Not a Fred so Rod will have to do. This morning I had a little twinge of pleasure when my rating jumped the score up a notch. Just now I saw it go from 0 to 10, but no doubt the first troll will bring it back down.
Now to watch The Antiques Road Show. We really enjoyed the one time we attended one, at Fountains Abbey. We had no valuable goodies to discover though 🙁
Hi Annie – I wonder if the Antiques Road Show would like 500 small bayonet candle light globes?
Seriously though, Antiques Road Show is about the only TV show (apart from from Bargain Hunt) that my wife will watch.
I’m sorry you still seem to have those small light bulbs JoKaH. Right type, wrong size for our stuff, very disappointing. They might become antiques if you hold onto them long enough! I didn’t follow up one suggestion re. pictures of an ancestor and his daughter…he ended up being featured in a Bolleywood film; a highly innaccurate story (as usual for any ‘dramatisation’). The stuff is with us in Aus. now.
Judging by the one time we attended The Antiques Road Show this is something for which the BBC deserve praise. It is very well run. The people there queue very patiently and enjoy each other’s company and chat. It is a long session for the antique experts, camera crews and technicians but the atmosphere is wonderful.
The US-EPA, politicians, presstitutes and activists pretending to be journalists regularly conflate different types of tailpipe emissions. They wouldn’t do it if they were trying to inform the public. Instead they only try to persuade it.
Steve Milloy addressed the fanatic tailpipe sniffers in this article on Breitbart.
MIT researchers are claiming that Volkswagen’s diesel emissions shenanigans have killed 60 unidentified Americans. They further claim that unless VW fixes the emissions problem by the end of 2016, another 130 unidentified people will bite the dust. This is all nonsense.
…
It is entirely possible that the practical emissions of vehicles haven’t been reduced substantially at all since the mid 1990′s; when Euro 3 was being drafted. The objective has been CO2-reduction.
…
And that isn’t working out either; heavier vehicles necessitated by technologies to comply with new regulations; and lots of optional extras (not included in test cycle vehicles) offered effectively as standard; as only the “pov-pack” level of cars with minimal equipment, skinny tyres, etc. are tested for compliance.
There’s a very long reading list at the end; only the “top half” or so of the material used. The list is in no particular order as even categorising it is likely to introduce bias.
Thanks, but seriously, there’s been quite a change this year with the way much of the local wildlife has been behaving. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, but it’s been different.
err bird behaviour is heavily influence by their immediate surroundings, with weather, weather events and seasonal changes being major factors that they need to respond to on different time scales. Where I am we have had periods of dry interspersed with strong storms. This has caused birds to fail at nesting for various reasons and has driven late season mating behaviour which is actually going quite well. Some birds, espeially smaller birds, fledged their young (who are good at hiding from storms) and were met with a bonanza of food that has enhanced their survival.
Didn’t you know that wild animals respond to such things?
I have a feeling ours are making the most of what warm weather there is, preparing for a cold onslaught. Mind you, if global warming means more wonderful wildlife of all descriptions thriving and bringing colour to an increasinly dull world, then bring it on. I’d rather see this than Penguins hobbling around.
It’s been a veritable bowerbird orgy in my backyard for most of spring and early summer. Every time I walked out the back door I caught them at it. I have a near permanent mob of satin bowerbirds with 1 dominant male, some sub-adult males and a heap of females.
The big male built his bower twice this mating season after a rival wrecked it on him in the middle of breeding. He decorates it with my clothes pegs plus flowers and blue plastic trinkets. I went through 50 pegs this spring/summer between my male and his rivals in the vicinity, which I don’t begrudge them.
He used to have about 4 female admirers at a time watching his buzzing, whirring and wing-display antics. At one stage I heard him break into a kookaburra impression to impress the girls.
Once the old male had finished with the bower it fell into disrepair for a couple of weeks until a young male claimed it and rebuilt it. His effort looked as if it was built by the Dodgy Brothers – lop-sided and misaligned. Obviously his first effort. He lucked out with the ladies. I’ve been fortunate to have 3 different bowers built in my backyard in the last few years.
Some other migratory species such as koels and cuckoos were absent this summer because we had an early dry period and a lot of trees failed to set the fruit the birds normally feed on. Apart from that it is business as usual. No global warming signature evident in their behaviour. I’m in the mid Hunter Valley.
I nearly rammed a koel on a backroad in Gippsland near Buchan. Flew right in front of my car and I just braked enough for it to survive.
At least 200km. south of where they are supposed to live. Must have been due to global warming. It was in 1989.
89 and 90 were super wet years up here. There were bogged ducks everywhere if I recall rightly. Your koel was probably just looking for a bit of dry land to sit on. Global normalling.
Is that your own blog Bemused? Those are great photos. We have all those birds in good numbers (after our fruit trees I guess) plus millions of those darned sulphur crested cockatoos!
The sulphur crested cockatoos are much worse than flying rats! We have black cockatoos, lots of magpies, blue wrens, robins, lorikeets, galahs, rosellas, crows, kookaburras; you name it, we seem to have it and they are all thriving. There are also snakes, wombats, possums, the odd kangaroo, flies by the million when they all came down from NSW recently; happily fewer now but more mossies since the rain. We also have ants of all sizes; an aquaintence had a bad allergic reaction to one of the tiny one;, bull ants, jumping jack ants (nasty little horrors), and spiders galore including numerous huge huntsmen recently. My goodness, why ever did we move back to Australia?!
Yes it is. Thankfully we don’t get the Cockatoos here, but we do get Black Cockatoos and Gang Gangs. Though they don’t hang around for all that long, just enough to make a huge mess.
I once lived on a farm about 40K out of Canberra. One summer morning I woke up to the distinct crackling of a grass fire, there was lots of long dry grass around my little humpy. I ran out in a panic only to find a flock of Gang Gangs all breaking open seeds on one of the trees…. was quite relieved.
The black cockatoos make a similar noise when they are raiding the hakeas; it’s not as bad as the racket when we mow around them; the nuts sound like stones!
We also have willy wagtails, blue wrens, crested pigeons, the occasional blackbird, sparrows and others yet to be identified. There is some sort of owl at night which sounds a bit like the northern hemisphere cuckoo! These are in addition to the others listed earlier. There is plenty of wildlife here, certainly not in trouble due to AGW or CC.
For the record, after much work to protect the crops, we have had some wonderful apples, some good to store. This is despite the dri-ish late winter/spring and early summer and no water in the dam for the garden. The apple trees, in particular, seem to have thrived, apart from a bit of bitter pit in a couple of varieties.
The North American waterfowl population is at an all time high since records have been kept. El Nino played havoc with the migration this season with many birds staying north of their usual wintering grounds. The populations of snow geese are so high that a spring season has been ordered. During this season there are no bag limits. Snow geese nest in the Arctic and the population is estimated to be several million.
13 Feb: Politico: Scalia’s death could change court on abortion, race, climate
Cases on the docket could alter American life on many issues.
(With contributions from Carol Eisenberg, Josh Gerstein, Alex Guillen, Brian Mahoney, Jason Millman and Nirvi Shah)
Justice Antonin Scalia’s death could change the course of history on the contentious social and legal issues pending before the Supreme Court this term, especially in closely divided cases where he was expected to serve as a lynchpin of a conservative majority…
Climate change
Obama’s Clean Power Plan could be in the hands of the D.C. Circuit Court.
One of Scalia’s last official acts as a justice was to deliver a large dent in Obama’s climate legacy, providing one of five votes to stay the Clean Power Plan, which regulates carbon emissions from power plants. The decision could set back implementation of the rule by years. A 4-4 ideological split on the Supreme Court raises the stakes for the more liberal D.C. Circuit’s eventual decision on the Clean Power Plan, though the high court would still have to lift its stay if the rule is upheld… http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/scalia-death-how-will-the-supreme-court-change-219256
14 Feb: Australian: Michael Asten: Climate change: CSIRO realigns after groupthink fails
(Michael Asten is a professor of geophysics at Monash University)
Cuts to the government-funded climate change program at the CSIRO coincide with a powerful critique of climate models by John Christy in a US congressional committee hearing.
While it is a matter for regret to see any research program truncated, and it is a difficult time for staff, redirection of CSIRO priorities into mitigation and adaptation is well justified…
It is my hope the new terms of reference for CSIRO’s contributions to climate change will include study and quantification of natural climate variability; if we can quantify these and use them for forward predictions, their value for planning mitigation measures is obvious… http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/climate-change-csiro-realigns-after-groupthink-fails/news-story/f5e57f67234a11f3c963abb508346dac
So 350 job secure public service scientists on 14% superannuation move from trying to prove something is actually happening to working out what to do about it? Solving “the greatest moral challenge of our time” (Keving Rudd, PM). I do hope they can fix it before retiring.
“I do hope they can fix it before retiring.”
TdeF, Identifying what it is they are going to “fix” would to me be a bigger problem.
That’ll probably see a few of them out to their well padded retirement.
I just don’t get it.
After all these years and hundreds of billions of dollars to “prove” man has set us on the road to global armagedon, they have nothing but alarmism to shout.
So now we are going to spend hundreds of billions to mitigate that alarmism?!
Madness, utter madness!
NO because whatever the weather problems turn out to be there is work to be done to help with people affected. Also being more aware of flood pains, natural systems etc is important.
You are confusing research with education. Being “more aware”, or making people “more aware” of the environment is hardly the role of the CSIRO. I learned about the impact of floods, droughts, and storms, etc on people, as part of geography at school (if I recall correctly). Whilst still at school, I also learned the basics of stochastic analysis, and how that can be applied to weather, rainfall, in particular. Thankfully I got out before schools turned into indoctrination centres for how terrible humans are, making children feel guilty about everything they do, and generally regressing to the point in time centuries ago where humans thought they were at the centre of everything and could control everything around them.
You also make no mention of various authorities which allow large scale housing developments to go ahead despite being located smack-bang in the middle of a flood plain – again, not something that the CSIRO needs to identify, as such things are…plainly evident…
Come back when you have some sort of legitimate case to make.
Exactly JM.
Like most of us here, we are not scientists but when these so called scientific experts tell us the reason for more of these “natural” disasters is global warming creating more of them, like most of us here, common sense kicks in.
I’m not a smart arse or ‘over educated” but commonsense tells you if you continue to place more people into the path of these natural occurrences, then you going to have more casualties.
A few years ago a dozen houses in my housing estate were affected by a Creek flooding at the bottom of the estate. Global warming or climate change if that doesn’t work for you, was the immediate culprit identified by a council community meeting.
Common sense kicked in and I checked with the local council. Over the last 100 years it’s flooded no less than a dozen times.
The last time being 5 years BEFORE the estate was built!
Yep. Well, that’s the thing about forward prediction. There’s nothing more uncertain – especially when it’s about forward predicting what will happen in the period ahead at some future point in time.
Backward prediction – now that’s an entirely different test of predictive ability.
13 Feb: Science Mag: Jon Cohen: Why fighting anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers often backfires
*For our full coverage of AAAS 2016, check out our meeting page. (LINK)
WASHINGTON, D.C.—If there’s a war on science, it’s not just one war. And branding people who disagree with you about vaccines, climate change, or genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as the enemy may be unwittingly fueling the conflicts. Those were some of the arguments made at a session here today at the annual meeting of AAAS (which publishes Science)…
In the case of GMO and climate change concerns, opponents often twist facts, stressed two presenters. Erik Conway, co-author of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, noted that there’s even a word (which he did not coin) for manufacturing of fake knowledge—“arnogenesis.” In the book, Conway and science historian Naomi Orestes(sic) contend that with climate change there was even a “Potemkin village” effect created by disbelievers who “replaced science with its opposite” because of their concerns that environmental regulations would harm the free market and damage important business interests. He said the Potemkin village creators exist “to pollute our knowledge of the world.”… http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-fighting-anti-vaxxers-and-climate-change-deniers-often-backfires
that is very funny. Do you have an explanation for this statement.
“What’s appalling is that Zika virus (ATCC® VR-84™) can be purchased from ATCC labs.”
