South Australia has the largest uranium deposit in the world, which it digs up to sell to other countries to make electricity. It also has lots of sun and wind and empty space. If any state can make solar and wind power work, surely it’s there.
And renewables are working for SA, working to put it in top place for Global Electricity Bills.
South Australia power prices to rise to highest in the world on Saturday, energy expert warns
South Australia will overtake Denmark as having the world’s most expensive electricity when the country’s major energy retailers jack up their prices this Saturday.
AGL, EnergyAustralia and Origin Energy will all increase their electricity prices from July 1, adding hundreds of dollars to annual household bills. Residential customers will see an average rise of 18 per cent under AGL, 19.9 per cent from EnergyAustralia, 16.1 per cent with Origin Energy. Bruce Mountain, the head of a private energy consultancy firm, said the increases would see South Australia take the lead on world power prices — but for all the wrong reasons.
“After taxes, the [typical] household in South Australia will be paying slightly more than the [typical] household in Denmark, which currently has the highest prices in the world,” Mr Mountain said.
Naturally, though both Denmark, and SA have the highest percentage of “renewable” energy in the world, this has nothing to do with them also being number one and two for Global High Cost Electricity. It’s just really bad luck that there is no country anywhere in the world which has both wind and solar and cheap electricity.
Michael McClaren, interviews Bruce Mountain, expert:
From commenter Pat: “…he exonerates wind and solar early in the piece, but it’s enough to listen from 11 mins in where he says (paraphrasing) – “…renewables have nothing to do with electricity price rises. wind & solar now cheaper at an average cost than coal or gas. transformation in energy, old world vs new world (of renewables). Mountain finally admits he doesn’t know if the total cost of the new world is higher than the total cost of the old world, but simply saying wind & solar are driving up our costs is not right.
AUDIO: 13mins29secs: 29 Jun: 2GB: Michael McClaren: Power prices highest in the world
Poor governance and market oversight is to blame for power prices soaring out of control, says energy expert Bruce Mountain.
http://www.2gb.com/podcast/power-prices-highest-in-the-world/
Bruce Mountain blames bad governance, which is also surely true, but alas, a confounding problem. Which state with a free market in electricity could also have a high uptake of wind and solar? Mountain thinks it’s worth mentioning that the marginal cost of wind and solar when they are producing is zero (as if the aim of an electricity grid was to provide random spikes of electricity “as the wind blows”. He doesn’t think it’s worth mentioning the 24 hours demand for spinning inertia to stabilize the grid, which coal and gas provide “for free”).
He argues that the zero cost nature of wind and solar depresses the wholesale price of electricity, and then people play a lot of games with electricity pricing (which I’m sure is true). He doesn’t say that in the old electricity market, there were less games, because it was a lot less complicated, and it didn’t need so much “governance” and “regulation”.
Ignoring the extra grid costs, transmission lines, and the devastating effect the intermittency and instability of wind and solar power Mountain claims a lot of wind and solar has a cheaper average cost than coal or gas. Yet even he has to concede that he “doesn’t know if the total cost of the new world is higher than the cost of the old world”.
Given that grid scale electricity is so difficult to estimate costs for surely the only marker that counts is the actual consumer price (plus taxpayer subsidies). If solar and wind are so cheap where is the key observation — the wealthy state running on wind and solar that attracts new businesses because of its cheap electricity?
h/t David B, pat
UPDATE: There’s more here on electricity price comparisons around the world.
Hey, tons of energy in the ground, left wing government hell bent on making everyone equally poor – where else in the world might we find such a place…? Keep an eye on those helicopters.
260
Best thing is to offer Abbott Defense Minister’s position. Change sub order to nukes. Order 2 GW French nuke for SA to be located on Fed Land at Army base near Whyalla. Call election.
130
Why buy French then equip them with US fittings when we could lease some off the shelf from the US for a good price, leaving money to develop smart devices to deploy from the solid platform. Making smart “torpedoes”is something we can manage.
112
Unfortunately the French won the tender. So US subs no longer an option. However, they do make nuclear power stations that work.
60
Anyone seriously looking at the options for buying a nuclear power station is well advised to look at the Russian offering. Even the Chinese are buying the more advanced Russian models – in order to copy them no doubt.
“Rosatom had foreign orders worth $110 billion in 2015. Last month the atomic energy corporation began construction a nuclear power plant in northern Finland”
https://www.rt.com/business/331829-rosatom-portfolio-orders-growth/
As for the French, they stopped building cheap power stations a long while back – and imported a huge number of cheap North African labourers to build them. Their nuclear power station builders are going bust.
As regards the submarine deal, you have to realize that the USA decides what is best for Australia:
1- The French built 2 Mistral helicopter-carriers for the Russians.
2- Because of the sanctions, the French could not deliver them.
3- The Russians were fully financially compensated by the French. Their sailors learnt how to use the ships and they had obtained all the construction details and plans as part of the purchase.
4- The Russian are improving on these plans and building their own “Mistrals” for a much lower cost and thereby improving their own economy.
5- The French sold the completed ships to the Egyptians. The Saudis paid for them.
6- The ships were designed for Russian helicopters and the Egyptians are ordering these helicopters from Russia – Saudi money again.
7- To compensate the French for not breaking the sanctions and staying “on side”, the Americans told the Australians to order French-designed submarines. The fact that the French have never built long-range submarines is considered unimportant. The fact that these submarines won’t begin to be available until 2030 is also unimportant. The fact that these submarines are only useful for threatening Chinese shipping is also unimportant – they are useless for defending Australia’s coastal shipping.
So as you can all now see, we have a load of politicians who need to be ditched. Rapidly. Here is a piece by an Australian barrister which should open your eyes.
“Time to Rethink Australian Defence Policy”
http://journal-neo.org/2017/05/07/time-to-rethink-australian-defence-policy/
81
Here a piece by London’s Financial Times – hardly a pro-Russian publication:
“Finland raises its bet on nuclear power”
https://www.ft.com/content/909e2980-2740-11e6-8ba3-cdd781d02d89?mhq5j=e1
The article explains why the French nuclear plant builders are going bust – and are having huge problems with current projects. It also mentions that the Russians have built 50 similar power stations – which does help a bit. 🙂
The interesting thing is that the shareholders get paid in at-cost electricity in proportion to their shareholding. If such a system were carried out in SA (daydreaming here), the Russians and their partners would make out like bandits.
61
The term Hard Labor definitely should be used for South Australia.
201
The honour of having the world’s most expensive power could not go to a more worthy recipient – led by Jay Weatherdill and his predecessor, Mike Rannaway.
260
toorightmate:
Actually SA won’t have the world’s most expensive electricity just yet**. There is bound to be another price rise from Oct.1 and probably another from Jan. 1 so there is every chance that they soon will have. And in time for the election on March 17.
There is supposed to be a Qld. election before that and a Tassie one shortly after the SA one. Will be an interesting time.
** Base rates are going to 38-41¢ per kWh. Denmark is 50¢ per kWh. Of course SA also has supply charges, government levies etc. which help(?) push the bill higher. But then it has times when you can’t use electricity which reduces your overall bill.
130
Do you know any of the people who reside in houses to which the wind power is rationed?
Last week, I think there were about 12 such houses.
What is “capacity factor?” ask the dummies (Weatherdill, Turnbull, Comrade Andrews, Hunt, Amnesia Palace Chick, Pyne, Bishop, Shorten, etc, etc).
80
Sorry. Do you mean that 12 people in SA are dumb enough to want only wind power?
I don’t buy or read the local paper but there was something in it last week about 11,000 people already had power cut off and thousands more will follow shortly.
70
Doesn’t the ACT want to be 100% renewable? Wish we could renew the pollies and public “servants”.
80
Well . . . Origin Energy currently offer “Greenpower” as an affordable (?) option of up to 100% of your usage.
If 100% of Australians opted for 100% “Greenpower”, what would happen?
Given that Australia doesn’t have 100% renewable energy availability, that’s plainly misleading advertising. Origin Energy do not have the capability to deliver 100% “Greenpower”.
In other walks of life, people would call this a bare faced lie.
Origin estimate that to go 100% “Greenpower” would cost the consumer an extra 5.61c extra per kWh or roughly $5.39 per week ( $70.13 per quarterly bill).
The question is that since RET energy has no fuel cost, Origin Energy have no associated overheads and the taxpayer has already footed the bill via the RET, why isn’t “Greenpower” offered at a discount?
100
And . . if you were a full on dedicated Greenie and wanted to be 100% sure of getting your “Greenpower”, only your “Greenpower” and zero coal fired power, even if it meant accepting the inherent intermittency, Origin Energy can’t provide it.
False advertising.
90
Raven:
The fragrant Dale Vince pioneered this in England; charging you more while you got standard supply. He did own some turbines including one labelled “the worst producer in the UK’.
Took in the gullible and those who wanted to signal virtue. Probably Prius drivers. Still he is now worth £100 million and is polluting rivers with blowouts from bio-gas generators.
80
Yes Raven I saw something on this – the pollution destroyed all the local fish in Welsh rivers.(Salmon I believe) and all for some recycled pigshit/methane that would have broken down naturally if left out in the paddock.
South Australia does not have a monopoly on green madness!
GeoffW
40
John O deserves some credit too methinks . . . . .
40
SA will be written up in history books as the place that showed the way to climate Nirvāṇa.
Wikipedia claims Nirvāṇa literally means “blown out”, as in an oil lamp.
Seems appropriate.
230
Sorry to get personal about this but Bruce Mountain bloke-well who the hell is he?! And what is Michael McClaren(2GB)doing giving air time to someone who is a hell for bent green lefty import from another continent spouting this academic nonsence. Why should we have to listen to the head of a private consultancy firm who probably makes a fat living from advising people like Weatherdill & co and wants us to believe that renewables are cheaper than coal or gas. Was this all on 2GB radio? I can’t believe it! Alan Jones please do something!!
Yours completely pissed off, GeoffW
250
That guy Mountain is justly deserving of great fame. He has the worst toupee I’ve ever seen on television.
100
Bruce Mountain? I wonder what name was on his birth certificate? As I do Angelina Jolie!
Zero ongoing costs? Anybody that consults this bloke is in for disappointment!
130
Mike McCLaren is my favourite announcer and I’m sure he would be the first admit that he pulled the wrong rein this morning.
As i listened to this interview, it started to dawn on me that obfuscation was taking over from outright lies and misleading nomenclature as the latest leftist tactic.
80
I’m sure anyone with a $500000 mortgage will be heartily chuffed to hear that the marginal cost of owning a home is close to zero. Perhaps this numb-skull has never heard of mortgages
110
And maintenance!
90
The good thing about the crow eaters state is that they can have a new slogan: “WE ARE NUMBER ONE”. Unfortunately, for them it is a slogan no other state wants, except possible the cabbage gardeners.
110
Both smell like NUMBER TWO.
80
Congratulations to Premier Weatherill. He has surely done a great deal to deserve this incredible honour but to be fair, a lot of the credit goes to his tireless Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis. We may be a little country and South Australia a minnow on the world stage, but took everyone working together to win this acclaim.0
It takes a great deal to shut down industry the way they have and blame other people, eliminate those dirty jobs and turn off the airports and blow up a power station. The world owes them a great debt and promises to follow their lead on reducing carbon dioxide by doing absolutely nothing and now demanding the rest of the country pay them to live well by raiding National Banks for other people’s money and holding on to their unearned windfall gains in the GST and their inaleinable right to build the next batch of useless submarines.
They have one great product though, politicians. Sarah Hansen Young, Julia Gillard and now the irrepressible Christopher Pyne who has apologised profusely for saying what he said.
At least they have stopped their immigration problems. No one wants to move to South Australia.
341
Look out South Australians, Tasmanians and Victorians …
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/snow-plummeting-temperatures-hail-and-unbelievably-severe-frost-on-the-way/news-story/1d43311c2e8c4c5f47d1ddf3205b6b32
110
It’s winter, isn’t it?
