disappear. The subsidies for wind will go the the same way.
Bottom line — never hitch your wagon to a fad. Never!
Solar is proving to be worthwhile for some applications. But these are able to justify themselves economically so they will probably succeed. They need no government incentive.
I know of no application for wind power that can say the same. It’s a vital part of only one thing — future trouble when it can’t handle the
loadtall story that was sold to the public.20
You could however barely do it with Nukes. If you started today and worked double time – given how long Keystone has been in approval though one would have to guess that you are right – won’t happen in my lifetime.
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Thankyou Tony. I remember seeing you toying with the 28.5% and determinedly trying to avoid getting sucked in. Well I guess it just kept gnawing at you and there are a few folk who just won’t let themselves give up when they know there is something there. It seems to have indeed turned into the marathon you’d feared and all to tell whether it’s doable or just Barry on some bender.
It’s as well other world leaders should know what’s behind it so they dong just get swept up in the euphoria of Paris. Some briefing paper for Tony’s Paris team shouldn’t go amiss.
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Hi Tony, I look forward to your posts.
However, you might lack the enlightenment that he brought for some.
‘We Thought He Was Going To Be The Next Messiah’ [Barbara Walters]
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With Hillary as ‘The Third Coming’!
Tony.
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Oh for another President like the youngest U.S. President ever.
Such a pity that he never sought the nomination for a second term, which he was fully entitled to do.
Even when he ran as an (semi) Independent candidate one term later, he still polled just under 28%, finishing second, carrying six States, and 88 EC votes, and relegating the incumbent President to third place. This was the most successful third party or independent result in U.S. Presidential history, and the highest placed non major party candidate in U.S. history.
Tony.
Post Script – I’ll bet some of you are scratching your heads.
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Apparently not.
10
Here is a little weekend viewing for the keen environmental researchers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0pDB_C-jwkU
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Yeah, thanks BilB. One mark for showing it to us.
It would certainly be interesting if the lot collapses. But I fail to see how any of it can be attributed to CO2 rise. If the industial revolution didn’t happen these ice sheets would still be on the verge. Only thing is, we wouldn’t know about it!
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I always have a good chuckle when I see these things.
The basic message here is:
1. We weren’t sure of a lot of the physical mechanisms in play on the Antartic mainland.
2. So we flew over the ice, taking ultrasound readings, and mapping the change of depth in the ice cover.
3. And we found that the glaciers were moving.
4. And other areas of ice were melting, especially in those areas where there is some volcanic activity.
Now, of course they jump directly to climate change as being the culprit, because that is a condition of their employment, but they really should try to demonstrate in what way, what they have just observed, is significantly different to the state of Antarctica, a couple of hundred years ago.
Otherwise it just comes across as propaganda.
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BilB,
For heaven’s sake – IPCC says the ice sheet will increase then it says the ice sheet will decrease, then, shock horror, the western ice sheet will decrease (undersea volcanos will do that). I didn’t watch far enough but I’m willing to bet there were tears.
“Oh the humanity”.
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Here’s a question for you BilB.Where is the power coming from,when the “Wind Isn’t Blowing” or “The Sun Isn’t Shining?
00
With due consideration for the new Union Labor Government in Victoria refusing to honour a binding contract for needed new roadworks infrastructure, and complaining that the previous Coalition Government should not have signed the contract in an election year (ignoring that there is a caretaker period before elections and the contract was signed well before that period), ignoring that major project contracts have many stages including design, environmental impact, documentation, calling for expressions of interest, calling tenders, assessing tenders, arranging Commonwealth and State financing and then signing a contract with the successful tenderer, it angers me that our governments, notably the socialist left, squander so much of our money, play politics with no consideration for financial consequences. The Premier claims that the state election was a referendum on the project. What nonsense, the contract had been signed and now penalties apply that will be around one billion dollars, ignoring Labor creative accounting distraction tactics.
There are many examples of squandering by governments with members who have obviously had no business experience, most if not all could not tell us the difference between revenue and profit. Who are not interested in cost-benefit analysis of their projects and grants.
Consider the financial impact of climate change spending on government budgets and tax revenues and/or borrowing to spend.
Madness.
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D Andrews is really Joan Kirner in men’s clothes.
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Slightly more feminine in my view;but urban young gen metro types are not my scene! Apologies in advance to the more sensitive readers.
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Never forget Andrews said the contract was “not worth the paper it was written on” and “there will be no compensation paid”.
http://media.heraldsun.com.au/multimedia/2015/apr/andrews/andrews.mp3
Another Labor liar.
20
When is a “contract not valid”?
When the Labor party pays $420 million of taxpayers money to get cancel it.
30
Didn’t you get the memo Dennis [snip]??
Tony says that the Victorian election was a referendum on the EW link. Pro EW link lost, Govt’s must of course keep their promises so EW link canceled. simple.