Why is it appalling? Who do you think qualifies for purchasing permits and how do you think it gets studied if no one is allowed to trade it?
To Tony, not knowing whether Zika is a causative agent, it would be foolish not to examine whether any other correlations exist. We know that the virus has crossed the placenta and we know that the virus is endemic in mosquitoes in the region where the microcephaly cases have spiked, so it is a link worthy of study. On the other hand that doesn’t mean not looking elsewhere as the consequences of delaying until the virus is ruled out are great. Toxic chemicals are a common and able cause of birth deformities, abortions etc and their usage and persistence can be assessed. The environmentalist might be naive in their certainty and wishful thinking that evil companies did it, but there is good reason to look at such chemicals.
Oddly Rereke, and you also Gee Aye, I now also agree.
A few hours following links have given me a new perspective on this, so I apologise for jumping to conclusions based loosely around only part of the overall story.
The answer is don’t immediately oppose the view on every subject even if Yu disagree with them on many. Archives I’ll show that I’ve transgressed this but have also upheld it including with yourself.
Dave, that is a bit unhinged and unintelligible to me.
Sounds like it is about relative risk of chemicals versus viruses. Or something?
Can you reword that, but this time more succinct, please.
What was your main point?
It was my impression that the association of microcephaly with Zika was claimed first and the claim of chemical cause happened as a secondary reaction.
On any newsworthy event one always wonders whether the first reports are more reliable or less reliable than later reports. Probably there is no rule of thumb there, so to get an answer will require, as you say, work.
In the meantime, don’t sleep with anyone from the Caribbean.
Sadly this is very easy advice to follow.
this would be appropriate on jo’s previous thread, but most readers will be on this one, so here goes:
13 Feb: UK Daily Mail: Ellie Zolfagharifard: The silent sun: Eerie image revealed as solar activity remains the quietest it has been in more than a century – and some claims it could even trigger a mini ice age
We’ve had smallest number of sunspots in this cycle since Cycle 14
This cycle reached its maximum solar activity in February of 1906
Low solar activity can lead to extended periods of cooling, researchers say
‘The current level of activity of solar cycle 24 seems close to that of solar cycle number 5, which occurred beginning in May 1798 and ending in December 1810,’ added an analysis by Watts Up With That… http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3444633/What-happened-sun-Solar-activity-remains-quietest-century-trigger-mini-ice-age.html
I will take a small bit of credit since I wrote to the editor complaining about the ungracious summary published at the time of his death.
Lawrence Money replied and agreed that something else might be published as an obituary. Professor Peter Rudd (James Cook University) and Piers Larcombe ( Chief Sedimentary Scientist at RPS Metrocean consultancy) have done quite a good job at putting his scientific contribution in perspective.
an excellent obit and precisely what should have been written when Prof Carter died. thank you for any part you may have played in getting this published.
btw your url has a “k” at the end (htmlk) which prevents people from opening the link.
This is indeed an excellent article. Bob Carter was always a gentleman and a breath of fresh air in the CAGW “debate”, unlike the university that shunned him.
Another breath of fresh air has recently come from Michael Asten, a professor of geophysics at Monash University, who wrote an op-ed in The Australian last Friday (12 Feb). I wonder if his university will tolerate such expression of common sense, or whether he, too, will be ostracised.
13 Feb: National Post: Terrence Corcoran: Terence Corcoran: Another Ontario green energy blow-up
Debris from the exploding Ontario Liberal green energy rocket continues to land on the hapless citizens of the province. Gas plant scandals, soaring power rates, declining electricity output, massive subsidies to money-losing wind and solar, non-stop bafflegab from government ministers: when will it stop? Not now, and maybe never.
Details of the latest meteorite-sized chunk of the Dalton McGuinty/Kathleen Wynne green power blow-up are on display at the blog of energy consultant Tom Adams, who formerly served on the Ontario Independent Electricity Market Operator board of directors and the Ontario Centre for Excellence for Energy board of management
Adams picks up a story that made brief headlines in late 2012 when Windstream Energy, a U.S. company, filed a NAFTA complaint claiming $475 million in damages…READ ALL http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/terence-corcoran-another-ontario-green-energy-blow-up
14 Feb: West Australian: Paul Murray: Power party must end
Getting paid for doing nothing sounds like a dream.
But that’s the luxury successive State Governments have been providing for a group of big WA companies to the tune of more than $60 million a year.
The payments are for the agreement of these big power users to either switch off or scale back their electricity consumption when peak demand creates problems in the South-West network.
It was started by the Carpenter Labor Government back in 2006 when WA’s rapid growth meant the power utilities were struggling to meet demand and brownouts were occurring, but these days we have more than 1000MW excess capacity…
Interestingly enough, DSM was not even required this week when such still conditions meant the State’s biggest wind farm, Collgar, was producing virtually nothing from its 206MW capacity at some of the hottest periods… https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/30813253/paul-murray-says-the-power-party-must-end/
14 Feb: South China Morning Post: Eric Ng: China’s under-utilised ultra-high-voltage power lines no silver bullet to rid grid of bottlenecks
State Grid plans to plough some 600 billion yuan into UHV lines by 2020
The high-capacity UHV lines, more efficient and economic for long-distance transmission, are expected to cost state-owned State Grid Corporation more than 600 billion yuan (HK$711 billion) to build until 2020. But they’ve also turned out to be no panacea for the nation’s renewable power distribution bottlenecks…
Wind and solar farm operators’ hopes that the construction of UHV lines would bring significant relief to the distribution bottlenecks they face in sending power out from wind- and solar energy-rich but sparsely-populated northern regions have also been dashed.
Ip said on average only 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the transmission capacity of UHV lines could be used to send wind and solar power, since it was intermittent in nature and required the mixing of conventional electricity, like coal-fired power, whose output was more stable throughout the day.
He noted even the UHV line linking Hami in Xinjiang and Zhengzhou in Henan province, which sourced as much as 40 per cent of input from renewable energy, had suffered from low utilisation since it was commissioned in early 2014, and it was under repair and maintenance half of last year due to damage caused by huge load fluctuations. http://www.scmp.com/business/article/1912878/chinas-under-utilised-ultra-high-voltage-power-lines-no-silver-bullet-rid
Just experiencing a bit of the Green Utopian world (our boiler has packed in – in the middle of a Scottish winter). And being a cold windless day – we might soon get the full Utopian dream: a power cut!
I hope the latest claims of gravity wave detection are more conclusive than the previously well-publicised detection method which relied on analysis of the polarisation of the microwave background
Either way, the science is still not settled, and I look forward to seeing what eLISA will tell us
It’s true, my highly controversial statement was definitely worth a red thumb.
How dare I be excited, or positive about such research – I should be like all the followers of the AGW religion, and be unwaveringly negative and regressive about absolutely everything humans have done, or will do.
It only takes 1 look at the Skeptical Science website to realise that Werner Herzog speaks some sense
Hydro Tasmania was relying on BassLink and Yallourn coal generated electricty for 40% of its requirements due to depleted storages until winter. However, BassLink was damaged and since mid December has had to rely on its own stations. The cable was to be repaired by mid March, but is less certain as the fault has yet to be located.
On the 12th. December reserves were 3274 GWh or 22.4%; on the 8th. February they were 2636 GWh or 18.3%. As most people were on holiday demand would have been down a little so one can expect more demand over the next few months.
Looking at the lake levels over the past twelve months one finds they were very low; Lake Gordon was minus 40m. and the Great Lake minus 17m. Earlier levels are not known but the two big storages didn’t rise much over Winter with normal rainfall and it is doubtful if they will ever fill completely again.
Emergency measures include discussion with Bell Bay Aluminium to reduce consumption, the installation of 100Mw of diesel generators by the end of March, and another 100Mw by the end of April, if not sooner, and recommissioning the Tamar Valley Power station which has been done, plus another 75Mw to be operational by March.
Looking at the rainfall maps for the West Coast catchments shows that they have received average falls (2500+ mm.) for the past three years. So the excuse of low rainfall is not tenable for the low lake levels, and more likely to be deliberate management policy of selling too much hydro power to the National grid over BassLink. One can speculate about this but one has to wonder about the cost of the emergency measures.
I am not an engineer, but wonder if the the power stations produce as much electricity as they would with greater hydraulic pressure from full dams. Take Lake Gordon with its underground station and a 190m. dam wall with only 150m. of head?
That’s what the greens are saying, but the 308MW of wind capacity they already have hasn’t been doing much of late. Hydro T. think they need 200 MW of diesel, roughly equivalent to another 800 MW of wind turbines, or 1300 MW of solar panels ( only operate efficiently from 10 to 4). Perhaps they could use this green electricity to pump water from the Franklin R. back into Lake Gordon? Perhaps ARENA would fund it and Minister Hunt, the world’s best Minister for the Environment, officiate at the opening!
Leave our Mr Hunt alone, he has approved more rehabilitation projects than all the previous government’s Ministers put together. It’s just that the reason for doing it is a bit a lot misguided (carbon sequestration).
In the meantime it gets a lot of unemployed school leavers some work experience planting trees, and off the street for a few hours a day!
RobertO as I understand it, the amount of power generated by a hydro plant is dictated by the design of the particular rotating generator(s) and tightly controlled RPM (in order to produce the exact alternating frequency) . Rotating speed is controlled by “throttling” the flow of water to maintain the proper speed and the “throttle” must react to changes in demand load. More load = more water but never more (or less) than required to hold rotating speed
If a dam has a high water level (higher pressure) then less flow volume is required to maintain a given speed (and load). As the dam level drops (pressure lowers) then more flow is required to produce the same amount of power. You could say that a higher quantity of stored energy resides in the upper water levels than in the lowest levels.
In many (most)areas, the dam operators are required to provide a minimum and maximum flow through the plant in order to sustain and protect the river downstream. This being the limiting factor for the amount of power a given hydro plant could produce.
This is true for any generating method, hydro, steam, diesel and whatever may come along in the future. The problem is even worse when many generators must feed a common distribution system because they all must be in sync within a small tolerance. They are so fanatical about it that you can use a synchronous motor to drive a clock and it will stay on time within a fraction of a second over periods of years now that atomic clocks are available for the frequency standard.
The other problem involved is that the field current in the generator must be adjusted up or down concurrently with the change in driving force, water flow, steam pressure to turbines or throttle to diesel engines. It’s quite a juggling act. And thankfully over the whole grid the demand doesn’t make sudden large jumps or it might be impossible to keep everything going.
thankfully over the whole grid the demand doesn’t make sudden large jumps or it might be impossible to keep everything going
Which is exactly the effect of renewables when penetration is high
Wind – when it suddenly stops or starts blowing (or when it blows harder than the maximum operational speed of the turbines)
Solar – when a large enough patch of cloud moves over or off a PV array
You state that the sync tolerance is fanatical for generators. The fanaticism is a requirement for the stability of AC grids (and the safe operation of synchronous generators). And the synchronisation is required in both frequency and phase – especially when generators are switched into a grid after being brought online.
Very few (if any) of the renewables proponents have more than a trivial, theoretical notion of how AC grids operate beyond the local, low voltage distribution subnets.
Thanks Mark, so Hydro Tas. must be using more water for each MW produced with low dam levels. Wonder if anyone has thought about it since the dam levels were 40 % a couple of years ago and only 22% going into the 2015-16 Summer. It wouldn’t make much difference with the Poatina station as there is an enormous head (3000 ft.), but for the rest, particularly the Gordon station, it is probably relevant.
Sorry to interrupt the frivolity, just wondering on yesterday’s regurgitation of the “notch” theory.
The graph in fig 1 extends well past 2010. How can that happen to TSI with an 11 year smoothing and an 11 yr phase shift to the left. Smoothed temperature is also impacted. Is there some estimation process to fill in the missing “data” or is it merely a labelling fault.
Interesting that SIDC monthly sunspot numbers have trended lower since the early eighties. Latest data also shows average sunspots now at the low levels of the early 20th century. Two elements of the data but oddly missing from the graph.
Just wondering.
[I’ll approve this even though the question seems a little picky. If you want David to answer you it would be better to submit this in the prior thread since he may not be watching this one.] AZ
Sks makes a nice list, don’t they? Accuracy of Al Gore??? What accuracy?
