Just have a look around at their site, but click on the Pricing tab on the menu bar and scroll down for the costs.
The average system is now up around 2.5KW, hence around 8 to 12 panels.
That cost is $34 per panel, so around $340, for a yearly full service, and if the system lasts the full 25 years then that’s an extra $8500 at today’s prices.
So, now, this cleaning with the, umm, special coating included means that the system will have to generate an extra 2.5KWH per day to feed back to the grid just to cover the cost of the servicing.
For some perspective, the $8500 for cleaning the panels for the hoped for 25 years life of them is just a tad over 5 YEARS supply of power from the grid.
As mentioned in another thread, there’s no auditability of actual output and no will to even check that systems are working for as long as they have been “paid” to work.
That sort of subsidy structure is either devised by nincompoops or those wishing to put other peoples’ money into the pockets of “friends”.
In fact, thereâs a guy in Germany who seems to be taking this issue seriously and who appears to see it as the potentially giant financial opportunity that it is (why almost no one in the U.S. seems to see this opportunity, I donât know).
Heâs developed a pretty cool system that uses a tracking set of sprayers to remove snow â and to wash the panels when they are dirty (did I mention that goose poop, yes, goose poop, has become a significant sun blocking issue on our system?).
. . .
You can fool the sheep, but not the goose.
In the early days of PV solar in Germany, some systems were set up to de-ice by running (reduced, regulated) grid current through the panels. PV cells are resistors as well as capacitors and, when exposed to light, voltage and current “sources”.
Owners could switch on the heating so that the snow/ice in immediate contact would start to melt, lubricating the slip of the whole mass of ice/snow cover.
This might be convenient but isn’t much good in terms of energy balance or for those who cop a load of snow on their heads when the stuff shifts. Steep rooves in Germany have “ice fences” so that when the stuff starts to melt, it doesn’t fall as large chunks and kill people standing below.
http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/trends-in-extreme-weather-events-since-1900–an-enduring-conundrum-for-wise-policy-advice-2167-0587-1000155.pdf It is widely promulgated and believed that human-caused global warming comes with increases in both the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. A survey of official weather sites and the scientific literature provides strong evidence that the first half of the 20th century had more extreme weather than the second half, when anthropogenic global warming is claimed to have been mainly responsible for observed climate change. The disconnect between real-world historical data on the 100 yearsâ time scale and the current predictions provides a real conundrum when any engineer tries to make a professional assessment of the real future value of any infrastructure project which aims to mitigate or adapt to climate change. What is the appropriate basis on which to make judgements when theory and data are in such disagreement?
The compilation of temperature records are a source of problematic methodology of a kind not seen elsewhere in science. Under the umbrella term of âhomogenisationâ, there now seem to be a growing myriad of post-hoc adjustments to the original raw data that all seem to go in one direction, namely to increase the overall rate of global warming. This happens even on official websites. The total change is often somewhat greater than the 0.8-1ÂşC rise over the 20th century that is agreed by most people, critics or not. This is exemplified by data in Figure 4. This makes the problem of dispassionate engineering assessment almost impossible to achieve. Hansen (1981) wrote : âA remarkable conclusion from Figure 3 is that the global temperature is almost as high today as it was in 1940.â It is not clear now why this should be remarkable, although at the time, the rise in temperature from about 1975 had cancelled out some of the cooling since 1940 in the then available data. At the time, he [Hansen]showed 1980 temperatures were about 0.15ÂşC cooler than 1940. Now, NASA shows 1980 temperatures about 0.2ÂşC warmer than 1940. They have made a relative shift of +0.35ÂşC, and the adjustment represents ~40% of the century variation. The lesson from this is that the data integrity for claiming extreme events needs to shown to be of the highest order, and that the results claimed do not depend on the data manipulation itself.
You would expect that by the year 2000, the measurement of temps would have been pretty accurate. With most of the yearly temps since 1998 being increased (and decreased around 1910-1920), no wonder we are starting to question their motives.
http://file.scirp.org/Html/7-2801173_63199.htm Quantification of the Diminishing Earthâs Magnetic Dipole Intensity and Geomagnetic Activity as the Causal Source for Global Warming within the Oceans and Atmosphere
Quantitative analyses of actual measurements rather than modeling have shown that âglobal warmingâ has been heterogeneous over the surface of the planet and temporally non-linear. Residual regression analyses by Soares (2010) indicated increments of increased temperature precede increments of CO2 increase. The remarkably strong negative correlation (r = -0.99) between the earthâs magnetic dipole moment values and global CO2-temperature indicators over the last ~30 years is sufficient to be considered causal if contributing energies were within the same order of magnitude. Quantitative convergence between the energies lost by the diminishing averaged geomagnetic field strength and energies gained within the ocean-atmosphere interface satisfy the measured values for increased global temperature and CO2 release from sea water. The pivotal variable is the optimal temporal unit employed to estimate the total energies available for physical-chemical reactions. The positive drift in averaged amplitude of geomagnetic activity over the last 100 years augmented this process. Contributions from annual CO2 from volcanism and shifts in averaged geomagnetic activity, lagged years before the measured global temperature-CO2 values, are moderating variables for smaller amplitude perturbations. These results indicated that the increase in CO2 and global temperatures are primarily caused by major geophysical factors, particularly the diminishing total geomagnetic field strength and increased geomagnetic activity, but not by human activities. Strategies for adapting to climate change because of these powerful variables may differ from those that assume exclusive anthropomorphic causes.
http://www.tech-know-group.com/papers/Reassessing_CO2_climate_role.pdf The authors evaluate the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “consensus” that the increase of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is of anthropogenic origin and is causing dangerous global warming, climate change and climate disruption. They conclude that the data do not support that supposition. Most of the currently accepted scientific interpretations are examined and the given impression that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will increase the earth’s surface and/or air temperature is questioned. New insight is offered drawing a conclusion that no additional warming is possible due to the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Acceptance of that IPCC paradigm is incurring costly and draconian efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, tax such emissions and replace fossil fuel combustion by alternative energy systems whether such alternatives will achieve the desired results or not. The totality of the data available on which that theory is based is evaluated here, from Vostok ice core measurements, to residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere, to more recent studies of temperature changes that inevitably precede CO2 changes, to global temperature trends, to the current ratio of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, to satellite data for the geographic distribution of atmospheric CO2, to the effect of solar activity on cosmic rays and cloud cover. Nothing in the data supports the supposition that atmospheric CO2 is a driver of weather or climate, or that human emissions control atmospheric CO2. Furthermore, CO2 is not a pollutant, but an essential ingredient of the Earth’s ecosystem on which almost all life depends via photosynthesis. This paper rejects the new paradigm of “climate science” and asserts that the traditional, century old meteorological concepts for the factors that control weather and climate remain sound but need to be reassessed.
In the seasonal spirit of “returning from death” I made a brief inquiry into the condition of brain death and the likely results of being pronounced “brain dead”.
In 2012 Richard C. Senelick, a neurologist writing for The Atlantic, stated:
No one who has met the criteria for brain death has ever survived — no one. It can be difficult to predict a person’s outcome after a severe brain injury, but it can be said with certainty that a brain dead individual is dead, the same as if their heart was not beating.
This doctor’s statement is false. In 2008 a boy named Steven Thorpe was involved in a motor vehicle accident in the UK which damaged his brain very badly. The damage was so bad that four (4) consecutive doctors pronounced Steven as being brain dead, and that his organs should be harvested. Two weeks later Thorpe began breathing on his own without a ventilator, which therefore does not satisfy the medical and legal definition of brain death. Five weeks later he had recovered full consciousness, was talking about his experience, and was fit enough to leave hospital. Read the story at the BBC and the Daily Mail.
If Dr Senelick had been talking in generalisations he might have gotten away with it. If he had merely said that recovery from brain-death was nearly impossible and anyone who hoped for recovery from such a state was just indulging in baseless wishful thinking, that would have been a true statement. But he instead took an extreme position, stating it twice: “No one who has met the criteria for brain death has ever survived — no one.”
Unless all of Thorpe’s first four doctors made separate and independent misdiagnoses of brain death, one has to conclude that recovery from brain death has occurred at least once, and Dr Senelick’s denial was false at the time he made it.
If true death is permanent by definition, how long does one have to wait before declaring brain death as permanent?
Clearly a week is not enough time, if Mr Thorpe’s case is any guide. It is possible that the first diagnoses were not mistaken and that neural activity recovered to detectable levels by the following week.
Cases of recovery from clinical brain death seem to have happened at least 3 times between 2008 and 2014. Perhaps these can all be written off as mistaken diagnoses of brain-death, or perhaps they are all unusual cases in which brain death had genuinely occurred and yet was temporary.
On deeper matters, this still does nothing for the Dualist view that consciousness can survive clinical death. There is no evidence of Near Death Experiences occurring at the same time as flat EEGs, so the idea of consciousness being held in a spirit separate from the body still has no objective evidence for it.
When life gets stressful it is very easy to forget how wonderful life is compared to the alternative.
On deeper matters, this still does nothing for the Dualist view that consciousness can survive clinical death. There is no evidence of Near Death Experiences occurring at the same time as flat EEGs, so the idea of consciousness being held in a spirit separate from the body still has no objective evidence for it.
It’s interesting that most Christians believe this, yet there is actually no evidence for it in the Bible, unless you interpret certain passages with this particularly in mind.
The Bible actually teaches death: “For dust you are and to dust you will return”.
It also teaches the resurrection, just as Christ rose from the dead.
I approach religeon from an agnostic geopolitical perspective:
If you take the Roman view of events, two millennia ago, the disciples and followers of Jesus would have be seen as a political movement, with a philosophy, and goals, contrary to those of Rome.
The “removal” of the executive leader of a “rebel organisation”, has always been a standard way of disrupting and suppressing contrary political views. The Romans would not see Jesus as being any different, so they would have just followed standard operating procedures.
But in the case of the organisation that Jesus founded, that attempt at supression didn’t work.
At this time of year, Christians celebrate the resurrection, and subsequent survival, of the Christos organisation, all it stood for, and all it still currently stands for, even following the loss of its principle leader, and visionary.
Rereke
I don’t suppose either of us were there to witness the events ourselves. I expect the MSM in those days was no better than today.
Nevertheless, it is my understanding that the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, literally washed his hands after hearing the prosecution’s case.
In fact, many believe that is the origin of the saying “I washed my hands of it” in dismissing a particular issue.
My take on the story is that Pilate was not convinced of any wrongdoing or danger, and was therefore rather blase about the whole thing, simply turning his back on the intentions of the pharisees and administrative bureaucracy of Judahism.
In other words, Christ was deemed not a threat to the Roman empire, but to the regional Jewish establishment of the day.
Regardless, Easter is a time to celebrate the richness of life. A time to reflect on all the things for which to be thankful. That includes Jo and David’s blog, and the camaraderie that we share.
Ka hari Aranga Rereke.
I think that what you term “The Christos organisation” would not have survived without the Resurrection of Christ. Remember, the disciples were a bunch of complete scaredy-cats after the crucifixion and Peter had denied Christ. So what changed them?
I guess there are probably quite a few people who should be thankful about the numerous checks and balances in place when it comes to determining the extent and permanence of brain injury, especially when agonising decisions usually fall to close family.
A work colleague was diagnosed with a brain tumour after he started suffering from dizziness and nausea, and was told by his doctor “I’m not sure how you’re still alive, let alone still able to go to work”. That was at least 10 years ago, and he’s still at work (the tumour was removed).
A Fly Pick gold star? I’d like to thank my producer, my director, the Academy…
I’ll have to add it to my meager collection of JN moderator Star Picks. It’s very few and far between for me. My last mod gold star was probably from Oggi back in July 2012. Not that I’m sad enough to have looked it up or anything.
Okay, yes, I’ve just done a quick review of gold stars awarded to other players, such as MBC, Handjive, “Tim”, Backslider, and Dr Marohasy. The pattern seems to be that if you can use evidence and direct quotes to show that a so-called expert’s public opinion was erroneous then you are in the running for a star pick. Keeping it short and sharp tends to increase your chances I think. Beyond that, it is just luck as to whether you are in the right place at the right time. Yes, the stars have to align too. So for those goldfingers with stars in their eyes, there is the game plan to aim at. More difficult to say what gets a Fly Pick star specifically, as they seem to be more rare.
Hmm, one from Oggi, now one from Fly, two more mods’ stars to go and I can complete the whole set.
Hey…
(get ready for it)
Hey… if you collect all 4 moderator stars together…
(tee heee)
… do all four stars join together to make… A SUPER-NOVA !!
I went to the dentist today and was bowled over with the charges. I told the dentist he should do what a goose can and a duck can’t.
He said “What’s that?”
I said”Stick your bill up your ass”.
A goose is a goose and a duck is a duck, except that a MUSCOVY duck is really a goose.
I’ve been reading about Tasmania’s power crisis and if ever there was an example of wind and solar not being up to the task, and the risk of putting your power eggs into one hydro basket, this is it. Give me cheap and reliable coal power any day.
The dams were down to 14.6% (2104 GWh) on the 23rd. of March and still no repair date to the cable; think of the cost of re-commissioning the gas turbines, cutting the production of the 3 major users and put in 200MW of diesel. Doesn’t do much to their clean green image and PR, but at what cost to keep the lights on because they sold too much green electricity in the carbon years!
In fact the last point was very telling, the dams were drained intentionally to profit from the carbon tax. Look where that got them. Apparently, Basslink may potentially never be repaired if the cost is too high. However, I wonder how many will take this as a salutary lesson on the frailties of so-called renewable energy?
Attracting as many punters as you can by removing the reference to the Christian (and pagan) religious festival.
Those who must have the word “Easter” emblazoned upon their packaging, can purchase a ‘Real Easter Egg’, or a ‘Meaningful Easter Egg’, each providing a Christian message with the egg.
This endless repetition that coal is dirty has to stop. It is wrong. Modern power stations are super clean. No acid rain, no particulate matter, no sulphur, very environmentally friendly. The ‘smoke’ is always just steam.
Really, if you ignore the ridiculous idea that CO2 is pollution, the stuff we and plants breath out, the very stuff from which all life on earth is made, modern coal is very clean. It replaced the poor and incomplete combustion in domestic fires of wood and coke and coal and brown coal and peat. People used to burn everything in winter especially in the cities and the mess was massive, especially in Europe. The devastation was widespread and the cities were filthy places. The devastation in the country was also massive. For making steel, the forests of Finland vanished to the point where no tree is over 200 years old. All saved by clean coal, clean factories and the clean air acts.
It is hard to imagine the London of the 1850s with at times 3,000 deaths from cholera a week, dirty smog, no sewerage, no running water and the sewers with 200 outlets straight into the Thames from where they pumped the drinking water. Limed sheets were hung in Parliament to mask the smell. Carbon filled the air and the fog. Fixing the sewage changed life, as did clean power. Melbourne retrofitted sewerage into the inner city in the 1880s. Pumping stations were built and sewerage plants. All required power. Prior to that there were thousands of cases of cholera at once even in suburban Caulfield. Now people talk about clean energy. They have no idea, living in a clean world which many of the people of the world cannot imagine.
I was in Cheboksary, on the Volga last year on one of the few boats which took tourists. The Russians have hydro and nuclear. The trans Siberian train is all electric. There is a McDonalds and it was not the food, the architecture, the signage which fascinated the village children. It was the flush toilets.