Stop trying to undermine the PM and make him look a fool [snip]! 🙁
[While what you wrote may have been tongue in cheek, it breaches this blog’s standards. – Mod]
15
Hi Jo. Perhaps you could encourage your readers to join this course in practical comedy at UQ. So far the method of engaging with ‘deniers’ seems to be to call us names, set up straw man arguments, and delete comments and questions which undermine warmist arguments. Let’s not make it too easy for them!
70
Maybe we can discuss the course as it unfolds.
Another Peter
10
https://www.edx.org/course/making-sense-climate-science-denial-uqx-denial101x Don’t know why that didn’t post in my first comment..
30
Nuccitelli and Cook, now that’s funny.
40
As someone said along time back:”I would rather go bushwalking with Ivan Milat”
20
Wow, I hope not that bad.
I might come back for the course as a Troll
40
You can bet your breaches those two will be up to something. Classifying the participants, inferring all sorts of stuff about them, treating them accordingly and writing up some pseudo-scientific psycho paper at the end of it I shouldn’t wonder.
Just remember if you participate, be prepared to be treated as a specimen.
60
MSM is making much ado about nothing re the following:
BP promises more transparency on climate change issues
The Guardian-16 Apr 2015
Activist investors score victory at BP annual meeting
Financial Times – Apr 17, 2015
Church of England celebrates progress in BP climate change policy
ChristianToday-17 Apr 2015
Pension funds score victory with BP climate change resolution
IPE.com-17 Apr 2015
17 April: BidnessEtc: Micheal Kaufman: Key Takeaways From BP plc (ADR) Annual Shareholder Meeting
BP shareholders also voted on the issue of climate change. They pushed for the company’s management to provide more detailed information related to the risks and opportunities, that the company may face as a result of climate change. BP could become the first major oil company to regularly update investors on how the company’s operations and strategies affect climate change.
The proposed plan, put forward by large investors and NGOs, received almost unanimous acceptance as nearly 98% of the participants voted in favor. Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said:
***“This resolution is about disclosure, it’s not about setting targets.”
Ahead of the voting on climate change proposal, major investors expressed their support for the resolution. ***Norway’s sovereign oil fund, with a 2.16% stake in BP, said on Wednesday that it would support the resolution…
A similar resolution will be put to vote at rival Royal Dutch Shell plc’s (ADR) (NYSE:RDS.A) annual shareholder meeting on May 19. The two European companies could lead the charge on new climate change policies, keeping their investors informed about the company’s effects on the climate…
http://www.bidnessetc.com/40142-key-takeaways-from-bp-plc-adr-annual-shareholder-meeting/
23 March: Euractiv: Could Oslo’s decision to divest from coal inspire bigger cities to do the same?
When Oslo sells the coal investments in its pension portfolio next month, it will set a historic precedent: the first capital city in the world to divest itself of that most polluting of fossil fuels…
***But does Oslo’s decision really mean much, given that Norway’s own pension fund – the gigantic Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) – continues to invest in fossil fuels?…
***Erik Lae Solberg, Oslo’s vice mayor for finance, admits his city’s decision to sell 40m krone (£3.3m) worth of coal investments in the Oslo Pension Fund isn’t much. But it sends a signal, he says, that Oslo does not want to contribute to the most climate-damaging fossil fuels, and that the city has a wider goal to be climate-friendly.
***“We’ve seen that coal is clearly the energy source that is most harmful,” Solberg said…
Still, it is a conundrum for Norway, a major producer of oil (and, to a lesser extent, coal), which channels its excess petroleum revenues into its own pension fund.
***The government has so far resisted parliamentary calls for Norway’s $860bn nest egg, GPFG – the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund – to divest from fossil fuel. A government-appointed panel recently recommended that the fund not divest from fossil fuels, but rather set up a new climate-related exclusion criterion on a case-by-case basis…
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/climate-change/could-oslos-decision-divest-coal-inspire-bigger-cities-do-same-313139
to be continued…
30
ah yes, Norway is very concerned about CAGW!
12 March: Bloomberg: Matthew Carr: Norway Bets Cutting Pollution Abroad Is an Easier Battle
The nation may pay about 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) for emission cuts in European Union nations, or if that negotiation fails, buy permits elsewhere under a planned global climate deal. Norway currently expects its own greenhouse gas levels to be about the same in 15 years, so will meet its 40 percent reduction goal by paying for curbs abroad…
“Carbon trading can speed up the global transition away from a fossil economy,” said Jens Froelich Holte, a political adviser at the Norwegian ministry for climate and environment.“Trade creates benefits and this is as true for carbon as it is for other commodities,” he wrote in an e-mail Feb. 16…
Norway’s plan may boost EU carbon prices, which fell 81 percent since 2008, said Tim Yeo, chairman of the U.K. parliament’s energy and climate change committee. Higher prices will in turn influence investment decisions, he said by phone Feb. 25…
***Norway, which is not an EU member, is the bloc’s second-biggest oil and gas supplier, and participates in Europe’s carbon market for certain industries including oil and natural gas production. Norway’s emissions from those industries rose 80 percent since 1990, with the total from all uses up 4.6 percent.