60
I got involved in a discussion the other day about the “star ratings” on appliances.
In a cold country, or even the Southern half of Australia, this information is to a large extent pointless.
Several other people in the discussion obviously have no understanding of the term “efficiency”.
If the outdoor temperature is such that heat energy inside the home is sought, then nearly all appliances are 100% efficient, insofar as ever last drop of energy, every kWh, is expended within the heated space. The only difference is the difference in tariffs 31 and 41 here in Tasmania. (two meters; one for space heating and domestic hot water, and the other for everything else).
There are a few caveats. In the case of clothes drying, this would apply only to condensing dryers not vented to the outdoors. In the case of a dishwasher, only if the heat energy in the grey water were captured for recirculation (not done in Australia so far as I know).
Then it occurred to me that the same thing applies to lighting. If the release of heat energy inside the home is desired, then incandescent bulbs are just as efficient as any of the modern gadgets. In the case of a globe, “efficiency” generally refers to the quantity of light divided by the power consumed, but every last calorie of energy; be it light or heat, is dissipated inside the living space.
Much of the green propaganda that deals with “green living” is misleading to the general public. The concepts advanced by this wooly thinking is supported by sentimental myths which rely on no evidence, which includes “global warming”, climate change”, “greenhouse effect”, “greenhouse gas”, “rising sea levels”, and dying polar bears.
90
I used to live in an old farm house in Northern New York. It gets cold in winter. To help keep cost of heating down I would heat with wood for the peak, ie when I get home from work. Also the vent from the clothes dryer discharged into the house, which added heat and humidity. I would normally line dry clothes in the summer time. Also put a lod of washing on in the morning, so I could dry clothes in the evening, and take advantage of the heat produced.
10
I’ve done the dryer vent in the house thing too.
I tried to rig up a suitable filter but fluff still drifts everywhere.
People living in a warm climate don’t appreciate the need to augment the water vapour in a living space, particularly when the space is heated by combustion.
The air for the fire must come from somewhere, so it infiltrates the space through crevices. If the outdoor RH is 30% and the temperature is minus 30, you know what the RH will be when it infiltrates the heated space. Sparks from static electricity shoot half an inch.
20
I have to say it takes a Green point of view to really appreciate this achievement. Leader of the Greens Richard Di Natale has previously offered an olive branch to power distressed steel makers in Whyalla. They can keep making steel as long as they don’t use coal. Exactly how that is done is not known but at least he shows a real interest in keeping the jobs going. He would agree with Weatherill that the Banks are the real problem after the miners and need to willingly hand over their profits to a deserving South Australian government.
250
I understand that the Whyalla steelworks has been acquired by a Korean company that intends to construct a dedicated coal fired power station for steel production and general works electricity requirements.
Because it will not sell electricity to the grid government penalties will be avoided.
190
Mini state of the art coal fired power stations has merit and should catch on.
130
I have some room in my backyard
50
Dennis I think it might be a gas fired power station.
Adani wants them to produce the rail line from the mine to Abbott Point, much amusement.
40
True. Gas powered. My point is that coal is needed to make steel, as coke, pure carbon. It is what strips the Oxygen from Fe2O3 and leaves as CO2. Carbon is the oxygen hungry element which oxidizes metals. Without it no steel. Not even iron.
120
Sorry. Which ‘reduces’ metal oxides to metal, the opposite of oxidation.
50
This is how the Koreans want to spend the $400 million donation from the federal government.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDUdUQGM45E
00
Hmmm ….So the consortium demands $400 million for upgrades and possibly a mini power station, seems reasonable.
‘The preferred bidder is a consortium headed by private equity firm Newlake Alliance, which aims to use Finex steelmaking technology from South Korea’s Posco under licence.
‘The Newlake bid is understood to be seeking $400 million in cash and kind from the federal government.
‘The South Australian government is offering $50 million in cash to a new owner provided it is spent on capital upgrades to the Whyalla steelworks.’
Read more: http://www.afr.com/news/canberra-seeks-delay-to-arrium-sale-deadline-20170628-gx0v30#ixzz4lNU7mAS2
Follow us: @FinancialReview on Twitter | financialreview on Facebook
60
TdeF:
Unusually I have to disagree with you, possibly because I live in SA.
Firstly Tom Koutsantonis isn’t tireless, he is tiresome.
Secondly the State Government blew up 2 power stations (Playford B and Northern).
Thirdly Christopher Pyne hasn’t apologised profusely. It was profanely because he had been shown up.
Lastly “The world owes them a great debt ” should be “SA owes the World a lot of debt (and hopes to conn the rest of Australia into paying it)”.
As for Sarah Hansen Young, Julia Gillard and Christopher Pyne you must understand that the best and brightest in SA look interstate for their careers. Those who lack the ability have to stay behind and run the State (MOD, note I didn’t use an “i” in that word so this can be posted).
260
Nothing wrong with SA that a sh*tload of other state’s GST payments can’t fix.
Please send more GST.
110
Points taken. Christopher Pyne apologized not for what he said, not for betraying every Liberal ideal and deceiving everyone, but for saying what he said at the time he said it without retacting a word. His ‘apology’ goes into history as one of the least sincere apologies in history, but how do you apologise for a lifetime of deceit?
However if Sarah Hansen Young, Julia Gillard and Christopher Pyne are the best and brightest, you really do have a problem.
110
In one of his books, Spike Milligan wrote, “It was one of those rooms where, when you turned on the light, it got darker”.
140
Spike Milligan – a great guy.
You’d have to think though; if South Australia is the canary in the coal mine and the canary has already fallen off the perch, then someone should tell Jay to look at the cage.
Meanwhile, no one has left the coal mine.
40
Spike Miligna – the well known typing error.
10
Spot on TD-all your comments make 100% common sense.
GeoffW
80
This years winner of the Burnt Cable Aware goes to………SA!!
For services above and beyond to green/Left stupidity.
Any takers for who might want to present it to the worthy winners?
120
extremely well said.
40
To say the Greens are daft is dealing with their idiocies with a too light touch.
It would seem none of them have looked further ahead than their noses. None of them seems to have considered what is already becoming a real disposal problem.
“Oh, they can just be recycled,” we are told. Oh yeah?
Wind generators have a supposed lifetime of 25 years. A few, a very few, of them may actually make it: all the ones which have not met any wind. Solar panels are supposedly as long lived too.
Recycling the windmills will be interesting. According to this article at Notrickszone, the windmill propellors are not recyclable at all and will have to be disposed of in land fills. How very green. That’s an estimated 40 million tons at least of unrecyclable material. And that’s just the turbine propellor blades, add in the concrete towers for those which use them, and that’s an awful lot of landfill. It could always be used to make new islands, I suppose, or be sent to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (Kiribati and Tuvalu) as material aid to raise them above the `rising seas.’ The concrete waste alone would make good reinforcing for their international airports’ runways.
Solar cells beat windmills out of first place in the race for the most polluting Green solution with claims of 300 times more waste than nuclear for the equivalent power generation. Recycling these is in its infancy. The mountain is expected to grow faster than current methods can match, at least without a concerted effort.
There is expected to be 100,000 tons or more and maybe reaching 300,000 tons by 2032. From there to 2040, expectations are for about 700,000 to 800,000 tons of scrap per year, according to the Japanese estimates.
Hindsight is always 20-20 vision. Green vision appears awfully myopic. Clean power. Yeah. Right.
With the modern re-development of molten salt reactors, they can burn the waste products from the current conventional reactors as fuel. Waste disposal problem solved, because the MSRs supposedly burn it down to non-radioactive ash. Nuclear waste disposal solved. If that can be achieved, then diverting otherwise wasted funds from subsidies to enabling the research to iron out the MSR designs is a better use of the money.
In the mean time, back in that fantasy or Green World, given the rate at which electricity prices are climbing, will recycling be even affordable? It’s already looking bad and the more trying to be green, the less green can be achieved.
Of course it will be affordable, by making full recycling mandatory and charging the utilities an ever increasing recycling fee for each square metre of solar panel and per blade for the wind generators. At three blades per generator, that will be a tidy little earner. Why ever increasing? It’s a ‘virtuous circle’ as Sir Humphrey would call it, with built in positive feedback. It goes without saying that this fee will be immediately passed on as a User Pay’s Charge to the customers. You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet: those gold-plated electrons will become solid platinum electrons.
Would it be a fair question to ask if Premier Weatherill and his tireless Energy Minister, Tom Koutsantonis‘ have even considered future disposal at all? After all, power stations were built to last 50 years,.. windmills last from one to whenever years as do solar panels. They can really only be regarded as ‘temporary.’
60
Wow! What a mess leftists/greenies make wherever they gain power. Venezuela, Illinois, and now South Australia.
Throughout portions of my life I have known people who wouldn’t listen to their parents, their school teachers, the police, courts; no one could seem to reach them with reason or any other means. They usually either disappeared from my life or wound up in prison.
Some people just refuse to accept reasoning, learning, teaching, warning, or punishment. How do these people rise to power in places such as Venezuela, Illinois (primarily Chicago), and SA?
190
Chicago has some of the toughest gun control measures…and one of the highest murder rates…. go figure….
Gotta love Lefties…clueless….
Chicago is kind of like an open air prison, yes?
81
Chicago is a great city, one of the greatest. However like Paris and New York and even Stockholm these days, it has serious no go areas where even the police do not venture. The housing estate Robert Taylor Homes was unpoliceable, although great efforts have been made in the last 20 years, demolishing the worst areas. 90% of murders are black on black. Black lives matter is a perverse slogan.
However I would recommend Chicago to anyone as a tourist or in business. Fabulous architecture, restaurants, shopping plus the Art Museum. It is very close to Melbourne in most aspects including Lake Michigan. The darker side is no more visible than in Manhattan or Los Angeles or any big city.
50
Came across this little piece on Chicago this morning. Might be of interest . . . . .
http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=232186
40
In Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, the unemployment rate is 96%. Of course they vote Democrat and care nothing for Global Warming or Climate Change or National pride or defence. These are issues far outside the immediate area of concern. Such ghettos could not exist in the small cities of the US where 80% of all Americans live. It is a giant city phenomenon true of Paris, New York even Stockholm. No go areas in otherwise wonderful and peaceful cities. Cities would disintegrate if most people were not law abiding. The massive illegal immigration into California is largely not discussed. The fact that California is rich with a GDP larger than countries allows this problem to be hidden and also creates the problem. For former Governor Schwarznegger it is far safer to talk about the Climate.
20
SEVERE WEATHER. One of the most overlooked problems concerning wind and solar is severe weather. With South Australia having much of it’s wind farms allocated to certain areas, when we again get severe lines of high very active thunderstorms the destruction or damage to many of the wind turbines is very probable and then there will be no power for quite a long time. Most people have not heard of Static Discharge Fields where the air becomes ionized and severe damage can result to any mechanical devices in it’s path. https://flightsafety.org/hs/hs_jan_feb98.pdf Here is a description of what happened to a helicopter returning from the North Sea oilfields. There have been a number of these occurrences and it is often associated with St.Elmo’s Fire being a warning of what is to come. Wind farms would not fare well in this sort of weather. Most parts of Australia have not seen thunderstorm activity with tops above 40,000′ for a long time but they were very prevalent in the 1960’s through to the mid 1980’s and it is storms such as these that can create massive destruction.
When storms rise above these heights the air is very unstable over a large area and it is not uncommon to get lines of these cells more than 400 miles long. The lightning, hail and extreme down bursts associated with this sort of weather are just what is required to wreck a wind farm. Anyone who has traveled extensively in rural Australia will have seen the broken Southern Cross windmills which are just a small example of what big storms can do. Six inch hail thrown out of a microburst would destroy any solar panel hit by it. In the 1960s and 1970’s there were 26 recorded accidents of jets in the USA not being able to out climb these down bursts whilst attempting to land or take off under approaching thunderstorms. There would be no one in the S.A. Government that has any first hand experience of severe weather or understands the forces that come to bear on a wind turbine sitting high up on an unprotected ridge with the passage of severe storm cells. These people are MORONS
251
Thanks rk. Interesting information. Not an angle I have heard much of.
