Darn free energy costs a fortune to collect.
The 39ft turbines were fitted with a sonar so they could be switched off if seals and dolphins wandered by, but the sonar developed a fault.
£18MILLION tidal energy scheme supposed to power 600 homes stops working after just three months
- The taxpayer-funded DeltaStream project in Pembrokeshire in Wales, was designed to use the flow of the ocean with a 39ft turbine installed on the seabed
- But the system developed a fault and stopped generating electricity weeks after
- Tidal Energy Ltd has now gone into administration and is seeking a buyer
Dolphins and seals killed by coal: zero
h/t Marvin
As I mentioned in another post, show me one Green-Left scheme that actually works.
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Extracting taxpayer’s monies from governments.
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And don’t forget about the kickbacks!
GeoffW
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Yes, that aspect always seems to deliver the goods. But I wonder if that’s really the nemesis of the Green-Left benefiting ie the capitalists, banks and financiers making money from Green-Left schemes? So for the Green-Left it’s another failure. 🙂
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You mean ( gasp from the audience here….) That the green-left are just useful idiots and stooges of the banisters?
Never!!! Hold a parliamentary enquiry!!!!!
/sarc
He he
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Banisters….rotten auto correct…I was trying to say “banksters”…
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That’s a relief, I thought you meant baristas!.
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They work very well if you are the one collecting the $$$
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This is a common headline in the UK.
The Labour government controlling the Principality is so economically inept it defies belief.
Everything is about supporting politically correct theory and nothing is about considering hard economic reality.
I have often wondered how destabilising is the effect of tidal energy being fed into the national grid. Four times per day of maximum output, four times per day of zero output – but at least it is predictable. The need to fire up fossil fuel generators during times of high and low tides pushes any idea of economic reality right out the window.
Also,being located underwater in a highly corrosive salty environment certainly will not help long term performance, not to mention other problems such as barnacles, seaweed, sand and mud corrosion, and switching off when there is a nearby dolphin.
Tidal energy? A classic case of ecolunacy.
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And, of course, the difference in generating ability between neap and spring tides.
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Year: circa 1956.
Programme: BBC’s Panorama.
Presenter: Richard Dimbleby.
TOPIC: The Zeta Project. A grand project to harness waves and the tides to generate electricity. I think it was off the coast of Scotland.
There is nothing new under the sun.
I was 11 years old when that program went air. The Zeta Project was never heard of again.
R-COO- K+
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The really down side of this and projects like this is that at some point in time, there is going to be a legitimately useful and productive idea that is going to come along, and everyone will be so shell shocked from the rip-offs, that it won’t be considered. It may or may not see the light of even a demonstration project because of those that talk a good deal and can schmooze well will have deafened everyone.
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6 metre tides. It’s enough to keep you thinking at night.
There is already a tidal power station here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rance_Tidal_Power_Station
The fact that the principle has been slow to be further developed suggests that it is hardy competitive. But others are still trying.
Move Port Phillip Bay to Broome and we could build one there.
00
Bemused, except for graft, kickbacks, bribery, lies, deceptions, etc., your question is impossibly hard.
If you grant that these liberal tricks and crimes are not defined as “works”; then the answer to your question is no, never, nada, zero, the null set!
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Taxpayer funded, meaning subsidised, another example of socialism masquerading as environmentalism and socialists picking winners and ignoring the market.
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In 1905, Einstein realized the whole universe is dynamic and alive because there is abundant “free energy” (E) stored as mass (m) in each atom of matter.
More than 99% of the mass and energy of every atom is in its nucleus. (Chemical reactions re-arrange only electrons and release <1% of the energy released in nuclear reactions.)
In 1922, Aston received the Nobel Prize for measuring the mass of every atom and expressing its mass as its “nuclear packing fraction.”
On 6 & 9 Aug 1945, Hiroshima & Nagasaki were destroyed by releasing releasing nuclear energy from uranium-235 and plutonium-239, respectively.
On 24 Oct 1945, nations and national academies of sciences were united to save the world from nuclear annihilation by using a “trick” from one of Hitler’s nuclear scientists to hide the source of energy in atomic bombs – NEUTRON REPULSION.
The first scientist sent to examine the ruins of Hiroshima in August 1945, Prof. PAUL KAZUO KURODA of the Imperial University of Tokyo risked the rest of his life to keep Prof. Carl von WEIZSACKER’s misleading nuclear binding energy equation from being used to deceive the entire world population about abundant “free energy” in every atom after WWII.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/TRIBUTE_TO_KURODA.pdf
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Any thoughts on how we can generate that energy? Preferably a long way away at first trial.
There may well have been nuclear reactions when the Earth formed similar to those in Gabon (Oklo) but where to from then?
40
Good questions and good insight.
Once United Nations and their “national” Academies of Sciences stop hiding NEUTRON REPULSION – the source of energy in cores of
1. Heavy elements like Uranium
2. Ordinary stars like our Sun
3. Galaxies like the Milky Way
4. The now expanding Cosmos . . .
(that also powers atomic bombs and nuclear reactors)
Technology will quickly find economically and environmentally safe ways to use that same energy to benefit all humanity.
50
And let us not forget the endless source of renewable/free energy behind the exploitation of the anthropogenic species was the invention of infinite debt during 2007 circa when it was discovered/proclaimed that what is known as the ‘debt ceiling’ could likely be infinite like time and space.
Einstein could never have foreseen the invention of infinite debt, a concept so far beyond ordinary human thought that no great mind however gifted could have anticipated it. And yet, here we all are today, like astronaughts flying beyond the zeros upwards to the furthest reaches of interstellar astronomical debt.
60
Next month a Canadian climatologist of integrity, Dr. Tim Ball, faces legal action for having the ability to comprehend the causes of climate change and the courage to challenge obviously bogus “climate science” from former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nation’s IPCC.
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2016/12/31/warning-to-trump-dont-approve-gmo-pesticide-fda-horror-show/#comment-199361
The court decision could expose the Norwegian and/or Swedish Nobel Prize Committees to additional questions.
40
Be great to get some economic climate scientists with integrity to comprehend the cause of the current economic climate of such things as wind turbine economic climate funding and tidal energy economic climate funding………
I continue to remain skeptical about the current efforts to obtain a bona-fide economic climate with respect to turbines in general
30
*I continue to remain skeptical about the current efforts to obtain a bona-fide economic climate with respect to the turbine environment in general
20
This morning’s Australian had at least three prominent articles spruiking Climate Change, starting with the lead article.
The half justifying article on the front page talked about how electricity prices were rising with the Large Generator Certificat price rise from $55 to $89. Surprise, suprise. That is the idea of LGCs and they have been $89 for a long time now.
Another statement in the lead article on page 2 was that renewables were replacing ‘old’ power stations. So I suppose new ferries should replace the old Sydney Harbour Bridge too. They could save on painting.
The article on page 3 argued that parrots in WA had grown wings 1cm longer in the last 40 years, thanks to Climate Change, which is treated synonymously with Global Warming, so the warming makes wings longer makes Climates Change. What warming? Who is making this stuff up? Are they sure these are the same parrots and not a different parrot? Who needs satellites when you have parrots as a way of precisely measuring temperature, allegedly to 0.1C? Amazing. Parrotmometers.
The third article was about how investors were going to make money with new gas power plants. No mention of how they had to pay for LGCs too and gas exploration has been banned and supplies are limited.
Then there was the Victorian State minister justifying the 300% increase in brown coal prices, as the price had not risen in ten years. Really?
So 12% a year every year compound for ten years then? Many times the CPI. Only fair of course and it will reduce the profits of those evil coal power stations, forcing them to close. Then of course the extra $250Million a year stops.
We are being besieged with climate change bad news, old power stations and how the governments are all acting in our interests. None of it is true but we are being indoctrinated by compliant journalists who must believe everything they are told in a low news period. There is not a bad word to be read about the rapid increase of prices, irresponsible closures or the destruction of a wonderful cheap and utterly reliable power supply for a political fantasy. All for a good cause apparently, except no one can explain that either.