We have ultra clean cities, ultra clean energy. Only nut cases want to go back to living in medieval times with wood fires and pits and dirt. Our world is clean and food is more plentiful than ever and massive infant and maternal mortality of 30% is a thing of Victorian times. Yet people yearn for clean energy and a clean environment when they already have it. Try Madras or Cairo, relatively modern cities which are disasters. Only spoiled westerners can complain about ‘clean’.
Give me cheap and reliable and clean coal power any day.
I agree with you but Bilary has vowed to shut down all the coal-fired generating plants if elected. That nasty ol’ carbon, we need to get rid of it, don’t we. Wonder what she would think if someone proposed decarbonising her and some others including the EPA.
Given that graduate realists, those pesky engineers, have historically often been at the heart of climate related reality checks globalist eco-marxist resistance, is it unsurprising to witness the association of graduate educational credentials in engineering with jihadist radicals? No. It seems not. And that’s not all. Apparently not only strongly represented with extremist behaviour the credentials indicate the same personality type as right wing extremism. It appears there is little to chose between them. But the same definitely cannot be said for left wing extremist stereotypes.
This researcher I suspect betrays himself at every turn. Researchers uncover link between education and extremism.
I hope the engineers have something to say about this. Holding a postgraduate qualification in biomechanics I know I’m a lost cause.
I just watched a rerun of a recent Catalyst show on “their” ABC. The topic was about the revolution in household batteries to back up intermittent domestic solar and grid connected windmills.
I felt quick sick watching it because this massive investment is totally unnecessary because CAGW is not happening and fossil fuel (or nuclear) gives us dirt cheap reliable electricity.
What a massive and unnecessary drain on the economy.
I haven’t watched the episode but wanted to chime-in on the household batteries.
The Tesla Powerwall was getting a lot of coverage, though Tesla decided to withdraw the larger model from the market. Now the smaller 6.4kWh version is the only domestic version available, and that is still a long way from the 3 days’ worth of energy storage that would be needed to be totally off-grid and independant of coal.
For as long as artificially high tax-subsidised feed-in tariffs are available, making it more worthwhile to sell high in the day and buy low at night rather than store the energy, I have difficulty seeing how Poweralls are going to sell well. Especially as they add $3000 to the system install cost. Perhaps the government will mandate on-site storage for solar panels to prevent them from disrupting the grid as domestic PV proliferates.
Interesting that Energex were trialling the Powerall. Perhaps buffering at the substation level is sufficient for smoothing out the cloudy ripples of PV feed-in. Or perhaps Energex are looking at protecting against a Carrington Event?
Quick response energy storage will still have useful applications in our grid, but one little 6.4kWh Powerall isn’t going to liberate anyone from coal, and that’s without even considering the cost of it.
They mentioned that the Adelaide City Council will be offering $5,000 subsidies for battery packs and the South Australian government will offer subsidies as well.
Yep – subsidizing households to stabilize the grid.
We discussed it when the episode originally aired – I was quite angry by the end of it. The stupidly upbeat presentation was seriously offensive. Especially the statement
But here we have a view of the future, a view big companies like this are taking seriously. You’d have to think, out of all the research groups around the world focussing on batteries, someone somewhere will make the breakthrough within the next 10 to 20 years. Maybe sooner.
I think you nailed it with substation buffering, when the cost is competitive. It would stabilize surges throughout the day and early evenings and allow distributors to top up cheaply overnight. The concept of home batteries is not a great idea. I have about 80kWh storage in a sea container, coupled to 3kW of solar and a 3kW wind turbine on my farm which is off grid because of it’s location. There’s still the odd time of the year that the Genset startsup. Batteries are stored energy and just like storing petrol or other hazardous items, a domestic setting is not ideal. For safety, economy of scale, ease of control and scheduled maintenance I think the sub station is the place, should it become economic. For those who want to go off grid….it’s ok for the enthusiasts but they will find they make sacrifices.
King Is. lies about halfway between Tasmania and Victoria. It covers 1000 sq. km. with a population of 1800 people, mainly occupied in farming ventures producing high quality meat and milk products.
The main method of electricity generation has been diesel generators, but recently a hybrid station has evolved using wind, diesel and solar inputs and battery back-up. Over the past month the performance of these inputs has been noted on 30 occasions.
Wind Energy
The turbines have supplied 38% of the islands needs. The maximum output noted was 2268 Kw, and the turbines were idle one third of the time. The turbines exceeded 1000 Kw 8 times of the 30 sampled (27%).
Diesel Generation
The diesel generators supplied 62% of the islands needs with a maximum production noted of 1540Kw, and were idle 20% of the time.
Solar Energy
Less than 1% of electricity came from the sun and on one occasion 60 Kw was noted, but average production was only 9 Kw (day and night).
General
Daily usage varied from 800 Kw at 3 am. to a maximum of 1700 Kw. at 6 pm. each day, and usually was supplied by a combination of diesel, or wind and sometimes using battery output.
King Is. is a windy place with the wind coming from all directions, but usually from the W or SW. The average wind speed noted was 7-8 m/sec(28kph) with a maximum of 17.4 m/sec which gave 2268 Kw. Very little electricity was generated with winds less than 5-6 m/sec.
The wind turbines have provided 38% of the island’s electricity needs allowing the diesel generators to shut down 20% of the time with some fuel saving, but being idle 30% of the time could not be wholly relied on without a very large battery capacity.
I think this island demonstrates use of wind energy in an appropriate location, but it also demonstrates quite well its limitations for a larger scale operation.
Did you notice that it is impossible to get the costs involved for the various components?
The vanadium redox battery was supposed to be a “breakthrough” but failed and it wasn’t deemed worth saving hence the big lead-acid array.
They added big flywheels to the diesels allow them to be used to stabilize the grid, even when they aren’t running (their generators run as motors in this mode).
When just isn’t as much demand as the turbines are generating, a variable resistor bank is used to match demand to the output as I’m guessing the wind turbines can’t be curtailed quickly enough
They do have a very pretty realtime display of the power output and consumption of the generator and batteries.
The resistor bank is the smoothest way to keep the wind turbines loaded up. The excess energy is dumped to heat when the batteries are full and the load is met. If wind speed is too high the turbines will turn out of the wind.
Not 5km under the ocean from the old open pit, but about 1km. The undersea workings stopped on a large fault zone.
No, the ocean hasn’t flooded the underground workings, but the old open pit is now a small brackish rainwater lake. The body of water may extend partway along the underground workings but no-one is interested in finding out with the price of tungsten ore now quite low. Further exploration (drilling) was done in the early 2000’s to try and extend the open pit but nothing much came of it.
I would have thought the price of tungsten would be on the way up these days seeing as it is about the only metal with an SG the same as gold and by gold plating it you can replace all the missing wealth in the bank vaults, Fort Knox etc.
As with off-grid Windorah where the Qld Govt spent ~ $100,000 per house to install a solar thermal plant to supplement the 100,000-litres-per-year diesel plant consumption.
‘The Australian government recently provided a billion dollars for renewables startups, but Australia canât or wonât provide a few million dollars, to outfit an official expedition to the Antarctic Ocean, to prevent thinly disguised commercial whale hunting in the Australian controlled whale âsanctuaryâ.
Amazing. A horizontal straight line would be as good a fit as any. Nothing to see here folks would be as good a summary of the last 200 years. Table top. It shows how splining data can just produce meaningless curves, unless someone has a theory of a direct driver of short term temperature variation other than random variation.
Yes, which should go the way of all such spikes. Natural variation, a combination of factors like a freak wave or an exceptionally cold winter.
The June 1941 Nazi invasion of Russia in Operation Barbarossa, that year’s end was the coldest in 130 years and stopped the siege of Moscow. Tanks froze. Shells could not be fired. Sump oil turned to sludge. Nothing worked. The previous coldest year was allegedly 1812, the invasion of Russia by Napoleon’s Grande Armee. You can only assume that both followed a peak in temperature which convinced the military leaders that a spike in temperature would persist when it was in fact a harbinger of extreme cold. A bit like the tide running out before a tsunami. Spikes are natural and mean nothing.
I keep on receiving letters from the Liberal Party. They want me to send them $15.00 so that they can win the next election. The first two came from Tony Nutt.
I keep on responding to their requests. I was always taught that responding to correspondence was the polite, well mannered, thing to do.
The latest request came from Richard Alston, the Federal President of the Liberal Party of Australia.
Here is my response to Mr Alston:
Dear Mr Alston,
Thank you for your email. It is the third one Iâve received this month from the Liberal Party asking for money.
The first two came from Mr Tony Nutt, who asked me for $15.00.
I advised Mr Nutt that I would not be contributing on this occasion. He has not responded.
I now confirm that advice to you. I will not be making a contribution on this occasion.
Why?
Well, as I explained to Mr Nutt, the Liberal Party has stopped representing the conservative side of the Australian electorate. If I wanted to vote for a leftist political party Iâd vote Labor.
Can you change my mind?
Yes. Announce the following:
1. There will be no reintroduction of a Carbon Dioxide tax nor any Carbon trading scheme;
2. There will be a significant reduction in the activities of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC)and its orderly wind-up will occur during the next term of a Liberal Coalition Government as part of the budget repair process â along with the $1 billion son of the CEFC recently announced by Mr Turnbull;
3. Global warming/climate change research will be defunded as part of the budget repair process;
4. A full and independent effectiveness and integrity audit of the Bureau of Meteorologyâs (BoM) temperature data collection and temperature adjustments will be undertaken in the first year of the next term of the Government (there can be no more whitewashes);
5. Section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act will be repealed in line with the promise made at the last election;
6. The funding for the Labor Partyâs Safe Schools programme will be rescinded and a sensible Liberal party policy put in its place; and,
7. The budget of the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) will be reduced in each year of the Forward Estimates to deliver a minimum 15% real saving to the budget over that period.
When a commitment is made by Malcolm Turnbull to these matters I will be happy to get back on board.
Until that is done I can advise you that I will be looking to vote for a non-green conservative independent for the House of Representative and for the National Party in the Senate – given it has negotiated a power sharing agreement with the Liberal Party that protects Australia from the worst of the Malcolm Turnbull climate policy follies. I will also be promoting this course of action to as many people as I can.
Yours sincerely,
(Name and address supplied)
I post this on Joâs site as part of my commitment in the last sentence.
Festivals on or about the Spring/Autumn Equinox are and have been ‘special’ for human for a very long time, before times when men would nailed to wooden crosses for saying ‘why not be nice to one-another’.
This year is somewhat special in that it is the earliest spring/fall since 1896! Yes, the 2016 vernal or spring (autumn or fall) equinox was on March 20 at 4:30 UTC (March 19 at 11:30 p.m. CDT).
Celebration at the equinoxes (and the solstices) have been happening in human societies since before record were written — Easter (First Sunday after a full moon, after the spring equinox) was commandeered from the Jewish and pre-Christians (like all major Christian festival dates) to lend legitimacy and relevance to the Christian story.
And yes records show that Jesus was convicted by the Roman authorities just after a Jewish Passover celebration — a celebration that is linked to the equinox, however it was one particular Passover and so it truth Easter should be a fixed date, not a variable one.
So to all what ever your celebration is, have a happy one! đ
It seems funny (peculiar) that we wish others a Happy Easter. Why would a non believer care? I think they wouldn’t. And a believer would know the significance of the resurrection of Christ and not need the, “Happy Easter,” although they certainly wouldn’t reject it. Easter would be a joyous celebration of the single most significant thing about Christianity â the tomb was empty that morning, the first day of the week, when the women went there to finish the burial preparations of the body of a man they thought was dead.
So to believer and non believer alike, may this day bring you the joy and happiness you expect from it.
I appreciate the sentiment Roy, put it this way I’d rather have people wishing me well in the spirit of their beliefs than behaving in a threatening manner towards me, my lifetime non believer stance is a purely personal trait that is me being honest with my innermost self that I could not believe in a deity without pretending or lying and insulting others that feel strongly otherwise.
Such are the times that I’ve had to drop the self describing term atheist as its been hijacked by the left to include their numerous ugly traits and don’t want people aligning myself with them so non believer will have to do for now.
To those that follow Christian bases beliefs I thank you for developing a religion decent enough to be entwined into modern democratic nations and their constitution’s that helped nurture the advancement of technology and thinking, and a Happy Easter to you too.
I too would rather have people wishing me well from their tradition. A wish for my happiness or wellbeing is a whole lot more to be desired than someone’s wish for fire and brimstone raining down on me because I don’t believe as they do. You can rest assured that I am not your judge.
The unfortunate thing about our Christian heritage here in America is that we’re throwing it all away as fast as we can. And as we throw it away, what comes in to replace it is costing us more and more restrictions, loss of freedom and ultimately I think it will cost us the nation that was carved out of the wilderness of North America starting in 1620 (1610 if you want to count Jamestown in Virginia which ultimately failed). We made a lot of mistakes as we went but have always stood up and admitted our faults. It was a long painful road to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights and yet more long years to the nation that rejected slavery, then segregation and other mistakes. And we’re tossing it all down the drain as fast as we can.
I was just talking with one of my European friends and he claims that extreme temperatures in Hungary are now 8 to 10 degrees higher than 20 years ago. He also said that the length of extreme temperature events are also longer, from one or two weeks up to six weeks.
No, he claims to have actually seen it. I know that this kind of anecdote is little to go on, however he is quite convinced of impending disaster, whatever the actual cause.
I guess I will need to dig up some temperature records for Central Europe.
I guess I will need to dig up some temperature records for Central Europe
Yep
Empirical evidence – cornerstone of actual science, followed by prediction of sufficient detail as to be falsifiable (ie. “flooding will occur someplace, sometime” won’t do)
The confrontation canât be found in any history booksâthe written word didnât become common in these parts for another 2000 yearsâbut this was no skirmish between local clans.
Now, after a series of excavations between 2009 and 2015, researchers have begun to understand the battle and its startling implications for Bronze Age society.
The well-preserved bones and artifacts add detail to this picture of Bronze Age sophistication, pointing to the existence of a trained warrior class and suggesting that people from across Europe joined the bloody fray.
A perfect example of applied science, with input from a range of disciplines. One detail I had not been aware of is the fact that one’s teeth contain various traces of chemical diet elements ingested during your growth period, so allowing a good guess as to the area where you grew up (not so much now, I would think, with food staples from everywhere). But, fascinating.
Tony of course they use vegetable carbon.
Vegetable carbon is 100% natural vegan carbon and therefore unlike the other forms it will be correctly assimilated and aligned by the human body’s energy waves.
When I read the news of our dear leader’s desire to provide yet another billion dollars to the global warming scam I wrote, once again, to my MP, Louise Markus. Now she is one of the good guys; she voted for Abbott in the spill and, in the few conversations that I have had with her (yes, she actually rings me!), she is clearly a “conservative”. This is what I wrote:
Oh dear, Louise,
$1,000,000,000 on “Renewable Energy”
I would support $1 Bn for new hospitals.
I would support $1 Bn for a new road system in Sydney.
I would support $1 Bn for new dams and hydro.
But I will not support the waste of $1,000,000,000 to support risky research that should be funded by commercial interests, not taxpayers.
If the aim of this waste is to “save the planet” not only is it a waste, it is senseless! The Australian contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere is only 0.00002% of the total atmosphere – virtually nothing! We could close down every factory in the country tomorrow, stop driving every vehicle and turn off every power station and it would not make one iota of difference to the climate.
It is really pointless to spend money we have not got to fix a problem that does not exist to appease a portion of the electorate that will never vote for you anyway, while alienating the portion of the electorate that should be voting for you.