Do send in any links you find. Data. Old News stories. I’d like to know more… 🙂
Cheers, Jo
71
rk is quite correct based on my many hours of glider flying particularly during the period from the mid 1960’s through to the mid 1970’s.
Interestingly looking back now from a perspective some 40 years on, there was a considerable change in our local thermal and cloud conditions around the time of the Great Pacific Climate Shift beginning in 1977 which preceded [ brought on? ] the trend of the recent and now rapidly passing period of increasing global temperatures .
The stability characteristics of the local western Vic air masses became a lot more stable with very few thunderstorms and a lot lower thermal heights and less cloud conditions after the onset of the GPCS in 1977-78 unlike the much more unstable atmospheric conditions of the 1940’s, 50’s, 60’s and early to mid 1970’s.
[ Theres that 40 to 60 year cycle again! Aligned with the shift from a cooling phase of the climate and the predicted new oncoming Ice Ages of those 40 years or so to a warming phase of the climate following the GPCS of 1977-78. ]
For most of the last few decades in SE Australia a very broad hard to delineate semi-permanent north- south orientated trough line during the summer period became established through central Victoria .
To the west of this trough line soaring conditions ie; atmospheric conditions were often quite stable and soaring conditions were very ordinary for much of the time.
To the east of the trough line for gliding clubs located in eastern Victoria and most of SE NSW, soaring conditions were often superb.ie; the atmospheric conditions were often a lot more unstable but not to the extent of a substantial increase in storms similar to those of the mid 20th century.
I am no longer flying but recent visual cloud conditions and weather patterns around here seem to indicate we may be heading back to much more unstable conditions in our local airmass not perhaps very differnet to those often thundery conditions and short periods of heavy rainfal from storms of some 50 or 60 years ago..
And that is paralleling a flattening of past increasing global warming temperature trends and now increasing indications of the probability of a declining global temperture trend.
All the above is very subjective I know.
But as a farmer whose income and living depended on the weather and as a glider and power pilot with some 3000 hours of flying time as a life time hobby, I watched,tried to analyse and still do so, the weather conditions that I have lived in , flown in and made my living from for some seven plus decades past.
110
As much as I would like to see wind subsidy farms destroyed by nature or otherwise, widespread destruction of these structures does not appear to occur in the USA where they have much more extreme weather events than we generally do.
41
In the ’70’s. the Canadian prairie provinces had freezing rain conditions on a near annual basis.
This generally occurs near the end of winter; last week in March or first week in April, before the Spring thaw.
Rain freezes on the conductors in high winds and the conductor diameter can grow to nearly a foot.
When broad expanses of rural Manitoba were served by wooden poles, they would go down like dominoes for miles and miles at a stretch.
There is no doubt in my mind that the colder conditions foreseen by Fahrenolt and Luning, the Russian Assididmov? and Jo’s own David Evans is occurring in 2017 just as it was predicted.
In another couple of years I can well imagine such freezing rain conditions possible in SA and Tassie.
I would expect that these conditions would be devastating to giant fans with fragile blades.
40
the Russian Assididmov? = Renowned Russian scientist Chabibullo Abdussamatov in the above post.
10
Extreme weather in the US is the norm, utterly unlike Australia. Yes, they have St.Elmo’s fire. On average 15 hurricanes a year strike Florida. I was in a light plane over Texas in a storm the like of which I had never seen. There were 75 tornadoes at the same time. In Texas the rain can be tropical for days on end and in winter, one inch of ice on the roads. 100% humidity. Even Colorado in one year I remember -40C in winter and +40C in summer and the Chinooks blew for three days at a steady 100km/hr. In summer it was 2C hotter at night at 40C and utterly oppressive 95% humidity. No transmission towers blew over as in South Australia. The US weather is nothing like Australia. Even the vegetation. The desert around Las Vegas is real desert and does not bloom in the wet. The areas around dams are not green, just wet grey dirt. It is a very different place. In Texas I have seen people carried off a jumbo on stretchers with all the cabin emergency oxygen bags down. A short flight from Atlanta. It is very common to have a plane delayed or cancelled due to bad weather. I have never experienced even bad weather in Australia in a thousand flights.
However Americans are happy with their weather. If you complain about the heat or humidity, they just say thanks it is not Texas. If you complain about the incredibly dangerous cold, they say thanks it is not Alaska. At bit like Hong Kong, where school children hope the Typhoon is severe enough that they get to stay home from school. Or the US where they hope the blizzard buries the school. We do not have such weather in Australia or in fact in the whole Pacific. It was called the Pacific by Magellan would found the weather amazingly Peaceful compared to the Atlantic.
So in Australia, we worry about the Climate? It could not be better. Maybe another 2C in Melbourne.
50
This storm cut the power and no wind farms involved
22 May 2017
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-21/sydney-flight-delays-due-to-severe-storms-hitting-nsw/8374236
30
Yet another article knocking good ol’ South Australia. Still – there’s no such thing as bad publicity, as the old saying goes! It’s kinda fun being at the centre of attention, no matter what the reason.
I took part in a telephone survey last night, which is rare for me but the topic was the political situation in SA and how I would vote in a hypothetical election held now. I thought “this’ll be good” and agreed to participate. The caller revealed he was calling from Tassie and as we progressed through the interview I cottoned on that he was sympathetic to my views and in fact dropped his professional guard (such as it is with those type of firms) a couple of times to agree with me “off the record”.
On the question of who I would vote for I said “the liberals” and on his follow-up question of “why – is it because of their policies” I said “no, they’re just the best of a bad bunch”. Oh what fun I had over the fifteen minutes!
Getting back to the topic of this thread, I changed to Alinta energy about two years ago. Not one of the “Big Three” but I wonder what will happen to my bill?
110
Who is knocking SA.
They just keep leading with their jaw.
140
All right, what I meant was “inviting the pundits to knock SA”. It is certainly correct for Jo to keep publishing these SA-related articles highlighting our political ineptitude as they occur.
70
Three choices – the same, up or down. One certainty – UP!! That is what electricity bills, for those reliant on the grid, will do in Australia for the next 50 years. It will take an eternity to undo this mess. There is a huge amount of inertia in the climate disruption nonsense. That has to be dealt with before there is any hint of changing policy direction.
110
Perhaps the RAAF could do with some tactical ground-attack target experience? Coming in at ground-zero to put a couple of rockets at the base of a tall pole with spinning blades on the top, would be quite a challenge. Doing it in a plantation of the things, would be even more so.
Better still, perhaps a computer game manufacturer should produce a simulation? What a fantastic way of getting rid of the angst. And think of all those potential pilots, who would have already received virtual training.
The opportunities are almost endless.
71
Just one slow rocket flying along minding its own business – just like a bird – until it exploded when hit by a blade would be enough to shut a single turbine down. Repairs can take up to 12 months (blades imported from overseas, getting old off blade, new blade on).
So base your game on a drone equipped with rocket launchers or recoil less cannon. Opening scene as a flight of them come into view (out of the mist?) with apocalyptic music should get lots of pirate downloads. Fame and Fortune don’t await you.
30
Bruce Mountain simply has no idea. This article he authored proves it:
http://reneweconomy.com.au/teslas-price-shock-solar-battery-as-cheap-as-grid-power-22265/
I would really like to see him go off grid with his proposed 14kWh Tesla battery and 5kW of solar panels – what a joke.
And to presume “No One” knows if renewables are more expensive than coal fuelled generation is so ignorant it is beyond stupidity. I would think this is now blindingly obvious to everyone in the western world.
180
A study published a week or two ago by Norwegian scientists found that the CO2 release from making the batteries for an electric car is equivalent to the CO2 emissions from 8 years running a normal petrol (gas) car !
Electric cars significantly increase CO2 emissions.
Typical batteries in an electric car have a projected lifespan of 5 years or so ….. So if we assume that it will be similar in domestic use then using these in conjunction with PV panels will be yet another increase in CO2 emissions.
131
You underestimate the shear dumbdowness of the average pleb in the Western World !
50
Hmm, “dumbdowness” … Such a soft, snugly, reassuring word.
20
Rick Will @ #10.
Rick, O, Rick, when will you learn?! 🙂
Most plebs are quite sane but to paraphase Norman Mailer as it applies to the warmistas, renewable energy spivs and pushers, battery bulldusters, electric car creeps, anti coal cretins and etc.
.
The secret to sanity is the ability to hold the maximum of impossible combinations in one’s mind.
.
For the rest who can’t or don’t or won’t think!
“There are none so blind as those who do not wish to see!“
81
Sing the impossible dream, tra la.
30
Rick, it’s possible to go “off grid” if usage patterns are modified, using just about any kind of generation. The reason why people stayed “on grid” was that the power was cheaper, much cheaper, with the economies of scale, particularly in matching demand to supply.
The problem we face is the deliberate switch from the most efficient, cheapest available means of generation to an unreliable, expensive means of generation, this decision founded on a false premise.
150
Man Mountain is making the claim that he can get lower cost electricity using a 14kWh battery and 5kW of solar panels. The only way that works is if he stays connected to the grid. He cannot see, and does not understand, that he is cheating the system. The only real test of cost competitiveness is to get off the grid. And I know that household solar or wind are not yet competitive with grid pricing. Inevitably, if the course is not changed, it will be cheaper to go off grid because there is little or no benefit of scale with wind or solar.
I get free power now but I have a clear understanding of what that costs the system. Others have to pay for my choices and ability to install these systems.
The actual cost that intermittents add to the grid is not well understood. This is a letter from Solar Citizens to their subscribers:
There is this confused belief that there is an almighty pool that electricity is pumped into all the time and then taken out as needed. There is no appreciation that electricity produced on a pleasantly warm Sunday in spring when strong winds are blowing has vastly less value than the electricity produced at 4pm on a blistering hot, deadly calm Wednesday in February.
101
If Man Mountain is on the internet promoting his beliefs in his ability to live without grid power he is just plain straight out lying.
Nothing less thanstraight out lying!
The World Wide Web and its main tool, the”Internet”, is totally and absolutely reliant upon universal grid power at every single point in every single nation for its continuing existence and the ability of people to use the internet for data transmission at every level.
The WWW and its main tool, the “Internet” now uses around 10% of the total global electrical power production.
If Man Mountain goes anywhere outside of his own establishment and boundaries by any means other than walking or animal he is reliant upon grid power to refine , transport and pump the fuel and energy for his conveyance.
If Man Mountain uses ANY medical requirements what so ever, he will be relying on the grid power to ensure those mediacal systems work to his requirements.
If Man mountain buys ANY of his requirements from outside of his own property boundaries such as food and drink and a complete range of commercial and proffessional and financial services he will be and is totally reliant upon grid power to ensure the operations of every single one of those services.
The list just goes on and on!
Those who claim they are entirely self sufficient in their own power use and then boast about it particularly via the grid reliant Internet are lying to themselves and everybody else and mostly enjoying w—-ing themselves in public without realising how stupid and ignorant of the realities of universal and absolutely critical to our global civilisation’s functioning that ultra reliable, incredibly stable, ever there Grid power has become.
Unfortunately due to the extreme reliability of our western civilisations electrical power production from fossil fuels and the universal near continental wide grid power distrubution networks over the last two thirds of a century past, we have near two complete generations who haven’t a clue as to what life is like without absolutely reliable grid power being available when ever they like to flick a switch or go to the freezer or super market for food or use an immense range of services all powered by the grid energy.
So in their blatant ignorance and ultimate stupidity they have never bothered their tiny intellects in figuring out why the grid and its power is so reliable.