I remember the first time I visited sks. It was quickly obvious why Jo was calling Skeptical Science an ambush site. They bait the hook for the uncritical, unskeptical reader and then when you’ve begun to believe they’re really skeptical (meaning honest), they set the hook and there you are, believing their line of drivel.
It’s shameful that they have to throw dirt on Dr. Carter after he can no longer defend himself. Their lack of respect is despicable. But that’s their nature, no respect for anyone or anything except the party line.
I looked through the whole list of so called climate myths and found only one statement by SkS that I could agree with.
Myth:It’s El Niño.
SkS: El Niño has no trend and cannot be responsible for the trend in global temperature.
As far as I know, no one is claiming that El Niño is responsible for any long term trends ( only short term fluctuations). Hence this myth is a straw man argument from start to finish.
Nonetheless, AGW activists salivate during El Nino’s:
“See, we told you it was worse than we thought … we’re all frying” … etc
A regular commenter at Judith Curry’s went one step further in hypocrisy – “although the the rise in temperature will only be a short-term fluctuation, it should stop all this pause talk dead in its’ tracks”
Skeptical Science? Now that’s just wrong. What deceit! There is nothing skeptical anywhere. It is the Internet version of the Watchtower. Science is by definition skeptical. Skeptical Science is a useless tautology.
You know instantly when people talk about THE science, that they do not know anything about science. No real scientist has ever heard of THE science, like THE Bible. Science is not a religion. It is not a belief. It is not dogma. It is not consensus and mantras and kumbaya my Gore.
The absurd mantras which follow are really silly. O Great Gore, you are so good and so rich and so wrong.
Al Gore’s 10 year end of world scenario expired two weeks ago. As far as anyone can see, the world’s weather is fine and the seas are not acid and there are fewer hurricanes and agricultural production is massive.
As for CO2 a pollutant? You have to torture logic to argue that the stuff from which we are made is a danger to our existence. We are polluting internal combustion engines each churning out 3 ton of CO2 a year. All life on earth is made almost entirely from CO2 and H2O, which is why everything dries out and burns. Even pretty Green Chlorophyll is an evil long chain hydrocarbon, say C55 H72 O5 N4 Mg. A carbon pollutant? All the lawns, trees, forests, birds of the air, flowers and food are made from CO2.
Apart from the sad mocking of Bob Carter, which they see as necessary even after he is gone, nothing on THE science column is fact based real science. Even the need to have one last shot at Bob is the ultimate accolade to a great man. It simply means they could not win a single argument when he was alive. Now they have to argue with the facts and all they have is Al Gore’s book of wisdom.
Readers interested in the truth behind the science, rather than the falsehoods and smears perpetuated by uninformed individuals, should consult scientist-run websites like skepticalscience.com or books on the topic like my own “Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change.
13 Feb: AlGore.com: Statement by Former Vice President Al Gore on CSIRO
“CSIRO’s research has been vital to the world’s understanding of how our climate is changing and it has helped to build a foundation on which we can anticipate future change and risk. For many years, CSIRO’s contributions to climate observations and modeling have been globally recognized and respected, and the decision to cut this effort from CSIRO should be revisited at the highest levels of the Australian Government. Further development of climate modeling and observations by CSIRO and colleague scientific organizations is essential to planning for climate mitigation and adaptation to global warming. This effort needs strengthening, not weakening, after the Paris Agreement in December.” https://www.algore.com/news/statement-by-former-vice-president-al-gore-on-csiro
14 Feb: Weather.com: Valentine’s Day Arctic Outbreak Brings Coldest Temperatures in Decades to Boston, New York City
By Jon Erdman and Chris Dolce
On top of that, wind chills on Sunday dropped into the 40s below zero in portions of Upstate New York and New England, including Saranac Lake, New York, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and Montpelier, Vermont…
Here are several other cities that have set new daily record lows for Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14) and have also seen their coldest temperatures in many years… https://weather.com/storms/winter/news/cold-outbreak-valentines-northeast-midwest-south-feb2016
14 Feb: Fox13: Record-breaking cold sweeps eastern U.S.
By Holly Yan and Azadeh Ansari, CNN
Bridgeport, Connecticut, could suffer an all-time low of 1 below. Philadelphia could tie its record low of 2.
And those are just the real temperatures…
Even the South isn’t immune to the brutal winter weather…READ ON http://fox13now.com/2016/02/14/record-breaking-cold-sweeps-eastern-u-s/
14 Feb: CBC: Central, Eastern Canada in deep freeze for another day
The agency has issued about 140 extreme cold warnings throughout northwestern Ontario to northern New Brunswick due to a large Arctic high-pressure system…
Early Sunday, the temperature was -28 in Ottawa and -27 in Montreal, but wind chill values were making the temperatures feel like -40 in both cities.
Environment Canada issued a special weather statement on Sunday saying wind chill values will be between -38 and -50 Sunday morning and into the night in some areas of northern and eastern Quebec…
“I keep saying to people, you know, there will be times when El Nino will go to sleep and we’ll see that dreaded Polar Vortex, reaching down from Siberia right into the heart of Canada, and of course, that’s what we’re seeing this weekend,” said Dave Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada… http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/extreme-cold-1.3447862
just remembered this was on the 4BC radio hourly news bulletin this morning. simply said it was an Essential Poll.
of course, they didn’t say the poll was commissioned by Solar Citizens, nor did they reveal the questions…which are at the bottom of this excerpt!!!
15 Feb: Sky News: AAP: Strong solar policy favoured by voters
Most Australians would be more likely to vote for a party that wants to install solar panels on every home and in hospitals and schools, a new poll has found.
Commissioned by Solar Citizens, the Essential poll found 63 per cent of Australians were more likely to vote for a party with a strong solar policy in this year’s federal election.
It also found 60 per cent would more likely vote for a policy that supported battery technology and almost as many would choose a party committed to large-scale solar and wind.
Solar Citizens national director Claire O’Rourke said the poll showed Australians want more ambitious solar policies on their agendas.
‘Australians want political leadership that will deliver cleaner, cheaper energy from the sun – and they’re willing to use their vote to make it happen,’ she said…
RIDICULOUS QUESTIONS FOLLOW http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/federal/2016/02/15/strong-solar-policy-favoured-by-voters.html
15 Feb: Northern Echo: Plan to cover council roofs with solar panels mooted
A bold Greens plan that could see all council buildings and infrastructure around the country fitted with rooftop solar panels so councils can cut their power bills and save ratepayers money is being launched today.
The plan allows solar companies to install solar panels on council property in a mutal exchange to cut power costs.
Australian Greens deputy leader and climate change spokesperson, Qld Senator Larissa Waters, will discuss the plan at the Solar Citizens Political Forum at 11.30 am QUT Gardens Point today.
Queensland Greens’ Brisbane lord-mayoral candidate, Ben Pennings, said the Greens’ ‘Shading Our Suburbs’ Plan would also invite tenders for new structures for solar panels that create shade…ETC http://www.echo.net.au/2016/02/plan-to-cover-council-roofs-with-solar-panels-mooted/
15 Feb: RenewEconomy: Sophie Vorrath: Poll finds majority would support party proposing solar on every rooftop
The survey results coincide with the latest data on solar PV growth in Australia, which reveals that January 2016 was one of the worst starts to a year for the industry since 2012 – even worse than January 2015.
The report shows rooftop solar installations in January fell across every state except for WA, and across almost every significant size bracket, excluding the 7-10kW range and for systems 2.5kW and less. Registrations for new rooftop solar installations in January 2016 slumped to just 47MW for the month. http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/solar-vote-strengthens-poll-finds-growing-demand-for-pv-policy-support-53717
12 Feb: MIT Technology Review: Richard Martin: Suddenly, the Solar Boom Is Starting to Look like a Bubble
By all accounts, 2016 should be a great year for solar power providers. In December, Congress extended the federal investment tax credit for solar installations through 2022, convincing analysts to project strong growth for the solar industry in coming years. Prices for solar panels continue to decline, even as emissions reduction targets reached under the Paris climate accord drive governments to seek more power from renewable energy sources. Several recent reports have shown that the cost of solar is often comparable or nearly comparable to the average price of power on the utility grid, a threshold known as grid parity…
But investors are not feeling the love…
Last month Nevada introduced sharp cutbacks in its program for net metering—the fees paid to homeowners with rooftop solar installations for excess power they send back to the grid. California and Hawaii, two of the biggest solar markets, have introduced changes to their net metering schemes as well. Across the country, as many as 20 other states are considering such changes, which would dramatically alter the economics of rooftop solar…
The uncertainty has cast the solar providers’ business models into doubt. Without net metering payments, residential solar “makes no financial sense for a consumer,” SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive recently admitted to the New York Times… https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600805/suddenly-the-solar-boom-is-starting-to-look-like-a-bubble/
14 Feb: Courier Mail: Steven Wardill: Solar and wind power revolution is coming to Queensland with new projects capable of powering more than a million homes
The proposals range from two massive wind farms in Mount Emerald, solar farms in Townsville and Dalby and a biomass plant powered by chicken litter at Mount Cotton…
Valued at more than $2.4 billion, the new Queensland-based investments would halt the exporting of green energy jobs to southern states.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the Government’s policies were helping to attract investment, create jobs and combat climate change…
***However, not all the projects will proceed.
And the Government will have to attract significantly more investment as well as provide financial support to meet the 50 per cent target to prevent significantly pushing up power prices.
***The Queensland Productivity Commission recently questioned the Government’s target with detailed analysis finding an additional 17,000GWh of renewable energy and ***$10.8 billion worth of subsidies would be needed to reach the target…
***The Government has created an expert panel headed by retired investment banker Colin Mugglestone to investigate ways to achieve the target… http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/solar-and-wind-power-revolution-is-coming-to-queensland-with-new-projects-capable-of-powering-more-than-a-million-homes/news-story/4629576fcd039eea1189220b20742cd3
***29 Jan: QLD Government announce Renewable Energy Taskforce panel
Mr Bailey said the expert panel would be chaired by Mr Mugglestone, a investment banker, engineer, and experienced business executive who retired from Macquarie Capital in 2014 with more than 30 years’ experience in the infrastructure sector, working on projects throughout Australia, the UK, South East Asia and Norway.
Mr (Colin) Mugglestone will be joined by prominent climate change and clean energy advisor Allison Warburton; Paul Meredith, a physics professor and Director of UQ Solar; CEO of ACIl Allen Consulting Paul Hyslop; and Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie…
“Panel members have been chosen from an outstanding field of high quality candidates and I congratulate them on their appointment. They have been chosen for their expertise in renewable energy, climate change, energy market policy and regulation, and public policy,” he (Environment Minister Dr Steven Miles) said…
***As part of the public inquiry, the taskforce will undertake a comprehensive public consultation program, allowing Queenslanders to have their say on the proposed target. It will undertake public forums across the state to engage with consumer groups, households, peak energy industry bodies, energy businesses and unions…
The panel is expect to deliver a final report to the government towards the end of the year. http://wastemanagementreview.com.au/qld-government-announce-renewable-energy-taskforce-panel/
pat:
The CourierMail link is paywalled. Any mention of breeding unicorns? How the hell are they going to replace black coal with ‘renewables’ and not force up electricity prices?
Solar PV is cheapest and that is 4 times the cost of black coal fired.
The greens are wetting themselves because the Noor solar heat project first stage (of 5 if the money doesn’t run out). The first stage started last week and will deliver 143MW for daylight plus 3 hours storage. The greens have read this to mean that a million homes will be getting 24 hour “pollution free” electricity for practically no cost – instead it would supply about 7,900 homes for maybe 10 hours at a wholesale cost of $260-265 per MWh (8 -9 times that of coal fired), and as Tony has pointed out these things run a gas turbine 3-5 hours in the morning to heat up the fluid.
The first 3 stages will build to 453MW capacity (maybe) and cost $4.55 billion – that’s smaller than the Northern Power Station in Port Augusta which is shutting down next month because it is old and the S.A. Premier is a [snip][snip] [snip] believing wind can supply reliable power. I see that the Victorian [snip] are heading that way too.