There is a reason that Turnbull lost his leadership over this issue before, and that issue remains and is not forgotten by conservative voters. It would seem that it is Turnbull rewarding the Greens for their Senate support. The thought of Turnbull getting you into bed with the Greens should terrify all conservative Liberals – the Greens will politically rape you, and us.
How can I vote for a party that is moving so far from my beliefs? I am still undecided as to how I would vote in the lower house, as I respect and like you, but I will be voting (1) in the Senate for the Australian Liberty Alliance and none of my preference votes will go the the despicable woman who is No 1 on the Liberal Senate ticket. What she did to Tony Abbott was beyond despicable.
I trust that you will indicate my complete antipathy on this and related “climate change” issues to your colleagues at your next party room meeting.
Kind regards,
I got the normal auro response in a couple of seconds but two days later, I got this:
Dear Peter
I understand your response. I will relay your concerns to my colleagues.
Warm Regards
Louise Markus MP
Federal Member for Macquarie
At least she read it (or somebody did) so let’s hope I am not the only one who wrote.
This is an outstanding scholarly video about leftist “thinking”. Its tile is “IQ, racism and the conservative” but it goes beyond that. Twenty minutes. Please watch.
Interesting but hardly new, leftists have been claiming since at least the 1950’s that intelligent people are on the left. Like man-made global warming this has never been proved but is repeated dogmatically and endlessly. The speaker is correct about the social pressure to conform. I was a socialist at University because it seemed a good thing. I lasted 3 weeks because I did what most of them don’t do and looked up the history and ‘achievements’ of socialism. I’ve forgotten the name of the book that persuaded me, but it was a history of socialist settlements, mostly in Australia.
You may not know, or care, but many towns on the River Murray in S.A. were founded by socialists; time and time again a group of fervent, well meaning believers would start the settlement which would rapidly collapse (never more than 2 years, often sooner). Those still believing would move up-river along with some newcomers to found another town etc. until the whole thing collapsed. There was even a group of australians, veterans of previous failures, who went to Paraguay to found a socialist colony in the jungle “free from distraction” – it didn’t last.
I reasoned that if the most dedicated group of the true believers who’d continued to believe despite failure that there was no hope of socialism ever working with humans. I did think it might work for ants and bees until I learnt a bit about them.
As the old british saying goes “If you’re not a socialist before you’re 25, there is something wrong with your heart. If you are a socialist when you’re older than 25, then there is something wrong with your head”. Presumably because experience in the real world brings realism to your beliefs. That is the problem with our schools and Universities in that the teachers pass from school to university and never find themselves exposed to real life. “the inner-city dwellers” jibe, all busy reinforcing the doctrine and attacking anyone who doesn’t conform; hence the dogmatism of the trolls.
I was reading Climate Change the Facts, 2014. Great essays. Nigel Lawson in particular, ex Chancellor of England. Excellent clear thinking. In his reasoning however I considered two things which could be better addressed by science
.. “by burning fossil fuels -coal, oil and gas – we are increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and thus, all other things being equal, increasing the earth’s temperature.”
The first is the essential point conceded by just about everyone where the second is what everyone argues about. Once again the first and foundation statement in the logic is completely unproven to this day. The sole argument is that it is obvious, which to a scientist, it isn’t.
The second .. “the stimulus to plant growth”.. “Biologists have always known that CO2 is essential for plant growth.”
Essential? Stimulus? CO2 is the entire plant. The only source of energy and material for plants and animals is photosynthesis. This is CO2 capture using sunlight to form Carbohydrates, which as the name indicates is hydrated carbon (dioxide). The formula is (CO2)m(H2O)n. These are the building blocks of life. Slow combustion of these ‘carbs’ back to CO2 and H2O is what powers our existence.
In other words, we and all life on earth are ultimately made from Carbon Dioxide and very little else, except calcium for bones for humans. CO2 is not a fertilizer, a stimulant or an additive. That 50 tonne tree you see is solid carbon dioxide and water.
There are only three major ingredients in creating life on earth. Carbon Dioxide, Water and sunlight. If you have enough of these three, you can grow plants in a desert, with a few trace metals and a third trace gas, nitrogen. If you are missing any of these three, life ceases to exist. You are also limited by all three, which is Lawson’s ‘fertilizer effect’. More CO2 and more plants. Simple. So how Carbon Dioxide can be labelled pollution is beyond reason. You may as well label water and sunlight pollution.
Sorry, the other big gas is chlorine, as in salt. Banned by Greenpeace. It and Potassium chloride are the conductors of all our electrical wiring. Salt was known as white gold by the Romans and they were paid in salt, thus sal or salary. Egyptians too. Gandhi’s famous strike in India was at the salt works because salt is a basic human and animal requirement. Fresh water too. Only Greenpeace would ban chlorine. It shows how ignorance of basic science is behind so many Green arguments. For them rational philosophy never happened.
When only 2% of the world’s water is fresh and only perhaps 2% of that is available, the rest locked up in Antarctica and the Great Lakes and Lake Baikal. The Greens insistence that we do not trap fresh water in dams is madness. Who suggested desalination plants were sustainable, requiring massive amounts of fossil fuel power. So they are all mothballed while we pay for them where dams which last forever and cost a fraction of the money are not being built.
If ever there was serious damage done by the Greens to a needy world, surely it is the banning of new dams. The natural way of life is dying of thirst and starvation in a drought but Greens want the rivers to empty into the salty ocean in a drought. You have to be thankful to the people who built the 26 locks on the great Murray river, saving us from disaster. It would have been illegal today.
Greens are not cute. They are dangerous to life on this planet. Their solar panels and windmills are just nutty but the real damage is stopping real progress on alternative energy beyond their shaman gods of sun, wind and water. It is a druidic cult led and fed by communist political opportunists (tautology) like Adam Bandt whose unpublished PhD is on communism.
The only source of energy and material for plants and animals is photosynthesis
Most people have no clue whatsoever about photosynthesis, nor any interest in it as a practical concept.
Consequently the CAGW advocates can get away with “photosynthesis supplements life cycles” or similar malicious hogwash. This lets them “put a price on carbon” without significant public backlash.
Yes, such dissembling hypocrites are really vomitous. But the wilful ignorance of the public is their core enabler.
(This may relate directly back to the special coating I mentioned in Comment Number 1 right at the top of this page, because this was the very first thing I thought of as soon as I read the information at their website.)
Some of you may know (or even may not know) that I also contribute at the Mothers car care site on their Wax Forum. In fact, that was the very first time I used my screen name when I first added a Post at their site way back in May of 2006.
In 2009, I had also been a contributor for a year at what is now my Home site. I didn’t want to mention too much about what I was doing at my home site at the Mothers site, because this was basically a car care site.
However, I tentatively added a New Thread and subsequent Posts about Pure Carnauba Wax, and in that series of five Posts, I mentioned some of the Science behind photosynthesis, what ianl8888 mentions above.
The process of plants taking the CO2 out of the surrounding air only occurs during daylight, as it is Sunlight which provides the trigger for this process. That was what surprised me the most about the process. I remember as a child hearing that old adage that trees, umm, breathe (for want of a better way of describing it simply) CO2 in and breathe out Oxygen. But the process stops at night. It is triggered as sunlight shines on that plant, any plant at all, first thing in the morning as the Sun rises, and stops at Sunset.
I (tentatively) wanted to combine something about CO2 into something related to car care, and the Carnauba Wax process interested me enough to do just that. It was heart in mouth stuff for me in a way, because I wasn’t all that sure how something like this might be perceived at a site where it was only about car care.
As it turned out, that Thread of mine actually proved quite popular, and as the visits to that Thread rose, the Admin at the Forum made the Post a Sticky Post, one of only two Sticky Posts from a Forum member. It has proved to be one of the most visited Posts at the site.
The principle would be similar for the protection of those solar panels mentioned in the earlier comment here at Joanne’s site. The wax is the very thinnest of coatings which still allows the light through but protects the surface of the panel in this case, in much the same way is it protects the top layer of paint on your car, the Clear Coat, and in exactly the same manner as the wax protects the leaves of the parent tree in the jungle heat. The fact that it shines up to a virtual glow, and beads water away is the added bonus.
Not in the sense of being so rare. It is 78% of the atmosphere, but it is a smaller 1.1% component in human biology than the big three of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon and nitrogen, 3% by weight and generally in proteins, amino acids and DNA. I note on the internet, the human % are often given by weight as the abundance, which is wrong. Hydrogen is only 10% on this basis when it is 62% by frequency in H2O and CH2 chains.
We are mostly water and weigh a lot less dried out. Much of the rest is CH2 like wood, so we burn. Not a great deal of nitrogen at all. So if you get the percentages (by number, not weight as hydrogen is light)
By number of atoms in humans
Oxygen 24%
Carbon 12%
Hydrogen 62%
Nitrogen 1%
Total 99%
However if you take out the H2O you are left with Carbon 12%,Hydrogen 14%, Nitrogen 1% so of the 27%, we are hydrocarbons with 4% Nitrogen. Good fossil fuel. Pollution.
“It might also surprise you to know that nearly 15% of Australian households have solar panels on their roofs.
Thatâs the highest number of solar panels on peopleâs roofs per capita anywhere in the world.”
â Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, speaking on Q&A on March 22, 2106.
Verdict: Josh Frydenberg was correct.
. . . BoM Special Climate Statement: Prolonged March heatwave affects many parts of Australia
Issued 11 March 2016, updated 22 March 2016
Man, this is just such a huge story. Can you believe it. Whopping big. (oh Tony, please, /sarc)
4.5GigaWatts of Nameplate. That’s 4,500MW of raw power. That’s Loy Yang PLUS Hazelwood.
Total power generated by this humungous amount of rooftop power. The same as generated by Bayswater in, umm, 98 days.
Number of coal fired power plants closed by this huge amount of rooftop solar power – Nil.
Number of power plants easing back on their power generation because of this huge amount of rooftop solar power – Nil.
Why?
Because this is spread across the whole of Australia in small local areas where it has all but zero effect on local grid demands.
The total power generated by all this rooftop solar power is a tad over 2% of total power generation. Between a half and two thirds of that power being generated by those rooftop panels is consumed by the homes with the panels, so the amount returned to the grid ….. spread across the whole of Australia is around 0.75% of Australia’s total power generation, not even 1%.
Tony, that is the nominal DC output of the panels, not the AC contribution to the grid. Lose 20%. Lose more because it would never happen that all panels are operating at their maximum power at any one time.
28 Mar: UK Telegraph: Jillian Ambrose: Business could save ÂŁ1bn through energy behaviour change
Npower Business Solutions, a division of the Big Six supplier, said that it has already helped customers to drive bills down by ÂŁ26m after acquiring an energy management firm which specialises in company habits.
Npower snapped up the RUMM energy consultancy in April last year as part of the company’s plan to grow within the increasingly competitive business supply market…
***The supplier refers to its behaviour analysts as âcarbon psychologistsâ and says that the experts can design energy saving programmes by addressing employee energy habits to help them adopt more energy efficient ways of working… http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/27/business-could-save-1bn-through-energy-behaviour-change/
***Tele’s Jillian Ambrose has heard about these “carbon psychologists” before:
July: 2015: Utility Week: Q&A: Npower’s Wayne Mitchell
Jillian Ambrose talks to Wayne Mitchell, director of markets and innovation, Npower Business Solutions, about customer engagement trends in the industrial and commercial market.
Q: Where is the most exciting innovation taking place in the B2B market?
WAYNE MITCHELL: âMost of the innovation weâre getting involved in is around energy solutions, getting in on the demand side of the meter, and forming longer, more interesting relationships with clients. This is an area weâve had less involvement with in the past, partially because it requires trust, but weâve built trust and weâre now beginning to work on energy solutions â whether thatâs helping customers to use energy at the right time of day, or reduce consumption or interact with market mechanisms such as National Gridâs demand-side balancing reserve, or STOR [short-term operational reserve].
***âQuite recently weâve acquired a small start-up business based in south Wales called Rumm, which is predominantly a data management and data intervention company â they collect data from remote devices but they also have behavioural scientists and carbon psychologists at work for them.â http://utilityweek.co.uk/news/qa-npowers-wayne-mitchell/1149062
27 Mar: The Maine Campus: Josh Fabel: New film series seeks to educate on the topic of climate change
The classroom in the back of Fogler Library was filled with a large crowd of students and faculty on Tuesday, March 22, gathered together for a free presentation of the film, âMerchants of Doubt.â …
The film highlights people who, presenting themselves to the media as âscientists,â are paid to create doubt about climate change, despite innumerable scientific studies pointing toward its existence, according to the filmâs website…
âIâm planning on going into climate change,â anthropology student, Bethany Elfaham, said. âThe film is focused on people that are making doubt about climate change. I wanted to watch a film on finding more examples about climate change, and getting better ways to explain it to the public.â
âI was interested in coming tonight because I am interested in climate change and changing peopleâs mind about it,â University of Maine anthropology and psychology student, Mariah Geer said…
***âMerchants of Doubtâ was the third film to be shown in the series, with two more films, âThis Changes Everythingâ and âIn the Path of Resistance,â to be shown in the following weeks. Each film in the series is available to view on Fogler Libraryâs film database… http://www.mainecampus.com/?p=1742
***âThis Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climateâ is the Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary, which left a large carbon footprint “in nine countries and five continents over four years” according to the film website, which also states “Throughout the film, Klein builds to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better”.
the third film which “seeks to educate” the students at Maine is:
In the Path of Resistance
Justice beyond the Keystone XL pipeline
A documentary by Alex Leff
Bill McKibben recently tweeted about an inspiring new student film on the folks living along the KXL route. http://ashbournefilms.com/in-the-path-of-resistance/trailer/
Leff’s previous effort was “Students & Goliath – How the Youth Took on the Fossil Fuel Industry”, another fave of 350.org.
“Thanks” to the Interwebs, I observed that the German media machine is so desperate to report warming that (public broadcaster in central Germany) MDR’s extended weather forcast for Easter on Friday first made a point (for about 30 seconds of the 3-minutre report) of how warm Boxing Day had been last year; as if it were relevant to the forecast.
The forecast was for dreary, cold weather with the possibility of black ice on roads in some areas, followed by a temporary clearing of clouds likely in some areas on Sunday and Monday. i.e. an “average” end to March.
I haven’t seen a post or comment from “Sheri” for ages.
Does anyone know whether or not she is well?
Her comments were always quite inspirational and rational.
Rod KK is correct, I believe it was me that upset her for what was a misinterpretation of a comment which was directed at the followers of ‘Voldemort’ not Christians.
I hope she is doing well and still visits Jo’s site, I miss her posts also, there is no ill will from me just respect.
Spent a few days in Perth over Easter; one has to be impressed with the ease of getting around on the trains and buses for mimimal fares as well as the friendly folk.
VIDEO: 57secs: 28 Mar: Fortune: Lucinda Shen: This Is Why Shares of SunEdison Probably Shouldn’t Be Soaring Today
by Lucinda Shen
A tweet tells all.