By buying from Europe, Norway leaves less space for others in the bloc to emit, Yeo said…
Trading alone won’t save the climate, according to environment groups. Over-reliance on carbon markets “is more than lazy, it’s counterproductive to the basic task of cutting emissions,” said Rasmus Hansson, the only Green Party member of parliament in Norway…
The global climate agreement should allow cuts under a commitment by one country or group of countries “to be claimed towards the commitment of another,” the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Feb. 25 in a statement outlining its preferences…
New environmental rules may spur U.S. states to introduce cap-and-trade policies to protect the market share of their power industries from incursions by neighbors, according to a report published last week by Resources for the Future, an environment policy think tank in Washington…
If other countries choose not to trade, they will either adopt weaker climate targets or pay more to meet their goals, Daniel Rossetto, director of Climate Mundial, which advises on carbon trading, said Feb. 20 by phone from Maputo, Mozambique.
Norway’s plan “throws down the gauntlet to every other nation,” he said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-12/norway-bets-pollution-abroad-an-easier-battle-carbon-climate
14 April: Redd-Monitor: Chris Lang: Norway hands over US$80 million to increase deforestation in Guyana
Norway has transferred US$80 million to the Inter-American Development Bank as part of the Norway-Guyana US$250 million REDD deal. Perhaps surprisingly, if Guyana spends the money it will involve the destruction of a large area of rainforest.
The money is part-funding for the 165 MW Amaila Falls hydropower dam, deep in Guyana’s forest…
Norad clearly needs to take a closer look at the Amaila Falls project. The reservoir will flood an area of more than 2,000 hectares of forest. But more serious in terms of the impact on people and forests is the construction of a new access road that will open up previously remote forest…
The access road will lead to increased logging and mining with serious impacts for the indigenous Patamona people who live in the area. In June 2014, the Amerindian Peoples’ Association and the Forest Peoples Programme produced a report looking at the treatment of indigenous peoples’ rights under Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy…
Allegations of corruption surround the project. The price tag of the dam has rocketed from US$325 million in its early stages to US$915 million. It would be Guyana’s most expensive project ever.
The company with the contract to build the hydropower plant, the access road and transmission lines is China Railway First Group. In October 2014, Norway’s Council on Ethics recommended the exclusion of China Railway Group from investments by Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global “due to an unacceptable risk that the company is involved in gross corruption”. China Railway First Group is a subsidiary of China Railway Group.
http://www.redd-monitor.org/2015/04/14/norway-hands-over-us80-million-to-increase-deforestation-in-guyana/
link to the following from Redd-Monitor homepage:
16 April: Redd-Monitor: Chris Lang: Everybody knows how not to cut down trees, so why is REDD so difficult to implement?
Since 2009, CIFOR has been carrying out research into 23 REDD projects around the world, as part of its Global Comparative Study on REDD+. Three years into the research, CIFOR realised that REDD was “barely moving ahead”, as William Sunderlin, principal scientist at CIFOR, puts it…
VIDEO: In his presentation, Sunderlin summarises the results of the survey as follows:
“There is serious ground for concern about how and whether the REDD concept can persist and evolve.”…
“REDD is simply unable in most cases to pay the opportunity costs of forest land conversion.”…
TRANSCRIPT: William Sunderlin on the challenge of establishing REDD+ on the ground
CIFOR, 15 April 2015
In 2007, after decades of failure in various approaches to stopping deforestation and forest degradation, there was much excitement about REDD. Implicitly it held a lot of promise.
***As the Norwegian prime minister at the time said, “Everybody knows how not to cut down trees.”…
40
Lomborg’s appointment shows us what an ‘evil’ genius the Honorable Christopher Pyne is. The Facebook fascists go mad.
50
Yes, but it does give us a useful list of names, for further reference.
70
Any mention of the $100 million former PM Gillard granted to the University of South Australia in Adelaide in return for an honorary doctorate? Or the $300 million she granted to a UN education fund where she is now a board member?
120
Unfortunately, any word against Gillard makes you a misogynist, and that’s the end of the argument.
No one can say that Gillard and her Labor minions were stupid, they certainly knew exactly how to manipulate the media, and their supporters to effectively
silencedrown out any opposition. A lot of fanatical Labor drones go on about Tony Abbott and his religious beliefs, and how they will destroy Australia, yet Kevin Rudd was (is) equally devout – apparently Labor supporters have no problems with that…20
In 2006 KRudd was interviewed on ABC Compass, as was PM Howard and other political party leaders. KRudd said that he was a “Christian Socialist” and his hero was a German (deceased) Catholic Priest Socialist. PM Blair of the UK is also a Christian Socialist.
In classic Union Labor denial and deceit KRudd later called himself a Fiscal Conservative.
Gillard also denied her past, founder of the Australian Socialist Forum. Later merged with The Fabian Society when she had her sight on deputy leadership of Union Labor.
30
Her ridiculous speech was written by imported spin doctor John McT who rehearsed it with JEG before she delivered it in Parliament at the wrong time, when she was defending Peter Slipper who was accused of badly treating a male employee from his office staff. McT was the spin doctor for UK Labour who used the same tactic against the opposition leader there. He also branded PM Tony Blair an education PM while the standards of UK education crashed. Gillard was given the same brand.