492
I was just musing on the idea that parrots evolve differently and so quickly to a sensitivity of 0.1C in an average across a state across the seasons. That is just incredible. The extra wing length provides precisely the extra cooling the parrot requires to live in the very slightly hotter average temperature. Incredible. This belongs in Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Are there any other factors in the environment which might produce a change in wing length? Is the wing length of a parrot such a constant that it is accurate to such a degree? Maybe these were slightly older parrots? Or from a different family and the short winged parrots had moved to greener pastures? Maybe there was a change in predator and they preferred very slightly shorter wing parrots or the shorter ones were smarter and were not caught as easily after another forty years of exposure to man? This is a new science of absolutes, precise averages and all based on parrots. At least the words Climate Change might garner some more funding from a grateful minister?
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By 2100 parrots will be the size of a Terradactyl, if I’m around I will train one for riding and call it Buckbeak.
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The parrots in Alice Springs should already be as big as emus then.
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I had to wonder about this one , when you compare a long dead stuffed parrot with a live one I’m sure the dead one will be slightly shrunken and a bit off colour .
As for the wave generator only working for a few weeks can anybody remember what happened to the one undertow in South Australia during the Dullard Crudd years .
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They measure bones
01
It sunk.
10
At least the one in SA lasted longer than the one clogging up the beach in Port Kembla but the one in Port Fairy is being repaired after bits broke off it and the sub sea cable failed.
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Was that sub sea or subsidy failure? 🙂
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Subsidies never fail.
40
This is not a comment about the paper as I’ve not read it and I am very sceptical. if the existing phenotype is quite variable and coded by a simple genetic system, there is no reason to think that such a change could take more than one generation (about 8 years for this bird).
One generation is sufficient for significant change in morphology.
33
One generation is sufficient for significant change in morphology
Please give precise examples of this miracle of speedy evolution.
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the answer is in what you understand by evolution and what evolution actually is.
If you breed the next generation from individuals with the extreme phenotype then, depending on the underlying genetic system, you will produce a generation with a shift in phenotype towards the extreme. Some genetic architectures will buffer the shift so that it is a tiny shift per generation and some will allow the shift to almost to completion in one generation. No examples (precise???) needed as it is as trivial as going to a sheep farm, killing all the white sheep and finding that the next generation produced by the black sheep are darker on average than what existed on the farm before.
remember the early population, allegedly, had shorter wings on average. This average will include individuals with longer and shorter wings – including wings longer than the current population. When we say the population “evolved” in this case, we don’t mean that new variation was acquired by mutation in the time period in question. Selection has just removed or made rare certain variation that is allegedly poorly adapted. The speed of this change is obviously slower than in the sheep example above since the alleged selective pressure is not as severe and the genetics of wing span is likely additive with many genes and alleles contributing. Such variation takes time to shift.
BTW I have read the paper now and don’t consider a conclusion linking their observation to be supported.
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Your best comment to date Gee.
10
Hey, biggest story on BBC is cold snap in Europe. Maybe they are changing their mind about climate change. On the other hand maybe they are just reporting what is happening.
20
And thanks for the approbation. It is pretty much introductory undergrad evol genetics.
00
I have seen Australians morf from energetic rational beings to weak kneed snowflakes in two generations.
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Yes the MSM are still banging on about climate change and all related nonsense. Yet they ignore the one bit of news that’s so relevant. Countries all over are still building new coal fired power stations. The World Resources Institute has reported that over 1,200 new coal plants with a total capacity of 1,400 GW are being built or planned. How come we keep hearing about how we are closing down our old coal fired power stations yet much of the rest of the world is building new ones? How come we are so focused on increasing the cost of electricity so much by refusing to build new coal fired power stations to generate base load power that’s so essential to our economic survival? Why are there so many people here in Australia embarking on economic suicide?
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BTW Germany, which happens to have their fair share of lunatic Greens politicians, is building 25 new coal-fired plants. They are needed to avoid a looming power shortage caused by decommissioning nuclear power plants. Just goes to prove Australia is lead by lunatics far worse than those in Germany.
290
There is little doubt that renewables, wind and solar, are an inefficient way of producing electricity; fine for isolated communities as long as there is diesel back-up.
Take King Is. for example; the diesel generators are seldom off and talk about 70% replacement of diesel consumption is just that; 30% is more like it.
In Australia the powers that be are talking about 50% renewables by 2030 on one hand, and at the same time flat out flogging as much coal to the world as they can to keep the country afloat with its enormous administrative burden fostering green tape, much duplication and even triplication.
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Well at least the parrot isn’t dead.
Musing on the concept, but could the bigger parrots be a result of the increased vegetation and associated food?
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I have been studying Norwegian Blues for some time now,but for the life of me I cannot discern any elongation at the extremetiies.
160
What I really meant to say was what a load of post modern scientific nonsense. Probably related to the story from UNE about the demise of meat ants due to increasing temperatures. In that case I fronted the academic in question .
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I dunno the meat ants on the shores of my dam are pretty content I think.
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Wait. Parrots and Global Warming?
“As she reaches the end of her eight years as Chief Scientist, Julia Slingo reflects on how Met Office science has evolved and what the future holds.
As well as developing our science to tackle issues at the global to local scale, we have also advanced capabilities in ensemble prediction so we can talk about the probabilities of specific weather and climate events.
We usually employ these in forecasting, but we can equally apply the concept of ‘one flap of a seagull’s wings will forever change the future course of the weather’ to explore the myriad of paths that the world’s weather could take.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/barometer/features/looking-to-the-future?WT.mc_id=Twitter_Content_Science
Whoa! Wait. What?
How Lasers and a Goggle-Wearing Parrot Could Aid Flying Robot Designs
In a new study, a team of scientists measured and analyzed the particle trails that were produced by the goggle-wearing parrot’s test flights, and showed that previous computer models of wing movement aren’t as accurate as they once thought.
http://www.nbcnews.com/mach/innovation/how-lasers-goggle-wearing-parrot-could-aid-flying-robot-designs-n692731
Even their 97% analogies are a failure.
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Apologies to Lewis Carroll.
“The time has come,” the Greenies said,
“To talk of many things:
Of sun and wind and carbon tax
Of spurious tree rings
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And the length of parrot wings.”
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MSM, who still reads (or watches) this stuff?
150
by definition the mainstream reads it.
Mods… all of 3.x is way off topic. For my part in this I am happy for it to be shunted to unthreaded.
00
Yes it’s off topic but what else is there to say about a stupid, expensive, non-working tidal power machine?
See? It only took a sentence.
20
The easiest thing is to do is to write nothing rather than drawing attention to a poorly written newspaper article about which neither the journalist nor the commenter bothered to try to understand. You are right, a waste of all our time.
20
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke
Is that a long bow?
20
a bit of a long bow… the good men could be using their time pursuing a worthwhile cause instead of pissing angrily into the wind emitted by a blog
12
400 tonnes of steel and a 200 kw turbine for £18 million!
($30 million) Right now you couldn’t fry an egg with it!
Now the company Deltastream is bankrupt . .
Someone is responsible for this shocking waste of money.
And they should be made to pay. Wake up Wales you have been ripped off!
GeoffW Sydney
261
Sorry the above should read 200 tonnes and 400 kw.
Either way a very bad deal.
GeoffW
150
Actually you will find it is 200 tonnes and 0 Kw.
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They’re looking for a buyer. Any scrap metal dealers around who’ll pay a couple of quid per pound less salvage costs?
140
They should drag it out of the sea onto the foreshore for all to see. They could name it ‘Pembroke’s Folly’. Who knows it might become a tourist attraction and serve as reminder of the economic costs & risks that renewable energy entails.
GeoffW
231
How about just: Pembroken?
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Then you have the $93Million in Federal grant (55Million Pounds) gift to Geodynamics for Tim Flannery’s “The technology is straightforward” hot rocks public startup. The directors on $400,000 pa? It does not take long to get through the money and they did. Plus the $46Million raised from investors.
“The technology worked but unfortunately the cost of implementing the technology and also the cost of delivering the electricity that was produced to a market was just greater than the revenue stream that we could create,” Geodynamics chief executive Chris Murray said.
You would have thought they worked this out before spending the money?
So the shares are under 2c from $2 each. That’s life, with our money plus those poor investors who lost their savings. Mad investors who believed the prospectus?
Given the billions spent by the CSIRO on proving not solving “Climate Change” with 350 full time scientists, it is a drop in the R&D ocean. Failure is the norm.