Shares of beleaguered Solar giant SunEdison ( SUNE 4.13% ) soared over 15% Monday, following rumors that the company was considering a buyout from Rockefeller Brothers Fundâa company that has recently moved away from oil investments…
But sorry bullish investorsâthe rumors are likely untrue, as the alleged author of the piece on Briefing Wire, Ioana Madalina Iacob, retweeted on Twitter that her publication, DebtWire, had nothing to do with the piece…
The Briefing Wire piece, published on Sunday, alleged that the rumors of a takeover âsurfaced from anonymous yet trusted source,â and said that âindustrial conglomerate Rockefeller Brothers Fund has solar operations and by some accounts, the nearly limitless potential in new, clean, and renewable energy.â
SunEdison also revealed Monday that it would temporarily suspend stock contributions to the retirement savings plans of itâs directors and executives, which will last until the company is up to date with its Security and Exchange filings, according to a regulatory filing Thursday…
When asked for a comment regarding the rumors, representatives from SunEdison said âwe decline to comment on market rumors and speculations.â http://fortune.com/2016/03/28/sunedison-tweet-rumor/
updated reminder:
28 Mar: WSJ: SEC Investigating SunEdisonâs Disclosures to Investors About Its Liquidity
Probe examining whether the solar-power company overstated cash position last fall as stock slid
By Liz Hoffman and Aruna Viswanatha
At the time, SunEdison shares had fallen about 75% since midsummer. The slide has continued, with shares down 96% from a July high, and the company is working with advisers on a potential bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the matter. The companyâs market value has fallen to around $400 million from nearly $10 billion in July.
A SunEdison spokesman declined to comment…READ ALL http://www.wsj.com/articles/sec-investigating-sunedisons-disclosures-to-investors-about-its-liquidity-1459207385
28 Mar: The Wall St Transcript: Abengoa SA: Abengoa presents the homologation of standstill contract
Abengoa (MCE: ABG.B/P SM /NASDAQ: ABGB), the international company that applies innovative, sustainable technology solutions to energy and environmental sectors presented the homologation of the standstill contract which has garnered support from 75.04 % of the company’s lenders. The objective is that the conditions of the contract will be applied to all lenders. Abengoa passes the agreement with the support of 15.04 % more than the required 60 % of the lenders in order to approve the restructuring plan.
The standstill contract will permit the company to exercise certain rights for resolution and early maturity of financing. This will allow the company to reach 75 % of adhesion needed to pass the final plan.
***In parallel, Abengoa will also present as part of their restructuring plan for the company the plan to file Chapter 11 for its affiliates in the United States and Chapter 15 for all affiliates with the end goal to apply protection and a homologation of the agreement in the US…
Abengoa SA issued this content on 28 March 2016 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein (LINK) https://www.twst.com/update/abengoa-sa-abengoa-presents-the-homologation-of-standstill-contract/
28 Mar: The Local, Spain: AFP: Spanish energy giant given 7 months to avoid bankruptcy
One of the world’s biggest renewable energy firms, Spain’s Abengoa, said on Monday it had been given a seven-month breathing space by its creditors for restructuring that should stave off the threat of immediate bankruptcy…
In parallel, the company plans to file for Chapter 11 protection from creditors for its affiliates in the United States…
Abengoa, which employed 28,700 people worldwide in 2015, wants to refocus on core activities. It has already signalled its intentions to sell off its biofuels assets and other holdings, on a case-by-case basis…
The company’s head, Felipe Benjumea, stepped down last September. He is under investigation for serious mismanagement and under fire for taking a compensation package of 11 million euros. http://www.thelocal.es/20160328/creditors-give-spanish-energy-giant-abengoa-seven-months-grace
How lucky is Abengoa to have this agreement put in place right about now, just as the warmer Months begin in the Northern Hemisphere, with Summer on the horizon.
You know, the best power generation time of the year.
Let’s hope it’s a bright and clear Summer, so they can gouge sorry, make as much money as they can from the electricity that the models predict they might generate. It will help them to, umm, adjust, homogenise, bump up, indicate that solar power is, well, you know, viable???
Iâve been reading about Tasmaniaâs power crisis and if ever there was an example of wind and solar not being up to the task, and the risk of putting your power eggs into one hydro basket, this is it. Give me cheap and reliable coal power any day.
a whole new line of CAGW investigation requiring funding!
29 Mar: Yale e360: Is Climate Change Putting World’s Microbiomes at Risk?
Researchers are only beginning to understand the complexities of the microbes in the earthâs soil and the role they play in fostering healthy ecosystems. Now, climate change is threatening to disrupt these microbes and the key functions they provide.
by Jim Robbins
“These microbes have somehow lost the capacity to adapt to the new conditions,” said Vanessa Bailey, one of the authors of the study, published this month in PLOS One…
“Soil was a black box,” said Janet Jansson, chief scientist for Biology Earth and Biological Sciences at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and president of the International Society for Microbial Ecology. “I have been working in microbial ecology for decades, and it has been difficult, if not impossible, to study them. Now we have these new molecular processes, and suddenly the whole field is exploding.”
There is a Manhattan Project-like urgency to sussing out these secrets… http://e360.yale.edu/feature/is_climate_change_putting_world_microbiomes_at_risk/2977/
28 Mar: NYT: Michael Greenstone: Overlooked Tool to Fight Climate Change: A Tweak in Fuel Standards
One of the best new opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions might be to tweak a bureaucratic regulation weâve had around for close to four decades.
Changing vehicle fuel efficiency standards â if done properly â could not only reduce emissions from cars and trucks, but also set the nation on a path that textbook economics suggests is the most efficient: by placing a nearly economywide price on carbon pollution…
Using corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards might seem counterintuitive. They are widely regarded as costly and inefficient because they rely on mandates for achieving emissions reductions, rather than letting market forces find the least expensive ones. But a big advantage is that CAFE standards have been required by law since the 1970s and so do not require new legislation.
CAFE standards were last updated in 2011 and are now up for review by the E.P.A…READ ON http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/upshot/overlooked-tool-to-fight-climate-change-a-tweak-in-fuel-standards.html?_r=0
28 Mar: Breitbart: James Delingpole: Climate Change: The Greatest-Ever Conspiracy Against The Taxpayer
Climate change is the biggest scam in the history of the world â a $1.5 trillion-a-year conspiracy against the taxpayer, every cent, penny and centime of which ends in the pockets of the wrong kind of people, none of which goes towards a cause remotely worth funding, all of it a complete and utter waste.
Here is an edited version of a speech on this subject I gave last week to the World Taxpayersâ Associations in Berlin…READ ON http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/03/28/climate-change-the-biggest-conspiracy-against-the-taxpayer-in-history/
28 Mar: WSJ: Obama Administration Defends Limit to Power Plant Carbon Emissions
EPA argues Clean Air Act provides âwell-established authorityâ to enact rule
By Amy Harder and Brent Kendall
WASHINGTONâThe Obama administration on Monday offered a comprehensive legal defense of its signature climate-change regulation limiting carbon emissions from power plants, telling an appeals court that the rule is well within the bounds of its authority.
The Environmental Protection Agency, writing in a 175-page brief submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said the regulation was critical to addressing what it said was the most important environmental challenge facing the U.S…READ ON http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-administration-defends-limit-to-power-plant-carbon-emissions-1459203570
28 Mar: Scientific American: How to Talk Global Warming in Plain English
Scientists struggle to convey the risks of climate change simply
By Erika Bolstad, ClimateWire
âIf we want to tell the nation the risk, we need to [do it] in plain English,â Alice Hill, the National Security Councilâs senior director for resilience policy, told scientists at a gathering in Washington, D.C., last week. As her boss, Susan Rice, often notes, Hill said, âclimate change is a dire threat to the prosperity and safety of the American people.â
The discussions played out at a two-day meeting of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine panel advising the group that puts out the assessment: the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Work is beginning on the fourth assessment, a congressionally mandated review of climate change impacts on the United States…
The climate assessment is intended to guide risk planning for federal, state and local agencies and tribal governments, as well as businesses, and the aim of last weekâs meeting was to help shape how the next assessment will characterize and communicate risk given the state of current science, including sea-level rise projections…
The panel bandied about creative ideas for getting its point across, including hiring filmmakers for video storytelling, or writers and artists to craft a version of the assessment released in a graphic novel-type format…
Water scientist Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute said he didnât think it was that no one was reading their assessment. Itâs more likely that ânot enough people read itâor not enough people choose to act on it,â he said.
âI think we could change that,â he said. âAnd one way to change that is to have much more involvement of key, vulnerable groups.â…READ ON http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-talk-global-warming-in-plain-english/
Probably too late to be mentioning this at a Thread not many will visit any more, but this raises my hackles.
The Victorian Labor Government is looking after its Union buddies, sorry, is purchasing water from the Wonthaggi Desal plant for Melbourne at an absolutely exorbitant rate, water that is not really needed.
The amount of water being supplied will be 50 Billion litres, which is flat out capacity for the plant.
This desal plant might be classified as a water producer, but it’s a horrendous consumer of electrical power.
The Labor crowd airily wave this off by saying that they, umm, offset the power consumption by purchasing green power or planting trees or whatever, or investing is a wind plant to supply the power, and here they just quote the Nameplate they need to run this plant, which is 90MW.
What they don’t say is that while wind power generates its power at around 30% Capacity Factor, hence only 7.2 hours a day on average, this desal plant requires its full power for 24 hours of every day.
To supply that water, the plant will consume 800GWH of power a year. That 800GWH is not the output from one wind plant, but is 30% of the output of ….. EVERY wind plant in Victoria, but hey, the plant requires 24 hours worth of power. The plant is not connected to the wind plant alone, but to the grid in Victoria, and as the grid does not differentiate between wind power and coal fired power, then it will actually be supplied in the main by coal fired power.
That 800GWH of power a year, being consumed 24/7/365, is, (to use wind powers own misleading claims) enough to power 110,000 Victorian homes.
With this desal plant in continuous operation, don’t look to see Hazelwood being closed down any time soon.
That 800GWH power consumption per year is around 1.7% of Victoria’s total power consumption, so despite calls for power consumption to be lowered, Victoria is actually ramping up their consumption, courtesy of a Government which prides itself on how green it is.
Tony, excellent post and observation. This issue needs to be broadcast far and wide. The Andrews government has been negligent on so many issues. The cancellation of the East-West Link is costing a billion dollars when he said it wouldn’t cost Victorians a cent. Then there’s the advocacy for the agenda-ridden Safe Schools program that Andrews has stated Victoria will proceed with regardless of the Federal government’s approval and continued funding. This puppet of the rabid CMFEU is out of control. Paying extra for water, unneeded water, from the desal plant is a further insult to the taxpayers of Victoria who are already reeling from leftist agenda-ridden decisions. The Andrews government has banned the teaching of Christmas carols in schools.
Daniel Andrews is out of control.
Could you please post your comment about the activation of the desal plant on a later thread? It deserves further exposure.
thanks for leaving this comment. Sometimes, when there is something worth mentioning here, there’s nowhere to place it, without looking like I’m (blatantly) going off topic, so on occasions like that, it either does not get said, or gets lost in old Threads which no one sees any more.
It’s easy to say a plant like this only consumes 90MW, and then say they are getting their power from an equivalent 90MW wind plant, because people see the correlation and think it’s covered, but again, it’s the actual power consumption that is the main thing here.
A 90MW wind plant at the average yearly power delivery Capacity Factor of 30% will generate 236GWH, and the plant consumes 800GWH, so it needs a further 560GWH just to stay operational, and where do you think that extra power comes from, well, in actual fact, all of it really, because the plant is connected to the electricity grid, and not directly to any wind plant at all.
Virtually all of that power consumption will be coming from coal fired power.
And the cost of that electricity.
$200 MILLION.
Just for the electricity alone to keep the plant operational for 24 hours of every day, delivering water at its maximum rate.
All sheeted back home to the consumers of ….. all water, in extra costs for that water.
So, there I was, off to the butchers yesterday for a yummy piece of Silverside.
Pulled up at the lights behind this same new van at the home page, with a very clever logo, and then had a quiet laugh to myself.
Central Queensland Solar Clean
Just have a look around at their site, but click on the Pricing tab on the menu bar and scroll down for the costs.
The average system is now up around 2.5KW, hence around 8 to 12 panels.
That cost is $34 per panel, so around $340, for a yearly full service, and if the system lasts the full 25 years then that’s an extra $8500 at today’s prices.
So, now, this cleaning with the, umm, special coating included means that the system will have to generate an extra 2.5KWH per day to feed back to the grid just to cover the cost of the servicing.
I suppose it had to happen.
Clever logo though.
Tony.
261
If the special coating is good enough it will stop those pesky photons from reaching the panels and aging them! What’s the SPF factor ? đ
100
I’m guessing they use the same coatings as detailers use on car paintwork.
Hmmm, maybe I’ll coat mine. Then again, most of the coatings reduce UV penetration so I might lose some output..
50
Coatings come from C-Voltaics. A start-up from U of Houston. Coating physics / chemistry not mentioned.
50
For some perspective, the $8500 for cleaning the panels for the hoped for 25 years life of them is just a tad over 5 YEARS supply of power from the grid.
Oh dear, how the costs add up, eh.
But hey, isn’t it cheaper than coal fired power.
Tony.
121
I can just foam and pressure wash mine from the ground
I seriously would like to know what percentage of home PV arrays ever get cleaned
100
Very small percentage.
As mentioned in another thread, there’s no auditability of actual output and no will to even check that systems are working for as long as they have been “paid” to work.
That sort of subsidy structure is either devised by nincompoops or those wishing to put other peoples’ money into the pockets of “friends”.
20
Tony
“Clever logo though”
Not up to scratch (IMO) with
“Stiff Nipples Air Conditioning”
130
Well that had me choking my coffee all over my keyboard!!
;>))
60
Or the sign on a Manitoba septic tank pumper:
“Stool Bus”
100
Can that stuff work better for fracking ‘natural’ gas than CO2? Send that bus to Alberta, please!
30
Cleaning up. Like a friend on gardening. Raking it in.
80
In fact, thereâs a guy in Germany who seems to be taking this issue seriously and who appears to see it as the potentially giant financial opportunity that it is (why almost no one in the U.S. seems to see this opportunity, I donât know).
Heâs developed a pretty cool system that uses a tracking set of sprayers to remove snow â and to wash the panels when they are dirty (did I mention that goose poop, yes, goose poop, has become a significant sun blocking issue on our system?).
. . .
You can fool the sheep, but not the goose.
60
At an angle greater than 55° Gooses, Goosi, cannot land to poop. Beware of seagulls that poop while flying. đ
20
In the early days of PV solar in Germany, some systems were set up to de-ice by running (reduced, regulated) grid current through the panels. PV cells are resistors as well as capacitors and, when exposed to light, voltage and current “sources”.
Owners could switch on the heating so that the snow/ice in immediate contact would start to melt, lubricating the slip of the whole mass of ice/snow cover.
This might be convenient but isn’t much good in terms of energy balance or for those who cop a load of snow on their heads when the stuff shifts. Steep rooves in Germany have “ice fences” so that when the stuff starts to melt, it doesn’t fall as large chunks and kill people standing below.
20
http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/trends-in-extreme-weather-events-since-1900–an-enduring-conundrum-for-wise-policy-advice-2167-0587-1000155.pdf
It is widely promulgated and believed that human-caused global warming comes with increases in both the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. A survey of official weather sites and the scientific literature provides strong evidence that the first half of the 20th century had more extreme weather than the second half, when anthropogenic global warming is claimed to have been mainly responsible for observed climate change. The disconnect between real-world historical data on the 100 yearsâ time scale and the current predictions provides a real conundrum when any engineer tries to make a professional assessment of the real future value of any infrastructure project which aims to mitigate or adapt to climate change. What is the appropriate basis on which to make judgements when theory and data are in such disagreement?