14 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: Will US supreme court judge death save climate plan?
CRIB NOTES 15-19 FEB: Game on for Clean Power Plan, top climate scientists gather in DC, air pollution linked to 5.5 million deaths a year
The death of a 79-year-old Texan judge could have radically changed the mood music around US president Barack Obama’s beleaguered plan to make states slash greenhouse gas emissions…
Analysts say that means it’s game on for Obama’s flagship climate policy. Here’s a taster…ETC
The world’s top wonks meet for the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting – expect a slew of new reports out this week.
There’s likely to be specific focus on how more frequent extreme weather events will shock the global food system…
Figueres and Gore to talk
Prepare yourself for an tsunami of optimism in Vancouver this week. “More than 70 speakers will dare us to dream — to make no small plans,” say the organisers. UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and Al Gore are among the speakers. http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/02/14/will-us-supreme-court-judge-death-save-climate-plan/
11 Feb: ScoopNZ: Energy Ministers and Business Leaders to meet at Summit
Energy Ministers and Business Leaders to meet at Resilience Summit
The growing importance of resilience is demonstrated in the calibre of delegates gathering in New Zealand’s capital next month for the Asia-Pacific Energy Leaders’ Summit hosted by the World Energy Council and BusinessNZ Energy Council…
The Asia-Pacific Energy Leaders’ Summit is attracting CEOs and senior executives from across the globe, including Shell, Rosseti Russia, Enersis Chile, Chevron, Honda and Fujitsu, and energy experts from Norway, US, UK, Japan, China, the Philippines and Australia. They will be joining over 50 major corporates and institutions from New Zealand and around the world, including the World Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Asian Development Bank, APEC Energy Working Group, International Renewable Energy Association and the APEC Sustainable Energy Centre.
Energy Ministers and high level officials from across the Asia-Pacific will join New Zealand Ministers Bridges and Bennett to discuss the growing resilience risks and challenges presented by climate change, emerging technologies, extreme weather events, cyber security, and the energy-water-food nexus… http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1602/S00335/energy-ministers-and-business-leaders-to-meet-at-summit.htm
Asia – Pacific Energy Leaders’ Summit
Delivering Resilient Energy Infrastructure
March 16-17th 2016
In conjunction with the World Energy Council the BusinessNZ Energy Council are hosting the International Energy Leaders’ Summit in early March 2016 in Wellington. This will be a must-attend event for all those looking to future-proof the energy systems of the Asia Pacific region…
Summit highlights include:…
•Visit to Meridian Energy’s West Wind farm set in the hills above Wellington…
Who is attending?
(BOTTOM OF PAGE link: FULL SPEAKERS LIST
PLUS PROGRAMME http://www.bec.org.nz/summit
Funding Issues: The chief executive of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Larry Marshall, has proposed a restructuring of jobs at CSIRO, effectively wiping out its climate modeling division. This is causing quite a back-lash among the climate scientists, who are considered by some as among the best climate modelers in the world. Of course, their emphasis minimizes natural variation. When one claims the science is settled, there are consequences. In general, CSIRO has a distinguished 85-year history, but has been tarnished by its embrace of human-caused global warming to dominate climate variation.
Who,if anyone considers our CSIRO scientists to be the best climate model less in the world?
If they are the best in the world, why are their models so wrong?
I thought I read in the climategate emails that David Jones was sending the numbers to the CRU at East Anglia for processing, and Harry, of “Harry, readme.txt” fame, had remarked on what a hell of a mess the Australian numbers were in, stations that didn’t exist etc.
Any wonder the Australian models get nothing right.
Saturday’s death of Antonin Scalia may prove to be a world tragedy.
Should Obama stack America’s Supreme Court with another enviro-loon, the decisions of the Court will have profoundly harmful impact upon the most powerful economy of the West. It is already devastated by the insane official debt of the Obama Administration, ($19 trillion dollars) and all the unfunded liabilities of the USA and all the subordinate governmental entities, States, Dependencies and Cities ($64 trillion dollars.)
There’s no way to avoid major economic pain. But history shows the electoral demand for someone to “do something” means absurd wishful-thinking ‘solutions’ will be applied that will exacerbate the situation.
Less immediately painful, but a loss for individual liberty, next month’s Supreme Court clash over contraceptives, religious liberty and President Barack Obama’s health care law also now seems more likely to favor the Obama administration.
I’ve finally cracked after the 10,000th grammatical mistake by this website’s otherwise excellent authors and posters. The plural of Fred is Freds. The plural of El Nino is El Ninos. For all plurals, just add an “s”, regardless of whether the noun ends in a vowel or consonant.
Also, the possessive form of the pronoun “it” is “its” (no apostrophe, ever). And the possessive form of “who” is whose, not who’s.
Dear Warmists,
I live a few blocks from the beach, a few meters above sea level. However I am starting to doubt the value of my investment in lifejackets and gondolas. Shouldn’t I be under a few metres of water by now? In fact on Sunday I read that the tiny rate of increase in sea levels is actually dropping, so NASA have concluded someone must be stealing the water. Maybe the same people who stole the temperature increase? I also note that Tim Flannery lives next to the water on the Hunter river and Al Gore bought a condo on the water in San Francisco. So is someone fibbing because the sea level looks just like it did when I first went to the same beach as a boy? It has been a long time since the last extreme weather event and the summer in Melbourne has been very cool and disappointing. We may soon have to turn the heaters on in the hope that they produce Global Warming and change the Climate to a little warmer. We can only hope the 350 scientists of the CSIRO solve this urgent problem soon. It is too cold to go swimming in mid summer and I still have to walk to the beach.
Watched Q & A tonight in the hope of seeing Mark Steyn take down Sarah Hyphen Young in particular.
Dammit if she didn’t agree with practically the first thing he said.
Ah, well . . .
I found this a few minutes ago on my Verizon home page. It’s small so I just quoted it. There’s probably more to it but it’s not working for me.
Global warming will make some flights longer and considering flying contributes to global warming, we could have a run-away train on our hands. Patrick Jones (@Patrick_E_Jones) has the details.
They don’t say why global warming will make some flights longer nor do they explain why “some” and not others.
You can’t stop it, the run-away train I mean. We were watching an old episode of Star Trek Next Gen last evening (Netflix) and global warming was mentioned — that’s from way back in the mid ’90s. If you started today to ferret out every last reference to this nonsense and stomp it into oblivion you’d never reach the end of it. More comes in the front end of the pipeline than you can take out the back end. It’s like trying to pick up the local beach and move it inland 10 miles by picking up one grain of sand at a time and taking them individually to their new site, one trip per grain. You can’t get there from here.
The last few days I have noticed a shift away from warming and towards air pollution in my local USAn news feeds – going back to the bad old days of smog run rampant. Articles like http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/over-5-million-people-will-die-from-a-frightening-cause-breathing-1277429
“About 5.5 million people around the world die prematurely every year from breathing polluted air, and the majority of those deaths are occurring in China and India, where factories and coal-fired power plants are fueling economic growth, according to a report released Friday.
The authors said the findings show that disease from air and household pollution ranks as the number two cause of death worldwide. It comes in right behind smoking, which the World Health Organization says kills 6 million people annually. The research, part of an initiative to monitor the global burden of disease, is being presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.”
I am almost willing to bet that generic “air pollution” will once again take center stage and CO2 will be relegated to being just a component of the evils in our air. Of course, this will be part of a new IPCC study group’s model runs, made possible by our tax dollars, and proof of the need for their eternal vigilance.
Of course, if you want fewer people using fewer resources, 5 million dead would be a good start. Plus the 6 million (that’s all?) of us who smoke.
My only problem is that I have been, all along, saying there are far worse things in our than CO2. I’d like to see efforts made to clean the sulfers, the soots, the assorted by-products of industry – cleaner tech, retrofitted scrubbers, we have the means right now. Cheaper than solar and wind. I want clean air, I just don’t want more world government meddling in order to get it, yet I have this nagging feeling that is ne of the places we are headed to next.
🙂
LightningCamel came out of the closet
to show on Limerick skill he’s got it.
The rhyme was sublime
with fine use of time,
I am hoping to see lots more of it!
Pirate Bay of science?
A researcher in Russia has made more than 48 million journal articles – almost every single peer-reviewed paper every published – freely available online. And she’s now refusing to shut the site down, despite a court injunction and a lawsuit from Elsevier, one of the world’s biggest publishers.
For those of you who aren’t already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub, and it’s sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn’t afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it’s since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court – a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science.
…
Don’t get us wrong, journal publishers have also done a whole lot of good – they’ve encouraged better research thanks to peer review, and before the Internet, they were crucial to the dissemination of knowledge.
But in recent years, more and more people are beginning to question whether they’re still helping the progress of science. In fact, in some cases, the ‘publish or perish’ mentality is creating more problems than solutions, with a growing number of predatory publishers now charging researchers to have their work published – often without any proper peer review process or even editing.
…
She also explains that the academic publishing situation is different to the music or film industry, where pirating is ripping off creators. “All papers on their website are written by researchers, and researchers do not receive money from what Elsevier collects. That is very different from the music or movie industry, where creators receive money from each copy sold,” she said.
…
I’m afred it just won’t do! 😉
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What have you got against Fred? 🙂
40
“What have you got against Fred?”
He’s always trying to needle everyone.
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I was told Fred was a little twisted, but that turned out to just be a yarn.
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Physics/atmospheric professor William Happer on 12-8-2015 at US Senate hearing on climate change: https://www.heartland.org/sites/default/files/happer_climate_data_testimony.pdf
or see: http://balance10.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-vast-drama-that-keeps-way-of-tree.htmlo
10
Completely unfettered Fred.
40
This thread reminds me of a children’s book entitled: “Fred, Fred, Use your Head!”
Good advice when it comes to climate matters.
50
Not a Fred so Rod will have to do. This morning I had a little twinge of pleasure when my rating jumped the score up a notch. Just now I saw it go from 0 to 10, but no doubt the first troll will bring it back down.
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Now to watch The Antiques Road Show. We really enjoyed the one time we attended one, at Fountains Abbey. We had no valuable goodies to discover though 🙁
40
Hi Annie – I wonder if the Antiques Road Show would like 500 small bayonet candle light globes?
Seriously though, Antiques Road Show is about the only TV show (apart from from Bargain Hunt) that my wife will watch.
30
There we go again forgot to proof read (apart from
fromBargain Hunt)30
Greg Hunt is no bargain.
50
I’m sorry you still seem to have those small light bulbs JoKaH. Right type, wrong size for our stuff, very disappointing. They might become antiques if you hold onto them long enough! I didn’t follow up one suggestion re. pictures of an ancestor and his daughter…he ended up being featured in a Bolleywood film; a highly innaccurate story (as usual for any ‘dramatisation’). The stuff is with us in Aus. now.
20
Judging by the one time we attended The Antiques Road Show this is something for which the BBC deserve praise. It is very well run. The people there queue very patiently and enjoy each other’s company and chat. It is a long session for the antique experts, camera crews and technicians but the atmosphere is wonderful.
30
The Centennial Light Bulb in No6 Fire Station, Livermore, California has been operating since 1901, the video gives a good history of it’s existence, get stuffed Turnbull go incandescent!
50
The setting would certainly have been just right for the program. Fountains Abbey is a really top spot
20
You are right Fred and this is your thread (Fred).
10
This thread is supposed to be “un”-Freded
20
I converted a recent comment of mine on Joanne’s blog to a blog post of my own.
There’s a very long reading list at the end; only the “top half” or so of the material used. The list is in no particular order as even categorising it is likely to introduce bias.
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Well, our backyard birds are going ballistic lately, so climate change here we come. I look forward to the roller coaster ride to that’s come.
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..that’s to come.
30
beautiful plumage 😉
40
Thanks, but seriously, there’s been quite a change this year with the way much of the local wildlife has been behaving. I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, but it’s been different.
30
Storms disrupting feeding, breeding and migration…
36
The “weather” disrupting thinking from “Gee Aye” yet again……….
Very sad!