No one then questions where the money goes.
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The technology worked? They couldn’t stop the pipes from disintegrating.
140
Is that settled science? I would have thought pipes choking up from deposition from mineral solutions formed at high temperatures and cooling nearer the surface would have been the problem.
80
It’s settled science now. $150million has vanished too, $93 million from our us and probably a lot of superannuation fund money, also our money and no strings attached, no conditions. Underwriters, management, consultants, lawyers, directors, university friends and all to prove the technology is straightforward but just failed to make enough money? So unexpected, or was it?
In the real world of cutting edge R&D, people work night and day for nothing to create a product, market it and support and develop it and take their profits from the success. In the IPO world, financiers and lawyers work night and day to float the company on a prospectus which paints a wonderful picture of roaring success and then it is period of spending all the money until failure, supervised by the same people as directors on large salaries plus lots of shares should it actually succeed.
110
I would love to know how much union members superannuation money has disappeared into green schemes.
00
Do these defunct companies that created non-working renewable projects get a tax write-off after the money is all gone and nothing is left to show for it?
10
Because it is relatively affordable and widely available, coal remains the world’s number one fuel for generating electricity, producing steel and making cement. It provides almost 30% of the world’s primary energy, declining to 27% by 2021.
Medium-Term Coal Market Report 2016 December
http://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2016/december/medium-term-coal-market-report-2016.html?utm_content=buffer4ed48&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
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Coal in the form of coke is not only how the furnaces work but essential for converting iron oxide to iron. We have no substitute. The pure carbon coke grabs the oxygen atoms and becomes the dangerous pollutant CO2 which feeds all life on earth. Waste electricity powers the aluminium refineries which also produce deadly CO2. Now let the Greens live without steel, aluminium, reinforced concrete. Their mud brick housing, dirt streets and wooden bicycles and iPhones would be their reward for destroying modern democratic society.
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How does a greenie make a wooden bicycle without steel tools? Most greenies are flat out making a soy latte, to the point they must go out and have someone else make it for them…
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Soy? I read that if live cattle export was murder, milk was prostitution. My favorite bumper sticker was “the greatest wilderness is between a Greenies’ ears”
181
One of my favourites too. The story is that they’re strange cattle these Greens. Sorry Chad Morgan.
81
Facebook had an article of someone from Africa making bicylces out of bamboo.
40
I can see it now , everybody in Adam Bandt’s electorate in one big community hug group, building themselves bamboo bicycles out of the single clumping bamboo stand in Adam Bandt’s backyard and riding them around South Yarra. The RACV would have to create a wing for bamboo bicycles.
40
Steel is possibly the world’s biggest single commodity, $US1,000Bn a year wholesale and 10x that as products from cars to bridges to tractors to freeways, piping, structures. It has its own markets, independent of the world’s exchanges, even the metals exchanges. Steel is the basis of modern society, as much as concrete which was reinvented in the 1870s as Portland cement for lighthouses. The Romans had the recipe but everyone forgot how to make it. The Bronze age, the Iron age and we are now in the Steel and concrete age. Concrete also needs steel.
Steel comes from trees. It used to take many acres of forest just to create 1 ton of steel. There is hardly a tree in Finland which is over 200 years old as like so many countries, the land was totally stripped for steel. Coal and in particular coke saved us, saved our landscapes, saved our forests, rehabilitated whole countries but the Greens hate coal. They have no idea how much their quality of life following the industrial revolution is utterly dependent on coal and even with a billion windmills, we would still need steel. Windmills are made from steel.
So they want to close Whyalla, Portland, Port Pirie, Steel and metal refineries factories and buy our steel and food and fish from China and Vietnam. Why? With what exactly? The Government’s money? As Margaret Thatcher said, the government has no money, never more obvious than today when Federally alone we are borrowing $1Billion a week.
The extreme unreality of the people against coal is amazing. Just try to live without steel.
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The pure carbon in coke reduces the iron oxide to pure iron plus CO2 which bubbles out. Australian coal is far better for coking than rival Indonesia. To deny our coal to emerging countries is to deny them the ability to make steel, the most important commodity after food and water.
All these devices from windmills to tide generators to hot rocks depend utterly on steel. Steel is made from red dirt and ancient compost.
100
Aluminium oxide is also converted to metal by petroleum coke. Once again the ouprocess creates CO2. Of course the Green want aluminium refining stopped. Soon all the world’s CO2 will be in China. Plus all the world’s wealth. That seems to be the Green ideal. Donald Trump is our only hope now.
80
The relevance of this was highlighted when the leader of the Australian Greens, GP Dr Richard Di Natalie said he was happy for steel smelter Whyalla to stay open, as long as they didn’t use coal! This is impossible. Similarly with Alcoa. CO2 is how the oxygen is taken away from the Fe and Al oxides.
40
Don’t forget that the directors of the company had to have an excuse to close it down before anyone started asking about the state of their off-shore bank accounts.
Typical green engineering ‘don’t look at the length feel the width’.
70
Here is another expensive Green disaster closer to home.
“The $8 million project received $4.4 million in funding from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency under the Emerging Renewables Program”.
http://reneweconomy.com.au/wave-energy-company-oceanlinx-goes-into-receivership-89508/
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I’m not aware of any wave energy project that has succeeded. There have been several in the UK that have swallowed money and produced nothing but cr@p.
120
There are a couple of tidal plants, they dam up a sh1tload of water at high tide and release it at low tide, it’s a way to capture and use the moons gravitational energy, you know that same gravitational energy that doesn’t affect the climate.
110
try this: https://im42na.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/wind-and-solar-will-provide-a-mere-4-percent-of-all-the-worlds-energy-by-2040/
40
@ mods
Typo check.
The headline reads 8 million pounds, the subhead reads 18 million pounds.
Which is correct? If they’re both correct, they need to have the distinction between the two figures made clear, because at the moment it looks as if both refer to the same thing.
50
From the Daily Mail: “The £18million ‘wet elephant’ received £8million funding of EU money and £500,000 from the Welsh Government”.
70
But…but…but they had good intentions.
The road to hell is paved with the fools gold of good intentions. Unfortunately, it usually costs a lot of real money to build it. The consequential cost of lost opportunities is incalculable (real aspirations, real lives, and real poverty to name a few of the “hidden” costs).
110
I am always assumed by the way any new power project always seems to be described in terms of ‘homes’.
What is the current conversion rate between ‘homes’ and ‘small businesses’? Or ‘corner shops’? ‘Factories’? ‘Local supermarkets’?
100
Using ‘homes’ is just a cop out and is meaningless. Every one uses different amounts of electricity depending on the number in the household, work commitments and if there are teenagers there.
60
Well according to http://www.carbonindependent.org/sources_home_energy.html
That’s 13.4 kWh per day. So they even get to inflate the “Homes supplied” numbers. A regular all electric home uses around 30kWh a day when using heating/cooling or maybe 20kWh on a really good day. My home would use 5kWh just to cook dinner and we have energy efficient appliances!. Now add on your Tesla roadsters 60kWh battery and that’s a Green-Dream household consumption of around 90kWh per day meaning a Megawatt windmill supplies just 40 Green-dream Houses (Assuming 10% transmission losses and a 17% capacity factor). So just to supply green dream houses you’d need 200,000 windmills and that’s only 20% of the economy.
Lately Al Gore has been spreading the science-fiction that solar has become more cost effective than coal. When you look at the comparison they compare the two on $/watt nameplate, IE that 100 Megawatts of solar is the same cost as 100 MW of coal. Completely neglecting that solar has a reliable capacity of around 1.5% (You can only rely on solar to produce 1.5W on a 99.5% reliability basis per 100 Watts Nameplate installed capacity). Their analysis is also based on JUST THE PANELS which of course requires the economy to switch to DC power, since Al Gorge neglects little things like Inverters, batteries, wires and towers, buildings or even tools to clear the land and build the structures these panels rest upon. That’s a bit like comparing coal using just the furnace, without the boiler alternator, pipes and so on
90
Well don’t I feel like a spend thrift. Our 3-bedroom one bath home consumes about 1,000 kWhr per month, or 12,000 kWhr per year. We heat and cook with gas and the hot water heater and dryer are gas-fired as well. In the US, our electricity consumption is considered “average”.