The compilation of temperature records are a source of problematic methodology of a kind not seen elsewhere in science. Under the umbrella term of âhomogenisationâ, there now seem to be a growing myriad of post-hoc adjustments to the original raw data that all seem to go in one direction, namely to increase the overall rate of global warming. This happens even on official websites. The total change is often somewhat greater than the 0.8-1ÂşC rise over the 20th century that is agreed by most people, critics or not. This is exemplified by data in Figure 4. This makes the problem of dispassionate engineering assessment almost impossible to achieve. Hansen (1981) wrote : âA remarkable conclusion from Figure 3 is that the global temperature is almost as high today as it was in 1940.â It is not clear now why this should be remarkable, although at the time, the rise in temperature from about 1975 had cancelled out some of the cooling since 1940 in the then available data. At the time, he [Hansen]showed 1980 temperatures were about 0.15ÂşC cooler than 1940. Now, NASA shows 1980 temperatures about 0.2ÂşC warmer than 1940. They have made a relative shift of +0.35ÂşC, and the adjustment represents ~40% of the century variation. The lesson from this is that the data integrity for claiming extreme events needs to shown to be of the highest order, and that the results claimed do not depend on the data manipulation itself.
273
KR
To see the extent of the adjustments, just check GISS temps in 2009 with their 2014 temp graph. The first graph shows only one temp above the 0.6C anomaly (2005).
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/2009-temperatures-by-jim-hansen/
The second graph shows a number of years above 0.6C after 1998 to 2009.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
You would expect that by the year 2000, the measurement of temps would have been pretty accurate. With most of the yearly temps since 1998 being increased (and decreased around 1910-1920), no wonder we are starting to question their motives.
212
http://file.scirp.org/Html/7-2801173_63199.htm
Quantification of the Diminishing Earthâs Magnetic Dipole Intensity and Geomagnetic Activity as the Causal Source for Global Warming within the Oceans and Atmosphere
Quantitative analyses of actual measurements rather than modeling have shown that âglobal warmingâ has been heterogeneous over the surface of the planet and temporally non-linear. Residual regression analyses by Soares (2010) indicated increments of increased temperature precede increments of CO2 increase. The remarkably strong negative correlation (r = -0.99) between the earthâs magnetic dipole moment values and global CO2-temperature indicators over the last ~30 years is sufficient to be considered causal if contributing energies were within the same order of magnitude. Quantitative convergence between the energies lost by the diminishing averaged geomagnetic field strength and energies gained within the ocean-atmosphere interface satisfy the measured values for increased global temperature and CO2 release from sea water. The pivotal variable is the optimal temporal unit employed to estimate the total energies available for physical-chemical reactions. The positive drift in averaged amplitude of geomagnetic activity over the last 100 years augmented this process. Contributions from annual CO2 from volcanism and shifts in averaged geomagnetic activity, lagged years before the measured global temperature-CO2 values, are moderating variables for smaller amplitude perturbations. These results indicated that the increase in CO2 and global temperatures are primarily caused by major geophysical factors, particularly the diminishing total geomagnetic field strength and increased geomagnetic activity, but not by human activities. Strategies for adapting to climate change because of these powerful variables may differ from those that assume exclusive anthropomorphic causes.
143
Very interesting, a bit counter intuitive but worth following up. Thanks.
60
Was this intended to be posted 04-01-16?
20
http://www.tech-know-group.com/papers/Reassessing_CO2_climate_role.pdf
The authors evaluate the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “consensus” that the increase of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is of anthropogenic origin and is causing dangerous global warming, climate change and climate disruption. They conclude that the data do not support that supposition. Most of the currently accepted scientific interpretations are examined and the given impression that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will increase the earth’s surface and/or air temperature is questioned. New insight is offered drawing a conclusion that no additional warming is possible due to the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Acceptance of that IPCC paradigm is incurring costly and draconian efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, tax such emissions and replace fossil fuel combustion by alternative energy systems whether such alternatives will achieve the desired results or not. The totality of the data available on which that theory is based is evaluated here, from Vostok ice core measurements, to residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere, to more recent studies of temperature changes that inevitably precede CO2 changes, to global temperature trends, to the current ratio of carbon isotopes in the atmosphere, to satellite data for the geographic distribution of atmospheric CO2, to the effect of solar activity on cosmic rays and cloud cover. Nothing in the data supports the supposition that atmospheric CO2 is a driver of weather or climate, or that human emissions control atmospheric CO2. Furthermore, CO2 is not a pollutant, but an essential ingredient of the Earth’s ecosystem on which almost all life depends via photosynthesis. This paper rejects the new paradigm of “climate science” and asserts that the traditional, century old meteorological concepts for the factors that control weather and climate remain sound but need to be reassessed.
232
I wonder when they will admit the ruse is up.
141
In the seasonal spirit of “returning from death” I made a brief inquiry into the condition of brain death and the likely results of being pronounced “brain dead”.
In 2012 Richard C. Senelick, a neurologist writing for The Atlantic, stated:
This doctor’s statement is false. In 2008 a boy named Steven Thorpe was involved in a motor vehicle accident in the UK which damaged his brain very badly. The damage was so bad that four (4) consecutive doctors pronounced Steven as being brain dead, and that his organs should be harvested. Two weeks later Thorpe began breathing on his own without a ventilator, which therefore does not satisfy the medical and legal definition of brain death. Five weeks later he had recovered full consciousness, was talking about his experience, and was fit enough to leave hospital. Read the story at the BBC and the Daily Mail.
If Dr Senelick had been talking in generalisations he might have gotten away with it. If he had merely said that recovery from brain-death was nearly impossible and anyone who hoped for recovery from such a state was just indulging in baseless wishful thinking, that would have been a true statement. But he instead took an extreme position, stating it twice: “No one who has met the criteria for brain death has ever survived — no one.”
Unless all of Thorpe’s first four doctors made separate and independent misdiagnoses of brain death, one has to conclude that recovery from brain death has occurred at least once, and Dr Senelick’s denial was false at the time he made it.
If true death is permanent by definition, how long does one have to wait before declaring brain death as permanent?
Clearly a week is not enough time, if Mr Thorpe’s case is any guide. It is possible that the first diagnoses were not mistaken and that neural activity recovered to detectable levels by the following week.
Cases of recovery from clinical brain death seem to have happened at least 3 times between 2008 and 2014. Perhaps these can all be written off as mistaken diagnoses of brain-death, or perhaps they are all unusual cases in which brain death had genuinely occurred and yet was temporary.
On deeper matters, this still does nothing for the Dualist view that consciousness can survive clinical death. There is no evidence of Near Death Experiences occurring at the same time as flat EEGs, so the idea of consciousness being held in a spirit separate from the body still has no objective evidence for it.
When life gets stressful it is very easy to forget how wonderful life is compared to the alternative.
170
So any time in the future warmists could suddenly snap out of it and wake up, that’s amazing.
252
It’s interesting that most Christians believe this, yet there is actually no evidence for it in the Bible, unless you interpret certain passages with this particularly in mind.
The Bible actually teaches death: “For dust you are and to dust you will return”.
It also teaches the resurrection, just as Christ rose from the dead.
Christ is risen! Happy Easter!
140
I approach religeon from an agnostic geopolitical perspective:
If you take the Roman view of events, two millennia ago, the disciples and followers of Jesus would have be seen as a political movement, with a philosophy, and goals, contrary to those of Rome.
The “removal” of the executive leader of a “rebel organisation”, has always been a standard way of disrupting and suppressing contrary political views. The Romans would not see Jesus as being any different, so they would have just followed standard operating procedures.
But in the case of the organisation that Jesus founded, that attempt at supression didn’t work.
At this time of year, Christians celebrate the resurrection, and subsequent survival, of the Christos organisation, all it stood for, and all it still currently stands for, even following the loss of its principle leader, and visionary.
80
Rereke
I don’t suppose either of us were there to witness the events ourselves. I expect the MSM in those days was no better than today.
Nevertheless, it is my understanding that the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, literally washed his hands after hearing the prosecution’s case.
In fact, many believe that is the origin of the saying “I washed my hands of it” in dismissing a particular issue.
My take on the story is that Pilate was not convinced of any wrongdoing or danger, and was therefore rather blase about the whole thing, simply turning his back on the intentions of the pharisees and administrative bureaucracy of Judahism.
In other words, Christ was deemed not a threat to the Roman empire, but to the regional Jewish establishment of the day.
Regardless, Easter is a time to celebrate the richness of life. A time to reflect on all the things for which to be thankful. That includes Jo and David’s blog, and the camaraderie that we share.
Ka hari Aranga Rereke.
90
I think that what you term “The Christos organisation” would not have survived without the Resurrection of Christ. Remember, the disciples were a bunch of complete scaredy-cats after the crucifixion and Peter had denied Christ. So what changed them?
20
I guess there are probably quite a few people who should be thankful about the numerous checks and balances in place when it comes to determining the extent and permanence of brain injury, especially when agonising decisions usually fall to close family.
A work colleague was diagnosed with a brain tumour after he started suffering from dizziness and nausea, and was told by his doctor “I’m not sure how you’re still alive, let alone still able to go to work”. That was at least 10 years ago, and he’s still at work (the tumour was removed).
90
A Fly Pick gold star? I’d like to thank my producer, my director, the Academy…
I’ll have to add it to my meager collection of JN moderator Star Picks. It’s very few and far between for me. My last mod gold star was probably from Oggi back in July 2012. Not that I’m sad enough to have looked it up or anything.
Okay, yes, I’ve just done a quick review of gold stars awarded to other players, such as MBC, Handjive, “Tim”, Backslider, and Dr Marohasy. The pattern seems to be that if you can use evidence and direct quotes to show that a so-called expert’s public opinion was erroneous then you are in the running for a star pick. Keeping it short and sharp tends to increase your chances I think. Beyond that, it is just luck as to whether you are in the right place at the right time. Yes, the stars have to align too. So for those goldfingers with stars in their eyes, there is the game plan to aim at. More difficult to say what gets a Fly Pick star specifically, as they seem to be more rare.
Hmm, one from Oggi, now one from Fly, two more mods’ stars to go and I can complete the whole set.
Hey…
(get ready for it)
Hey… if you collect all 4 moderator stars together…
(tee heee)
… do all four stars join together to make… A SUPER-NOVA !!
đ ducking and running.
70
” đ ducking and running.”
IS a Duck just a small Goose?
22
I went to the dentist today and was bowled over with the charges. I told the dentist he should do what a goose can and a duck can’t.
He said “What’s that?”
I said”Stick your bill up your ass”.
A goose is a goose and a duck is a duck, except that a MUSCOVY duck is really a goose.
20
I received a gold star? Where?? When??…. I didn’t even know.
30
Yeah, it surprised me too. đ A pleasant surprise, of course.
One day you told heatwavemongerers to chill out.
20
I’ve been reading about Tasmania’s power crisis and if ever there was an example of wind and solar not being up to the task, and the risk of putting your power eggs into one hydro basket, this is it. Give me cheap and reliable coal power any day.
210
The dams were down to 14.6% (2104 GWh) on the 23rd. of March and still no repair date to the cable; think of the cost of re-commissioning the gas turbines, cutting the production of the 3 major users and put in 200MW of diesel. Doesn’t do much to their clean green image and PR, but at what cost to keep the lights on because they sold too much green electricity in the carbon years!
170
In fact the last point was very telling, the dams were drained intentionally to profit from the carbon tax. Look where that got them. Apparently, Basslink may potentially never be repaired if the cost is too high. However, I wonder how many will take this as a salutary lesson on the frailties of so-called renewable energy?
170
Check the post from a little while back
Oil giant Venezula, Green giant Tasmania â both running out of electricity
100
Soon to be followed by the UK.
Happy Easter everyone. In the politically correct UK, the word ‘Easter’ no longer seems to be allowed on chocolate Easter eggs in the UK.
There seems to be a strong correlation between socialist PCness and a country or region’s energy shortages.
160
Socialism? Marketing, old chap.
Attracting as many punters as you can by removing the reference to the Christian (and pagan) religious festival.
Those who must have the word “Easter” emblazoned upon their packaging, can purchase a ‘Real Easter Egg’, or a ‘Meaningful Easter Egg’, each providing a Christian message with the egg.
30
You can add Germany to your list of countries with renewable energy issues (specifically wind) —what a disaster !!
http://stopthesethings.com/2016/03/26/germans-face-wind-powered-economic-nightmare-ebillions-squandered-on-subsidies-as-co2-emissions-rise/
30
And very clean.
90
This endless repetition that coal is dirty has to stop. It is wrong. Modern power stations are super clean. No acid rain, no particulate matter, no sulphur, very environmentally friendly. The ‘smoke’ is always just steam.
Really, if you ignore the ridiculous idea that CO2 is pollution, the stuff we and plants breath out, the very stuff from which all life on earth is made, modern coal is very clean. It replaced the poor and incomplete combustion in domestic fires of wood and coke and coal and brown coal and peat. People used to burn everything in winter especially in the cities and the mess was massive, especially in Europe. The devastation was widespread and the cities were filthy places. The devastation in the country was also massive. For making steel, the forests of Finland vanished to the point where no tree is over 200 years old. All saved by clean coal, clean factories and the clean air acts.
It is hard to imagine the London of the 1850s with at times 3,000 deaths from cholera a week, dirty smog, no sewerage, no running water and the sewers with 200 outlets straight into the Thames from where they pumped the drinking water. Limed sheets were hung in Parliament to mask the smell. Carbon filled the air and the fog. Fixing the sewage changed life, as did clean power. Melbourne retrofitted sewerage into the inner city in the 1880s. Pumping stations were built and sewerage plants. All required power. Prior to that there were thousands of cases of cholera at once even in suburban Caulfield. Now people talk about clean energy. They have no idea, living in a clean world which many of the people of the world cannot imagine.
I was in Cheboksary, on the Volga last year on one of the few boats which took tourists. The Russians have hydro and nuclear. The trans Siberian train is all electric. There is a McDonalds and it was not the food, the architecture, the signage which fascinated the village children. It was the flush toilets.
We have ultra clean cities, ultra clean energy. Only nut cases want to go back to living in medieval times with wood fires and pits and dirt. Our world is clean and food is more plentiful than ever and massive infant and maternal mortality of 30% is a thing of Victorian times. Yet people yearn for clean energy and a clean environment when they already have it. Try Madras or Cairo, relatively modern cities which are disasters. Only spoiled westerners can complain about ‘clean’.
Give me cheap and reliable and clean coal power any day.
300
I agree with you but Bilary has vowed to shut down all the coal-fired generating plants if elected. That nasty ol’ carbon, we need to get rid of it, don’t we. Wonder what she would think if someone proposed decarbonising her and some others including the EPA.
20
Given that graduate realists, those pesky engineers, have historically often been at the heart of
climate related reality checksglobalist eco-marxist resistance, is it unsurprising to witness the association of graduate educational credentials in engineering with jihadist radicals? No. It seems not. And that’s not all. Apparently not only strongly represented with extremist behaviour the credentials indicate the same personality type as right wing extremism. It appears there is little to chose between them. But the same definitely cannot be said for left wing extremist stereotypes.This researcher I suspect betrays himself at every turn.
Researchers uncover link between education and extremism.
I hope the engineers have something to say about this. Holding a postgraduate qualification in biomechanics I know I’m a lost cause.
Meanwhile, a Happy and Blessed Easter to all.