The feminists applauded JEG for speaking out, but I doubt that they were aware that her political theatre spin was man created.
40
From one of the out-raged “Barefaced political bias and taking the public for idiots”.
I wonder if they ever look in a mirror?
10
While the leftists rage about the $4 million granted to the University of Western Australia, ask them about the hundreds of millions of dollars, probably close to one billion dollars or more since Federation, that the Australian Labor Party has granted to their union movement comrades every time Labor is in government, federal and state.
In a book written in the 1990s, I cannot remember the title, author and former senior Commonwealth Government of Australia finance department executive during the Labor years 1983-1996, Dr.Des Moore wrote that Labor had “laundered” close to one hundred million dollars of taxpayer’s monies via grants to unions that were mostly returned to the ALP as direct donations or election campaign funding/advertising.
Apparently a dodgy but legal method of transferring our money to unions. The unions apply for the grants and the infamous rubber stamp approves them.
During the Keating Labor years there was a union picket line blocking entry to a pulp mill in Burnie, Tasmania. On talk back radio I listened to a man who was preparing an entertainment street theatre for the workers on picket duty, he referred to having received a “quick response arts grant” from the minister responsible. To add to the incredible story he also admitted that his theatre group was formed at the New South Wales Government Chullora Railway Workshops, but when the Coalition closed it down in favour of putting the railway work out to tender to private enterprise the group moved to South Australia to another government location.
By the way, during the 1980s executives from the Chullora Workshops told a gathering of manufacturing business managers from the Bankstown District that the absenteeism at their union dominated workplace was sixty percent per day.
Solidarity Forever!
60
In the early ’80’s I had a chap working for me who had come out from Poland and was immediately employed at NSW Railways. He didn’t speak english, and the only duties he was assigned was taking the numbered disc off the nail on one board and putting it on another (to indicte he was on duty). Reverse procedure at knock-off. He got so bored that after 3 weeks he used to go back to the boarding house and watch daytime TV to improve his english.
Come Xmas Eve everyone seemed to be on duty, but they disappeared to the pub, leaving him alone. An Inspector arrived and asked “where are the boys?’ Ted started to say they were around somewhere when the Inspector said ” I know they’re at the pub, but which one”. When told off he went to join them.
There was a furniture business run out of the Railway’s Carpentry shop. Guess who supplied the delivery trucks? Hint: they were the same ones that delivered the old(?) sleepers for landscaping. (The main operator was annoyed when the NSWR set a limit of 800 sleepers per employee per year; he had to buy their quota from hundreds of “workers”).
I knew a chap working for the NSWR who changed position to Campbelltown, mainly because of a rather complicated private life*. He reasoned that Campbelltown was Country but their Inspectors never came there, and obviously neither did the City ones. He claimed to work as hard as anyone there – about half an hour a day. He made a lot of phone calls via the railway phones.
* not certain of details but his ex-wife was shacked up with some thug who was waiting for his brother to finish his prison term, so they could ‘deal with him’ for living with the brother’s ex-girlfriend.
40
A farmer and member of the Country Party (now Nationals) and local mates in Cootamundra, New South Wales (farms in that area) placed the railway depot under surveillance in the 1970s. They discovered that employees used government diesel fuel, had private vehicles serviced at government expense and generally treated the depot as their supplier of goods and services. The accounting estimate was $2 million a year of corruption, stealing of taxpayer monies. All railway employees had to be members of the union.
Having observed the corruption over 40 plus years of working, not a union member, 25 years of senior management reporting to a public company board and shareholders, I find it hard to accept that our nation has been raided by corrupt leftists. And that now the ABC/SBS/MSM all but ignore the Royal Commission into trade union governance and corruption. And that Union Labor Greens & Other Senators voted against government legislation to make trade unions accountable in line with public companies.
And that the Senate of many members who are there because of preference deals, primary votes less than 10 per cent, equal number of Senate seats regardless of population of states, are able to block government legislation.
40
Yes & that was only the ones who didn’t sign on.
A mate, who worked there as a fitter & turner, in the steam workshop, some years after steam was eliminated, told me of another trick. So many were getting injured, clocking on for the day at the workshop, then climbing the high fence into a certain cement pipe factory for the day on piece work, they built a gate into the fence. Can’t have the “workers” getting hurt now can we.
He thought that was wrong, so he built a complete racing motorbike in the workshop. Everything, including all engine gearbox parts & housings were cast, machined, & even forged at our expense.
The only things he had to buy were the tyres. The purchasing officer involved reckoned that even railway auditors might baulk a motorcycle racing tyres ordered by the steam workshop.
40
Sounds like the Australian Submarine Corporation, where a former chief had various pieces of equipment manufactured by the employees, using materials paid for by taxpayers. Feeding troughs (ironically?), and an exhaust system for a motor boat, at the very least – not to mention a room adjoining his office which was refurbished to store and display maps…
30
The production of batteries for the submarines is a micro story, expanded copper mesh, alternative suppliers not welcome, BHP Group controlled supplies of metals. Union approved, of course.