They then fall victim to the first twisted and warped green mentality activists that come along who are out to make a name for themselves and latch on to thetotally spurious assumptions that the solutions to life’s problems is to ban some aspect of our past success as a civilisation, in this case fossil fuels that have so reliably powered the Grid for the last three quarters of a century.
The intellectually challenged and usually elitist plebs who adopt and go along with the activists are so wrapped up in their own superiority and importance that they are just not smart enough to realise that they also will be suffering along with everybody else when they destroy the very long period, highly developed, fully functioning, ultra reliable foundation of our living standards and our civilisation, the electrical power grid and its ultra reliable fossil fueled power generators.
50
first, I heard McLaren promo his interview with Mountain and I think, he, like me, thought Mountain was including criticism of wind and solar when he spoke about SA electricity bills this week. McLaren sounded surprised when this wasn’t the case at all.
SECOND, and very important: I have responded to TonyfromOz with another Giles Parkinson “baseload not needed” piece – “Baseload”: An outdated term that should not be confused with “reliability – at the bottom of Jo’s previous “India, China” thread,
plus, below Giles, I have posted, in a separate comment, the cached version of an E&E piece –
***E&E News: Grid: Coal interests answer criticism from oil and gas lobby – WHICH IS A MUST-READ.
HOPE TONY GOES THERE, BUT HOPE OTHERS WILL READ THOSE TWO PIECES AS WELL.
meanwhile:
29 Jun: UK Daily Mail: The sun is set to ‘change form’ as NASA says solar minimum is on the way
Sunspots are heading toward a low point expected in 2019-2020, NASA says
Solar minimum means certain types of activity, such as sunspots and flares, drop
But, it could cause coronal holes and enhance the effects of space weather
By Cheyenne Macdonald
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4648214/NASA-says-solar-minimum-way.html
80
Don’t know wether to thank you or curse you for the Giles Parkinson link pat. Talk about a “reality free” zone!
30
The more we see of this bloke with the big name, the more we should call for Michael McLaren to account for his presence. He sounds like a big, dollar soaking sponge.
30
I read that Giles Parkinson piece, and also the comments, and it’s astounding to see that people have no idea at all.
Giles still makes the mistake of using that word ….. baseload as a describing adjective, also indicated when he also equates baseload (his usage) to another describing adjective, reliable, when he equates it to coal fired power plants.
When the day comes that these people realise that Base Load (two words) is an actual physical absolute requirement of 18,000MW of dedicated power at the lowest point of actual power consumption, then I can’t wait to see what they say as it is pointed out to them, and they attempt to back away from what they have said for so long.
Wind and solar power can never supply that.
Tony.
70
Nothing that 1,000,000 wind turbines can’t fix.
00
Just one of the comments at that Giles Parkinson article is this classic:
Oh dear! (or should that be no idea!)
Tony.
20
‘Fear wind energy rejection will go national.’New policy
on wind energy in Germany … I like a bit of schadenfreude
in the evening.
http://notrickszone.com/2017/06/28/the-de-facto-end-of-wind-turbine-forests-new-policy-in-germany-send-powerful-signals/#comments
90
Or, alternatively, as Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore said:
“I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Name the film and win the prize.
40
Apocalypse Now – translate, energy crisis, Man(n) Made – now.
51
Winner.
Green Thumb.
Fact trumps fiction every time.
31
Bruce Mountain has a website specializing in square brackets [and important-sounding stuff to do with [[bill analysis software]] to do with Choice’s [[retail market concierge switching service]] – so there!].
Who can say [no] to an Alpine-level [expert] called [Bruce Mountain] with so many cool square brackets? What couldn’t Bruce’s [MarkIntell] do for your [retail concierge switching], especially, as the [MarkIntell] site explains, when [[MI[Tariff]: is a web-deployed tool that bolts onto MI[Insight]]]?
Bewildered by energy and prices? Bruce and his square brackets will make sure you stay that way.
141
If he keeps pushing renewables he will have to change his name to Bruce Molehill.
131
Or “Bruce the Rug”.
41
Bruce the shill
31
This Bruce?
Bruces Sketch – Monty Python’s Flying Circus
20
For goodness sake, get the kids,
[and socialist greens,] out of the kitchen!
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll/lewis/alice/images/image099.jpg
50
Kitchen table conversations are no longer allowed – by Order of the HRC.
41
However ‘The prince said it was “very important” to talk to plants and that they “respond” when spoken to.’
So you should pay attention to the response from a chat to your vegetables and salad before you consume them. 🙂
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/5080991/Prince-of-Wales-talked-to-plants-scientists-test-if-it-works.html
20
That was one of Charles’ more logical statements.
20
It would be interesting to calculate the economic losses which can be directly attributed to the cost of ‘renewable energy’ in SA to present a true picture to politicians and the media. Perhaps someone is in a position to do so or to organise it ?
Seems to me that some aspects of this will be:
a. The amount of money sucked out of the economy by the ‘renewable’ costs of energy (hidden taxes) – every household will have seen their disposable income fall and so be unable to spend that – a direct loss / reduction in turnover and profits for businesses the ‘energy tax’ would otherwise have been spent on – consequential reduced turnover/profits for those businesses – reduced investment and potentially/probably staff reductions;
b. The cost to industry and the resulting drop in turnover / profits, reduced investment and staff reductions (e.g. the closure of the plastics recycling plant which was set out the other day)
c. What, if any, is the job loss / unemployment increase which can be attributed to the energy tax;
d. Is there a real reduction in GDP but which is masked ? Does the higher, inflated cost of energy get included in GDP and thus hide an actual reduction in output and a real reduction in GDP?
Just some thoughts … I suspect that a lot could be found out by a desktop study, particularly if any economists have produced figures on the effect of income or sales tax rises on the economy – what would be harder would to be to get the real information from business of the effects on small and large businesses. Maybe a crowd-study through social media could be got running with individuals asking the same questions of the businesses in their immediate area……
110
Indeed it would. Especially item d.
Then there are the costs which SA impunity imposes on other states.
30
Roger @ #16
I posted the link to this article here on Jo’s blog a couple of weeks ago to this, in my opinion, very important economic rather than energy related study vian PHYS.org.
The researchers apparently expected to find a somewhat different result and appear to be taken aback by the results of their study.
To give them credit they did publish the study as seen here which is very condemnatory of renewable energy and its economic impact on a national economy.
It is a study which I wish was given a great deal more publicityn to counter the constant grtossly misleading, lying propaganda barrage from the renewable energy industry.
Study suggests choice between green energy or economic growth
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-02-choice-green-energy-economic-growth.html#jCp
00
The more a government taxes business or personal wealth the worse the economy becomes. A point is reached (probably already passed that point) where revenue declines and eventually the whole economy collapses. It’s a common thing among the leftists (including the Turnbull government) that raising taxes is a good thing. It’s a BIG mistake.
140
That is precisely what has happened with every Labour Government in Britain – they wreck the economy and leave it it in tatters. It’s what the left-wing do – they promise to spend other people’s money to buy votes until the money runs out and then they blame it on ‘capitalism’.
110
PeterS
IIRC the Laffer Curve puts this at around 20 %
20
See. There is a “tipping point”.
00
Denmark is not much more than a very large sandspit jutting up some average 31 metres above and into the North Sea;
Area is 42,930 square Kms including 443 islands which places Denmark at the 133rd position in national area, globally;
South Australia is 5 times larger in area than Denmark with 1,034,500 sq kms area.
SA’s population is 1.72 million, about 30% the size of Denmark’s population.
Denmark’s dependencies are the Faroe Islands and the self governing Greenland, the world’s claimed largest Island
[ I always thought that Papua/ New Guinea / Irian Jaya was the world’s largest island. Maybe Wiki and the Danes haven’t heard of New Guinea etc being on the opposite side of the globe. ]
South Australia IS a dependency on the rest of Australia along with Green controlled Tasmania, under Windmill Weatherill and his treasurer, Kostalottajobs
430 companies registered in Denmark are involved with producing, constructing, erecting, maintaining and supporting Wind turbines.
Five large Danish registered corporations manufacture wind turbines which they then sell at vast markups to assorted Australian ethical and morality free renewable energy scammers under the protection of the wind tunnel [ lots of hot fast moving air confined in a mostly closed but empty volume ] brained South Australian and Victorian political operatives.
South Australian’s build submarines, so far of the bathtub catergory.
They will be French designed submarines, not Spanish as the latest Spanish submarine design fortunately before it left port was recalculated to be categorised as a fixed mooring on the sea bed due to a misplaced decimal point way back in the original design stages.
It wouldn’t float if it ever left the building docks!
The Danes when the wind doth blow and blow hard, due to excess wind power generated, they export, they literally give away lots of wind generated power to Norway and Sweden for which the Danes have to pay their wind turbine generating companies.
When the wind don’t blow they have to import lots of hydro generated power from Norway which they have to pay for all over again.
Hence their high energy prices.
South Australian’s when the wind doth blow have their power lines fall over, their wind turbines blink out and a North Korean level blackout effect occurs.
They had an old but still perfectly good coal fired generator but dynamited the chimney down so nobody could use them again.
They have immense natural resources in minerals and even coal in central SA but rely on an interconnector for power from Victoria.
Their Submarine building corporation doesn’t trust their politicians to supply power reliably at any level so is installing its own diesel generators from which the emissions should just about equal the emmissions of CO2 saved by installing wind turbines that work sometimes .[ although not much over the last month or so of not much wind]
My informants tell me that the density per head of population of diesel and petrol powered Gen sets in SA is now running at the highest per head of population on the whole globe.
And so with no resources of any sort except brains and manpower, the Danes are just as wealthy and have a higher living standard at an average per capita income of US $53,000 than do the South Australians with a claimed and no doubt falling US$52,000 per capita annual income.
With enormous mineral and energy resources located across the depth and breadth of SA which in their flea brained politician’s beliefs should stay in the ground to SAVE the PLANET all over again, the South Australians just buy other peoples products like turbines from the Danes and then sit down and bemoan their fate as deeply deprived citizens that they can’t trust those Danish turbines to produce the power they demand.
So other Australian’s should be rushing to mitigate their discomfort by spending a few odd billion to build another 1000 odd kilometre long interconnector to access the power from those coal fired NSW and those back country Queenslanders coal fired generators.
And if other Australians don’t come rushing to the asid of the SA politicians, well they will just shove another bank tax onto the Big Banks that all Australians will have to pay in increased bank charges and so get their subsidies from the rest of Australia that way.
.
With wind turbines the Danes Go Up.
With submarines if they ever get around to building one, the South Australian’s Go Down.
.
Somehow that seems to be good metaphor for the difference between the Danes and the South Aussies.
Or at least the South Aussie politicians which one must remember, were voted into power again and again by those same South Australian voters.
61
Jo, I understand that you are very busy. But at the same time as you are preparing these articles, how much longer would it take to edit (dumb down for social media) then copy and paste to your Facebook page ? You haven’t updated that page in 10 months.
50
Made the mistake of suggesting people visit Jonova’s blog when discussing / arguing Climate Change, Renewable Energy on Facebook. Instead of coming here they go to Jo’s Facebook page only to come back to me saying that the blog is defunct because the last post was x months ago.
00
Don’t worry about South Australia, there is an experiment happening in South Korea which boggles the mind. The new president must think CO2 is related to particle pollution, or perhaps he’s just another pseudo Marxist.
‘The new President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in has committed his country to phasing out all coal and nuclear power stations suggesting a major change in energy policy for the Asian state.
‘The step marks the first major new international commitment away from coal since Trump announced his decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement to limit global emissions.
‘In a speech made during the official ceremony to mark the shutdown of the country’s oldest nuclear power plant Moon promised to scrap existing plans for new nuclear plants, not extend the life of existing ones, shut down 10 old coal power plants and cancel new coal projects.’
Energy Desk
71
Well they won’t shutdown every nuke they will follow Israels lead and maintain a plutonium maker just for gigs.
41
That’s easy to explain. He is really a North Korean operative!
31
Actually,that is too serious to joke. Is it real?