10
1000 kwh per month is 30kwh a day as I said, though I usually manage that in an all electric house. Then my cost is around 30c per kwh so we expend a bit of effort on reducing the leccie bill!
00
Ouch! My cost is $0.12/kW-hr. It’s really not economical to put in compact fluorescents because they only last about 4,000 hours, not the 23,000 originally promised. If I had to pay $0.30/kW-hr that would probably do it. Part of the issue for us is that a lot of lights are left on. That will happen when you have a 10-year old and 6-year old running around.
00
This seems to be ‘invasion of hostile foreign mercenaries’, If local such would be deemed “mutiny” with appropriate ‘hanging from the yardarm’!!
What are you Brits doing? Even from the ignorant colonies, you Brits ‘yousted’ to have some semblance of intelligence! Did we actually loose WW-II?
90
I disagree with Albert Einstein.
I think there is some level of probability that the Universe is finite.
Whereas human stupidity is infinite.
131
No one has any clue to the Universe or earthling stupidity! In this God owned Casino (rakes from every bet.) I am willing to agree with you!
71
“Never underestimate the power of a large group of stupid people!”Einstein
00
Probability margin of error –
Universe – 100%
Human Stupidity – 0%
Fixed!
100
stupidity or deliberate rorting ?
OR deliberate rorting being masqueraded as stupidity ?
When none are held accountable, the scam will continue!
20
Does the universe recognise stupidity.Or otherwise? I guess we can’t impose our reality and our senses on the stars.We go to them eventually.
51
How is that disagreeing with Einstein? The alleged quote was:
I am not sure he made that quote at all, but that is the popular take.
80
We just need to rejig the ‘infinite improbability drive’ to give human stupidity a more measurable preventative possibility.
🙂
60
keeping to the bird theme, BBC had this in their World Service Radio news headlines recently. they then named a specific bird and said it was arriving 16 days early (not mentioned in the documented article below). it was a short & brief news item, probably 3 lines, but it gave the impression temperatures had risen 16 degrees because of CAGW:
29 Dec: BBC: Birds migrating earlier as temperatures rise
Birds have reached their summer breeding grounds on average about ***one day earlier per degree of increasing global temperatures***, according to the research by Edinburgh University.
The study looked at hundreds of species across five continents.
It is hoped it will help scientists predict how different species may respond to future environmental change…
Long-distance migrants, which are shown to be less responsive to rising temperatures, may suffer most as other birds gain advantage by arriving at breeding grounds ahead of them…
Takuji Usui, of Edinburgh University’s school of biological sciences, said: “Many plant and animal species are altering the timing of activities associated with the start of spring, such as flowering and breeding…
The study, published in Journal of Animal Ecology, was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-38450228
lost interest in finding any specific bird in the following that is the one allegedly arriving 16 days early. it all sounds very speculative anyway:
28 Dec: WileyOnlineLibrary: Temporal shifts and temperature sensitivity of avian spring migratory phenology: a phylogenetic meta-analysis
3.We confirm earlier findings that on average birds have significantly advanced their spring migration time by 2·1 days per decade and 1·2 days °C−1…
***While we are able to identify predictors that explain some of the true among-species variation in response, substantial intra- and interspecific variation in migratory response remains to be explained…
***However, there is considerable variation in the slope around the average, with different species or even populations of the same species exhibiting both earlier and later timings of spring migration over time and with respect to temperature change (Miller-Rushing, Primack & Stymeist 2008; Hurlbert & Liang 2012)…
We found a highly significant trend for earlier spring migration timing over time (Fig. 1a). Overall, the global average advance in migration timing estimated by the null model was −2·1 (95% CI: −2·9 to −1·4) days per decade. In all models, this advance in migration timing was significantly steeper in MADs than for FADs (Fig. 2a; Table S3). Furthermore, in all models, the advance in migration timing varied among decades, being steepest in the 1920s and 1990s (Table S3)…
Our results agree with previous findings that in recent decades, the average avian spring migration timing has advanced in response to climate change (Parmesan & Yohe 2003; Root et al. 2003; Lehikoinen, Sparks & Zalakevicius 2004; Lehikoinen et al. 2010), with migrants arriving at their breeding grounds on average 2 days per decade earlier…
***Our results also confirm that migration timing is temperature sensitive, with migrants arriving around 1 day earlier 1 °C−1 rise in global temperatures…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2656.12612/abstract
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The BBC also ran a story about the Siberian Swan that migrated to the UK 29 days earlier because of the freezing temperatures in Siberia.
90
I imagine my house martins doing the same thing.
One day, in Africa, the boss house martin will say: “Gather round chaps. The Arctic has been a degree or so warmer this year so I say we set off this Thursday and not leave it until a fortnight on Saturday. What do you all think?”
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It this steady and seemingly endless stream of confirmation bias for Climate Change, Global Warming. Wings 4mm longer. A bird arriving days earlier or later. Punxatawny phil looking for his shadow. All with scientists stating that the correlations are good, the signs are clear and the auspices in the stable. So many ‘scientists’ all confirming that the only possible reason for a 4mm change in wing length in a sample is Climate Change which is immediately restated as (localized) but Global Warming. No other explanation. There is also a logical seque that the only possible reason for any of these extreme events like a swan arriving early is Climate Change.
So our scientific community have become druids, interpreting the signs of the Gods and the flights of birds as containing portents and warnings not to abuse the planet and to send more money for their budget runs thin. This was half of the National newspaper. Then of course evil Trump who will upset our balance of trade, depress the currency, create war with China and affect the share price of Ford and General Dynamics and the rate at which Democrats multiply. The paper seems full of prognostications, dire warnings and political climate change. Brexit will destroy England and Putin is up to something.
It was really nice when the newspaper and TV and Radio used to just report what happened and not the wing length of parrots to a few mm, when
journalists did not read auguries and make wild claims about the fate of the world. Possibly the worst are the new class of observational scientists
to whom the slightest correlation, the craziest postulation and the statistically insignificant are all earth shattering proof of Climate Change and not confirmation
of perfectly ordinary and natural variation. It is relatively cool in Melbourne, despite Flannery’s Angry Summer, or was that last year?
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I liked the quote used yesterday “If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to do a better experiment.” Lord Ernest Rutherford
Conversely you cannot use any variation to justify a conclusion without implying that things must stay exactly the same to high precision, without any basis at all for that idea.
The natural world is not regulated like a clock. It is chaotic and everything is dependent on other things. Chaos is the norm, not constancy. Only the average is close to constant
and that varies.
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Thank you pat.
Did they mention any economic consequences of this early arrival, and any avenue of(at least) recouping the cost of this study?
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aussiepete –
I only heard the news headline, which seemed interested only in giving the impression the earth’s temp had risen 16 degrees.
then I found the article with its convoluted claims.
there was a study last year that claimed some raptor or other was arriving somewhere or other 15 days early – which I can’t locate just now – so maybe this new study (which takes into account previous studies) mentions this, but it’s not worth checking. BBC succeeded in airing another bit of CAGW propaganda. that’s it.
50
3 Jan: UK Times: Taxpayers face £1bn bill over green energy subsidy scandal
Sean O’Neill, Chief Reporter & Sean O’Driscoll, Dublin
The Treasury faces the bill after a massive overspend on subsidies encouraging farmers and businesses in Northern Ireland to run eco-friendly power schemes. The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) was supposed to cost £25 million in its first five years but the bill is likely to reach £1.15 billion over 20 years.