20
err bird behaviour is heavily influence by their immediate surroundings, with weather, weather events and seasonal changes being major factors that they need to respond to on different time scales. Where I am we have had periods of dry interspersed with strong storms. This has caused birds to fail at nesting for various reasons and has driven late season mating behaviour which is actually going quite well. Some birds, espeially smaller birds, fledged their young (who are good at hiding from storms) and were met with a bonanza of food that has enhanced their survival.
Didn’t you know that wild animals respond to such things?
40
I have a feeling ours are making the most of what warm weather there is, preparing for a cold onslaught. Mind you, if global warming means more wonderful wildlife of all descriptions thriving and bringing colour to an increasinly dull world, then bring it on. I’d rather see this than Penguins hobbling around.
20
It’s been a veritable bowerbird orgy in my backyard for most of spring and early summer. Every time I walked out the back door I caught them at it. I have a near permanent mob of satin bowerbirds with 1 dominant male, some sub-adult males and a heap of females.
The big male built his bower twice this mating season after a rival wrecked it on him in the middle of breeding. He decorates it with my clothes pegs plus flowers and blue plastic trinkets. I went through 50 pegs this spring/summer between my male and his rivals in the vicinity, which I don’t begrudge them.
He used to have about 4 female admirers at a time watching his buzzing, whirring and wing-display antics. At one stage I heard him break into a kookaburra impression to impress the girls.
Once the old male had finished with the bower it fell into disrepair for a couple of weeks until a young male claimed it and rebuilt it. His effort looked as if it was built by the Dodgy Brothers – lop-sided and misaligned. Obviously his first effort. He lucked out with the ladies. I’ve been fortunate to have 3 different bowers built in my backyard in the last few years.
Some other migratory species such as koels and cuckoos were absent this summer because we had an early dry period and a lot of trees failed to set the fruit the birds normally feed on. Apart from that it is business as usual. No global warming signature evident in their behaviour. I’m in the mid Hunter Valley.
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I nearly rammed a koel on a backroad in Gippsland near Buchan. Flew right in front of my car and I just braked enough for it to survive.
At least 200km. south of where they are supposed to live. Must have been due to global warming. It was in 1989.
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89 and 90 were super wet years up here. There were bogged ducks everywhere if I recall rightly. Your koel was probably just looking for a bit of dry land to sit on. Global normalling.
40
My back yard birds in Brisbane are behaving “normally” (they told me).
I suspect it is global warming that is contributing to them acting normally.
60
Flying foxes keep crapping on everything in sight, so no climate change here yet.
Getting a bit fred up with it though.
110
Install a couple wind turbines. That’ll clear them out.
90
Doh! Why didn’t I think of that? Thanks for the tip.
40
Is that your own blog Bemused? Those are great photos. We have all those birds in good numbers (after our fruit trees I guess) plus millions of those darned sulphur crested cockatoos!
30
Rats with wings?
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The sulphur crested cockatoos are much worse than flying rats! We have black cockatoos, lots of magpies, blue wrens, robins, lorikeets, galahs, rosellas, crows, kookaburras; you name it, we seem to have it and they are all thriving. There are also snakes, wombats, possums, the odd kangaroo, flies by the million when they all came down from NSW recently; happily fewer now but more mossies since the rain. We also have ants of all sizes; an aquaintence had a bad allergic reaction to one of the tiny one;, bull ants, jumping jack ants (nasty little horrors), and spiders galore including numerous huge huntsmen recently. My goodness, why ever did we move back to Australia?!
40
Flying cane toads…..
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Yes it is. Thankfully we don’t get the Cockatoos here, but we do get Black Cockatoos and Gang Gangs. Though they don’t hang around for all that long, just enough to make a huge mess.
40
I once lived on a farm about 40K out of Canberra. One summer morning I woke up to the distinct crackling of a grass fire, there was lots of long dry grass around my little humpy. I ran out in a panic only to find a flock of Gang Gangs all breaking open seeds on one of the trees…. was quite relieved.
80
The black cockatoos make a similar noise when they are raiding the hakeas; it’s not as bad as the racket when we mow around them; the nuts sound like stones!
We also have willy wagtails, blue wrens, crested pigeons, the occasional blackbird, sparrows and others yet to be identified. There is some sort of owl at night which sounds a bit like the northern hemisphere cuckoo! These are in addition to the others listed earlier. There is plenty of wildlife here, certainly not in trouble due to AGW or CC.
For the record, after much work to protect the crops, we have had some wonderful apples, some good to store. This is despite the dri-ish late winter/spring and early summer and no water in the dam for the garden. The apple trees, in particular, seem to have thrived, apart from a bit of bitter pit in a couple of varieties.
10
The North American waterfowl population is at an all time high since records have been kept. El Nino played havoc with the migration this season with many birds staying north of their usual wintering grounds. The populations of snow geese are so high that a spring season has been ordered. During this season there are no bag limits. Snow geese nest in the Arctic and the population is estimated to be several million.
40
13 Feb: Politico: Scalia’s death could change court on abortion, race, climate
Cases on the docket could alter American life on many issues.
(With contributions from Carol Eisenberg, Josh Gerstein, Alex Guillen, Brian Mahoney, Jason Millman and Nirvi Shah)
Justice Antonin Scalia’s death could change the course of history on the contentious social and legal issues pending before the Supreme Court this term, especially in closely divided cases where he was expected to serve as a lynchpin of a conservative majority…
Climate change
Obama’s Clean Power Plan could be in the hands of the D.C. Circuit Court.
One of Scalia’s last official acts as a justice was to deliver a large dent in Obama’s climate legacy, providing one of five votes to stay the Clean Power Plan, which regulates carbon emissions from power plants. The decision could set back implementation of the rule by years. A 4-4 ideological split on the Supreme Court raises the stakes for the more liberal D.C. Circuit’s eventual decision on the Clean Power Plan, though the high court would still have to lift its stay if the rule is upheld…
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/scalia-death-how-will-the-supreme-court-change-219256
14 Feb: Australian: Michael Asten: Climate change: CSIRO realigns after groupthink fails
(Michael Asten is a professor of geophysics at Monash University)
Cuts to the government-funded climate change program at the CSIRO coincide with a powerful critique of climate models by John Christy in a US congressional committee hearing.
While it is a matter for regret to see any research program truncated, and it is a difficult time for staff, redirection of CSIRO priorities into mitigation and adaptation is well justified…
It is my hope the new terms of reference for CSIRO’s contributions to climate change will include study and quantification of natural climate variability; if we can quantify these and use them for forward predictions, their value for planning mitigation measures is obvious…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/climate-change-csiro-realigns-after-groupthink-fails/news-story/f5e57f67234a11f3c963abb508346dac
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So 350 job secure public service scientists on 14% superannuation move from trying to prove something is actually happening to working out what to do about it? Solving “the greatest moral challenge of our time” (Keving Rudd, PM). I do hope they can fix it before retiring.
92
“I do hope they can fix it before retiring.”
TdeF, Identifying what it is they are going to “fix” would to me be a bigger problem.
That’ll probably see a few of them out to their well padded retirement.
I just don’t get it.
After all these years and hundreds of billions of dollars to “prove” man has set us on the road to global armagedon, they have nothing but alarmism to shout.
So now we are going to spend hundreds of billions to mitigate that alarmism?!
Madness, utter madness!
72
NO because whatever the weather problems turn out to be there is work to be done to help with people affected. Also being more aware of flood pains, natural systems etc is important.
52
You are confusing research with education. Being “more aware”, or making people “more aware” of the environment is hardly the role of the CSIRO. I learned about the impact of floods, droughts, and storms, etc on people, as part of geography at school (if I recall correctly). Whilst still at school, I also learned the basics of stochastic analysis, and how that can be applied to weather, rainfall, in particular. Thankfully I got out before schools turned into indoctrination centres for how terrible humans are, making children feel guilty about everything they do, and generally regressing to the point in time centuries ago where humans thought they were at the centre of everything and could control everything around them.
You also make no mention of various authorities which allow large scale housing developments to go ahead despite being located smack-bang in the middle of a flood plain – again, not something that the CSIRO needs to identify, as such things are…plainly evident…
Come back when you have some sort of legitimate case to make.
50
Exactly JM.
Like most of us here, we are not scientists but when these so called scientific experts tell us the reason for more of these “natural” disasters is global warming creating more of them, like most of us here, common sense kicks in.
I’m not a smart arse or ‘over educated” but commonsense tells you if you continue to place more people into the path of these natural occurrences, then you going to have more casualties.
A few years ago a dozen houses in my housing estate were affected by a Creek flooding at the bottom of the estate. Global warming or climate change if that doesn’t work for you, was the immediate culprit identified by a council community meeting.
Common sense kicked in and I checked with the local council. Over the last 100 years it’s flooded no less than a dozen times.
The last time being 5 years BEFORE the estate was built!
40
Yep. Well, that’s the thing about forward prediction. There’s nothing more uncertain – especially when it’s about forward predicting what will happen in the period ahead at some future point in time.
Backward prediction – now that’s an entirely different test of predictive ability.
40
Making predictions is difficult – especially when it is about the future.
20
13 Feb: Science Mag: Jon Cohen: Why fighting anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers often backfires
*For our full coverage of AAAS 2016, check out our meeting page. (LINK)
WASHINGTON, D.C.—If there’s a war on science, it’s not just one war. And branding people who disagree with you about vaccines, climate change, or genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as the enemy may be unwittingly fueling the conflicts. Those were some of the arguments made at a session here today at the annual meeting of AAAS (which publishes Science)…
In the case of GMO and climate change concerns, opponents often twist facts, stressed two presenters. Erik Conway, co-author of Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, noted that there’s even a word (which he did not coin) for manufacturing of fake knowledge—“arnogenesis.” In the book, Conway and science historian Naomi Orestes(sic) contend that with climate change there was even a “Potemkin village” effect created by disbelievers who “replaced science with its opposite” because of their concerns that environmental regulations would harm the free market and damage important business interests. He said the Potemkin village creators exist “to pollute our knowledge of the world.”…
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/why-fighting-anti-vaxxers-and-climate-change-deniers-often-backfires
40
Of course it is. (/sarc)
According to some environmentalist, it seems that the birth defects caused by the mosquito borne Zika virus is not caused by the mosquito after all.
It’s cause by that filthy disgusting corporate American poisoner Monsanto, and that rotten pesticide it uses to control the mosquito.
Yeah! That sounds like par for the course, eh!
Tony.
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Tony: Don’t Do That. Just DDT.
50
Tony, being ex RAAF, probably knows the song that starts with
“It started with three, now there’s millions on me”
10
Yeah!
I blame that firefighting foam. (/sarc)
Tony.
20
Will it observe state/national borders like ebola seemed to, then just fade away?
Monsanto? Here is the another theory going around.
“Tdap Vaccinations for All Pregnant Women in Brazil Mandated in Late 2014”
https://idsent.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/tdap-vaccinations-for-all-pregnant-women-in-brazil-mandated-in-late-2014/
10
Information on Zika virus…….
http://humansarefree.com/2016/02/zika-virus-what-you-are-not-being-told.html#more
http://humansarefree.com/2016/02/zika-virus-Rockefeller.html#more
20
that is very funny. Do you have an explanation for this statement.
“What’s appalling is that Zika virus (ATCC® VR-84™) can be purchased from ATCC labs.”
Why is it appalling? Who do you think qualifies for purchasing permits and how do you think it gets studied if no one is allowed to trade it?
To Tony, not knowing whether Zika is a causative agent, it would be foolish not to examine whether any other correlations exist. We know that the virus has crossed the placenta and we know that the virus is endemic in mosquitoes in the region where the microcephaly cases have spiked, so it is a link worthy of study. On the other hand that doesn’t mean not looking elsewhere as the consequences of delaying until the virus is ruled out are great. Toxic chemicals are a common and able cause of birth deformities, abortions etc and their usage and persistence can be assessed. The environmentalist might be naive in their certainty and wishful thinking that evil companies did it, but there is good reason to look at such chemicals.
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I never thought I would type this, but I actually agree with you on this, Gee Aye.
90
Oddly Rereke, and you also Gee Aye, I now also agree.