30
Moon is a liberal lefty, which explains his energy revolution.
20
Speaking to people at work about this and some steadfastly refuse to acknowledge LRET etc has played a role in power prices.
It is beyond comprehension why they think the way they do.
90
Being conservative but not “right-wing” I have no objection to subsidy, taxation and regulation on principle. This leaves me free to make the following serious propositions:
The current dire geopolitics of the world’s pipelines, critical straits and sea lanes make it imperative that we pass laws against all ineffective green energy (ie all mainstreaming of wind and solar) and against all use of petroleum for electricity (beyond localised use in the event of grid unavailability or grid failure.) Subsidies may be necessary to help with the very high cost of dismantling and abolishing wind power.
Only coal, nukes and hydro should be permitted to contribute to the grid and the use of solar etc should come down to individual choice for individual premises. Subsidies should be available only for the urgent modernisation/implementation of coal, nukes and hydro for the grid. Loopy hydro doesn’t count, nor does loopy carbon capture.
A new Great Game is on in the Middle East, Eurasia and Africa, and the stakes keep getting higher as the outcomes look less and less certain. The West can no longer run and police the world. It just can’t. Australia cannot stay right out of the new Great Game, but doesn’t need to buy into it. Sorry to harp, but an energy crisis can come within 24 hours of any closure of any of the major straits, especially Hormuz. 24 hours, Malcolm! Try supplementing SA wind with diesel soaring to historic highs. Life is complicated enough now with the oil price in the toilet.
I’m serious. The War on Coal is a giant security issue for Australia. It is a war waged against ourselves, a phony war whereby we are being persuaded to gnaw off our own leg to escape from an imaginary trap. The real trap lies between Iran and Oman. Time we stopped treating coal as the reliable old servant who does all the hard stuff but stays in a hovel out the back and isn’t invited into the salon. The War on Coal is obscene.
181
South Australia’s energy issues serve as a stark warning for the future, not just in terms of government dictated mandates with renewable energy, but also the longer-term and inevitable decline of available fossil fuels in the far-off future (probably hundreds of years). Even with abundant solar and wind, such renewables just don’t appear able to ever make the grade.
It’s quite plausible that without abundant fossil fuels (in several hundred years hence), life for humanity might return to something like the late middle ages for most people (with carts, horses, bikes, less travel, energy poverty etc etc), with only the super-rich flying in planes and driving petrol cars (or perhaps just for important ‘conferences’).
Nothing in nature says there HAS to be a viable and efficient alternative form of energy to the abundant, transportable, highly concentrated energy one gets from fossil fuels (thanks to solar energy converted by photosynthesis to chemical energy and captured over very long time periods, and then stored and upgraded by the heat and pressure of the earth over geological ages). The trick that fossil fuels actually do incidentally, is to effectively ‘stretch’ time; organisms capture solar energy over millions of years to provide such enormous amounts of short term energy, existing solar energy technology can’t do this, unless you invent some kind of time-energy dilation (good luck with that), or some kind of spatial-energy enhancement (enormous solar grids try this, but it isn’t nearly enough and very costly).
Nuclear energy could do it for politically stable countries (France gets around 80% of its’ electricity from nuclear), but in politically unstable countries, it might prove problematic and risky.
In 300 years one might commonly see ocean-going cargo and transport ships with sails off the southern coastline, utilizing the strong winds of the southern ocean, much like in the 1700-1800s.
30
I remember when they (media) stared pushing the evil of CO2 emissions showed large cooling towers in UK etc. (usually on Nuclear plants) and implies the harmless steam emitted was CO2! Yep CO2 looks like clouds when its emitted.
50
and hasn’t that sucked in some distinguished dills!!
40
one flew over the cuckoo’s nest……
20
For quite some time, the market told us that hydro has the most cost effective energy source.
It still is for small regions close to plants with reliable water flow, although the price advantage
to consumers who co-located with hydro has been diluted by the market allowing it to be a base source
in a mixed generation pool. Still the reliability is there, making it a good place for an aluminum smelter in the old
dirty days, and a server farm in the new clean ones.
It may be now that the market will determine that the biggest cost in energy markets is political, and that the source mix
is less important. When One sees large firms putting in their own generation, one thinks back to history in the US, when every little
town had its own hydro dam or coal plant…and with no grid rural folks still lived with kerosene and sunshine. The depression era
REA was part of the impetus for a grid, as was the growing efficiency and reliability for larger plants.
There are now numerous ways to generate electricity reliably and cost effectively. The polluting elements of same have become manageable
technical problems to all but zealots.
IF one doesn’t have reliable, relatively cheap, dispatchable electricity one has a political problem, plain and simple.
Like clean water, decent road and rail transport, plentiful food, and public sanitation The technical problems are in hand and
cost effective solutions available to even third world countries.
The barriers are political honesty and stability, and respect for a modes amount of individual freedom and respect for property rights.
Its not the windmills, its the windbags.
100
29 Jun: AFP: Merkel takes aim at Trump ahead of stormy G20
German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared headed for a collision course with US President Donald Trump on Thursday after vowing to make a stand next week for climate protection and open markets at what is expected to be the most fractious G20 summit in years.
Merkel said discussions at the July 7-8 gathering of world leaders in Hamburg would be difficult given Trump’s climate scepticism and “America First” stance, but that she was determined to seek a clear commitment to the Paris accord against global warming and a pledge against protectionism.
When Trump announced in early June he would withdraw from the Paris deal, “we knew that we could not expect discussions to be easy” at the G20 summit, Merkel told the German parliament.
“The differences are obvious and it would be dishonest to try to cover that up. That I won’t do,” she said, adding that the US exit from the 2015 Paris pact had made Europe “more determined than ever” to make the accord a success…
Trump’s divergent stance has left Western allies struggling to find a common front for the G20 gathering — unlike previous summits, when differences were drawn along global north-south and east-west lines…READ ALL
https://www.afp.com/en/news/15/merkel-takes-aim-trump-ahead-stormy-g20
40
what a piece of CAGW trash the BBC has become.
decades of pushing this rubbish and yet they feel the need to re-hash the whole thing from the start every time they report on the topic:
29 Jun: BBC: Merkel: Hamburg G20 to focus on Paris climate deal
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said this year’s G20 summit will focus on furthering the aims of the Paris climate deal – putting her on a direct collision course with Donald Trump…
As host, it is up to Mrs Merkel to set out the priorities of the annual meeting, which is being held in Hamburg.
This year, the Paris climate agreement, established to limit the impact of carbon emissions on the environment, with countries committed to keeping the rise in global temperatures “well below” 2C, will be among them.
LINK ◾Five effects of US pullout
LINK ◾What is the Paris climate deal?
Mrs Merkel will be joined by leaders including Mr Trump, Britain’s Theresa May and newly-elected French President Emmanuel Macron. The latter has made his views on Mr Trump’s climate change stance entirely clear, pledging to “make the planet great again” – a play on the American president’s election slogan…
VIDEO: Schwarzenegger backs Macron on the issue of climate change
Mr Trump pulled the US out of the deal on 1 June, saying the Paris agreement was a deal that aimed to hobble, disadvantage and impoverish the US.
He claimed the agreement would cost the US $3tn in lost GDP and 6.5 million jobs – while rival economies like China and India were treated more favourably…ETC
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40441143
41
28 Jun: Deutsche Welle: Ruby Russell: G20 stage set for climate change battle
The environment is expected to get unprecedented attention at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg next week – as the resolve of 19 countries is put to the test following Trump’s rejection of the Paris Agreement.
“Climate change will be high on the agenda,” Alois Vedder, head of politics department WWF Germany, told DW…
n Wednesday, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Christiana Figueres joined with international scientists and business leaders to author a wish-list for the G20 – in the form of an article in the journal “Nature.”
It outlines six goals for the G20 to set for themselves by 2020…
The year 2020 has weighty significance: It is not only the earliest date the US can legally exit the Paris Agreement, but also marks a “tipping point” by which scientists say if emissions do not fall, the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals become virtually unattainable…
“We stand at the doorway of being able to bend the greenhouse gas emissions curve downwards by 2020, as science demands, in protection of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and in particular the eradication of extreme poverty,” Figueres said in a statement.
Wael Hmaidan, director of Climate Action Network (CAN) International, welcomed the analysis, saying that, “if agreed, it would represent a very ambitious and welcome outcome” of the summit…
Against the backdrop of the G20, there is massive pressure from the general public, civil society groups, scientists and public figures to act on environment…
Last week, Merkel attended the “Civil20” summit, in Hamburg, which saw civil society groups including CAN gather to put their demands to the Group of 20.
“The German G20 leadership has been very open to civil society input. We have seen them taking our comments very seriously,” Hmaidan told DW, adding that the “openness and transparency” of the German presidency set an important precedent for the future of the group…
Hamburg is expected to be overrun with protestors demanding action over global poverty and the environment…
But there will also be close attention next week on countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia, which have historically dragged their feet on climate change…
As well as looking for a commitments on direct measures to reduce carbon emissions, experts say agreements made on G20’s core remit of economic development and financial regulation are also essential to fighting climate change…
Finance and investment
“Having the G20 ensure that the future financial system is compatible with the Paris Agreement is important,” said Hmaidan. “We want countries to work further on creating carbon pricing that will help the shift from fossil fuel-intensive economies to renewable energy.”
He added that the G20 should additionally set a deadline for ending subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. Environmentalists also want to see action to ensure that international investment in development, as well as regulation of financial markets, is in line with Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainability Goals.
“The summit must deliver on regulation of financial markets for environmental risks,” Vedder said. “This is both an environmental and social issue.
***Pension funds are still investing in fossil fuels,” he added…
***”This poses both the risk of climate disaster – and that people will lose their pensions if these investments turn bad because the sector has to be shut down.”..
http://www.dw.com/en/g20-stage-set-for-climate-change-battle/a-39460270
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found the following on Deutsche Welle Ruby Russell’s Twitter page, where she wrote: “Climate scientists grade climate journalism. Brilliant.”
ah, the irony that it is published on FakeNews Guardian website:
26 Jun: Guardian: Climate scientists are now grading climate journalism
Climate Feedback provides a venue for climate scientists to evaluate the accuracy of climate news stories
(Daniel Nethery is the associate editor and Emmanuel Vincent is the founder of Climate Feedback. Climate Feedback is launching a crowdfunding campaign today. To support this initiative please visit the campaign page LINK)
Yet despite the scientific consensus that global warming is real and primarily due to human activity, studies show that only about half the population in some countries with among the highest CO2 emissions per capita understand that human beings are the driving force of our changing climate. Even fewer people are aware of the scientific consensus on this question. We live in an information age, but the information isn’t getting through. How can this be?…
We’ve got proof of concept. Now we need to scale up, and for that we need the support of everyone who values accuracy in reporting on one of the most critical challenges facing our planet. Climate Feedback won’t reach its full potential until we start measuring the credibility of news outlets in a systematic way. We want to be in a position to carry out an analysis of any influential internet article on climate change. We want to develop a ‘Scientific Trust Tracker’ – an index of how credible major news sources are when it comes to climate change…READ ALL
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/apr/26/climate-scientists-are-now-grading-climate-journalism?CMP=share_btn_fb
The Conversation Bio: Daniel Nethery, PhD candidate, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. He is also a research officer in the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW.
2009–2010 Policy analyst, Australian Treasury
LinkedIn: Emmanuel Vincent, Project Scientist
Current: Climate Feedback, University of California, Merced,
NOAA Climate & Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
November 2012 – October 2014 (2 years)
“The program helps create and train the next generation of leading researchers needed for climate studies and has developed an outstanding reputation of attracting the best and the brightest PhDs in the relevant sciences.”
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2 pages: 29 Jun: Forbes: Michael Lynch: The “Unstoppable” Renewable Energy Revolution Keeps Faltering
Solar, wind and electric vehicles are now said to have such momentum that they are going to cause a peak in oil demand within as little as five years, according to the most optimistic projections. Solar and wind represent the bulk of new power capacity globally, the Chinese electric vehicle industry is booming, and India has embraced both solar and electric vehicles.