20
My folks run the caravan park at Cervantes. You should drop in some time, mum’s a like mind.
60
Tony Abbott gets a bagging for knockin back a beer.I’ll be blowed! Was he singing “onward Christian soldiers” at the time? He’ll need some drug and alcohol counselling for sure!
20
NOAA makes the past cooler with inappropriate adjustments, which is apparently the way to go when stuck with a ‘hiatus’.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01b8d10527b3970c-pi
30
Incredible!
Where did this come from?
20
http://www.c3headlines.com/2015/04/how-to-make-the-world-hotter-noaa-global-warming-fabricates.html
20
James Hansen showed us back in 1990 that USA temperatures had in fact fallen: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/
31
el gordo & PeterC
Yes that is incredible but also look at this from Real Science
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/04/19/russia-sells-missiles-to-iran-kerry-heads-to-the-arctic/
Scroll to near the bottom of the thread and look at the graphic for Reykjavik data manipulation
20
I have been thinking about Clouds. Are clouds part of the Greenhouse effect?
Any ideas.
More from me next Weekend Unthreaded.
10
Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas.
30
Thanks el gordo,
Are Clouds gas? Lots of people seem to treat clouds the same as water vapour.
20
A quick google suggests water vapor is an invisible gas, whereas clouds are water droplets.
20
The biggest solar farm in the southern hemisphere, but at what cost (financial, agricultural…)? 250 hectares (~617 acres) no less…
How is this significant for Nyngan? Did it provide income for locals? Will it provide ongoing work…? No mention of that either…
On another matter, France is having problems with its EPR at Flamanville in Normandy. The French nuclear power sector was arguably the world-leader in tis area at one time, but now, it claims that it is slipping badly, from a technological standpoint, as well as an economic one, although I don’t think anyone ever claimed nuclear power is dirt cheap…
30
Transport of the solar panels and other materials was awarded to a local (Narromine) transport business however the Sun does not shine at night in the Nyngan district and there are many cloudy days every year. The question is: would shareholders have invested if electricity prices were equal to coal fired power station pricing, in other word with no taxpayer subsidies, so called renewable energy surcharge tax.
40
Dennis,
Why doesn’t the sun shine at night?
Is there a problem with the sun’s trajectory?
Something has gone drastically wrong.
30
I reckon (wink) that the answer could be given at the Rabbit Trap Hotel in Albert New South Wales, around Peak Hill, Dubbo and Narromine.
20
I’ve been everywhere man (except Albert).
20
Can anyone of the electrical engineers who visit this site answer a few simple questions?
What happens if the grid supplying our power goes out of balance?
If more power goes into the grid than is taken out without remedial action, do the transformers and other equipment fry due to a high voltage surge?
On the other hand if power in drops without appropriate load shedding does the system collapse or do we just experience brownouts or blackouts?
It seems to me that with increasing unreliable wind and solar power being added and with the shut down on reliable conventional power (coal, gas, hydro if the green had their way), and the best available long term power source (nuclear, which is not likely to be around in Australia for decades while the Helen Caldicotts and greens of this world have so much influence) the probability of the above scenarios will become increasingly likely in the not too distant future.
Do we really have to go down that road before the man in the street recognises that they have been let down badly by the politicians, the media and unethical “scientists” with their noses deeply into the taxpayer funded trough?
40
The supply frequency drops as load rises and rises as load falls. That frequency is related to speed of rotation of the generators. Someone described it very well recently as like trying to keep your car going at exactly the same speed as you drive along going up & down hills. You need to keep adjusting your foot on the gas.
It’s actually very unlikely that the grid will collapse. There are trips that will operate automatically to disconnect generators when the supply rises above about 52 Hz.
Dropping below about 48.8 Hz. you’ll start getting to get towns blacking out, from being disconnected to protect the generators.
There are however generators kept spinning ready & contracted to connect automatically when the frequency drops below certain levels.
Nice explanation here:-
A grid failure is more likely to result from failure of some of the many automatic protection mechanisms to operate or bad planning or unforeseen equipment failure scenarios .
20
18 April: UK Telegraph: Christopher Booker: Will Welsh eels scupper the craziest ‘green’ project ever?
The absurd Swansea tidal lagoon would cost a fortune to build and would produce the most expensive electricity in the world
If you wanted a single example of how far all those who aspire to govern us after this election can lose any touch with reality, a good place to begin might be page 56 of the Conservative manifesto. Here, in a section on “Energy”, we are told how the Coalition Government has “unlocked £59 billion of investment” to produce “low carbon” electricity to meet our commitments under Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act. All the projects listed are, of course, hugely subsidised, to produce power costing us all twice or three times as much as that from conventional power stations. But there at the end is a mention of “the Swansea tidal lagoon”.