The Treasury can claw back £490 million from the block grant to Northern Ireland, leaving £660 million to be financed by taxpayers in England, Scotland and Wales. The scandal threatens the future of Northern Ireland’s first minister Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). She was the minister responsible when the scheme was set up in 2012. It was intended to boost renewable energy, but critics say Mrs Foster and her officials did not cap costs…(SUBSCRIPTION REQD)
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/taxpayers-face-1bn-bill-over-green-energy-subsidy-scandal-vc23ckztg
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sure it’s a great deal…ONLY AVAILABLE to 9% of households! might hurt the poor with children! who cares:
4 Jan: Guardian: Adam Vaughan: Green Energy UK offers first electricity tariff based on time of day
Customers will be charged 4.9p per unit of electricity from 11pm to 6am but up to five times as much during peak demand times
Consumer groups and campaigners welcomed the tariff, but said it would not be for everyone…
The tariff is underpinned by smart meters, which the government has pledged to fit in every home by the end of 2020, although official figures recently showed only 9% have been installed so far. Around four in 10 of Green Energy UK’s customers already have smart meters, which are a prerequisite for the tariff…
Martin Lewis of Money Saving Expert said the deal looked good on his first analysis, though the gas price of 3.59p per unit was expensive…
“But for others – for example, families with young children – it could be more difficult to change when they use electricity.”…
Time-of-day tariffs are also seen as a way to solve potential headaches for the National Grid as more renewable but intermittent sources of power such as wind and solar are brought online. British Gas last year offered customers a day of free electricity a week in a bid to encourage them to sign up for smart meters…
Lewis was critical of British Gas for installing smart meters that other suppliers are unable to operate, but he welcomed the rise of time-of-day tariffs and said the Green Energy UK offer was “not a bad predictor of the future”…
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jan/03/green-energy-uk-launches-first-time-of-day-electricity-tariff
2 Jan: Financial Times: Households offered first time-of-use energy tariff
Households have been offered Britain’s first “time-of-day” electricity tariff, with prices varying between periods of high and low demand, in a sign of how digital smart meters are opening new ways of managing energy usage. Green Energy UK, an independent energy supplier, will charge five times more for electricity used during the evening peak compared with overnight rates. The company said this would allow customers to save money by charging electronic devices and running appliances such as washing machines when power is cheapest…
https://www.ft.com/content/ac3b2788-d0eb-11e6-b06b-680c49b4b4c0
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more on the Northern Ireland Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scandal. easy to find further articles online:
4 Jan: Irish Independent: Laurence White: It’s projected at €577m – but Foster insists green energy overspend ‘will cost zero’
It came as the UK government rejected a call to instigate a public inquiry into the scheme. It made clear the RHI controversy was a devolved issue for Belfast to deal with.
The escalating political row has edged the power-sharing institutions towards implosion.
The RHI was supposed to offer a proportion of the business cost to run eco-friendly boilers, but the subsidy tariffs were set too high, so it ended up paying out significantly more than the price of fuel…
http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/its-projected-at-577m-but-foster-insists-green-energy-overspend-will-cost-zero-35340250.html
lol:
4 Jan: TheIrishNews: Up to Arlene Foster to restore faith in political structures
There is no doubt the Renewable Heat Incentive fiasco and subsequent political fallout has undermined public confidence in our system of government.
Chiefly, this scandal, which will cost the Northern Ireland taxpayer upwards of £400 million over a twenty year period, reflects badly on the DUP, which was in charge of the department running this scheme.
In particular, Arlene Foster’s reputation has been severely damaged, not just by her role in overseeing this ill-fated scheme but in her failure to take full responsibility for her actions and deal effectively with the financial and political repercussions…
http://www.irishnews.com/opinion/leadingarticle/2017/01/04/news/up-to-arlene-foster-to-restore-faith-in-political-structures-863639/
NI First Minister rejects ‘misogynistic’ calls to resign
Sky News-1 hour ago
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The directors of these green companies should have to put up a guarantee with their own money to remove these projects when they fail.
160
There is a time and tide in the affairs of men when all green schemes will be shown to be unworkable or fraudulent.
30
From the article, a government statement:
“This has helped make Wales a key player in the developing marine energy industry and we are keen to build on this success.”
Right!
Flights to Wales are booked solid as investors are keen to follow this success. You can make a small fortune in the marine energy industry if you start with a large one.
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TdeF – comment #3 – mentioned articles in The Australian today. here’s one of them:
4 Jan: Australian: Kylar Loussikian: Energy bills soar in shift from coal power stations
Electricity companies have begun hiking consumer prices around the country, blaming the closure of coal-fired generators and the increased cost of renewable energy for higher-than-predicted increases of more than $130 this year.
EnergyAustralia and AGL have increased electricity tariffs in Victoria by $135 and $132 on average for the year respectively — greatly exceeding state government modelling that concluded bills would rise by $27 to $100.
The Victorian price rises will flow from this week but the companies’ customers in other states, including South Australia and NSW, face a yet-to-be announced price rise in June…
Red Energy, the retailing arm of Snowy Hydro, informed customers in NSW its rates would increase this week because of “increases in the wholesale cost of electricity and the large-scale renewable energy certificates”.
Some tariffs were raised by almost 25 per cent.
The consumer price rises will increase political pressure on state and federal governments to deal with escalating energy costs that have sparked business warnings that rising power charges are undermining competitiveness…
The South Australian government is under pressure over its heavy reliance on renewable energy, particularly with the closure of the Northern power station and blackouts sparked by severe storms…
The Energy Council’s corporate affairs general manager, Sarah McNamara, said the Victorian wholesale price increases were a “byproduct of the reduction in the state’s generation capacity by around 20 per cent, a direct consequence of the upcoming closure of the Hazelwood power station in March”…
The Energy Council, which represents major electricity and gas producers, has repeatedly called for a national strategy to deal with supply issues and price volatility as older power stations are retired and an increasing amount of large-scale renewable energy is made available…
Victorian coal generators will also face increased royalty costs this year, with the subsidy intended on making renewable energy more attractive rising to 22.8c a gigajoule for companies mining brown coal from 7.6c, netting the government about $250 million over four years…
The Minerals Council’s Victorian executive director, Gavin Lind, said the brown coal royalty increases introduced by the Andrews government were harmful and ignored the practicalities of the electricity market.
“The expected increase in electricity costs will hit Victorian businesses hard, especially the manufacturing sector where uncertain economic conditions are already placing the industry under strain,” he said. “The Victorian government seems intent on increasing the state’s dependence on expensive and part-time energy sources and committing Victorian households and industry to higher energy prices. It will pass the cost of the scheme on to electricity users via their energy bills. In so doing, it will subsidise uneconomic renewable energy projects while driving out affordable, reliable coal-fired energy.’’
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/energy-bills-soar-in-shift-from-coal-power-stations/news-story/f04ff69323c798fc05097e98defa858e
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If Donald Trump had not won the election in the USA I would have seriously thought about mortgaging the house and investing in the windfarms proposed for Victoria , yes I know it’s a scam but it would have returned a heathy profit .
As for making money from other people’s misery yeah would have been guilty but also rich .
100
it could have been worse!
3 Jan: Belfast Newsletter: Adam Kula: RHI scandal: ‘Other parties said subsidies were too low’ says DUP man
The DUP launched a fierce counter-attack against its rivals on Tuesday night, accusing other parties of having wanted to make the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme even more profligate than it was.
Lee Reynolds, DUP group leader on Belfast City Council, told a meeting of the full council that a range of parties had wished to increase the subsidies paid out under the grossly-overspending scheme…
During the subsequent roughly hour-and-a-half debate, the DUP was attacked from all quarters.
SDLP councillor Tim Attwood described RHI as “the biggest public scandal since De Lorean” – something dating back to the 1980s…
Green councillor Georgina Milne lamented that one “travesty” of the scheme was that “people will now be very wary of renewable technology initiatives” in general…
Reynolds: “Sinn Fein, the SDLP, the UUP and Greens – I’ve noticed the Greens trying to re-write history around this – all complained the tariff was too low.“
If we’d listened to the parties who are doing most of the complaining now, we wouldn’t be looking at £400m: we’d be looking at even double that potentially…
“The record shows they would’ve made the scheme worse, not any better.”
Mr Reynolds did not elaborate on the details of this, and no-one of the parties he mentioned spoke again by the time a vote was called.
Ultimately, councillor Patterson’s vote was carried by 23 votes to 12 (with DUP opposing it, and Sinn Fein not voting)…
http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/business/rhi-scandal-other-parties-said-subsidies-were-too-low-says-dup-man-1-7756822
50
The sea is an incredibly unforgiving environment. Stuff in the water ALWAYS breaks. Especially electronics. That said this is a potentially interesting project, more predictable than wind, and less destructive. Although if the whole thing needs to be shut down every time a seal swims past its pointless. I’m also sceptical how it will weather winter storms, since they pretty much destroy most things that are in any way movable. I’ve no idea if they thought through a plan to clean and service the thing (short of full recovery). Some of the papers are reporting that the company behind it just went bust so I’m guessing without the magic ‘subsidies’ (and more) it looks like another enviro fail.