“The electric vehicle revolution is now as unstoppable as the renewable revolution. China understands that fact better than any other country.” Joe Romm 9/1/16 while the BBC says, “India is embracing solar power.”…
Costs have come down to the point where the Financial Times published an article titled, “The Big Green Bang: How renewable energy became unstoppable.” … One typical article was titled, “Futurist Ray Kurzweil Predicts Solar Industry Dominance In 12 Years –Trajectories Are Exponential”…
A number of states, led by California, have pushed their own programs and Andrew Winston in the Harvard Business Review noted “the business community does not want to leave the Paris climate agreement.”
It all sounds like Dorothy and her friends skipping gaily along towards the Emerald City while “Optimistic Voices” plays in the background (“Step into the sun, step into the light”). Unfortunately, reality is the wicked witch and the flying monkeys are starting to descend…
***As the professors say, compare and contrast (THE FOLLOWING) with the earlier quotes…READ ALL
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2017/06/29/the-unstoppable-renewable-energy-revolution-keeps-faltering/#13d5e58971b7
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memo to the CCC: when Brits stop buying houses in sunny Spain & Italy to escape the cold weather, they might go along with this big public money-spinner:
28 Jun: UK Telegraph: Jillian Ambrose: Accelerate electric vehicle targets to more than half of new car sales, urges new report
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC), an independent advisory body, has urged the Government to set a target that electric vehicles should make up at least 60pc of new cars and vans sold in the UK by the end of the next decade.
***The drive should include financial support, tax incentives and a strategy to roll out electric vehicle charging infrastructure as well as tougher emissions standards on new car sales beyond 2020, the committee said.
The committee’s chairman, Lord Deben, said: “The UK has shown global leadership on climate change, but progress will stall at home without urgent further action.
“New plans, for a new Parliament, are needed as a matter of urgency to meet our legal commitments, grasp the opportunities offered by the global low-carbon transition, and protect people, businesses and the environment from the impacts of a changing climate,” he added…
The call comes in the wake of major commitments from the governments of China and India which have both set ambitions electric vehicle targets to help tackle air pollution…
But Richard Black, of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, said a clear plan is essential to bring forward investment in clean transport solutions.
“Investors are ready and willing to put money into Britain’s low-carbon future — they just need clear, unequivocal signals from Government. And given the economic benefits of decarbonisation, one might ask: what are ministers waiting for?” he said…
The CCC said the UK can no longer delay investment in protecting the country against the impact of climate change. Mr Bell said the key issues facing the UK include widespread flooding beyond the areas known to be at risk, as well as preventable deaths due to heatwaves.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/06/28/accelerate-electric-vehicle-targets-half-new-car-sales-urges/
FROM COMMENTS:
Peter Mott: Many errors and half-truths.
(1) The Committee on Climate Change is a parliamentary committee set up the climate chnage act in 2008. It is not in ant meaningfule sense “independent”.
(2) The main reduction in emissions from generating electricity comes from the switch from coal to gas – gas emits less than half as much CO2 as coal. Renewable gneration (excluding the diurty wood burning by Drax) is pretty marginal (look at http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ for the current generating status by fuel).
(3) China and India have not committed to anything – the emissions of both countries will rise at least till 2030. Checkout http://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china.html to see the pledge.
(4) The days of unbounded subsidy are over, not just starting
(5) The extent to which these targets are legally binding is moot if you read the 2008 Act. Anyway they can just be ignored.
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Amazing, to what lengths will Lord Deben go to fight climate models.
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memo #2 to the CCC. any spare taxpayer money should be spent on fixing this insane, & deadly, CAGW policy, not on EV promotion, thank you:
READ ALL.
29 Jun: Bloomberg: Jess Shankleman: How the U.K.’s Tower Blaze Could Affect the Fight Against Global Warming
Insulation may have quickened spread of fire in London
Disaster is a setback for key lever in climate change fight
Local authorities across the U.K. are ripping foam insulation from housing blocks after concerns that plastic cladding on the Grenfell Tower acted as an accelerant to the June 14 blaze. In addition to drawing attention to fire safety rules, Britain’s housing crisis and income inequality, the disaster has implications for the fight against global warming.
***Buildings like Grenfell Tower were insulated to save energy and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Companies from Arconic Inc. to Cie. de Saint-Gobain SA, which supplied cladding and insulation being probed after the fire, are concerned the tragedy will mark a defining moment for the industry, said Nick Molho, executive director of the Aldersgate Group.
“A lot of the cladding failed safety tests,” Molho said, whose organization brings together company executives and policy makers to advise on environmental issues. “What we don’t know is how on Earth that was allowed to happen in the first place.”…
Efficiency — or squeezing more from each unit of energy whether it’s oil or electricity — has been an uncontroversial policy lever to use against global warming. The International Energy Agency, which advises 29 industrial nations, dubbed it the “first fuel” because saving energy is often the cheapest and easiest way to cut carbon-dioxide emissions…
“This is a global issue,” Rockwool Chief Executive Officer Jens Birgersson said by phone, noting other tower fires in Abu Dhabi and Istanbul linked to faulty cladding…
Regardless of the ultimate conclusions, the fire already has put a cloud over the efficiency business.
Unlike wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars that have become iconic clean-energy industries, insulation and measures to reduce energy use never registered highly in the consciousness of consumers.
***The companies involved in the industry are as diverse as Google Inc.’s Nest Labs Ltd., maker of a smart thermostat, and Johnson Controls International Plc, a maker of heating, ventilation and security systems for buildings…
***Some elements of the ruling Conservative Party and a right-wing research group called the Global Warming Policy Foundation are using the blaze to bolster their argument that climate change policies are having perverse and unintended consequences…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-29/tower-blaze-delivers-blow-to-niche-of-the-green-energy-industry
BBC, Carbon Brief & the rest of the MSM CAGW gate-keepers won’t be pleased with Bloomberg/Shankleman for reporting the above.
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Down with Asbestos!
10
Phases of a Project:
(1) Exultation.
(2) Disenchantment.
(3) Confusion.
(4) Search for the Guilty.
(5) Punishment for the Innocent.
(6) Distinction for the Uninvolved.
It sounds like SA is well into (2), heading for (3).
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To SA pollies. Please read todays posting at notrickszone http://notrickszone.com/2017/06/29/evidence-review-suggests-humans-may-not-be-the-primary-drivers-of-co2-concentration-changes/#sthash.xEw0U5tp.dpbs
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Do I sense a disrespect for pollsters? What happened to the art of propaganda?
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And cringe.
20
To help SA keep the record?
“Toxic Waste From Solar Panels: 300 Times That of Nuclear Power”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/29/toxic-waste-from-solar-panels-300-times-that-of-nuclear-power/
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But on the bright side
A whole new industry to compete with generator sales and installation
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***STILL SHILLING FOR SOLAR DURING THIS ENERGY CRISIS BROUGHT ON BY THE MANY AND VARIOUS CAGW POLICIES IMPLEMENTED OVER A NUMBER OF YEARS, MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT! SHAMELESS.
29 Jun: AFR: Destructive wave of energy price hikes about to hit
by Angela Macdonald-Smith With Mark Ludlow
A destructive wave of energy bill hikes is poised to sweep across businesses and households from July 1, with some commercial customers to be hit by a ***tripling in electricity prices after the closure of the Hazelwood coal generator.
The news of the hikes coincides with a sudden escalation of concern over the stretched east coast gas market after the unexpected shutdown of a major offshore platform in the Bass Strait just ahead of a cold snap in the south-east.
The shutdown has cut gas supply from the biggest supply source for the east coast by 15 per cent and triggered a sharp spike in wholesale gas tariffs, underscoring the pressures being felt across the energy sector.
Businesses coming off multi-year electricity contracts signed when the power market was in oversupply will suffer worst in the wave of retail price increases, seeing jumps in their total energy bills that will dwarf the up to 20 per cent hikes that some households are facing…
Victoria-based Wilson Transformer Co is bracing for an 83 per cent surge in its annual power bill from about $800,000 to almost $1.5 million, including a more-than-threefold jump in the electricity component of the charge, said executive chairman Robert Wilson. Its price for peak power is going from just under 4.4¢ a kilowatt-hour to about 15.4¢, while its off-peak tariff will jump from just over 2.5¢/kWh to about 9.65¢…
Mr Wilson and other consumers blame the shutdown by French-owned Engie in March of its 1600-megawatt brown coal Hazelwood plant in the Latrobe Valley for the price hikes. The closure removed a major source of low-cost baseload power from the market and made much dearer gas-fired generation the price setter across the wholesale market, sending prices soaring.
“We all know it’s a dirty old brown coal power station but the reality is, it shouldn’t have been closed so dramatically quickly; it’s just disrupted the market,” Mr Wilson said…
***An AEMO forecasting report to be released on Friday said the prediction of static consumption was partly the result of consumers changing their behaviour, by becoming more energy efficient and generating their own power in “behind the meter” initiatives such as solar PV…
***The continuing increase in electricity prices is causing households and businesses to embrace new technologies and energy efficiency to cut their power usage…
http://www.afr.com/business/energy/electricity/destructive-wave-of-energy-price-hikes-about-to-hit-20170629-gx1bol
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This will be a good test of Australia’s failing/failed electrical grid.
Extreme low temperatures predicted for southern Australia due to polar air mass moving north.
Can’t wait!
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/snow-plummeting-temperatures-hail-and-unbelievably-severe-frost-on-the-way/news-story/1d43311c2e8c4c5f47d1ddf3205b6b32
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FAUX CONCERN, PLAYING POLITICS & MORE SHILLING FOR WIND & SOLAR.
ALSO IN FAIRFAX NEWCASTLE HERALD:
29 Jun: Ballarat Courier (Fairfax): Electricity prices to rise by up to 20 per cent this financial year… but what about the future?
by Damon Cronshaw
Wallsend’s Frances Burdon rarely turns on the heater in winter.
“I use a rug,” Ms Burdon said…
She did use her gas heater once this winter because it was wet and cold, but this was because she was “worried about the house because it was so damp”…
Ms Burdon, 73, lives on the pension…
“I’ve always had a job. I was mostly in administration in hospitals. I reared three children,” she said.
A recent report by Kildonan Uniting Care found an increasing number of the “working poor” and “middle class” were struggling to pay power bills.
EnergyAustralia said it would provide an additional $10 million for “vulnerable customers” under its hardship program…
(Wallsend MP Sonia Hornery) accused the NSW government of driving up electricity prices by selling the power generators and deregulating retail pricing, which “allowed the big power companies to gouge even larger profits from customers”.
Opposition leader Luke Foley said a Labor state government would “re-regulate the electricity market to help households and businesses struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living”.
A spokeswoman for NSW Energy Minister Don Harwin said “privatisation has not caused electricity price rises”.
Mr Harwin agreed with EnergyAustralia, which attributed the latest price hike to “the closure of large coal-fired power stations and increased demand for gas by LNG projects in Queensland”.
Federal Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said: “The last time [federal] Labor were in office, electricity prices doubled”.
“When the Coalition repealed the carbon tax, it led to the largest fall in electricity prices on record.”
Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon said former prime minister Tony Abbott’s decision four years ago to axe the carbon tax had created policy uncertainty, reduced electricity supply and increased prices…
AGL chief executive Andrew Vesey said last week that “large-scale renewables [like wind, solar and battery storage], firmed up by open-cycle gas” would become “the new baseload for us”.
Shortland MP Pat Conroy, who is shadow assistant climate change minister, agrees that this is the way forward.
“Renewable energy coupled with storage or gas peaking plants is the cheapest way of getting new baseload power generation,” Mr Conroy said…
Mr Fitzgibbon said the market had decided that no new coal-fired power plants would be built in Australia.