I admit that, until recently, I had no more idea what this was about than 99 per cent of the population. But I was struck by the remarkable array of backers this scheme has attracted, from the Prudential insurance company and Ed Davey, our Lib Dem Energy and Climate Change Secretary, to George Osborne in his recent Budget speech, and the BBC, which has been giving it excitable puffs…
TLP insists that its £1 billion scheme will only work if it is allowed to charge for its electricity at 330 per cent of the normal wholesale price of £50 per megawatt hour (MWh). This would give it a subsidy of £118 per MWh, even more than that for offshore wind, making it easily the most expensive electricity in the world.
But even more interesting is how much electricity we would be getting for our money..READ ON
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11547082/Will-Welsh-eels-scupper-the-craziest-green-project-ever.html
20
We Aussies are catching up in the race to The Kingdom of Stupidity.
We are transplanting kelp to near Tasmania to see how it will cope with climate change (ABC News web site tonight).
Stay tuned to the ABC for the next super, duper Doozy.
40
Any thoughts on TCR and ECS?
I understand TCR is Transient Climate Response, and ECS is Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity. The former is, supposedly, how CO2 affects temperature in the short term, and the latter is, supposedly “what happens after all processes in the system have stabilized” (quote from Gavin Schmidt on Twitter, March 23rd).
AFAIK, there is no transient climate response: that is, CO2 is not the control knob, as Tom Nelson likes to say.
Moreover, how do we know if “all processes” stabilize, let alone whether “all processes in the system have stabilized”? How do we know that we even know most, let alone all, of the processes, let alone what they do and how they interact, let alone when they’ve stabilized? Might it not be a fundamental misunderstanding, perhaps underlying the problems with GCMs, that “all processes in the system” ever actually stabilize? How do we know that what is happening with climate right now is not the lack of stabilization of all processes that started 1,500 years ago? Or, if ECS is a reference merely to theoretical chemical processes and physical reactions, among gases and radiation, how do we know that’s what matters most?
I’d appreciate any thoughts or references. Thanks.
20
@ELC: Timothy Casey’s “Shattered Greenhouse” doesn’t cover weasel-word terminology such as TCR & ECS specifically, but it is a good explanation of how all this mess occurred in the first place.
http://greenhouse.geologist-1011.net/
30
Thanks.
00
Climate Activist Ben Affleck caught trying to alter history.
No surprises here.
30
I have been watching to see if any reporting on Judith Curry’s testimony would be done by the main stream media. Nope. Nothing. Not a peep. Not on cable, air, or in the Sunday papers. Not even in criticism. They don’t want people to hear the truth. It is clearly willful dereliction on the part of journalism.
60
Let me add: There are several opinion articles on climate change in the Sunday papers, even one that claimed skeptical views were modern day Lysenkoism. But nothing about Dr Curry’s listing of the scientific facts before the Congress of the United States.
50
8 April: National Center for Science Education: Climate Bumper Sticker Contest!
The goal: to spread the word about climate change, climate change denial, and/or the need for climate science education.
(“Climate change is real,” “Teach climate change,” “My other car is a hockey stick” … yeah, we’ve already thought of those. Keep thinking!)
Send your entries to [email protected]…
Rules & regulations:
Be original. Run a Google search and make sure your slogan hasn’t been used or overused…
Winners will receive one of these prizes: 1) a signed copy of Michael Mann’s The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars…etc
•Submissions will be accepted between April 8, 2015, and May 31, 2015.
http://ncse.com/climate/climate-bumper-sticker-contest
NCSE Advisory Council
includes:
Bill McKibben, 350.org
James Hansen
Bill Nye
Michael E. Mann – Penn State Uni
http://ncse.com/about/supporters
from ABOUT NCSE: What does NCSE do?
The National Center for Science Education, founded in 1981, engages in a number of activities advancing two primary goals: improving and supporting education in evolution, climate change, and the nature of science, and increasing public understanding of these subjects. This work is supported primarily by membership contributions, with some additional assistance from private foundation grants. NCSE is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
10
Some reading on Roundup
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/04/18/roundup-ready-perhaps-for-population-reduction/
in which you’ll find an interesting definition of “inert ingredient”
and then to “GMO or not”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/vitamin-a/
30
Ah, I love Australia! Also Brazil and Canada. I guess I am an ABC kind of guy
10
if the Guardian ruled the world!
19 April: Guardian: Damian Carrington: Carbon reserves held by top fossil fuel companies soar
Top 200 firms including Gazprom, ExxonMobil, BP and Anglo American hold four to five times more fossil fuels in existing reserves than can be safely burned
The carbon locked up in coal, oil and gas reserves owned by the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies has swollen by 10% in the last five years, despite warnings from the World Bank and others that most existing reserves cannot safely be burned.
The top 200 publicly traded coal, oil and gas companies now hold 555 gigatonnes of CO2 in their fuel reserves, boosted by their continuing efforts to find and develop new reserves. That figure alone is close to the total amount the world could ever emit while keeping global warming below the danger limit of 2C.