80
I don’t think you quite understand. Allow me to add some cynicism.
You don’t actually need to avoid chomping any marine life. You just need to build in some magic that claims to avoid that possibility to make the greenies feel good about things.
You also need to ensure that there is no way to determine how many seals have actually been consumed by the machinery. Certainly, no records of any such events should be kept. Employees discovering any such events must be silenced or sacked and discredited.
90
More on “free energy”
Link at
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/01/the-children-ar-180.html#comment-1081693
30
It’s worth noting that all EU money spend in the UK is UK money sent to the EU in the first place.
As for this developing a fault – did it? Or was the sonar picking up a fundamental flaw in the design? Did it react to the blades of the turbine – we know that windmills affects radar. Or, more likely, was it genuinely picking up seals, dolphins and sharks attracted to the equipment? Sharks may have been attracted by the motion or the electricity. Seals and dolphins may have been curious about the vibrations. All of them may have been attracted to diced or stunned fish.
80
Wow. Imagine if only 1/3rd of the funds spent on these useless feel-good projects had been devoted to thorium reactor development.
70
That wouldn’t have been that difficult after all the UK was running one in the 50s and 60s at Winfrith and it was only fully decommissioned at the turn of the century.
The main reason that Thorium reactors weren’t further developed is because they can’t be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium.
100
The development director of Tidal Energy Ltd put a hint of spin on, well, developments:
“‘The purpose of the project was to provide the essential learning, new knowledge, know how and experience to progress the industry in Wales.
‘What we set out to do we did, 100 per cent.’”
That’s funny, because the Tidal Energy Ltd website phrases things slightly differently:
“The Company’s technology will use the power of the sea’s tides to provide a secure and sustainable source of renewable electricity with ease, efficiency and minimal impact on the environment.”
Apart from burning through £££millions of taxpayers’ money, an impact on the environment seems to be the only thing these characters have, in fact, achieved.
90
UAH now out. Down to 0.23ºC anomaly
On a yearly basis, 2016 was an INSIGNIFICANT 0.02ºC warmer than 1998.
note, satellite measurement error is stated as +/- 0.1ºC.. (although probably rather more)
The meaningless so-called surface data, probably has an error somewhere over +1ºC to -3ºC
So 0.02ºC warming in 18 years…. WOW, scary ! 🙂
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For the Aussie here.
UAH Australia has 2016 in 5th place
1998 0.688
2005 0.493
2002 0.468
2013 0.444
2016 0.432
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Well we missed out on Gold again. At least UAH keeps some sanity in this. Expect this to be all over the ABC today….
90
BOM, will probably do a GISS.. “hottest year evah™” using “adjusted™” data.
71
Looks like BOM are using Sydney Obs Hill Urban Warming site to claim “hottest evah… in Sydney”..
Good enough for base level propaganda, ..
…but tossed out of the BOM calculations because it is unreliable and Urban TAINTED.
21
According to this …BoM CSIRO State Of The Climate 2016
2013 was Australia’s warmest year on record.
“Australia’s weather and climate are changing in response to a warming global climate system.
Australia has warmed by around 1 °C since 1910, with most warming since 1950.
Australia’s top five warmest years on record included each of the last three years—2013, 2014 and 2015; 2013 was Australia’s warmest year on record.”
. . .
If 2013 was the warmest year evah and 2016 is 5th hottest, there is an observed decline, contrary to rising carbon (sic) and the 97% alt science.
Perhaps someone who ‘believes in climate change‘ can explain how carbon (sic) does that?
130
To paraphrase the dull AGW advocate —
That’s all you got, more ad homies!
You’ve cherry-picked the data, because that’s not climate it’s weather as the UN-IPCC says, and it’s better now you’ve stopped kicking kittens…
Anyway like, you’ve totally misunderstood the feedbacks and ocean forcing, so there!
100
‘Australia has warmed by around 1 °C since 1910, with most warming since 1950.’
Half truths propaganda is the most effective.
It has probably warmed by one degree since 1910, but most of the warming took place between 1976 and 1998. Since then temperatures have remained flat.
30
At our ABC its the same.
Mr Plummer said: “We had our warmest autumn on record partly due to a very strong 2015-16 El Nino.”
The word ‘partly’ should be replaced by ‘primarily’, which gives a more accurate slant.
40
SST’s and – IOD also contribute. Big deal all you alarmists . Totally normal and natural.Ende.
40
Not tidal – FOtE and UK fracking
“The Advertising Standards Authority has been conducting an investigation into Friends of the Earth’s wild stories about unconventional oil and gas in recent weeks. Today it was announced that our green friends have decided that a hasty retreat is in order. Rather than fighting the allegations against them they have decided to promise to stop telling said porkie pies rather than wait for an official ruling that they are, in fact, wholesale purveyors of baked meat products.”
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2017/1/4/foe-in-full-flight.html#comments
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So an 18m pound plant powers HOW few homes????
80
Almost our hottest and wettest year ….
EMILY RITCHIE
Cities across the east coast and the Top End endured the highest recorded temperatures last year.
The Australian
“almost”
30
BoM is at it again, climate information services …
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-05/sydney-in-2016-was-the-hottest-year-on-record/8162212
40
So despite not using the Sydney Observatory Hill Urban Warming site in the Acorn record, except for urban homogenisation purposes of course…
…. it is still appropriate to use it for “HOTTEST EVAH..” poopaganda.
I bet this “fake news” comes from BOM without any explanation that Obs Hill was removed because it was known to have make urban heating issues.. 🙂
Straight, flat out, poopaganda.!!
71
someone keeps changing what I typed
….” known to have
makemajor urban heating issues.”21
Thing is, the more often the MSM and BOM make these sorts of statement, the more people are going to say to themselves… “BS, this year hasn’t been that warm at all”
More and more people will gradually start questioning what is fake-fed to them by the MSM and their helpers.
61
The bureau’s assistant director of climate information services, Neil Plummer, described the year as “eventful”.
21
Neil Plummer is currently Assistant Director Climate Information Services with the Bureau of Meteorology. Neil joined the Bureau in 1986 and started his career as a weather forecaster. He has held positions on various World Meteorological Organization expert teams and management committees and has been a coordinating author with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2008 he shifted into the world of hydrology as Manager Extended Hydrological Prediction before taking up his current position.
20
Guys, would this work to solve Australia’s self imposed energy crisis?
I have previously suggested that an entrepreneurial company could build a zero emission coal plant (or modify existing) by building a pipeline out to sea and exhausting the CO2 emissions outside Australia’s territorial waters, either beyond the Territorial Sea (12 nautical mile limit) or the Contiguous Zone (24 nautical mile limit).
Here’s another idea:
What about building a floating nuclear reactor in international waters and connecting it to the Australian grid by an undersea cable?
30
You don’t need to build one, you can rent them from Russia and maybe even the USA! They are called submarines!
40
As I mentioned previously Russia has a floating nuclear plant but it is 38MW electrical. I was thinking of something seriously big like 1GW.
30
USS Gerald Ford has 2 reactors, each 300MW. That is getting close to your power level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A1B_reactor
20
Sorry David, but that’s a no-no. Think of the direct, disastrous assification of the oceans by this ploy!
30
‘Leading Republicans broke with Donald Trump on Wednesday after the president-elect appeared to put more faith in WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange than in US intelligence agencies.’
Guardian
In other news the Chinese Communist Party has told The Donald to stop tweeting and return to the usual diplomacy.
Clearly they are worried, a reinvigoration of democracy, with open public discussion on sensitive issues, puts the dictatorship on the back foot.
50
Typo in the titles BTW … one says 8 million quid, the other 18 million.
30
Bulldust
I think the 8 is from the EU, the 18 is all up
20
Fair enough – sounds about right. Just another green boondoggle. At least it was a relatively small one.
20
It is like an oil or gas well, when you have made the drilling it is free. You can turn it on or you can turn it off.
The cost is in the development, not in the extraction. Very much like wind turbines, except that wind turbines output depends on weather.