110
I just watched a rerun of a recent Catalyst show on “their” ABC. The topic was about the revolution in household batteries to back up intermittent domestic solar and grid connected windmills.
I felt quick sick watching it because this massive investment is totally unnecessary because CAGW is not happening and fossil fuel (or nuclear) gives us dirt cheap reliable electricity.
What a massive and unnecessary drain on the economy.
You can watch it or read the transcript at: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4398364.htm
192
Quite not quick.
30
I haven’t watched the episode but wanted to chime-in on the household batteries.
The Tesla Powerwall was getting a lot of coverage, though Tesla decided to withdraw the larger model from the market. Now the smaller 6.4kWh version is the only domestic version available, and that is still a long way from the 3 days’ worth of energy storage that would be needed to be totally off-grid and independant of coal.
For as long as artificially high tax-subsidised feed-in tariffs are available, making it more worthwhile to sell high in the day and buy low at night rather than store the energy, I have difficulty seeing how Poweralls are going to sell well. Especially as they add $3000 to the system install cost. Perhaps the government will mandate on-site storage for solar panels to prevent them from disrupting the grid as domestic PV proliferates.
Interesting that Energex were trialling the Powerall. Perhaps buffering at the substation level is sufficient for smoothing out the cloudy ripples of PV feed-in. Or perhaps Energex are looking at protecting against a Carrington Event?
Quick response energy storage will still have useful applications in our grid, but one little 6.4kWh Powerall isn’t going to liberate anyone from coal, and that’s without even considering the cost of it.
90
They mentioned that the Adelaide City Council will be offering $5,000 subsidies for battery packs and the South Australian government will offer subsidies as well.
60
Yep – subsidizing households to stabilize the grid.
We discussed it when the episode originally aired – I was quite angry by the end of it. The stupidly upbeat presentation was seriously offensive. Especially the statement
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4398364.htm
90
The South Australian government should offer large subsides for battery packs because the SA government has stacks and stacks of surplus funds.
Send more GST.
70
Tasmania too.
They fried the interconnector selling their hydro to the mainland and getting a Carbon dividend via the Carbon dioxide tax.
They might as well fry their budget by subsidizing household battery packs.
That’s what they make at Battery Point isn’t it?
111
I think you nailed it with substation buffering, when the cost is competitive. It would stabilize surges throughout the day and early evenings and allow distributors to top up cheaply overnight. The concept of home batteries is not a great idea. I have about 80kWh storage in a sea container, coupled to 3kW of solar and a 3kW wind turbine on my farm which is off grid because of it’s location. There’s still the odd time of the year that the Genset startsup. Batteries are stored energy and just like storing petrol or other hazardous items, a domestic setting is not ideal. For safety, economy of scale, ease of control and scheduled maintenance I think the sub station is the place, should it become economic. For those who want to go off grid….it’s ok for the enthusiasts but they will find they make sacrifices.
70
Why not force the wind farms to buffer at their grid connection?
They cause the problem so they can prevent it. Then they could participate in the market by bidding their price like the other generators
130
That would work too. The reality of the economics is still the barrier, despite what the ABC says.
70
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/26/rajendra-pachauri-hits-back-harassed-female-colleague-claims
Have you been accusing Pachauri of sexual harassment?
40
Yes he once manipulated my proxies.
70
Nasty
20
This is interesting.
http://joeforamerica.com/2016/03/noaa-data-shows-no-global-warming-58-years-congress-investigates/?utm_source=LASMP&utm_medium=shr&utm_campaign=LASMP
71
The King Is. Renewable Energy Project
King Is. lies about halfway between Tasmania and Victoria. It covers 1000 sq. km. with a population of 1800 people, mainly occupied in farming ventures producing high quality meat and milk products.
The main method of electricity generation has been diesel generators, but recently a hybrid station has evolved using wind, diesel and solar inputs and battery back-up. Over the past month the performance of these inputs has been noted on 30 occasions.
Wind Energy
The turbines have supplied 38% of the islands needs. The maximum output noted was 2268 Kw, and the turbines were idle one third of the time. The turbines exceeded 1000 Kw 8 times of the 30 sampled (27%).
Diesel Generation
The diesel generators supplied 62% of the islands needs with a maximum production noted of 1540Kw, and were idle 20% of the time.
Solar Energy
Less than 1% of electricity came from the sun and on one occasion 60 Kw was noted, but average production was only 9 Kw (day and night).
General
Daily usage varied from 800 Kw at 3 am. to a maximum of 1700 Kw. at 6 pm. each day, and usually was supplied by a combination of diesel, or wind and sometimes using battery output.
King Is. is a windy place with the wind coming from all directions, but usually from the W or SW. The average wind speed noted was 7-8 m/sec(28kph) with a maximum of 17.4 m/sec which gave 2268 Kw. Very little electricity was generated with winds less than 5-6 m/sec.
The wind turbines have provided 38% of the island’s electricity needs allowing the diesel generators to shut down 20% of the time with some fuel saving, but being idle 30% of the time could not be wholly relied on without a very large battery capacity.
I think this island demonstrates use of wind energy in an appropriate location, but it also demonstrates quite well its limitations for a larger scale operation.
150
Did you notice that it is impossible to get the costs involved for the various components?
The vanadium redox battery was supposed to be a “breakthrough” but failed and it wasn’t deemed worth saving hence the big lead-acid array.
They added big flywheels to the diesels allow them to be used to stabilize the grid, even when they aren’t running (their generators run as motors in this mode).
When just isn’t as much demand as the turbines are generating, a variable resistor bank is used to match demand to the output as I’m guessing the wind turbines can’t be curtailed quickly enough
They do have a very pretty realtime display of the power output and consumption of the generator and batteries.
http://www.kingislandrenewableenergy.com.au/
90
The resistor bank is the smoothest way to keep the wind turbines loaded up. The excess energy is dumped to heat when the batteries are full and the load is met. If wind speed is too high the turbines will turn out of the wind.
20
King Island Dairy makes *delicious* blue cheese.
30
Don’t they also have a sheelite mine there?
30
Yes but it shut down in 1990 due to falling tungsten prices.
From memory the shafts extend about 5km into Bass Straight but have now flooded. Grassee is like a ghost town now.
60
Sorry, that’s Grassy
20
Scheelite, the tungsten ore is spelt
Not 5km under the ocean from the old open pit, but about 1km. The undersea workings stopped on a large fault zone.
No, the ocean hasn’t flooded the underground workings, but the old open pit is now a small brackish rainwater lake. The body of water may extend partway along the underground workings but no-one is interested in finding out with the price of tungsten ore now quite low. Further exploration (drilling) was done in the early 2000’s to try and extend the open pit but nothing much came of it.
41
I would have thought the price of tungsten would be on the way up these days seeing as it is about the only metal with an SG the same as gold and by gold plating it you can replace all the missing wealth in the bank vaults, Fort Knox etc.
10
Falling Tungsten prices.
Hmm! Wonder why.
Remember those old incandescent light bulbs.
Tungsten filaments.
Vacuum tubes and CRT’s. Tungsten heater wires.
Tungsten is a rare earth, and 85% of total World production comes from, yep, you guessed correctly, China.
Tony.
30
But Tony, just think if you could get 1250 bucks an ounce for those filaments âş
When you buy gold you get a piece of paper to say you own something in a bank in the middle of Beverley Hills or somewhere.
You never get to check what you really bought.
10
Would be interesting to know what the total supply costs are compared to 100% diesel, and what if any has been the ROI on solar and wind.
40
As with off-grid Windorah where the Qld Govt spent ~ $100,000 per house to install a solar thermal plant to supplement the 100,000-litres-per-year diesel plant consumption.
So guess how much diesel is now used?
100,000 litres per year !!!
But don’t ask for a cost/benefits report.
20
Just looked at the King Is. site, 8 am, its 100% diesel 1540 Kw and no wind nor solar input, a bad day for green energy.
70
‘The Australian government recently provided a billion dollars for renewables startups, but Australia canât or wonât provide a few million dollars, to outfit an official expedition to the Antarctic Ocean, to prevent thinly disguised commercial whale hunting in the Australian controlled whale âsanctuaryâ.
Eric Worrall (WUWT)
50
Warwick Hughes analyses the output of a few solar plants.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=4370
20
Someone should tell him about the Aneroid Energy site
http://energy.anero.id.au/solar-energy
20
My bad. I didn’t realise solar figures weren’t displayed
20
Cooling trend shows up in northern Japan.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01bb08cea153970d-pi
61
Amazing. A horizontal straight line would be as good a fit as any. Nothing to see here folks would be as good a summary of the last 200 years. Table top. It shows how splining data can just produce meaningless curves, unless someone has a theory of a direct driver of short term temperature variation other than random variation.
30
300 years.
20
Of interest, just before 1700 ad there was a huge warming spike.
30
Yes, which should go the way of all such spikes. Natural variation, a combination of factors like a freak wave or an exceptionally cold winter.
The June 1941 Nazi invasion of Russia in Operation Barbarossa, that year’s end was the coldest in 130 years and stopped the siege of Moscow. Tanks froze. Shells could not be fired. Sump oil turned to sludge. Nothing worked. The previous coldest year was allegedly 1812, the invasion of Russia by Napoleon’s Grande Armee. You can only assume that both followed a peak in temperature which convinced the military leaders that a spike in temperature would persist when it was in fact a harbinger of extreme cold. A bit like the tide running out before a tsunami. Spikes are natural and mean nothing.
50
I mean nothing special. Normal variation. Often followed by a spike or trough in the other direction.
20
JUST SEND MONEY
I keep on receiving letters from the Liberal Party. They want me to send them $15.00 so that they can win the next election. The first two came from Tony Nutt.
I keep on responding to their requests. I was always taught that responding to correspondence was the polite, well mannered, thing to do.
The latest request came from Richard Alston, the Federal President of the Liberal Party of Australia.
Here is my response to Mr Alston:
I post this on Joâs site as part of my commitment in the last sentence.
282
Good list
Maybe Cory Bernardi will go ahead with his “Tea Party” type spinoff so we get a decent choice.
120
A spinoff like the AfD is from the CDU in Germany. Getting 25% of the votes in some State elections a fortnight ago; a premiere on the ballot paper.
10
Festivals on or about the Spring/Autumn Equinox are and have been ‘special’ for human for a very long time, before times when men would nailed to wooden crosses for saying ‘why not be nice to one-another’.
This year is somewhat special in that it is the earliest spring/fall since 1896! Yes, the 2016 vernal or spring (autumn or fall) equinox was on March 20 at 4:30 UTC (March 19 at 11:30 p.m. CDT).
Celebration at the equinoxes (and the solstices) have been happening in human societies since before record were written — Easter (First Sunday after a full moon, after the spring equinox) was commandeered from the Jewish and pre-Christians (like all major Christian festival dates) to lend legitimacy and relevance to the Christian story.
And yes records show that Jesus was convicted by the Roman authorities just after a Jewish Passover celebration — a celebration that is linked to the equinox, however it was one particular Passover and so it truth Easter should be a fixed date, not a variable one.
So to all what ever your celebration is, have a happy one! đ
60
Also see http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/everything-you-need-to-know-vernal-or-spring-equinox
40
Happy Easter Jo and everyone here. Annie.
50
Happy Easter everyone.
70
It seems funny (peculiar) that we wish others a Happy Easter. Why would a non believer care? I think they wouldn’t. And a believer would know the significance of the resurrection of Christ and not need the, “Happy Easter,” although they certainly wouldn’t reject it. Easter would be a joyous celebration of the single most significant thing about Christianity â the tomb was empty that morning, the first day of the week, when the women went there to finish the burial preparations of the body of a man they thought was dead.
So to believer and non believer alike, may this day bring you the joy and happiness you expect from it.
100
I appreciate the sentiment Roy, put it this way I’d rather have people wishing me well in the spirit of their beliefs than behaving in a threatening manner towards me, my lifetime non believer stance is a purely personal trait that is me being honest with my innermost self that I could not believe in a deity without pretending or lying and insulting others that feel strongly otherwise.
Such are the times that I’ve had to drop the self describing term atheist as its been hijacked by the left to include their numerous ugly traits and don’t want people aligning myself with them so non believer will have to do for now.
To those that follow Christian bases beliefs I thank you for developing a religion decent enough to be entwined into modern democratic nations and their constitution’s that helped nurture the advancement of technology and thinking, and a Happy Easter to you too.
90
Yoni,
I too would rather have people wishing me well from their tradition. A wish for my happiness or wellbeing is a whole lot more to be desired than someone’s wish for fire and brimstone raining down on me because I don’t believe as they do. You can rest assured that I am not your judge.
The unfortunate thing about our Christian heritage here in America is that we’re throwing it all away as fast as we can. And as we throw it away, what comes in to replace it is costing us more and more restrictions, loss of freedom and ultimately I think it will cost us the nation that was carved out of the wilderness of North America starting in 1620 (1610 if you want to count Jamestown in Virginia which ultimately failed). We made a lot of mistakes as we went but have always stood up and admitted our faults. It was a long painful road to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights and yet more long years to the nation that rejected slavery, then segregation and other mistakes. And we’re tossing it all down the drain as fast as we can.
20
I was just talking with one of my European friends and he claims that extreme temperatures in Hungary are now 8 to 10 degrees higher than 20 years ago. He also said that the length of extreme temperature events are also longer, from one or two weeks up to six weeks.
H
10
Has anybody seen something like this for Central Europe?
10
http://notrickszone.com/2016/03/18/winter-to-drag-on-across-central-europe-march-2016-in-germany-so-far-1-5c-cooler-than-normal/#sthash.q1I8TwMq.dpbs
51
We are looking at summer extreme temperatures, not winter.
10
Your friend must buy the Sydney Morning Hamas and tune into Their ABC.
71
No, he claims to have actually seen it. I know that this kind of anecdote is little to go on, however he is quite convinced of impending disaster, whatever the actual cause.
I guess I will need to dig up some temperature records for Central Europe.
10
I guess I will need to dig up some temperature records for Central Europe
Yep
Empirical evidence – cornerstone of actual science, followed by prediction of sufficient detail as to be falsifiable (ie. “flooding will occur someplace, sometime” won’t do)
40
The disaster is from the ongoing invasion of Europe, not temperature.
50
The anecdotal evidence is correct, the Arctic Oscillation has been positive.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index.html
10
About 3200 years ago, two armies clashed at a river crossing near the Baltic Sea.
The confrontation canât be found in any history booksâthe written word didnât become common in these parts for another 2000 yearsâbut this was no skirmish between local clans.
Now, after a series of excavations between 2009 and 2015, researchers have begun to understand the battle and its startling implications for Bronze Age society.
The well-preserved bones and artifacts add detail to this picture of Bronze Age sophistication, pointing to the existence of a trained warrior class and suggesting that people from across Europe joined the bloody fray.
50
handjive:
Obviously a clash between those in favour of renewables (wood, stone) and those who wanted newer technology (bronze).
60
Really interesting, thanks.
A perfect example of applied science, with input from a range of disciplines. One detail I had not been aware of is the fact that one’s teeth contain various traces of chemical diet elements ingested during your growth period, so allowing a good guess as to the area where you grew up (not so much now, I would think, with food staples from everywhere). But, fascinating.
40
Here’s some reading material from ‘The Observer’ here in the UK. Enjoy!
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/27/saving-glaciers-ice-cores-shipped-mont-blanc-antarctica-climate-change
Nothing much changes, it seems….including the troll comments.
20
COLONELS OF TRUTH
The story of Colonel Sanders ‘Kentucky Fried Chicken’.