A few hours following links have given me a new perspective on this, so I apologise for jumping to conclusions based loosely around only part of the overall story.
Sometimes I feel like Fonzie.
I was wr
Tony.
70
The answer is don’t immediately oppose the view on every subject even if Yu disagree with them on many. Archives I’ll show that I’ve transgressed this but have also upheld it including with yourself.
I do enjoy the anarchy of Angry though.
20
Yu? “Archive will” not. “I’ll”. Virtual keyboards are the devil’s playground.
20
Yes!
Two dangers?
Truth
Lies
But hundreds of experts are printing online
Like this one
The danger in this is it has already blamed pyriproxyfen!
Maybe correct – but the danger lies in that it IS a VIRUS?
If it is chemicals – it will be a nightmare!
20
Dave, that is a bit unhinged and unintelligible to me.
Sounds like it is about relative risk of chemicals versus viruses. Or something?
Can you reword that, but this time more succinct, please.
What was your main point?
20
Agree Andrew
I’m not the best with words etc
But – the WHO & UN etc are telling us this is a Virus!
Yet a huge amount of information about Zika claiming it is a result of chemicals etc.
I’d like to know the truth, that’s all.
If it’s Virus – work on it!
If it’s Chemical based – work on it!
Suppose just asking – Is Zika causing the microcephaly?
30
It was my impression that the association of microcephaly with Zika was claimed first and the claim of chemical cause happened as a secondary reaction.
On any newsworthy event one always wonders whether the first reports are more reliable or less reliable than later reports. Probably there is no rule of thumb there, so to get an answer will require, as you say, work.
In the meantime, don’t sleep with anyone from the Caribbean.
Sadly this is very easy advice to follow.
10
this would be appropriate on jo’s previous thread, but most readers will be on this one, so here goes:
13 Feb: UK Daily Mail: Ellie Zolfagharifard: The silent sun: Eerie image revealed as solar activity remains the quietest it has been in more than a century – and some claims it could even trigger a mini ice age
We’ve had smallest number of sunspots in this cycle since Cycle 14
This cycle reached its maximum solar activity in February of 1906
Low solar activity can lead to extended periods of cooling, researchers say
‘The current level of activity of solar cycle 24 seems close to that of solar cycle number 5, which occurred beginning in May 1798 and ending in December 1810,’ added an analysis by Watts Up With That…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3444633/What-happened-sun-Solar-activity-remains-quietest-century-trigger-mini-ice-age.html
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13 Feb: UK Telegraph: Emily Gosden: Revealed: The great wind farm tax ‘con’
Ministers may break pledge to stop funding onshore turbines with consumer subsidies
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/energy/12156171/Revealed-the-great-wind-farm-tax-con.html
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The Age and SMH have published an approriate obituary to Professor Bob Carter.
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/obituaries/obituary-tiop-scientist-shunned-for-views-the-warmists-refused-to-debate-20160211-gmr7yx.html
I will take a small bit of credit since I wrote to the editor complaining about the ungracious summary published at the time of his death.
Lawrence Money replied and agreed that something else might be published as an obituary. Professor Peter Rudd (James Cook University) and Piers Larcombe ( Chief Sedimentary Scientist at RPS Metrocean consultancy) have done quite a good job at putting his scientific contribution in perspective.
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Thanks, but the SMH says this is old content. Is that intentional on the part of the SMH?
50
Peter C –
an excellent obit and precisely what should have been written when Prof Carter died. thank you for any part you may have played in getting this published.
btw your url has a “k” at the end (htmlk) which prevents people from opening the link.
this works:
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/obituaries/obituary-top-scientist-shunned-for-views-the-warmists-refused-to-debate-20160211-gmr7yx
110
Thanks Pat.
[I have also fixed the original reference – Fly]
50
This is indeed an excellent article. Bob Carter was always a gentleman and a breath of fresh air in the CAGW “debate”, unlike the university that shunned him.
Another breath of fresh air has recently come from Michael Asten, a professor of geophysics at Monash University, who wrote an op-ed in The Australian last Friday (12 Feb). I wonder if his university will tolerate such expression of common sense, or whether he, too, will be ostracised.
90
13 Feb: National Post: Terrence Corcoran: Terence Corcoran: Another Ontario green energy blow-up
Debris from the exploding Ontario Liberal green energy rocket continues to land on the hapless citizens of the province. Gas plant scandals, soaring power rates, declining electricity output, massive subsidies to money-losing wind and solar, non-stop bafflegab from government ministers: when will it stop? Not now, and maybe never.
Details of the latest meteorite-sized chunk of the Dalton McGuinty/Kathleen Wynne green power blow-up are on display at the blog of energy consultant Tom Adams, who formerly served on the Ontario Independent Electricity Market Operator board of directors and the Ontario Centre for Excellence for Energy board of management
Adams picks up a story that made brief headlines in late 2012 when Windstream Energy, a U.S. company, filed a NAFTA complaint claiming $475 million in damages…READ ALL
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/terence-corcoran-another-ontario-green-energy-blow-up
14 Feb: West Australian: Paul Murray: Power party must end
Getting paid for doing nothing sounds like a dream.
But that’s the luxury successive State Governments have been providing for a group of big WA companies to the tune of more than $60 million a year.
The payments are for the agreement of these big power users to either switch off or scale back their electricity consumption when peak demand creates problems in the South-West network.
It was started by the Carpenter Labor Government back in 2006 when WA’s rapid growth meant the power utilities were struggling to meet demand and brownouts were occurring, but these days we have more than 1000MW excess capacity…
Interestingly enough, DSM was not even required this week when such still conditions meant the State’s biggest wind farm, Collgar, was producing virtually nothing from its 206MW capacity at some of the hottest periods…
https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/30813253/paul-murray-says-the-power-party-must-end/
90
14 Feb: South China Morning Post: Eric Ng: China’s under-utilised ultra-high-voltage power lines no silver bullet to rid grid of bottlenecks
State Grid plans to plough some 600 billion yuan into UHV lines by 2020
The high-capacity UHV lines, more efficient and economic for long-distance transmission, are expected to cost state-owned State Grid Corporation more than 600 billion yuan (HK$711 billion) to build until 2020. But they’ve also turned out to be no panacea for the nation’s renewable power distribution bottlenecks…
Wind and solar farm operators’ hopes that the construction of UHV lines would bring significant relief to the distribution bottlenecks they face in sending power out from wind- and solar energy-rich but sparsely-populated northern regions have also been dashed.
Ip said on average only 10 per cent to 20 per cent of the transmission capacity of UHV lines could be used to send wind and solar power, since it was intermittent in nature and required the mixing of conventional electricity, like coal-fired power, whose output was more stable throughout the day.
He noted even the UHV line linking Hami in Xinjiang and Zhengzhou in Henan province, which sourced as much as 40 per cent of input from renewable energy, had suffered from low utilisation since it was commissioned in early 2014, and it was under repair and maintenance half of last year due to damage caused by huge load fluctuations.
http://www.scmp.com/business/article/1912878/chinas-under-utilised-ultra-high-voltage-power-lines-no-silver-bullet-rid
40
Just experiencing a bit of the Green Utopian world (our boiler has packed in – in the middle of a Scottish winter). And being a cold windless day – we might soon get the full Utopian dream: a power cut!
120
I hope the latest claims of gravity wave detection are more conclusive than the previously well-publicised detection method which relied on analysis of the polarisation of the microwave background
Either way, the science is still not settled, and I look forward to seeing what eLISA will tell us
51
It’s true, my highly controversial statement was definitely worth a red thumb.
How dare I be excited, or positive about such research – I should be like all the followers of the AGW religion, and be unwaveringly negative and regressive about absolutely everything humans have done, or will do.
It only takes 1 look at the Skeptical Science website to realise that Werner Herzog speaks some sense
30
The Tasmanian Electricity Saga
Hydro Tasmania was relying on BassLink and Yallourn coal generated electricty for 40% of its requirements due to depleted storages until winter. However, BassLink was damaged and since mid December has had to rely on its own stations. The cable was to be repaired by mid March, but is less certain as the fault has yet to be located.
On the 12th. December reserves were 3274 GWh or 22.4%; on the 8th. February they were 2636 GWh or 18.3%. As most people were on holiday demand would have been down a little so one can expect more demand over the next few months.
Looking at the lake levels over the past twelve months one finds they were very low; Lake Gordon was minus 40m. and the Great Lake minus 17m. Earlier levels are not known but the two big storages didn’t rise much over Winter with normal rainfall and it is doubtful if they will ever fill completely again.
Emergency measures include discussion with Bell Bay Aluminium to reduce consumption, the installation of 100Mw of diesel generators by the end of March, and another 100Mw by the end of April, if not sooner, and recommissioning the Tamar Valley Power station which has been done, plus another 75Mw to be operational by March.
Looking at the rainfall maps for the West Coast catchments shows that they have received average falls (2500+ mm.) for the past three years. So the excuse of low rainfall is not tenable for the low lake levels, and more likely to be deliberate management policy of selling too much hydro power to the National grid over BassLink. One can speculate about this but one has to wonder about the cost of the emergency measures.
I am not an engineer, but wonder if the the power stations produce as much electricity as they would with greater hydraulic pressure from full dams. Take Lake Gordon with its underground station and a 190m. dam wall with only 150m. of head?
50
Robert O,
How many times do you have to be told???
A few wind turbines and solar panels will fix the problem FOREVER.
You really are a slow learner.
50
That’s what the greens are saying, but the 308MW of wind capacity they already have hasn’t been doing much of late. Hydro T. think they need 200 MW of diesel, roughly equivalent to another 800 MW of wind turbines, or 1300 MW of solar panels ( only operate efficiently from 10 to 4). Perhaps they could use this green electricity to pump water from the Franklin R. back into Lake Gordon? Perhaps ARENA would fund it and Minister Hunt, the world’s best Minister for the Environment, officiate at the opening!
70
It strains the imagination to grasp how Hunt could be voted best ANYTHING.
50
That “award” puts him right up there with Wayne Swan.
What an honour!!!!
40
Leave our Mr Hunt alone, he has approved more rehabilitation projects than all the previous government’s Ministers put together. It’s just that the reason for doing it is
a bita lot misguided (carbon sequestration).In the meantime it gets a lot of unemployed school leavers some work experience planting trees, and off the street for a few hours a day!
30
RobertO as I understand it, the amount of power generated by a hydro plant is dictated by the design of the particular rotating generator(s) and tightly controlled RPM (in order to produce the exact alternating frequency) . Rotating speed is controlled by “throttling” the flow of water to maintain the proper speed and the “throttle” must react to changes in demand load. More load = more water but never more (or less) than required to hold rotating speed
If a dam has a high water level (higher pressure) then less flow volume is required to maintain a given speed (and load). As the dam level drops (pressure lowers) then more flow is required to produce the same amount of power. You could say that a higher quantity of stored energy resides in the upper water levels than in the lowest levels.
In many (most)areas, the dam operators are required to provide a minimum and maximum flow through the plant in order to sustain and protect the river downstream. This being the limiting factor for the amount of power a given hydro plant could produce.
90
This is true for any generating method, hydro, steam, diesel and whatever may come along in the future. The problem is even worse when many generators must feed a common distribution system because they all must be in sync within a small tolerance. They are so fanatical about it that you can use a synchronous motor to drive a clock and it will stay on time within a fraction of a second over periods of years now that atomic clocks are available for the frequency standard.
The other problem involved is that the field current in the generator must be adjusted up or down concurrently with the change in driving force, water flow, steam pressure to turbines or throttle to diesel engines. It’s quite a juggling act. And thankfully over the whole grid the demand doesn’t make sudden large jumps or it might be impossible to keep everything going.
70
Which is exactly the effect of renewables when penetration is high
Wind – when it suddenly stops or starts blowing (or when it blows harder than the maximum operational speed of the turbines)
Solar – when a large enough patch of cloud moves over or off a PV array
You state that the sync tolerance is fanatical for generators. The fanaticism is a requirement for the stability of AC grids (and the safe operation of synchronous generators). And the synchronisation is required in both frequency and phase – especially when generators are switched into a grid after being brought online.