Far more fossil fuels – about 2650GT – are held by state-owned companies, meaning that in total there are four to five times more fossil fuels in existing reserves than can be safely burned…
The 200 companies, which still spend billions a year searching for new reserves, are the focus of a fast-growing divestment campaign, backed by the UN, which is persuading investors to sell off their fossil fuel shares…
The FFI data shows that the top 10 coal companies alone own over half the carbon in the list, while the top 10 oil and gas companies own two-thirds of the carbon in those fuels…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/19/carbon-reserves-held-by-top-fossil-fuel-companies-soar
COMMENT by konnel: There’s an error in the sub-heading, mixes up the total reserves with the reserves of the top 200.
The table listing the companies by reserves really does show the futility of the Guardian’s campaign. The six super-majors – Exxon, BP, Shell, Conoco, Total & Chevron – which are the headline target for the divestment campaign hold a paltry 30Gt of the 2,650Gt total, or 1.13%.
It is at least acknowledged that the vast majority of reserves are held by state actors and not public companies but even still the article over-estimates the role of publicly listed companies as it includes mostly state owned companies like Rosneft, Gazprom and Petrobras. These three state controlled companies hold more than twice the reserves of all the super-majors.
The only possible way of keeping a significant proportion of the 2,650Gts of reserves in the ground is to make nuclear energy so cheap that it’s not worthwhile exploiting fossil fuels. Notions that countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela can be convinced to not exploit their natural resources are simply fanciful.
COMMENT by jonbryce: Rosneft and Gazprom are listed on the London Stock Exchange. Petrobras is listed on the Berlin Stock Exchange. They may be majority government owned, but you can still invest in them.
10
check the photo illustration, while having a laugh at this Fairfax EXCLUSIVE:
20 April: SMH: China and other big emitters challenge Australia over its climate change policies
by Adam Morton and Tom Arup
EXCLUSIVE
The world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, including China and the US, have questioned the credibility of Australia’s climate change targets and “direct action” policy in a list of queries to the Abbott government…
The questions have been lodged with the United Nations for Australia to answer in the lead-up to the December climate summit in Paris, where the world is supposed to sign a global deal to combat climate change.
It comes as Australia is facing questions in diplomatic circles for not sending a minister or its chief climate change negotiator to a meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in Washington DC, starting on Sunday.
To be opened by US Secretary of State John Kerry, the forum is meant to bring together ministerial representatives from 17 major countries in a bid to accelerate work on a climate deal. Australia is being represented by environment department head Gordon de Brouwer…
The international scrutiny comes as the government is increasingly facing claims at home that it is not serious about climate change…
***Mr Jackson (Erwin Jackson, deputy chief executive of the Climate Institute and a long-time observer of climate negotiations) said analysts have found that China’s actions to date were likely to deliver the biggest policy-driven cut in emissions ever seen…
“China can do more, but is doing far more than Australia by a country mile at the moment,” he said.
“China is introducing carbon pricing while the Australian government tearing up legislation. China is increasing renewable energy targets while the Australian government is reducing it.”
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/china-and-other-big-emitters-challenge-australia-over-its-climate-change-policies-20150419-1mnqt3.html
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“Governments in China and India want to shift away from coal”????
simply repeating this meme won’t make it so, WSJ:
19 April: WSJ: Helen Thomas: European Utilities Can’t Rely on Hot Air
Efforts to overhaul Europe’s carbon market are glimmer of hope
Governments in China and India want to shift away from coal to less-polluting energy sources…
Meanwhile, electricity demand looks moribund. Europe’s focus on efficiency is undimmed. Combined with rising renewables capacity, that means economic growth may not translate into greater power consumption. In the past few years, notes SocGen, rising economic output per capita hasn’t resulted in higher energy demand per capita.
One faint hope surrounds Europe’s carbon market. Oversupply of carbon allowances means prices in the continent’s cap-and-trade system are below €7 a metric ton, far too low to induce switching to cleaner energy sources. Hence the current debate over a stabilization plan to remove excess allowances.
That could boost carbon prices, another component of power prices. But the politics in Brussels looks fraught, balancing environmental concerns with higher energy prices while reconciling the desire of countries like Germany to act quickly with concerns of coal-dependent nations like Poland. Already, early implementation looks unlikely, with any plan slated for 2021.
Only a big move in carbon prices would help utilities anyway. The rule of thumb is that a €1 move in carbon prices adds €0.6 to €0.8 to power prices, according to Roland Vetter at CF Energy Partners. To make a meaningful earnings contribution, carbon prices would have to double, he argues…
http://www.wsj.com/articles/european-utilities-cant-rely-on-hot-air-1429468546
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all that hydro, & NZ still can’t meet its target??? solution, buy some carbon offsets!
Fairfax needs to get onto this story fast and advise China & the US to complain to the UN so they can write another EXCLUSIVE, attacking the NZ Govt!
20 April: IBTimes: Reissa Su: New Zealand Greenhouse Gas Emissions Still Above 2020 Levels Ahead Of Paris Talks
The net greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand have soared 42 percent with gross emissions, making the country the fifth highest per capita among 40 developed nations. The figures were recently released based on the new greenhouse gas inventory of the Ministry for the Environment.