“You need around $2 billion and a 50-year life to secure the return you’d expect from investment in a coal-fired generator. It’s not going to happen,” he said.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance reflected this in its 2017 outlook, which said solar and wind would “dominate the future of electricity”…ETC
http://www.thecourier.com.au/story/4761029/big-electricity-price-rise-to-hit-family-budgets/?cs=2452
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‘The coal industry suffered a major blow on Wednesday when the utility giant Southern Company abandoned work on its troubled Mississippi “clean coal” facility amid skyrocketing costs.
‘The Kemper County Energy Facility, conceived under President George W. Bush, promised to turn coal into cleaner-burning gas and provide a model for the future of coal. But after 11 years and $7.5 billion, the plant failed to produce commercially viable technology.’
Huffpo
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NO WONDER THE VAST CAGW MOB HATE HIM:
30 Jun: Bloomberg: Trump Vows to Unleash the ‘Vast Energy Wealth’ of the U.S.
By Jennifer A Dlouhy
President reorients energy policy away from climate change
Trump touts growing U.S. energy exports in speech Thursday
President Donald Trump said he is lifting an Obama-era policy that curtailed the financing of coal-fired power plants overseas, as he seeks to reorient the U.S. government away from fighting climate change and toward American “energy dominance.”
“We are now on the cusp of a true energy revolution,” Trump told a crowd of executives, lobbyists and laborers at the Energy Department on Thursday. “We are a top producer of petroleum and the No. 1 producer of natural gas. We have so much more than we ever thought possible. We are really in the driver’s seat.”
Trump is celebrating growing U.S. energy exports he says are leading to “millions and millions of jobs” and acting as a force for peace around the world. After decades of dependence on foreign oil, the U.S. is on the verge of becoming a net exporter of energy resources.
“The United States’ big competitive advantage today is low energy prices,” White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said in a discussion with other Trump administration officials before the president’s address. “We are no longer a victim of having to import our hydrocarbons; having to import our oil.”
As part of the White House “Energy Week,” Trump highlighted growing U.S. energy production and reversals of environmental regulations issued under former President Barack Obama’s tenure…
***The biggest change he revealed is a reversal on restrictions by the World Bank and other multilateral development banks for financing coal plants in developing nations…
Vice President Mike Pence said coal mines are reopening already.
“Coal miners are actually going back to work, and the ‘War on Coal’ is over,” Pence told the audience…READ ALL
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-29/trump-said-to-tout-coal-projects-nuclear-aid-in-energy-week
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Here is a Their ABC Radio National piece where they pretend to give “deniers” a fair go but they can barely hold back their contempt.
Written transcript at bottom of their page. Synopsis below.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/has-%E2%80%98denying%E2%80%99-won/8618606
Has ‘denying’ won?
Listen now(Link will open in new window)Download audioshow transcript
Saturday 24 June 2017 12:05PM (view full episode)
IMAGE: PLANET EARTH – THE BLUE MARBLE FROM APOLLO 17 (NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY) LINK TO LARGER IMAGE.
The science is 150 years old and growing each day, yet it is still being rejected by politicians and some academics. We shall talk to a few of those who remain unconvinced by climate research and its conclusions: a former vice-chancellor, a renowned Princeton mathematician, a space scientist from WA who worked on the Apollo program, a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and a climate researcher in America. Have they ever changed their minds on the topic? Do they perceive any risk at all? What do they think of President Trump’s policies? How can critics remain unmoved as the evidence mounts? Sharon Carleton reports.
Supporting Information
Andy Pitman has supplied the following links to support his statements:
The popular myth that climate scientists formed a consensus that the Earth was heading towards an ice age in the 1970s is addressed by Peterson in a paper freely accessible at:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1
The link to the 2013 IPCC report (working group 1) is available here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
The issues of natural variability are best approached via the index and terms like “variability”, “natural forcings”, “climate variability” but also on the key drivers of natural variability including ENSO, El Nino, the Southern Annual Mode, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and so forth. The link to the 2007 IPCC report (working group 1) is available here:
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar4/wg1/
In addition to the search terms listed above, there is a FAQ on natural variability in Chapter 2.
The statements around the IPCC ignoring reviewers comments needs to be considered in context: First, see
https://www.ipcc.ch/news_and_events/docs/factsheets/FS_review_process.pdf
Note that there are tens of thousands of reviewers’ comments and the fact that a reviewer raises an issue does not mean that this has to lead to a change in the IPCC report. The comment might be erroneous for example. Following exactly how the First Order Draft is modified to become the Second Order Draft and then the final draft based on reviewers’ comments, and the responses by the authors is a nightmare given there are 20,000 to 30,000 comments on the working group 1 reports. However, details are available at:
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ar5/review_of_wg_contributions.pdf
Letters from the reviewer editors are available at: (11MB, 102 pages)
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/drafts/WGI%20AR5%20Review%20Editor%20Report%20(30%20Jan%202014).pdf
Unauthorised releases of all reviewers’ comments for the 5th Assessment report can be found on line – whether these are accurate in all respects is difficult to determine.
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29 Jun: Daily Caller: Andrew Follett: Trump To Abolish Obama’s Green Legacy By Boosting Coal And Nuclear Projects
President Donald Trump announced he’s lifting Obama-era policies preventing the financing of overseas coal plants, along with reviewing policies hindering nuclear energy…
Trump will encourage the World Bank to finance coal plants in developing nations, and his administration will begin a comprehensive review of U.S. nuclear power policy. The administration is expected to push a permanent nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada…
Environmentalists began attacking the policy shift before Trump had even announced it…
Trump has already signed resolutions to repeal 13 major regulations to eliminate 4.3 million hours of paperwork and $36.2 billion in compliance costs…
Coal and nuclear power provided about 30 and 20 percent of all electricity generated in the U.S. in the year 2016 respectively, according to data from Energy Information Administration (EIA).
http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/29/trump-to-abolish-obamas-green-legacy-by-boosting-coal-and-nuclear-projects/
30
30 Jun: Australian: Rio shareholders back Yancoal bid as chairman silent on windfall plan
by Matt Chambers with AAP
Rio Tinto shareholders have backed the sale of the company’s Hunter Valley coal operations to China’s Yancoal for $US2.69 billion.
More than 97 per cent of the shareholders at the general meetings in London and Sydney voted in favour of the offer, Rio Tinto said in a statement to the ASX…
Rio Tinto chairman Jan du Plessis earlier refused to be drawn on whether Rio will return directly to shareholders any of the proceeds it looks set to receive from selling its Coal & Allied mines in the Hunter Valley to Yancoal Australia…
“We will use it for general corporate purposes. In due course, once we have the money in the bank, we will consider what we do with the proceeds in the normal capital allocation process in weighing up shareholder returns, investing in growth or strengthening the balance sheet.”…
When asked why Rio was getting out of coal, Rio chief Jean Sebastian Jacques said only that the company believed it should invest in iron ore, bauxite and copper, not coal.
***When pressed on coal’s future, Mr du Plessis said: “Coal will be an important source of energy for the world for a very long time.”…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/rio-chairman-silent-on-how-hunter-valley-coal-sale-windfall-will-be-allocated/news-story/c675f40bf0dac9bf202d8ad3023d0362
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Rational thinking people would look on this South Australian electrical power generation as an experiment which has shown that it really just doesn’t work.
Keep right at the top of your mind here that the WHOLE State of South Australia (SA) only consumes just a tad more than 6% of Australia’s total power consumption.
SIX PERCENT.
Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane EACH consume almost double the power of South Australia as a whole. (That’s each here, and not those three Capital cities added together.)
If they cannot make this work on such a tiny scale, then how do they even think it will work on the larger scale.
At the moment, I’m doing an exercise to check the output of ALL the Australian Wind Power generation for the last four Months, and today being the last day of the Month, I’ll have all the data in one place. It’s already shown me that wind power over these last four Months is averaging only a 22% Capacity Factor. (CF)
Capacity Factor alone can give a sort of false impression.
Think of the total Nameplate for wind, which is 4400MW and running at a three Month CF, then that’s a monthly, weekly daily average of 970MW ….. and again this is for the WHOLE of Australia, not just South Australia.
In South Australia, that Nameplate is 1700MW, so, an average 22% of that is 374MW, and really, anything operating at only 22% of its actual total operational capability should just be laughed out of existence.
However, see here how it might tend to give a false impression ….. a (relatively) stable total of 374MW no matter what.
But when you look at it on an individual basis, it shows up the actual problem with wind power ….. that variability, its intermittency.
In the old days, SA had coal fired power plants, albeit ancient, but they did deliver a stable power across the whole day, week, Month. When the time came for down time for maintenance, the grid operators knew well in advance, and they could schedule for secondary power plants to come on line to take up the slack. The coal fired power was cheap, and knowing the down time, then that secondary plant could plan effectively to be ready to go, so here we have certainty, and it could be readily planned to go smoothly, hence also a cheaper (than now anyway) exercise overall.
Okay then, scroll forward to now.
Look at this image, and you’ll all need to do the usual little bit of work. Rather than show you all a really bad day for wind power, (and trust me, there’s an awful of of THEM) I’ll cherry pick the best single day over the last three Months, the 9th April 2017.
This is the link.
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Whoops!
Hit Post Comment instead of Preview.
Part 2 of above comment.
Okay, so now you are at the link, see that chart there, well, hit the MW button at the top right. Then under that list of wind plants, see the States, well UNTICK all except SA and the box above it Subtotal, and also untick the box titled Total.
See how wind in SA did well on this day, up to a maximum of (around) 1500MW, and that’s a CF of 88%.
The average for the day was (around) 1200MW, a CF of 70%.
However, the point I am making here is in reference back to the old (cheap) days of certainty when those coal fired plants closed for maintenance, with plenty of forewarning as to the time and the duration.
See how on this great day for wind, the peak is at about 5PM and that’s the total of 1500MW, and of itself, that’s almost 70% of the total power requirement for the State at that time.
But note here that within three hours, it has lost almost 700MW, in three hours.
Now the grid controller needs to watch output by the minute. It’s not a straight line across the page like it once was with coal fired power providing that straight line certainty.
It’s now all over the place, up and down, and so those secondary power plants need someone virtually hovering over the ‘ON/OFF’ switch to start and stop the whole plant at a moment’s notice.
There is no certainty in that.
They cannot plan ahead.
They cannot buy the gas at a cheap rate, knowing in advance when it is needed.
The plant’s wear and tear rate rises astronomically with intermittent use like this.
Power costs rise.
Power costs rise.
See the point here.
Even on the best days, power costs are expensive.
Because of wind power.
I said it could be viewed as an experiment.
It’s in reality a failed experiment.
SIX PERCENT of Australia’s power, and they can’t even make that work.
Tony.
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29 Jun: Newsweek: Merkel Slams Trump: ‘We Can’t Wait for the Last Man on Earth to Be Convinced by Climate Change’
By Jason Le Miere
http://www.newsweek.com/merkel-trump-climate-change-paris-630096
29 Jun: ClimateChangeNews: Germany ‘massively weakened’ draft G20 climate plan to appease Trump
Latest draft of German plan for next week’s Hamburg meeting contains major concessions to US and opens door for coal projects to be defined as “clean”
By Arthur Neslen in Brussels
Germany’s G20 presidency dramatically weakened a climate action plan, gutting it of ambitious language and defining gas, and potentially even some coal power, as “clean technologies”, in an attempt to appeal to US president Donald Trump…
The action plan was intended to be agreed at next week’s Hamburg G20 summit. Climate Home has seen two versions, drafted in March and May of this year. The latter shows the degree to which the German presidency has bent to the will of the Trump White House.