40
btw MSM wasn’t really interested in this one. from memory, UK Times was the only other MSM to carry it. nice to see the Renewables industry putting ***humans before birds though!
21 Dec: DailyMail: Colin Fernandez: Wind farms can be DEADLY for birds of prey: Migrating raptors are attracted to turbines as potential landing spots
Birds risk being killed by the turbines’ spinning blades
They are particularly attracted to the tall structures during high winds
Experts say that future wind farm sites need to be planned carefully with birds migration routes in mind
Buzzards, kites, harriers falcons and sparrowhawks were all attracted towards turbines – putting them at risk of getting killed by the spinning blades…
The findings published in Biology Letters said birds of prey like to migrate across narrow straits and sounds…
The greatest attraction was during times of strongest winds, according to the report’s authors, environmental consultancy DHI, Aarhus University and others.
Overall, birds of prey migrated 49 per cent of the time towards the wind farm, compared to 22.8 per cent and 17.2 per cent to two comparable sites that did not have wind farms.
In the most extreme cases, falcons flew towards the wind farm 65 per cent of the time, compared to 0 per cent to the similar site without a turbine, while harriers flew towards the study site 54 per cent of the time, as opposed to 0 per cent of the turbine free site.
In conclusion, the authors write: ‘The attraction behaviour suggests that migrating raptor species are far more at risk of colliding with wind turbines at sea than hitherto assessed.’…
Henrik Skov of DHI, explaining the results told the Daily Mail: ‘It is probably that birds of prey are quite afraid of flying over open water.
‘For a raptor, it looks less risky to fly towards a wind farm than to fly over open water.
‘Sea birds, however, don’t experience the open water as being so hostile.’…
An RSPB spokesperson said: ‘While we need to generate more electricity through renewable sources, this must be delivered in harmony with nature.
‘This new paper emphasises the need to look carefully at each site and the potential impact or risks any proposal may have on local or migrating wildlife.’
A spokesman for the wind power industry said survey work on stationing wind farms aims to prevent harm to wildlife.
Renewable energy trade association RenewableUK’s Executive Director Emma Pinchbeck said: ‘We understand that any power station will have an impact on the environment – for example, ***emissions from coal-fired power stations kill thousands of people every year…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4054530/Wind-farms-DEADLY-birds-prey-Migrating-raptors-attracted-turbines-potential-landing-spots.html
40
Simple solution, remove those killer blades.
30
young Chelsea, who graduated from NY University with an M.A. in Journalism (Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting) in Dec 2014, is chosen to make this momentous announcement in the FakeNewsWaPo!
4 Jan: WaPo: Chelsea Harvey: Scientists say the global ocean circulation may be more vulnerable to shutdown than we thought
Intense future climate change could have a far different impact on the world than current models predict, suggests a thought-provoking new study just out in the journal Science Advances. If atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were to double in the future, it finds, a major ocean current — one that helps regulate climate and weather patterns all over the world — could collapse…
Nevertheless, the authors of the new study point out, many climate models assume a fairly stable AMOC — and that could be affecting the predictions they make for how the ocean will change under future climate change…
“This is a very common and well-known issue in climate models,” said the new study’s lead author, Wei Liu, a postdoctoral associate at Yale University, who conducted the work while at the University of California at San Diego. “I wanted to see, if I use a corrected model, how this will affect the future climate change.”…
In a commentary also published today in RealClimate, Stefan Rahmstorf, an oceans physics expert at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, explained how such a collapse could occur when the AMOC gets too weak…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/01/04/scientists-say-the-global-ocean-circulation-may-be-more-vulnerable-to-shutdown-than-we-thought/?utm_term=.00e66f8e3146
20
Andrew Bolt: Wave goodbye to more green dollars
From the WaybackMachine archive of Oceanlinx’s website:
MK1 – 2005
MK2 – 2007
MK3 – 2010
greenWAVE – 2014
40
reality for the MISSION-DRIVEN:
4 Jan: CarbonPulse: COMMENT: The Climate Trust rings in the new year with a forecast of the top 10 carbon market trends
The Climate Trust’s annual predictions about the carbon market events, policies, and ideas that will matter in 2017
PORTLAND, Ore. – The Climate Trust, a mission-driven nonprofit that specializes in mobilizing conservation finance for climate benefit, announced its fourth annual prediction list of 10 carbon market trends to watch in 2017.
The trends, which range from more native tribes joining carbon markets to environmental justice concerns playing an increased role in climate policy discussions, were identified by The Climate Trust based on interactions with their diverse group of working partners — government, investors, project developers, large businesses, and the philanthropic community…
“After collectively looking at the overall market, our team has identified areas of potential advancement, despite the anticipated inaction around climate at the federal level,” said Sean Penrith, Executive Director for The Climate Trust. “This year, more than ever, we felt there was a need for positivity, and have primarily chosen to share industry insights that are positive in nature—yet still strongly based in reality.”…
1. States, cities, and regions are going to lead the U.S. fight against climate change…
2. Progressive states and foundations will pick up support for domestic climate finance in the absence of federal action…
3. Global climate litigation campaigns will gain momentum during 2017, legitimizing our children’s right to a healthy planet…
4. Private industry picks up U.S. government slack making progress towards Paris commitments…
5. Environmental justice community concerns increasingly built into climate policy discussions throughout the U.S…
6. U.S. citizens become climate refugees in one of the hottest years on record…
7. More native tribes will join carbon markets…
8. China takes the lead in carbon markets, encouraging linkages…
9. U.S.-based institutional investors will increase commitments to investments that hedge out carbon risk…
10. California Air Resources Board prevails in CalChamber lawsuit and commits to cap and trade…
http://carbon-pulse.com/28674/
3 Jan: CarbonPulse: EU Market: EUAs fall most in 6 months as energy weighs, auctions loom
European carbon prices suffered their largest fall in more than six months, plummeting 11.4% on Tuesday as speculators dumped allowances ahead of the resumption of daily auctions and amid a wider energy market sell-off.
30
should have said Climate Trust provides “reasons” for each of their top ten picks.
don’t think other MSM have Trewin’s kms quote. saves southerners driving up this way, surely.
5 Jan: news.com.au: Benedict Brook: 2016 was the hottest year ever on Australia’s east coast, confirms Bureau of Meteorology
A RECORD breaking year of scorching heat and driving rain on Australia’s east coast meant that climate-wise, many of us have “shifted a few hundred kilometres north,” a weather expert has said…
“Along the east coast it was about a degree above normal and while that doesn’t equate to the whole difference between Sydney and Brisbane, that level of warming is equivalent to shifting a few hundred kilometres north,” said (Blair Trewin, a senior climatologist at the weather bureau)…
For the country as a whole, annual rainfall was 17 per cent above average…
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/2016-was-the-hottest-year-ever-on-australias-east-coast-confirms-bureau-of-meteorology/news-story/734e780dac6e3e48a617119e63da6963
the good news:
2 Jan: Australian: Food boom restores towns’ hunger to succeed
Regional cities such as Tamworth, Armidale and Wagga Wagga in NSW all switched their former stagnation for population growth rates of between 1 per cent and 2 per cent a year, with the increasing prosperity and expansion of agriculture credited as the key reason for their turnaround…
The Regional Australia Institute has identified 100 smaller country towns that have successfully halted their slow demise, including Victoria’s pulse capital of Rupanyup, the duck-farming town of Nhill and the West Australian grain town of Dalwallinu…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/food-boom-restores-towns-hunger-to-succeed/news-story/1970e609ae9b0d36b00f7ad9f255cdfe
30 Aug: Australian: Meredith Booth: Rains make desert bloom with best wildflowers in decades
Steady winter rain has produced the outback’s best floral show in 20 years, say locals, and will be seen by thousands of spectators congregating in the region for Birdsville’s annual race meet this weekend…
After a three-year dry spell, Yandruwandha Yawarrawarrka country, which straddles the extreme remote borders of South Australia, Queensland and NSW, has sprung to life with fast-flowing water from Cooper Creek spilling into the Coongi Lake system, where breeding water birds will soon be teeming to take advantage of new food sources.