The data has raised doubts about the government’s ability to reach its emissions reduction target of five percent from 1990 levels by 2020…
***To further help it reach its goal, New Zealand will need to delve into international markets for carbon offsets, reports Stuff…
(New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister Tim) Groser, who left for Washington last April 15 for a meeting on climate change, will be an observer at a meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate Change…
http://au.ibtimes.com/new-zealand-greenhouse-gas-emissions-still-above-2020-levels-ahead-paris-talks-1440749
16 April: Stuff NZ: Michael Daly: NZ greenhouse gas levels ease but remain well above 2020 target levels
To get there though, it is expected to have to delve into international markets for carbon offsets…
While participation in international carbon markets and the planting of forests to remove carbon dioxide would help New Zealand reach its 2020 target, measures would also include domestic emissions reductions, MfE said. A fourth contributor to the target would be surplus units from the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period from 2008 to 2012.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/67812544/nz-greenhouse-gas-levels-ease-but-remain-well-above-2020-target-levels
let’s just call the whole CAGW thing off and get Govts to move on to the more important things in life
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FINAGLE’S LAWS
LAW OF EXPERIMENT
First law—if anything can go wrong with an experiment or test, it will.
Second law–everything goes wrong at once.
Third law—experiments must be reproducible. They should all fail in the same way.
Fourth law–build no mechanism simply if a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful.
Fifth law—no matter how an experiment or test proceeds, someone will believe it happened according to his pet theory.
Corollary one–no matter what the result is, someone will misinterpret it.
Corollary two–no matter what results are anticipated, someone will be willing to fake them.
LAW OF MATHEMATICS
First law—in any collection of data, the figures that are obviously correct beyond all need of checking contain the errors.
Corollary one–no one whom you ask for help will see the errors.
Corollary two–everyone who stops by with unsought advice will see it immediately.
Second law–if, in any problem, you find yourself doing a transfinite amount of work, the answer can be obtained by inspection.
Corollary one–if inspection fails to yield results, judicious application of one of the methods outlined in the text following may be in order.
1. Finagle’s constant is used as a multiplier of the zero order term.
2. The main body of these laws was formulated during the time finagle was trying to prove his fundamental discovery that if a string has one end, it has another.
3. Finagle’s constant may be characterized as changing the universe to fit the equation.
4. The bougerre factor is characterized as changing the equation to fit the universe. Named after bougerre, a French professor of mathematics, the more common designation, due to language difficulty, is “buggers”.
5. The diddle coefficient is characterized as changing things so that the equation and the universe appear to fit without requiring any change in either.
6. Dr. Finagle was, actually, a German by the name of von nagle who moved to Ireland where his associates misunderstood the pronoun ciation of his name.
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Very good! 😉
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Are there any skeptics in Hawaii?
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Another east coast low developing, with the promise of soaking rain.
There has been an inordinate number of ECL lately and I was wondering if this could be a regional cooling signal.
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Four Corners investigation into Academic Deception. Are academics being coerced into giving passes to overseas students for the “money”. Pity they didn’t do the same investigation into “CAGW” research!,
I see strange Parallels, or is it just me?
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I hear negotiations are progressing for Owen Wilson to play Bjorn Lomborg in ‘Behind Enemy Lines V: Down on Green’… Perhaps they could entice Kevin ‘Bloody’ Wilson to play Tim Flannery….?
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Hi Jo,
Hope you keep an eye on Notrickszone over the weekend
Pierre posted a warning the other day with advance notice of a union demonstration against Renewable Energy Targets in Germany scheduled for Saturday 25th? Given submissions due on ours soon, might focus some attention.
Wir Weren Uns
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Hey,
just how did we all miss this?
This is from Australia’s own ABC.
No wonder this program died without trace.
Could this be the answer to that infamous 20 20 video.
Link to video clip
This was just so funny.
Tony.
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Thank Tony.One million thumbs up for that
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More likely to be despatched from being hit by a rotating blade or being dropped from one of the huge towers now dotting the landscape ?
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news update from California: http://blogs.kqed.org/science/2015/03/31/record-low-sierra-snowpack-will-drive-home-drought-impacts/
http://www.weatherwest.com/archives/author/thunder
https://twitter.com/Weather_West
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May I draw EVERYONE’S attention to the important comment ..
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CONVECTION BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK.
02
Doug, What happen to the tropospheric hotspot, over the tropics ?
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Hi jo,
Election debate on environment and climate change
Andrew Neil and the BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin were joined by leading politicians to debate climate change, energy prices and the countryside, in the first of a series of Daily Politics election debates.
The panel consisted of Labour’s Caroline Flint, Green Andrew Cooper, UKIP’s Roger Helmer. Lib Dem Ed Davey and Conservative Matt Hancock.
The five-strong panel began by each making a statement setting out their party’s energy and climate change policies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWBMorc5aLU or
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b05s4tgp/daily-politics-2015-election-debates-environment-and-climate-change
Watch how it descended into a bit of an ideological shouting match but nonetheless UKIP Roger Helmer stood firm by his convictions and won through. A true fighter I believe for cheap, reliable and plentiful fossil fuel energy.
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