Very few (if any) of the renewables proponents have more than a trivial, theoretical notion of how AC grids operate beyond the local, low voltage distribution subnets.
70
And yet the considerations are relatively obvious if you just stop to think about how to run a power grid.
30
Thanks Mark, so Hydro Tas. must be using more water for each MW produced with low dam levels. Wonder if anyone has thought about it since the dam levels were 40 % a couple of years ago and only 22% going into the 2015-16 Summer. It wouldn’t make much difference with the Poatina station as there is an enormous head (3000 ft.), but for the rest, particularly the Gordon station, it is probably relevant.
60
Sorry to interrupt the frivolity, just wondering on yesterday’s regurgitation of the “notch” theory.
The graph in fig 1 extends well past 2010. How can that happen to TSI with an 11 year smoothing and an 11 yr phase shift to the left. Smoothed temperature is also impacted. Is there some estimation process to fill in the missing “data” or is it merely a labelling fault.
Interesting that SIDC monthly sunspot numbers have trended lower since the early eighties. Latest data also shows average sunspots now at the low levels of the early 20th century. Two elements of the data but oddly missing from the graph.
Just wondering.
[I’ll approve this even though the question seems a little picky. If you want David to answer you it would be better to submit this in the prior thread since he may not be watching this one.] AZ
210
Does anyone know what an Unfreded Weekend is? Or for that matter, who Fred might be that the weekend had to be unfreded?
In any case it looks like poor Fred was robbed of his weekend. 😉
50
No one can take the party from Freddy Fudpucker. 🙂
40
Oh sure they can. Didn’t Jo just do it? 😉
50
How about an unfriended weekend on faithbook?
40
An unfreded weekend is the opposite to a fredded weekend.
20
Isn’t that a circular definition? Fredded depends on unfreded but unfreded depends on fredded and we don’t know what either one means. 😉
20
Bob Carter – hit a nerve with skepticalscience.
It is bizzare what SS actually wrote following the loss
of the renowned Bob Carter.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/Bob_Carter_arg.htm
The line item that made me cringe was the reference to the
accuracy of Al Gore.
The list of repudiations is long and very superficial.
Dr Carter obviously irritated this Alarmist website to the nth
degree with his factual delivery. 😀
151
Sks makes a nice list, don’t they? Accuracy of Al Gore??? What accuracy?
I remember the first time I visited sks. It was quickly obvious why Jo was calling Skeptical Science an ambush site. They bait the hook for the uncritical, unskeptical reader and then when you’ve begun to believe they’re really skeptical (meaning honest), they set the hook and there you are, believing their line of drivel.
It’s shameful that they have to throw dirt on Dr. Carter after he can no longer defend himself. Their lack of respect is despicable. But that’s their nature, no respect for anyone or anything except the party line.
161
Roy,
I agree with you… I actually struggled to find anything of substance in their list and especially their critique of Dr Carter.
10
I looked through the whole list of so called climate myths and found only one statement by SkS that I could agree with.
Myth:It’s El Niño.
SkS: El Niño has no trend and cannot be responsible for the trend in global temperature.
As far as I know, no one is claiming that El Niño is responsible for any long term trends ( only short term fluctuations). Hence this myth is a straw man argument from start to finish.
112
Nonetheless, AGW activists salivate during El Nino’s:
“See, we told you it was worse than we thought … we’re all frying” … etc
A regular commenter at Judith Curry’s went one step further in hypocrisy – “although the the rise in temperature will only be a short-term fluctuation, it should stop all this pause talk dead in its’ tracks”
Progress is made one ENSO at a time …
101
” it should stop all this pause talk dead in its’ tracks””
And when it eases off, the plateau becomes longer than its ever been…
The longest plateau ever, until we descend into the next valley.
71
Skeptical Science? Now that’s just wrong. What deceit! There is nothing skeptical anywhere. It is the Internet version of the Watchtower. Science is by definition skeptical. Skeptical Science is a useless tautology.
You know instantly when people talk about THE science, that they do not know anything about science. No real scientist has ever heard of THE science, like THE Bible. Science is not a religion. It is not a belief. It is not dogma. It is not consensus and mantras and kumbaya my Gore.
The absurd mantras which follow are really silly. O Great Gore, you are so good and so rich and so wrong.
Al Gore’s 10 year end of world scenario expired two weeks ago. As far as anyone can see, the world’s weather is fine and the seas are not acid and there are fewer hurricanes and agricultural production is massive.
As for CO2 a pollutant? You have to torture logic to argue that the stuff from which we are made is a danger to our existence. We are polluting internal combustion engines each churning out 3 ton of CO2 a year. All life on earth is made almost entirely from CO2 and H2O, which is why everything dries out and burns. Even pretty Green Chlorophyll is an evil long chain hydrocarbon, say C55 H72 O5 N4 Mg. A carbon pollutant? All the lawns, trees, forests, birds of the air, flowers and food are made from CO2.
Apart from the sad mocking of Bob Carter, which they see as necessary even after he is gone, nothing on THE science column is fact based real science. Even the need to have one last shot at Bob is the ultimate accolade to a great man. It simply means they could not win a single argument when he was alive. Now they have to argue with the facts and all they have is Al Gore’s book of wisdom.
160
Yes, but Michael E Mann reckons . .
😉
20
Best economic summary I’ve seen so far
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/why-us-voters-are-angry-and-why-the-economy-is-stagnant/
40
lol.
13 Feb: AlGore.com: Statement by Former Vice President Al Gore on CSIRO
“CSIRO’s research has been vital to the world’s understanding of how our climate is changing and it has helped to build a foundation on which we can anticipate future change and risk. For many years, CSIRO’s contributions to climate observations and modeling have been globally recognized and respected, and the decision to cut this effort from CSIRO should be revisited at the highest levels of the Australian Government. Further development of climate modeling and observations by CSIRO and colleague scientific organizations is essential to planning for climate mitigation and adaptation to global warming. This effort needs strengthening, not weakening, after the Paris Agreement in December.”
https://www.algore.com/news/statement-by-former-vice-president-al-gore-on-csiro
20
Another reason why the decision by the guy at the CSIRO is correct.
30
14 Feb: Weather.com: Valentine’s Day Arctic Outbreak Brings Coldest Temperatures in Decades to Boston, New York City
By Jon Erdman and Chris Dolce
On top of that, wind chills on Sunday dropped into the 40s below zero in portions of Upstate New York and New England, including Saranac Lake, New York, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and Montpelier, Vermont…
Here are several other cities that have set new daily record lows for Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14) and have also seen their coldest temperatures in many years…
https://weather.com/storms/winter/news/cold-outbreak-valentines-northeast-midwest-south-feb2016
15 Feb: UK Daily Mail: Put the romance on ice: New York suffers coldest Valentine’s Day in 100 YEARS as East Coast is hit with record lows and eye-watering wind chills of MINUS 36
By Kelly Mclaughlin For Dailymail.com and Associated Press
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3446546/New-York-City-faces-coldest-Valentine-s-Day-100-YEARS-East-Coast-hit-record-breaking-low-temperatures.html
10
sure it’s weather…but posting for Al Gore.
problems, problems…
VIDEO: 14 Feb: WCVB: Boston experiences coldest night in decadess
http://www.wcvb.com/weather/boston-experiences-coldest-night-in-decadess/37993580
14 Feb: Fox13: Record-breaking cold sweeps eastern U.S.
By Holly Yan and Azadeh Ansari, CNN
Bridgeport, Connecticut, could suffer an all-time low of 1 below. Philadelphia could tie its record low of 2.
And those are just the real temperatures…
Even the South isn’t immune to the brutal winter weather…READ ON
http://fox13now.com/2016/02/14/record-breaking-cold-sweeps-eastern-u-s/
10
14 Feb: CBC: Central, Eastern Canada in deep freeze for another day
The agency has issued about 140 extreme cold warnings throughout northwestern Ontario to northern New Brunswick due to a large Arctic high-pressure system…
Early Sunday, the temperature was -28 in Ottawa and -27 in Montreal, but wind chill values were making the temperatures feel like -40 in both cities.
Environment Canada issued a special weather statement on Sunday saying wind chill values will be between -38 and -50 Sunday morning and into the night in some areas of northern and eastern Quebec…
“I keep saying to people, you know, there will be times when El Nino will go to sleep and we’ll see that dreaded Polar Vortex, reaching down from Siberia right into the heart of Canada, and of course, that’s what we’re seeing this weekend,” said Dave Phillips, senior climatologist with Environment Canada…
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/extreme-cold-1.3447862
10
just remembered this was on the 4BC radio hourly news bulletin this morning. simply said it was an Essential Poll.
of course, they didn’t say the poll was commissioned by Solar Citizens, nor did they reveal the questions…which are at the bottom of this excerpt!!!
15 Feb: Sky News: AAP: Strong solar policy favoured by voters
Most Australians would be more likely to vote for a party that wants to install solar panels on every home and in hospitals and schools, a new poll has found.
Commissioned by Solar Citizens, the Essential poll found 63 per cent of Australians were more likely to vote for a party with a strong solar policy in this year’s federal election.
It also found 60 per cent would more likely vote for a policy that supported battery technology and almost as many would choose a party committed to large-scale solar and wind.
Solar Citizens national director Claire O’Rourke said the poll showed Australians want more ambitious solar policies on their agendas.
‘Australians want political leadership that will deliver cleaner, cheaper energy from the sun – and they’re willing to use their vote to make it happen,’ she said…
RIDICULOUS QUESTIONS FOLLOW
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/federal/2016/02/15/strong-solar-policy-favoured-by-voters.html
MSM is disgusting.
40
coincidence?
15 Feb: Northern Echo: Plan to cover council roofs with solar panels mooted
A bold Greens plan that could see all council buildings and infrastructure around the country fitted with rooftop solar panels so councils can cut their power bills and save ratepayers money is being launched today.
The plan allows solar companies to install solar panels on council property in a mutal exchange to cut power costs.
Australian Greens deputy leader and climate change spokesperson, Qld Senator Larissa Waters, will discuss the plan at the Solar Citizens Political Forum at 11.30 am QUT Gardens Point today.
Queensland Greens’ Brisbane lord-mayoral candidate, Ben Pennings, said the Greens’ ‘Shading Our Suburbs’ Plan would also invite tenders for new structures for solar panels that create shade…ETC
http://www.echo.net.au/2016/02/plan-to-cover-council-roofs-with-solar-panels-mooted/
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coincidence #2:
15 Feb: RenewEconomy: Sophie Vorrath: Poll finds majority would support party proposing solar on every rooftop
The survey results coincide with the latest data on solar PV growth in Australia, which reveals that January 2016 was one of the worst starts to a year for the industry since 2012 – even worse than January 2015.
The report shows rooftop solar installations in January fell across every state except for WA, and across almost every significant size bracket, excluding the 7-10kW range and for systems 2.5kW and less. Registrations for new rooftop solar installations in January 2016 slumped to just 47MW for the month.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/solar-vote-strengthens-poll-finds-growing-demand-for-pv-policy-support-53717
following has charts:
15 Feb: RenewEconomy: Sophie Vorrath: Australian solar PV market charts worst start to year since 2012
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/australian-solar-pv-market-charts-worst-start-to-year-since-2012-54064
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Snow flurries expected in Taswegia.