A great read from start to end.
40
handjive,
thanks so much for this great story. I smiled and I laughed.
Tony.
30
Say, speaking of KFC, have a look at their latest offering, the Zinger Black Burger.
It says at the site the following: (my bolding here)
Carbon in vegetables now, eh! Who would have thought?
Oh dear! Now even the Colonel is ignoring Climate Change.
Tony.
50
Tony of course they use vegetable carbon.
Vegetable carbon is 100% natural vegan carbon and therefore unlike the other forms it will be correctly assimilated and aligned by the human body’s energy waves.
đ
đ
30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ASxOV6kpTY&app=desktop
Tip of the hat from Sarasota.
00
When I read the news of our dear leader’s desire to provide yet another billion dollars to the global warming scam I wrote, once again, to my MP, Louise Markus. Now she is one of the good guys; she voted for Abbott in the spill and, in the few conversations that I have had with her (yes, she actually rings me!), she is clearly a “conservative”. This is what I wrote:
Oh dear, Louise,
$1,000,000,000 on “Renewable Energy”
I would support $1 Bn for new hospitals.
I would support $1 Bn for a new road system in Sydney.
I would support $1 Bn for new dams and hydro.
But I will not support the waste of $1,000,000,000 to support risky research that should be funded by commercial interests, not taxpayers.
If the aim of this waste is to “save the planet” not only is it a waste, it is senseless! The Australian contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere is only 0.00002% of the total atmosphere – virtually nothing! We could close down every factory in the country tomorrow, stop driving every vehicle and turn off every power station and it would not make one iota of difference to the climate.
It is really pointless to spend money we have not got to fix a problem that does not exist to appease a portion of the electorate that will never vote for you anyway, while alienating the portion of the electorate that should be voting for you.
There is a reason that Turnbull lost his leadership over this issue before, and that issue remains and is not forgotten by conservative voters. It would seem that it is Turnbull rewarding the Greens for their Senate support. The thought of Turnbull getting you into bed with the Greens should terrify all conservative Liberals – the Greens will politically rape you, and us.
How can I vote for a party that is moving so far from my beliefs? I am still undecided as to how I would vote in the lower house, as I respect and like you, but I will be voting (1) in the Senate for the Australian Liberty Alliance and none of my preference votes will go the the despicable woman who is No 1 on the Liberal Senate ticket. What she did to Tony Abbott was beyond despicable.
I trust that you will indicate my complete antipathy on this and related “climate change” issues to your colleagues at your next party room meeting.
Kind regards,
I got the normal auro response in a couple of seconds but two days later, I got this:
Dear Peter
I understand your response. I will relay your concerns to my colleagues.
Warm Regards
Louise Markus MP
Federal Member for Macquarie
At least she read it (or somebody did) so let’s hope I am not the only one who wrote.
151
Nice letter.
Good you have an MP that communicates with “the people”. Neither my state (Lib) or feferal (Lab) MP bother to acknowledge or answer emails.
I too, will be voting for the Australian Liberty Alliance in the senate. They don’t yet have candidates for the lower house but will in the future.
61
Peter
A fair bit of traffic on this over at Michael Smith News so you’re not the only one
40
This is an outstanding scholarly video about leftist “thinking”. Its tile is “IQ, racism and the conservative” but it goes beyond that. Twenty minutes. Please watch.
http://youtu.be/ODZ-RUufHgI
21
Dave M:
Interesting but hardly new, leftists have been claiming since at least the 1950’s that intelligent people are on the left. Like man-made global warming this has never been proved but is repeated dogmatically and endlessly. The speaker is correct about the social pressure to conform. I was a socialist at University because it seemed a good thing. I lasted 3 weeks because I did what most of them don’t do and looked up the history and ‘achievements’ of socialism. I’ve forgotten the name of the book that persuaded me, but it was a history of socialist settlements, mostly in Australia.
You may not know, or care, but many towns on the River Murray in S.A. were founded by socialists; time and time again a group of fervent, well meaning believers would start the settlement which would rapidly collapse (never more than 2 years, often sooner). Those still believing would move up-river along with some newcomers to found another town etc. until the whole thing collapsed. There was even a group of australians, veterans of previous failures, who went to Paraguay to found a socialist colony in the jungle “free from distraction” – it didn’t last.
I reasoned that if the most dedicated group of the true believers who’d continued to believe despite failure that there was no hope of socialism ever working with humans. I did think it might work for ants and bees until I learnt a bit about them.
As the old british saying goes “If you’re not a socialist before you’re 25, there is something wrong with your heart. If you are a socialist when you’re older than 25, then there is something wrong with your head”. Presumably because experience in the real world brings realism to your beliefs. That is the problem with our schools and Universities in that the teachers pass from school to university and never find themselves exposed to real life. “the inner-city dwellers” jibe, all busy reinforcing the doctrine and attacking anyone who doesn’t conform; hence the dogmatism of the trolls.
40
Happy Easterween to Jo and everyone!
20
Its all downhill from here.
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_HMIIF.jpg
10
I was reading Climate Change the Facts, 2014. Great essays. Nigel Lawson in particular, ex Chancellor of England. Excellent clear thinking. In his reasoning however I considered two things which could be better addressed by science
.. “by burning fossil fuels -coal, oil and gas – we are increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and thus, all other things being equal, increasing the earth’s temperature.”
The first is the essential point conceded by just about everyone where the second is what everyone argues about. Once again the first and foundation statement in the logic is completely unproven to this day. The sole argument is that it is obvious, which to a scientist, it isn’t.
The second .. “the stimulus to plant growth”.. “Biologists have always known that CO2 is essential for plant growth.”
Essential? Stimulus? CO2 is the entire plant. The only source of energy and material for plants and animals is photosynthesis. This is CO2 capture using sunlight to form Carbohydrates, which as the name indicates is hydrated carbon (dioxide). The formula is (CO2)m(H2O)n. These are the building blocks of life. Slow combustion of these ‘carbs’ back to CO2 and H2O is what powers our existence.
In other words, we and all life on earth are ultimately made from Carbon Dioxide and very little else, except calcium for bones for humans. CO2 is not a fertilizer, a stimulant or an additive. That 50 tonne tree you see is solid carbon dioxide and water.
There are only three major ingredients in creating life on earth. Carbon Dioxide, Water and sunlight. If you have enough of these three, you can grow plants in a desert, with a few trace metals and a third trace gas, nitrogen. If you are missing any of these three, life ceases to exist. You are also limited by all three, which is Lawson’s ‘fertilizer effect’. More CO2 and more plants. Simple. So how Carbon Dioxide can be labelled pollution is beyond reason. You may as well label water and sunlight pollution.
52
Sorry, the other big gas is chlorine, as in salt. Banned by Greenpeace. It and Potassium chloride are the conductors of all our electrical wiring. Salt was known as white gold by the Romans and they were paid in salt, thus sal or salary. Egyptians too. Gandhi’s famous strike in India was at the salt works because salt is a basic human and animal requirement. Fresh water too. Only Greenpeace would ban chlorine. It shows how ignorance of basic science is behind so many Green arguments. For them rational philosophy never happened.
41
When only 2% of the world’s water is fresh and only perhaps 2% of that is available, the rest locked up in Antarctica and the Great Lakes and Lake Baikal. The Greens insistence that we do not trap fresh water in dams is madness. Who suggested desalination plants were sustainable, requiring massive amounts of fossil fuel power. So they are all mothballed while we pay for them where dams which last forever and cost a fraction of the money are not being built.
If ever there was serious damage done by the Greens to a needy world, surely it is the banning of new dams. The natural way of life is dying of thirst and starvation in a drought but Greens want the rivers to empty into the salty ocean in a drought. You have to be thankful to the people who built the 26 locks on the great Murray river, saving us from disaster. It would have been illegal today.
Greens are not cute. They are dangerous to life on this planet. Their solar panels and windmills are just nutty but the real damage is stopping real progress on alternative energy beyond their shaman gods of sun, wind and water. It is a druidic cult led and fed by communist political opportunists (tautology) like Adam Bandt whose unpublished PhD is on communism.
31
The only source of energy and material for plants and animals is photosynthesis
Most people have no clue whatsoever about photosynthesis, nor any interest in it as a practical concept.
Consequently the CAGW advocates can get away with “photosynthesis supplements life cycles” or similar malicious hogwash. This lets them “put a price on carbon” without significant public backlash.
Yes, such dissembling hypocrites are really vomitous. But the wilful ignorance of the public is their core enabler.
Now tell Cassandra how this will change.
50
(This may relate directly back to the special coating I mentioned in Comment Number 1 right at the top of this page, because this was the very first thing I thought of as soon as I read the information at their website.)
Some of you may know (or even may not know) that I also contribute at the Mothers car care site on their Wax Forum. In fact, that was the very first time I used my screen name when I first added a Post at their site way back in May of 2006.
In 2009, I had also been a contributor for a year at what is now my Home site. I didn’t want to mention too much about what I was doing at my home site at the Mothers site, because this was basically a car care site.
However, I tentatively added a New Thread and subsequent Posts about Pure Carnauba Wax, and in that series of five Posts, I mentioned some of the Science behind photosynthesis, what ianl8888 mentions above.
The process of plants taking the CO2 out of the surrounding air only occurs during daylight, as it is Sunlight which provides the trigger for this process. That was what surprised me the most about the process. I remember as a child hearing that old adage that trees, umm, breathe (for want of a better way of describing it simply) CO2 in and breathe out Oxygen. But the process stops at night. It is triggered as sunlight shines on that plant, any plant at all, first thing in the morning as the Sun rises, and stops at Sunset.
I (tentatively) wanted to combine something about CO2 into something related to car care, and the Carnauba Wax process interested me enough to do just that. It was heart in mouth stuff for me in a way, because I wasn’t all that sure how something like this might be perceived at a site where it was only about car care.
As it turned out, that Thread of mine actually proved quite popular, and as the visits to that Thread rose, the Admin at the Forum made the Post a Sticky Post, one of only two Sticky Posts from a Forum member. It has proved to be one of the most visited Posts at the site.
The “Sacrificial Layer” (or “Why You Should Protect Your Clearcoat”)
The principle would be similar for the protection of those solar panels mentioned in the earlier comment here at Joanne’s site. The wax is the very thinnest of coatings which still allows the light through but protects the surface of the panel in this case, in much the same way is it protects the top layer of paint on your car, the Clear Coat, and in exactly the same manner as the wax protects the leaves of the parent tree in the jungle heat. The fact that it shines up to a virtual glow, and beads water away is the added bonus.
Tony.
30
Since when is nitrogen a trace gas?
40
Not in the sense of being so rare. It is 78% of the atmosphere, but it is a smaller 1.1% component in human biology than the big three of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon and nitrogen, 3% by weight and generally in proteins, amino acids and DNA. I note on the internet, the human % are often given by weight as the abundance, which is wrong. Hydrogen is only 10% on this basis when it is 62% by frequency in H2O and CH2 chains.
We are mostly water and weigh a lot less dried out. Much of the rest is CH2 like wood, so we burn. Not a great deal of nitrogen at all. So if you get the percentages (by number, not weight as hydrogen is light)
By number of atoms in humans
Oxygen 24%
Carbon 12%
Hydrogen 62%
Nitrogen 1%
Total 99%
However if you take out the H2O you are left with Carbon 12%,Hydrogen 14%, Nitrogen 1% so of the 27%, we are hydrocarbons with 4% Nitrogen. Good fossil fuel. Pollution.
30
Absolutely irrefutable evidence solar panels do not stop extreme 97% Global Warming:
> FactCheck Q&A: is Australia the world leader in household solar power?
The Conversation is fact-checking claims made on Q&A, broadcast Mondays on the ABC at 9:35pm.
“It might also surprise you to know that nearly 15% of Australian households have solar panels on their roofs.
Thatâs the highest number of solar panels on peopleâs roofs per capita anywhere in the world.”
â Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg, speaking on Q&A on March 22, 2106.
Verdict: Josh Frydenberg was correct.
. . .
BoM Special Climate Statement: Prolonged March heatwave affects many parts of Australia
Issued 11 March 2016, updated 22 March 2016
41
Man, this is just such a huge story. Can you believe it. Whopping big. (oh Tony, please, /sarc)
4.5GigaWatts of Nameplate. That’s 4,500MW of raw power. That’s Loy Yang PLUS Hazelwood.
Total power generated by this humungous amount of rooftop power. The same as generated by Bayswater in, umm, 98 days.
Number of coal fired power plants closed by this huge amount of rooftop solar power – Nil.
Number of power plants easing back on their power generation because of this huge amount of rooftop solar power – Nil.
Why?
Because this is spread across the whole of Australia in small local areas where it has all but zero effect on local grid demands.
The total power generated by all this rooftop solar power is a tad over 2% of total power generation. Between a half and two thirds of that power being generated by those rooftop panels is consumed by the homes with the panels, so the amount returned to the grid ….. spread across the whole of Australia is around 0.75% of Australia’s total power generation, not even 1%.
Please forgive my cynicism.
Tony.
71
Less the cost of contractors climbing on the roof with squeegees to clean the panels and in ten years, to replace them.
60
Tony, that is the nominal DC output of the panels, not the AC contribution to the grid. Lose 20%. Lose more because it would never happen that all panels are operating at their maximum power at any one time.
10
belated happy easter to everyone.
found this amusing!
28 Mar: UK Telegraph: Jillian Ambrose: Business could save ÂŁ1bn through energy behaviour change
Npower Business Solutions, a division of the Big Six supplier, said that it has already helped customers to drive bills down by ÂŁ26m after acquiring an energy management firm which specialises in company habits.
Npower snapped up the RUMM energy consultancy in April last year as part of the company’s plan to grow within the increasingly competitive business supply market…
***The supplier refers to its behaviour analysts as âcarbon psychologistsâ and says that the experts can design energy saving programmes by addressing employee energy habits to help them adopt more energy efficient ways of working…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/03/27/business-could-save-1bn-through-energy-behaviour-change/
***Tele’s Jillian Ambrose has heard about these “carbon psychologists” before:
July: 2015: Utility Week: Q&A: Npower’s Wayne Mitchell
Jillian Ambrose talks to Wayne Mitchell, director of markets and innovation, Npower Business Solutions, about customer engagement trends in the industrial and commercial market.
Q: Where is the most exciting innovation taking place in the B2B market?
WAYNE MITCHELL: âMost of the innovation weâre getting involved in is around energy solutions, getting in on the demand side of the meter, and forming longer, more interesting relationships with clients. This is an area weâve had less involvement with in the past, partially because it requires trust, but weâve built trust and weâre now beginning to work on energy solutions â whether thatâs helping customers to use energy at the right time of day, or reduce consumption or interact with market mechanisms such as National Gridâs demand-side balancing reserve, or STOR [short-term operational reserve].
***âQuite recently weâve acquired a small start-up business based in south Wales called Rumm, which is predominantly a data management and data intervention company â they collect data from remote devices but they also have behavioural scientists and carbon psychologists at work for them.â
http://utilityweek.co.uk/news/qa-npowers-wayne-mitchell/1149062
10
University of Maine “seeks to educate”?