Innamincka senior ranger Erik Dahl, who will host a group of Adelaide botanists collecting seeds from rare flowering plants this week, said sustained rain over many days in May and June had created the perfect conditions for a varied and abundant wildflower carpet. The tapestry began with yellow daisies and fleshy ground cells and has expanded with yellow poached egg daisies, purple swansonia, Stuart’s desert pea, grasses and red saltbush flowers…
Bureau of Meteorology climatologist Blair Trewin says Moomba, in South Australia’s far north-east corner, recorded the highest May and June rainfall in 21 years, coming off a very dry three years…
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O/T
Electricity prices set to soar as reliable power generators shut down.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/energy-bills-soar-in-shift-from-coal-power-stations/news-story/f04ff69323c798fc05097e98defa858e
40
How funny, now another BoM person tells SBS News a different version of 2016, it’s now 4th hottest ….
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/01/05/extreme-weather-events-dominated-2016-bom-annual-report
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4th hottest year in Australia (according to the BOM).
That sounds like things are cooling down now.
40
Fourth hottest? Give it a little time…it’s
amazing what a little homogenization can do.
30
‘…it’s now 4th hottest ….’
Its easy to make a mistake when dealing in fractions.
Reading the report summary I get the impression that its already out of date. They are looking through a rear view mirror whilst cherry picking, to convince the masses global warming is happening.
The report is badly flawed and the MSM concentrates too much on temperatures instead of precipitation, which is the key to what is coming.
40
‘Australian mean rainfall for 2016 was 17% above the 1961–1990 average. 2016 was Australia’s 15th-wettest year in a record spanning 1900 to present, with an area-average total of 544.99 mm—well above the average of 465.2 mm.’
If La Nina kicks in now we’ll sink, sea level will fall and the Artesian Basin replenished.
20
O/T, but this piece by a leading evolutionary psychologist is relevant to understanding groupthink in the hockey team:
“Forming coalitions around scientific or factual questions is disastrous”
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27168
- John Tooby
30
thought I posted this earlier, but maybe I didn’t.
anyway, haven’t seen the kms bit mentioned in other coverage. mind u, haven’t heard of any Queenslanders wanting to flee south on account of the “global warming” and it’s surely a good thing southerners won’t have to drive or fly north to enjoy our climate in future! lol:
5 Jan: news.com.au: Benedict Brook: 2016 was the hottest year ever on Australia’s east coast, confirms Bureau of Meteorology
A RECORD breaking year of scorching heat and driving rain on Australia’s east coast meant that climate-wise, many of us have “shifted a few hundred kilometres north,” a weather expert has said…
“Along the east coast it was about a degree above normal and while that doesn’t equate to the whole difference between Sydney and Brisbane, that level of warming is equivalent to shifting a few hundred kilometres north,” said (Blair Trewin, a senior climatologist at the weather bureau)…
For the country as a whole, annual rainfall was 17 per cent above average…
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/2016-was-the-hottest-year-ever-on-australias-east-coast-confirms-bureau-of-meteorology/news-story/734e780dac6e3e48a617119e63da6963
good news:
30 Aug: Australian: Meredith Booth: Rains make desert bloom with best wildflowers in decades
Steady winter rain has produced the outback’s best floral show in 20 years, say locals, and will be seen by thousands of spectators congregating in the region for Birdsville’s annual race meet this weekend…
After a three-year dry spell, Yandruwandha Yawarrawarrka country, which straddles the extreme remote borders of South Australia, Queensland and NSW, has sprung to life with fast-flowing water from Cooper Creek spilling into the Coongi Lake system, where breeding water birds will soon be teeming to take advantage of new food sources.
Innamincka senior ranger Erik Dahl, who will host a group of Adelaide botanists collecting seeds from rare flowering plants this week, said sustained rain over many days in May and June had created the perfect conditions for a varied and abundant wildflower carpet. The tapestry began with yellow daisies and fleshy ground cells and has expanded with yellow poached egg daisies, purple swansonia, Stuart’s desert pea, grasses and red saltbush flowers…
Bureau of Meteorology climatologist Blair Trewin says Moomba, in South Australia’s far north-east corner, recorded the highest May and June rainfall in 21 years, coming off a very dry three years…
2 Jan: Australian: Food boom restores towns’ hunger to succeed
Regional cities such as Tamworth, Armidale and Wagga Wagga in NSW all switched their former stagnation for population growth rates of between 1 per cent and 2 per cent a year, with the increasing prosperity and expansion of agriculture credited as the key reason for their turnaround…
The Regional Australia Institute has identified 100 smaller country towns that have successfully halted their slow demise, including Victoria’s pulse capital of Rupanyup, the duck-farming town of Nhill and the West Australian grain town of Dalwallinu…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/
20
4 Jan: KTLA from LA Times: 20 Feet of Snow Expected at Mammoth Mountain in Next 10 Days
Another blizzard swept Mammoth Mountain on Wednesday, the precursor to a string of storms expected to bring up to 20 feet of fresh snow in the next 10 days, the resort says.
Since Tuesday, 26 to 48 inches of fresh snow had fallen, with the deepest totals at the summit. Plows were working furiously to keep lots and streets clear.
Normal resort operations could be affected as personnel struggle to deal with the snow.
The cause of the snow? One of those “atmospheric rivers” that forecasters refer to in particularly generous storms like this. In the next week and a half, the Sierra resort is expecting three of those wet cycles.
Click here (LINK) to read the full story on LATimes.com.
http://ktla.com/2017/01/04/20-feet-of-snow-expected-at-mammoth-mountain-in-next-10-days/
4 Jan: SanFranciscoChronicle: Mike Moffitt: MIT scientists: Monster storms will triple in California by 2100
As forecasters predicted 12 inches or more of rain in parts of Northern California over the next week, MIT released a new study that warned that the state could expect the frequency of extreme storms to triple by the end of the century…
The scientists published their results in the Journal of Climate. They found that California will experience three times the number of extreme storms by 2100 if — as expected — the world’s average temperatures are 4 degrees Celsius higher then they are today…
The new technique focuses on large-scale atmospheric patterns instead of precipitation information to create more reliable storm simulations, according to the scientists…ETC
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/MIT-scientists-Monster-storms-will-triple-in-10835311.php
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Over 2000 years ago the Athenians sent a declaration of war to Sparta saying If we win we will kill your army, destroy your houses, free your slaves etc. etc.
The Spartan reply was IF?
The Spartans won and Athens was no longer the leading greek City State.
30
just noticed a comment – beginning with a news.com.au article – that wasn’t showing up is now showing up but in moderation. meanwhile, I posted the comment a second time. please throw away the first of the two, if that is possible. thanks & apologies.
20
Jo
For the record
“Larry Ledwick says:
4 January 2017 at 8:20 pm
From twitter:
Stefan Molyneux @StefanMolyneux 1 hour ago
Internet, repeat after me: the plural of “anecdote” is NOT “data.”
”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2016/12/30/tips-january-2017/#comment-77292
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3 Jan: ClimateChangeNews: Megan Darby: Is Germany’s renewable power boom stalling?
Analysis of 2016 data by leading solar research institute shows no growth in electricity from renewable sources.
Germany’s power generation from renewable sources is flatlining, according to a leading solar research institute.
Solar, wind, biomass and hydropower sources produced 186TWh in 2016, or 34% of net electricity supply, analysis from the Fraunhofer Institute shows – showing no increase from the previous year.
That was partly down to the weather: sunshine hours were down 4% and wind 14% from 2015 levels, lead researcher Bruno Burger told Climate Home.
A clampdown on subsidies also hit installations of solar panels, he said. “For wind, it was only weather conditions; for solar, it was weather and policy.”
With nuclear and coal generation in decline, the big winner was natural gas, which surged more than 40% on cheaper supplies…
Think tank Agora Energiewende is due to release its analysis on Friday. A spokesperson told Climate Home: “We do not subscribe to [Burger’s] numbers.”…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/01/03/is-germanys-renewable-power-boom-stalling/
the program I posted about recently, which features Christine Todd Whitman, among others:
AUDIO: 40mins: BBC Radio 4: Climate Change: The Trump Card
Will the next US government undo what the rest of the world has been trying to do? With political unease in many member states, is the EU backsliding and what is the current UK government doing about climate change?
Roger Harrabin gets some answers to these questions and asks if it really can all unravel.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b086s95f
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