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tries to project an upside at the end, but…
12 Feb: MIT Technology Review: Richard Martin: Suddenly, the Solar Boom Is Starting to Look like a Bubble
By all accounts, 2016 should be a great year for solar power providers. In December, Congress extended the federal investment tax credit for solar installations through 2022, convincing analysts to project strong growth for the solar industry in coming years. Prices for solar panels continue to decline, even as emissions reduction targets reached under the Paris climate accord drive governments to seek more power from renewable energy sources. Several recent reports have shown that the cost of solar is often comparable or nearly comparable to the average price of power on the utility grid, a threshold known as grid parity…
But investors are not feeling the love…
Last month Nevada introduced sharp cutbacks in its program for net metering—the fees paid to homeowners with rooftop solar installations for excess power they send back to the grid. California and Hawaii, two of the biggest solar markets, have introduced changes to their net metering schemes as well. Across the country, as many as 20 other states are considering such changes, which would dramatically alter the economics of rooftop solar…
The uncertainty has cast the solar providers’ business models into doubt. Without net metering payments, residential solar “makes no financial sense for a consumer,” SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive recently admitted to the New York Times…
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600805/suddenly-the-solar-boom-is-starting-to-look-like-a-bubble/
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14 Feb: Courier Mail: Steven Wardill: Solar and wind power revolution is coming to Queensland with new projects capable of powering more than a million homes
The proposals range from two massive wind farms in Mount Emerald, solar farms in Townsville and Dalby and a biomass plant powered by chicken litter at Mount Cotton…
Valued at more than $2.4 billion, the new Queensland-based investments would halt the exporting of green energy jobs to southern states.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the Government’s policies were helping to attract investment, create jobs and combat climate change…
***However, not all the projects will proceed.
And the Government will have to attract significantly more investment as well as provide financial support to meet the 50 per cent target to prevent significantly pushing up power prices.
***The Queensland Productivity Commission recently questioned the Government’s target with detailed analysis finding an additional 17,000GWh of renewable energy and ***$10.8 billion worth of subsidies would be needed to reach the target…
***The Government has created an expert panel headed by retired investment banker Colin Mugglestone to investigate ways to achieve the target…
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/solar-and-wind-power-revolution-is-coming-to-queensland-with-new-projects-capable-of-powering-more-than-a-million-homes/news-story/4629576fcd039eea1189220b20742cd3
***29 Jan: QLD Government announce Renewable Energy Taskforce panel
Mr Bailey said the expert panel would be chaired by Mr Mugglestone, a investment banker, engineer, and experienced business executive who retired from Macquarie Capital in 2014 with more than 30 years’ experience in the infrastructure sector, working on projects throughout Australia, the UK, South East Asia and Norway.
Mr (Colin) Mugglestone will be joined by prominent climate change and clean energy advisor Allison Warburton; Paul Meredith, a physics professor and Director of UQ Solar; CEO of ACIl Allen Consulting Paul Hyslop; and Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie…
“Panel members have been chosen from an outstanding field of high quality candidates and I congratulate them on their appointment. They have been chosen for their expertise in renewable energy, climate change, energy market policy and regulation, and public policy,” he (Environment Minister Dr Steven Miles) said…
***As part of the public inquiry, the taskforce will undertake a comprehensive public consultation program, allowing Queenslanders to have their say on the proposed target. It will undertake public forums across the state to engage with consumer groups, households, peak energy industry bodies, energy businesses and unions…
The panel is expect to deliver a final report to the government towards the end of the year.
http://wastemanagementreview.com.au/qld-government-announce-renewable-energy-taskforce-panel/
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pat:
The CourierMail link is paywalled. Any mention of breeding unicorns? How the hell are they going to replace black coal with ‘renewables’ and not force up electricity prices?
Solar PV is cheapest and that is 4 times the cost of black coal fired.
The greens are wetting themselves because the Noor solar heat project first stage (of 5 if the money doesn’t run out). The first stage started last week and will deliver 143MW for daylight plus 3 hours storage. The greens have read this to mean that a million homes will be getting 24 hour “pollution free” electricity for practically no cost – instead it would supply about 7,900 homes for maybe 10 hours at a wholesale cost of $260-265 per MWh (8 -9 times that of coal fired), and as Tony has pointed out these things run a gas turbine 3-5 hours in the morning to heat up the fluid.
The first 3 stages will build to 453MW capacity (maybe) and cost $4.55 billion – that’s smaller than the Northern Power Station in Port Augusta which is shutting down next month because it is old and the S.A. Premier is a [snip][snip] [snip] believing wind can supply reliable power. I see that the Victorian [snip] are heading that way too.
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14 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: Ed King: Will US supreme court judge death save climate plan?
CRIB NOTES 15-19 FEB: Game on for Clean Power Plan, top climate scientists gather in DC, air pollution linked to 5.5 million deaths a year
The death of a 79-year-old Texan judge could have radically changed the mood music around US president Barack Obama’s beleaguered plan to make states slash greenhouse gas emissions…
Analysts say that means it’s game on for Obama’s flagship climate policy. Here’s a taster…ETC
The world’s top wonks meet for the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting – expect a slew of new reports out this week.
There’s likely to be specific focus on how more frequent extreme weather events will shock the global food system…
Figueres and Gore to talk
Prepare yourself for an tsunami of optimism in Vancouver this week. “More than 70 speakers will dare us to dream — to make no small plans,” say the organisers. UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and Al Gore are among the speakers.
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2016/02/14/will-us-supreme-court-judge-death-save-climate-plan/
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11 Feb: ScoopNZ: Energy Ministers and Business Leaders to meet at Summit
Energy Ministers and Business Leaders to meet at Resilience Summit
The growing importance of resilience is demonstrated in the calibre of delegates gathering in New Zealand’s capital next month for the Asia-Pacific Energy Leaders’ Summit hosted by the World Energy Council and BusinessNZ Energy Council…
The Asia-Pacific Energy Leaders’ Summit is attracting CEOs and senior executives from across the globe, including Shell, Rosseti Russia, Enersis Chile, Chevron, Honda and Fujitsu, and energy experts from Norway, US, UK, Japan, China, the Philippines and Australia. They will be joining over 50 major corporates and institutions from New Zealand and around the world, including the World Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Asian Development Bank, APEC Energy Working Group, International Renewable Energy Association and the APEC Sustainable Energy Centre.
Energy Ministers and high level officials from across the Asia-Pacific will join New Zealand Ministers Bridges and Bennett to discuss the growing resilience risks and challenges presented by climate change, emerging technologies, extreme weather events, cyber security, and the energy-water-food nexus…
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU1602/S00335/energy-ministers-and-business-leaders-to-meet-at-summit.htm
Asia – Pacific Energy Leaders’ Summit
Delivering Resilient Energy Infrastructure
March 16-17th 2016
In conjunction with the World Energy Council the BusinessNZ Energy Council are hosting the International Energy Leaders’ Summit in early March 2016 in Wellington. This will be a must-attend event for all those looking to future-proof the energy systems of the Asia Pacific region…
Summit highlights include:…
•Visit to Meridian Energy’s West Wind farm set in the hills above Wellington…
Who is attending?
(BOTTOM OF PAGE link: FULL SPEAKERS LIST
PLUS PROGRAMME
http://www.bec.org.nz/summit
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http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/02/15/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-215/
Who,if anyone considers our CSIRO scientists to be the best climate model less in the world?
If they are the best in the world, why are their models so wrong?
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I thought I read in the climategate emails that David Jones was sending the numbers to the CRU at East Anglia for processing, and Harry, of “Harry, readme.txt” fame, had remarked on what a hell of a mess the Australian numbers were in, stations that didn’t exist etc.
Any wonder the Australian models get nothing right.
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Saturday’s death of Antonin Scalia may prove to be a world tragedy.
Should Obama stack America’s Supreme Court with another enviro-loon, the decisions of the Court will have profoundly harmful impact upon the most powerful economy of the West. It is already devastated by the insane official debt of the Obama Administration, ($19 trillion dollars) and all the unfunded liabilities of the USA and all the subordinate governmental entities, States, Dependencies and Cities ($64 trillion dollars.)
There’s no way to avoid major economic pain. But history shows the electoral demand for someone to “do something” means absurd wishful-thinking ‘solutions’ will be applied that will exacerbate the situation.
Less immediately painful, but a loss for individual liberty, next month’s Supreme Court clash over contraceptives, religious liberty and President Barack Obama’s health care law also now seems more likely to favor the Obama administration.
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I’ve finally cracked after the 10,000th grammatical mistake by this website’s otherwise excellent authors and posters. The plural of Fred is Freds. The plural of El Nino is El Ninos. For all plurals, just add an “s”, regardless of whether the noun ends in a vowel or consonant.
Also, the possessive form of the pronoun “it” is “its” (no apostrophe, ever). And the possessive form of “who” is whose, not who’s.
Rant complete, back to the ice floe now.
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Except where there is an abbreviation! It’s stands for it is. You are quite correct that its is the possessive.
I think some of the problem is caused by predictive text. Just on this comment I was ‘corrected’ from its to it’s when I meant its.
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Dear Warmists,
I live a few blocks from the beach, a few meters above sea level. However I am starting to doubt the value of my investment in lifejackets and gondolas. Shouldn’t I be under a few metres of water by now? In fact on Sunday I read that the tiny rate of increase in sea levels is actually dropping, so NASA have concluded someone must be stealing the water. Maybe the same people who stole the temperature increase? I also note that Tim Flannery lives next to the water on the Hunter river and Al Gore bought a condo on the water in San Francisco. So is someone fibbing because the sea level looks just like it did when I first went to the same beach as a boy? It has been a long time since the last extreme weather event and the summer in Melbourne has been very cool and disappointing. We may soon have to turn the heaters on in the hope that they produce Global Warming and change the Climate to a little warmer. We can only hope the 350 scientists of the CSIRO solve this urgent problem soon. It is too cold to go swimming in mid summer and I still have to walk to the beach.
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The missing water is hiding at the bottom of the….hang on, that won’t work.
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Watched Q & A tonight in the hope of seeing Mark Steyn take down Sarah Hyphen Young in particular.
Dammit if she didn’t agree with practically the first thing he said.
Ah, well . . .
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I found this a few minutes ago on my Verizon home page. It’s small so I just quoted it. There’s probably more to it but it’s not working for me.
They don’t say why global warming will make some flights longer nor do they explain why “some” and not others.
You can’t stop it, the run-away train I mean. We were watching an old episode of Star Trek Next Gen last evening (Netflix) and global warming was mentioned — that’s from way back in the mid ’90s. If you started today to ferret out every last reference to this nonsense and stomp it into oblivion you’d never reach the end of it. More comes in the front end of the pipeline than you can take out the back end. It’s like trying to pick up the local beach and move it inland 10 miles by picking up one grain of sand at a time and taking them individually to their new site, one trip per grain. You can’t get there from here.
It’s becoming a total frustration. 🙁
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The last few days I have noticed a shift away from warming and towards air pollution in my local USAn news feeds – going back to the bad old days of smog run rampant. Articles like
http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/over-5-million-people-will-die-from-a-frightening-cause-breathing-1277429
“About 5.5 million people around the world die prematurely every year from breathing polluted air, and the majority of those deaths are occurring in China and India, where factories and coal-fired power plants are fueling economic growth, according to a report released Friday.
The authors said the findings show that disease from air and household pollution ranks as the number two cause of death worldwide. It comes in right behind smoking, which the World Health Organization says kills 6 million people annually. The research, part of an initiative to monitor the global burden of disease, is being presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington.”
I am almost willing to bet that generic “air pollution” will once again take center stage and CO2 will be relegated to being just a component of the evils in our air. Of course, this will be part of a new IPCC study group’s model runs, made possible by our tax dollars, and proof of the need for their eternal vigilance.
Of course, if you want fewer people using fewer resources, 5 million dead would be a good start. Plus the 6 million (that’s all?) of us who smoke.
My only problem is that I have been, all along, saying there are far worse things in our than CO2. I’d like to see efforts made to clean the sulfers, the soots, the assorted by-products of industry – cleaner tech, retrofitted scrubbers, we have the means right now. Cheaper than solar and wind. I want clean air, I just don’t want more world government meddling in order to get it, yet I have this nagging feeling that is ne of the places we are headed to next.
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Amen Mari
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Right said Fred.
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Right said Fred, the other other Fred!
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John and readers,
January 1st. 1901.
Any suggestions?
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Federation of Australia, Inauguration Day.
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Commiserations to Fred.
Fred has been denied his weekend
I can’t think how this will end.
Fred’s not a denier,
He’s really a trier,
And never has he fiddled a trend.
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🙂
LightningCamel came out of the closet
to show on Limerick skill he’s got it.
The rhyme was sublime
with fine use of time,
I am hoping to see lots more of it!
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Interesting article:
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You mean this site? http://sci-hub.io/
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