27 Mar: The Maine Campus: Josh Fabel: New film series seeks to educate on the topic of climate change
The classroom in the back of Fogler Library was filled with a large crowd of students and faculty on Tuesday, March 22, gathered together for a free presentation of the film, âMerchants of Doubt.â …
The film highlights people who, presenting themselves to the media as âscientists,â are paid to create doubt about climate change, despite innumerable scientific studies pointing toward its existence, according to the filmâs website…
âIâm planning on going into climate change,â anthropology student, Bethany Elfaham, said. âThe film is focused on people that are making doubt about climate change. I wanted to watch a film on finding more examples about climate change, and getting better ways to explain it to the public.â
âI was interested in coming tonight because I am interested in climate change and changing peopleâs mind about it,â University of Maine anthropology and psychology student, Mariah Geer said…
***âMerchants of Doubtâ was the third film to be shown in the series, with two more films, âThis Changes Everythingâ and âIn the Path of Resistance,â to be shown in the following weeks. Each film in the series is available to view on Fogler Libraryâs film database…
http://www.mainecampus.com/?p=1742
***âThis Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climateâ is the Naomi Klein/Avi Lewis documentary, which left a large carbon footprint “in nine countries and five continents over four years” according to the film website, which also states “Throughout the film, Klein builds to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better”.
the third film which “seeks to educate” the students at Maine is:
In the Path of Resistance
Justice beyond the Keystone XL pipeline
A documentary by Alex Leff
Bill McKibben recently tweeted about an inspiring new student film on the folks living along the KXL route.
http://ashbournefilms.com/in-the-path-of-resistance/trailer/
Leff’s previous effort was “Students & Goliath – How the Youth Took on the Fossil Fuel Industry”, another fave of 350.org.
education or propaganda?
30
“Thanks” to the Interwebs, I observed that the German media machine is so desperate to report warming that (public broadcaster in central Germany) MDR’s extended weather forcast for Easter on Friday first made a point (for about 30 seconds of the 3-minutre report) of how warm Boxing Day had been last year; as if it were relevant to the forecast.
The forecast was for dreary, cold weather with the possibility of black ice on roads in some areas, followed by a temporary clearing of clouds likely in some areas on Sunday and Monday. i.e. an “average” end to March.
Frohe Ostern. Happy Easter.
60
I haven’t seen a post or comment from “Sheri” for ages.
Does anyone know whether or not she is well?
Her comments were always quite inspirational and rational.
50
Rod,
If my memory serves me correctly, Sheri became upset over a religiously based comment.
Sad that she seemed unable to appreciate the goodwill that most of us felt for her here on this site.
KK
20
Where’s Gai?
20
Rod KK is correct, I believe it was me that upset her for what was a misinterpretation of a comment which was directed at the followers of ‘Voldemort’ not Christians.
I hope she is doing well and still visits Jo’s site, I miss her posts also, there is no ill will from me just respect.
40
Spent a few days in Perth over Easter; one has to be impressed with the ease of getting around on the trains and buses for mimimal fares as well as the friendly folk.
30
From the IPCC anthem —
“Cloud delusions we recall, we really don’t know clouds at all.”*
But the heat-haze may be clearing …
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-mechanism-birth-cloud-droplets.html
*The anthem is based on ‘Both Sides Now’ by Joni Mitchell.
10
HUGE STORY:
VIDEO: 57secs: 28 Mar: Fortune: Lucinda Shen: This Is Why Shares of SunEdison Probably Shouldn’t Be Soaring Today
by Lucinda Shen
A tweet tells all.
Shares of beleaguered Solar giant SunEdison ( SUNE 4.13% ) soared over 15% Monday, following rumors that the company was considering a buyout from Rockefeller Brothers Fundâa company that has recently moved away from oil investments…
But sorry bullish investorsâthe rumors are likely untrue, as the alleged author of the piece on Briefing Wire, Ioana Madalina Iacob, retweeted on Twitter that her publication, DebtWire, had nothing to do with the piece…
The Briefing Wire piece, published on Sunday, alleged that the rumors of a takeover âsurfaced from anonymous yet trusted source,â and said that âindustrial conglomerate Rockefeller Brothers Fund has solar operations and by some accounts, the nearly limitless potential in new, clean, and renewable energy.â
SunEdison also revealed Monday that it would temporarily suspend stock contributions to the retirement savings plans of itâs directors and executives, which will last until the company is up to date with its Security and Exchange filings, according to a regulatory filing Thursday…
When asked for a comment regarding the rumors, representatives from SunEdison said âwe decline to comment on market rumors and speculations.â
http://fortune.com/2016/03/28/sunedison-tweet-rumor/
updated reminder:
28 Mar: WSJ: SEC Investigating SunEdisonâs Disclosures to Investors About Its Liquidity
Probe examining whether the solar-power company overstated cash position last fall as stock slid
By Liz Hoffman and Aruna Viswanatha
At the time, SunEdison shares had fallen about 75% since midsummer. The slide has continued, with shares down 96% from a July high, and the company is working with advisers on a potential bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the matter. The companyâs market value has fallen to around $400 million from nearly $10 billion in July.
A SunEdison spokesman declined to comment…READ ALL
http://www.wsj.com/articles/sec-investigating-sunedisons-disclosures-to-investors-about-its-liquidity-1459207385
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Entrepreneur makes good.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/chinese-tourists-flood-isolated-grain-town-throwing-drought-stricken-community-an-unexpected-lifeline/476605
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statement by Abengoa:
28 Mar: The Wall St Transcript: Abengoa SA: Abengoa presents the homologation of standstill contract
Abengoa (MCE: ABG.B/P SM /NASDAQ: ABGB), the international company that applies innovative, sustainable technology solutions to energy and environmental sectors presented the homologation of the standstill contract which has garnered support from 75.04 % of the company’s lenders. The objective is that the conditions of the contract will be applied to all lenders. Abengoa passes the agreement with the support of 15.04 % more than the required 60 % of the lenders in order to approve the restructuring plan.
The standstill contract will permit the company to exercise certain rights for resolution and early maturity of financing. This will allow the company to reach 75 % of adhesion needed to pass the final plan.
***In parallel, Abengoa will also present as part of their restructuring plan for the company the plan to file Chapter 11 for its affiliates in the United States and Chapter 15 for all affiliates with the end goal to apply protection and a homologation of the agreement in the US…
Abengoa SA issued this content on 28 March 2016 and is solely responsible for the information contained herein (LINK)
https://www.twst.com/update/abengoa-sa-abengoa-presents-the-homologation-of-standstill-contract/
28 Mar: The Local, Spain: AFP: Spanish energy giant given 7 months to avoid bankruptcy
One of the world’s biggest renewable energy firms, Spain’s Abengoa, said on Monday it had been given a seven-month breathing space by its creditors for restructuring that should stave off the threat of immediate bankruptcy…
In parallel, the company plans to file for Chapter 11 protection from creditors for its affiliates in the United States…
Abengoa, which employed 28,700 people worldwide in 2015, wants to refocus on core activities. It has already signalled its intentions to sell off its biofuels assets and other holdings, on a case-by-case basis…
The company’s head, Felipe Benjumea, stepped down last September. He is under investigation for serious mismanagement and under fire for taking a compensation package of 11 million euros.
http://www.thelocal.es/20160328/creditors-give-spanish-energy-giant-abengoa-seven-months-grace
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Climate warriors at work.
11 Million.
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Have you all had a quiet little think about this?
How lucky is Abengoa to have this agreement put in place right about now, just as the warmer Months begin in the Northern Hemisphere, with Summer on the horizon.
You know, the best power generation time of the year.
Let’s hope it’s a bright and clear Summer, so they can
gougesorry, make as much money as they can from the electricity that the models predict they might generate. It will help them to, umm,adjust,homogenise,bump up, indicate that solar power is, well, you know, viable???Yeah! Right!
Tony.
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Iâve been reading about Tasmaniaâs power crisis and if ever there was an example of wind and solar not being up to the task, and the risk of putting your power eggs into one hydro basket, this is it. Give me cheap and reliable coal power any day.
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a whole new line of CAGW investigation requiring funding!
29 Mar: Yale e360: Is Climate Change Putting World’s Microbiomes at Risk?
Researchers are only beginning to understand the complexities of the microbes in the earthâs soil and the role they play in fostering healthy ecosystems. Now, climate change is threatening to disrupt these microbes and the key functions they provide.
by Jim Robbins
“These microbes have somehow lost the capacity to adapt to the new conditions,” said Vanessa Bailey, one of the authors of the study, published this month in PLOS One…
“Soil was a black box,” said Janet Jansson, chief scientist for Biology Earth and Biological Sciences at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and president of the International Society for Microbial Ecology. “I have been working in microbial ecology for decades, and it has been difficult, if not impossible, to study them. Now we have these new molecular processes, and suddenly the whole field is exploding.”
There is a Manhattan Project-like urgency to sussing out these secrets…
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/is_climate_change_putting_world_microbiomes_at_risk/2977/
28 Mar: NYT: Michael Greenstone: Overlooked Tool to Fight Climate Change: A Tweak in Fuel Standards
One of the best new opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions might be to tweak a bureaucratic regulation weâve had around for close to four decades.
Changing vehicle fuel efficiency standards â if done properly â could not only reduce emissions from cars and trucks, but also set the nation on a path that textbook economics suggests is the most efficient: by placing a nearly economywide price on carbon pollution…
Using corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards might seem counterintuitive. They are widely regarded as costly and inefficient because they rely on mandates for achieving emissions reductions, rather than letting market forces find the least expensive ones. But a big advantage is that CAFE standards have been required by law since the 1970s and so do not require new legislation.
CAFE standards were last updated in 2011 and are now up for review by the E.P.A…READ ON
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/upshot/overlooked-tool-to-fight-climate-change-a-tweak-in-fuel-standards.html?_r=0
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Climate warriors at work.
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28 Mar: Breitbart: James Delingpole: Climate Change: The Greatest-Ever Conspiracy Against The Taxpayer
Climate change is the biggest scam in the history of the world â a $1.5 trillion-a-year conspiracy against the taxpayer, every cent, penny and centime of which ends in the pockets of the wrong kind of people, none of which goes towards a cause remotely worth funding, all of it a complete and utter waste.
Here is an edited version of a speech on this subject I gave last week to the World Taxpayersâ Associations in Berlin…READ ON
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/03/28/climate-change-the-biggest-conspiracy-against-the-taxpayer-in-history/
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28 Mar: WSJ: Obama Administration Defends Limit to Power Plant Carbon Emissions
EPA argues Clean Air Act provides âwell-established authorityâ to enact rule
By Amy Harder and Brent Kendall
WASHINGTONâThe Obama administration on Monday offered a comprehensive legal defense of its signature climate-change regulation limiting carbon emissions from power plants, telling an appeals court that the rule is well within the bounds of its authority.
The Environmental Protection Agency, writing in a 175-page brief submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said the regulation was critical to addressing what it said was the most important environmental challenge facing the U.S…READ ON
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-administration-defends-limit-to-power-plant-carbon-emissions-1459203570
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the same old song…
28 Mar: Scientific American: How to Talk Global Warming in Plain English
Scientists struggle to convey the risks of climate change simply
By Erika Bolstad, ClimateWire
âIf we want to tell the nation the risk, we need to [do it] in plain English,â Alice Hill, the National Security Councilâs senior director for resilience policy, told scientists at a gathering in Washington, D.C., last week. As her boss, Susan Rice, often notes, Hill said, âclimate change is a dire threat to the prosperity and safety of the American people.â
The discussions played out at a two-day meeting of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine panel advising the group that puts out the assessment: the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Work is beginning on the fourth assessment, a congressionally mandated review of climate change impacts on the United States…
The climate assessment is intended to guide risk planning for federal, state and local agencies and tribal governments, as well as businesses, and the aim of last weekâs meeting was to help shape how the next assessment will characterize and communicate risk given the state of current science, including sea-level rise projections…
The panel bandied about creative ideas for getting its point across, including hiring filmmakers for video storytelling, or writers and artists to craft a version of the assessment released in a graphic novel-type format…
Water scientist Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute said he didnât think it was that no one was reading their assessment. Itâs more likely that ânot enough people read itâor not enough people choose to act on it,â he said.
âI think we could change that,â he said. âAnd one way to change that is to have much more involvement of key, vulnerable groups.â…READ ON
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-talk-global-warming-in-plain-english/
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Probably too late to be mentioning this at a Thread not many will visit any more, but this raises my hackles.
The Victorian Labor Government
is looking after its Union buddies, sorry, is purchasing water from the Wonthaggi Desal plant for Melbourne at an absolutely exorbitant rate, water that is not really needed.The amount of water being supplied will be 50 Billion litres, which is flat out capacity for the plant.
This desal plant might be classified as a water producer, but it’s a horrendous consumer of electrical power.
The Labor crowd airily wave this off by saying that they, umm, offset the power consumption by purchasing green power or planting trees or whatever, or investing is a wind plant to supply the power, and here they just quote the Nameplate they need to run this plant, which is 90MW.
What they don’t say is that while wind power generates its power at around 30% Capacity Factor, hence only 7.2 hours a day on average, this desal plant requires its full power for 24 hours of every day.
To supply that water, the plant will consume 800GWH of power a year. That 800GWH is not the output from one wind plant, but is 30% of the output of ….. EVERY wind plant in Victoria, but hey, the plant requires 24 hours worth of power. The plant is not connected to the wind plant alone, but to the grid in Victoria, and as the grid does not differentiate between wind power and coal fired power, then it will actually be supplied in the main by coal fired power.
That 800GWH of power a year, being consumed 24/7/365, is, (to use wind powers own misleading claims) enough to power 110,000 Victorian homes.
With this desal plant in continuous operation, don’t look to see Hazelwood being closed down any time soon.
That 800GWH power consumption per year is around 1.7% of Victoria’s total power consumption, so despite calls for power consumption to be lowered, Victoria is actually ramping up their consumption, courtesy of a Government which prides itself on how green it is.
Tony.
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Tony, excellent post and observation. This issue needs to be broadcast far and wide. The Andrews government has been negligent on so many issues. The cancellation of the East-West Link is costing a billion dollars when he said it wouldn’t cost Victorians a cent. Then there’s the advocacy for the agenda-ridden Safe Schools program that Andrews has stated Victoria will proceed with regardless of the Federal government’s approval and continued funding. This puppet of the rabid CMFEU is out of control. Paying extra for water, unneeded water, from the desal plant is a further insult to the taxpayers of Victoria who are already reeling from leftist agenda-ridden decisions. The Andrews government has banned the teaching of Christmas carols in schools.
Daniel Andrews is out of control.
Could you please post your comment about the activation of the desal plant on a later thread? It deserves further exposure.
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gigdiary,
thanks for leaving this comment. Sometimes, when there is something worth mentioning here, there’s nowhere to place it, without looking like I’m (blatantly) going off topic, so on occasions like that, it either does not get said, or gets lost in old Threads which no one sees any more.
It’s easy to say a plant like this only consumes 90MW, and then say they are getting their power from an equivalent 90MW wind plant, because people see the correlation and think it’s covered, but again, it’s the actual power consumption that is the main thing here.
A 90MW wind plant at the average yearly power delivery Capacity Factor of 30% will generate 236GWH, and the plant consumes 800GWH, so it needs a further 560GWH just to stay operational, and where do you think that extra power comes from, well, in actual fact, all of it really, because the plant is connected to the electricity grid, and not directly to any wind plant at all.
Virtually all of that power consumption will be coming from coal fired power.
And the cost of that electricity.
$200 MILLION.
Just for the electricity alone to keep the plant operational for 24 hours of every day, delivering water at its maximum rate.
All sheeted back home to the consumers of ….. all water, in extra costs for that water.
Tony.
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