Several elements that have been REMOVED in the May draft are:
•A 2025 deadline for the end of fossil fuel subsidies
•References to the risk of “stranded assets”
•A call for “the alignment of public expenditure and infrastructure planning with the goals of the Paris Agreement”
•A push for carbon pricing
•A commitment to publish mid-century decarbonisation blueprints by next year
•A pledge to develop a “profound” climate plan for multilateral development banks
•Seven references to the UN’s 2018 review of nationally-determined contributions
•11 references to the 2050 mid-century pathway for net zero emission
•16 mentions of infrastructure decarbonisation
“The US massively weakened the language in the energy part of the action plan,” one source with knowledge of the negotiations said. “It pushed for references to so-called ‘clean’ fossil fuels and made it less explicit that the energy transition has to be built on energy efficiency and renewables.”
“It also provided cover to some other G20 members – such as the Saudis and Russia – to weaken some climate sections of the document, including the pledge to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.”…
If the drafts are agreed in this form, the admission from the international community that coal projects can be considered clean would be a major diplomatic victory for Trump, who has championed US miners, to parade back in the US…
In other G20 negotiations, a wrangle over references to the Paris deal in the main leaders’ communique is proving no less contentious…READ ALL
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/06/29/germany-massively-weakened-draft-g20-climate-action-plan-appease-trump/
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29 Jun: Reuters: New coal power plants may block Japan’s carbon emissions goal: minister
By Yuka Obayashi and Ami Miyazaki, TOKYO
Even as it champions the Paris climate agreement, Japan – the world’s fifth-biggest carbon emitter – continues its massive reliance on coal and natural gas, putting it out of step with the rest of the Group of Seven bloc and even South Korea…
Coal now accounts for about 31 percent of Japan’s power generation mix. Over the next decade, companies plan to build 41 new coal-fired power stations, according to data from government and companies…
Under the Paris deal, Japan has pledged to trim its carbon emissions by 26 percent in 2030 from 2013 levels.
The ministry estimates that Japan’s emissions could exceed its 2030 target by 70 million tonnes if all the coal power plants were built.
(Environment Minister Kouichi) Yamamoto said carbon pricing can help Japan hit its further target to slashing emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
“By 2050, we don’t aim to lower carbon, but we aim to exit from carbon. Carbon pricing is the most efficient tool to help us achieve the 2050 goal,” Yamamoto said.
The environment ministry recently set up a panel to discuss an appropriate carbon pricing. But the industry ministry has opposed it, claiming Japan already has high taxes on oil and coal, along with environment tax..
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-environment-analysis-idUSKBN19K15Z
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It seems to be emerging globally that the worst nasty with renewables is the matching ofquality factors when merged,not just volts and amps, but frequency and more specialist matters such as quadrature. These loom really large for, for example, a large windfarm is disconnected then re connected. It can be overcome by clever engineers but it’s importance was underscored by Finkel suggesting that these quality factors be part of the farm rather than part of grid, thus potentially lessening the shock of reconnection.
Still we have the silence of the experts, refusing to date in public whether renewables are mostly a pig in a poke.
All this theory was well known years ago, yet projects proceeded. Why?
Geoff
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‘Why?’
There was no due diligence because the ‘precautionary principle’ overwhelmed all rational thought.
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Yaaay! Go South Australia!
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During my travels I take note of wind turbines alongside the roads and this morning on the Kennedy Highway (Savannah Way – Route No.1) crossing the Atherton Tablelands heading south west there was a “wind farm” and every one of the wind turbines were operating, a rare sight.
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The Financial Review front page is about rocketing energy prices. For some, July 1st 2017 will see the quadrupling of their costs. Expect more closures. Also the letter from John Roskam of the IPA says he was truly shocked that electricity is 10% of the disposal income of the poor. It has been front page for some time, but Tony Abbott’s speech left him amazed and he called it unconscionable.
We are well past electricity prices being a problem. As the Fin Rev said, the sudden closure of a Bass Strait rig at the start of winter has taken 15% of our gas supplies out. Most retail customers will see 20% increase on July 1st. Still Weatherill and Turnbull insist there is no problem and they will fix it anyway. I note Weatherill must have done a deal to bring Pelican Point’s gas online but Turnbull’s battery in the sky is a decade away. I would also note Turnbull’s water battery does not require the buidling of a new dam, so it is probably Green policy and Green approved, which all his decisions must be.
So tomorrow, it will all hit the very slowly moving fans as the winter falls across the South and energy demands peak. Sunny South Australia may be spared the worst of it but they will be hit in summer. Governments will fall rapidly from here on, unless Hazelwood is brought back on line at Engie’s price. It was running flat out when it was closed, to prove a very good point. Turnbull will not survive the winter break.
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The pretence that ripping off electricity customers to pay for useless windmills will be the most important topic. What disappointed me in Abbott’s speech is that he only suggested a moratorium on ‘subsidizing’ wind and solar. Rubbish. Repeal the RET and start again. Besides as Alan Kohler and Turnbull and every other commentator says Green power is cheaper, let them build their own windmills and buy and install their own solar panels with their own money, not ours. There are fortunes to be made undercutting evil coal.
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Once again on this cold afternoon the wind refuses to blow over SA, delivering only 10 MW in SA versus electricity demand of 1500 MW. So they have 1250 MW being supplied from high priced natural gas, including 450 MW from the restreamed Pelican Point, with the balance of 250 MW to meet demand coming from Vic.
But Vic has only 5 MW from wind, and is importing 90 MW of hydro from Tassie, and then generating over 1000 MW from natural gas, including about 800 MW from Newport and Mortlake to meet demand of 6,100 MW with balance of supply from coal.
Meanwhile the pollies keep trying to explain away the high electricity prices – wind is free isn’t it? But it must be backed up by costly gas generators, and those “wise” pollies have decided to ban the search for extra gas supplies. So spot gas prices are now $12/gigajoule, used to be $4.00, current average about $9.00.
Current wholesale spot electricity price in SA is 16.6 cents/KWhr, and in Vic it’s 15 cents. Meanwhile in coal rich Qld the spot price is 8.8 cents/KWhr. Please explain.
Memo to pollies: No more excuses, DO SOMETHING!!
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And as we ramp up towards the evening peak, SA needs another 500 MW that will be drawn from Vic, but Vic is increasing supplies from NSW, and they are increasing supply from Qld.
So it’s a long power cord that is keeping the lights on in SA tonight.
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Its a Lukewarm World
‘Natural factors, unforeseen events responsible for models over-estimating temperature rises, say leading climate scientists.’
Graham Lloyd / Oz
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I still think Alan Kohler’s piece a week ago should be framed
“Australia’s post-coal economy.
In his address to the National Press Club on Wednesday, Chief Scientist Alan Finkel said: “Ever cheaper wind and large-scale solar, even without subsidies, are dominating investor interest. Investors prefer wind and solar because they are now cheaper to build than traditional generation such as hydro and coal.”
Finkel was backed up on the same day by the CEO of AGL Energy, Andy Vesey, who said: “We don’t see anything baseload other than renewables.”
So, no need to subsidise renewables. The only use for a scheme that does so is to humiliate Malcolm Turnbull, because he can’t get it past the dills in his party.”
We should all just agree! Stop the RET immediately. Stop taking our money to buy windmills for others.
Now according to all the experts, Austrlia’s Chief Scientist, the head of AGL and even a most senior economist commentator, They do not need it, as they are cheaper to build and they will be the new baseload. All great news. Start tomorrow. Save Malcolm Turnbull from being embarrassed. Please.
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Besides, the raid on the banks, $4Bn over 4 years is nothing like the $24Bn over 4 years of the RET, now totally unnecessary.
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Besides, it would be really a hoot to see all the windfarms go out of business the next day.
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It had to happen. Graham Lloyd, environment writer for the Australian.
Climate models over-estimated warming
Unforeseen factors that contributed to cooling included volcanic eruptions, a weaker sun in the last solar cycle and a rise in pollution from coal-fired power plants in China.
So the problems is.. a rise in pollution from coal-fired power plants in China. Now what sort of pollution is that? Surely not CO2?
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In case I was not clear, the reason the world is cooling is… (carbon) pollution.
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So to stop the warming AND the cooling, stop carbon pollution. More Chinese windmills built with CO2.
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Dr David Whitehouse gives an honest assessment.
‘The lesson of the pause is not that the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist, but rather that the computer models, which predicted an acceleration in global warming, and on which current policy is based, have proved to be inaccurate. Nevertheless, the pause is an important event that enriches our understanding of a highly complex climate system. In the future, a long-term rise in global temperatures may resume. There is a good chance, however, that the recent super El Niño only interrupted the 1997-2014 pause. No-one knows. But if the pause were to resume or warming keeps slowing down, many of the fundamental assumptions of climate science would have to be re-assessed.’
GWPF
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Jo
“South Australia has the largest uranium deposit in the world, which it digs up to sell to other countries to make electricity.”
IIRC the last time the lights went out they couldn’t dig it up
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hopefully, Trey in the comments is right, but here is another example of Trump’s own party going along with the Dems:
29 Jun: FrontPage: Daniel Greenfield: Republicans Force Pentagon to Push Global Warming
Every time you think Congress has hit rock bottom, they manage to exceed your expectations…READ ON
FROM COMMENTS:
Trey Von Dinkis: It’s a PROPOSAL in a BILL.
Trump will flush it down the toilet, IF it gets to his desk
http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/267142/republicans-force-pentagon-push-global-warming-daniel-greenfield
above links to The Hill, which wrongly has Susan Davis as a Republican, when she is Dem-San Diego.
28 Jun: Miami Herald: Pentagon, Trump are at odds on climate change — and Democrats are taking advantage
By Vera Bergengruen
An amendment to the annual defense policy bill requiring the Pentagon to submit a report on the national-security threats posed by climate change was approved by members of the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.
The text, co-sponsored by every Democratic member of the committee, calls climate change “a direct threat to the national security of the United States,” and cites similar statements made by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and other top military brass, highlighting the rift between President Donald Trump and the Pentagon when it comes to global warming.
“By talking about it in terms of national security, it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to ignore the fact that climate change is here, it’s real, it’s happening,” Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., who proposed the amendment, told McClatchy…
The Pentagon would have a year to submit an assesment of the 10 military bases within each service most threatened by rising sea levels, drought and thawing permafrost. It also asks for the costs of mitigating those effects.
Only one lawmaker, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., spoke against the amendment, saying “there is no evidence that climate change causes war.” Some Republicans backed the measure, saying it was a small, common-sense step.
“We are talking about a report,” said Rep. ***Jim Bridenstine, R-Okla. “It is just a report.”
Ultimately, most Republicans on the GOP-controlled commitee sided with the Pentagon’s long-held view that the effects of climate change pose an increasingly urgent security threat. The final bill still has to be approved by the full House…
This isn’t new for the military. For more than a decade, as climate change became a political football, the Pentagon was quietly gathering data, publishing roadmaps for climate change adaptation, and assessing how to mitigate the the risks…
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article158716619.html
***Jim Bridenstine is known as a “climate denier”!
Republicans on the Committee appear to be in the majority 34-27.
with the G20 coming up, I call this very bad timing and I hope it doesn’t pass in the House, or gets vetoed by the President.
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Another closure in SA
“Tenneco to close SA exhaust plant”
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/breaking-news/tenneco-to-close-sa-exhaust-plant/news-story/e07fe43f2952d487c6090127f7763f99
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One of the myths of windpower is that if only you had enough of them (like tens of millions) over a large enough geographical range then the wind would always be blowing SOMEWHERE and they would be able to supply reliable power. Of course you would need to ignore the massive interconnection cost and electrical losses. Well, it turns out that even over a continent the size of Australia the wind tends to be either blowing in most places or not blowing so a continental wide distribution of windmills will not produce reliable power.
The solution is to return to centralised cheap coal, gas, nuclear or hydro power stations that can deliver clean, reliable, inexpensive power indefinitely.
Simple really, and the technology has been worked out for over a century (except nuclear) with constant ongoing improvements.
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If you live in SA make certain you have your generator fuelled or battery charged ready for next week:
When Hazelwood closed, I predicted the first forced outages this week but next week looking more likely. If they can get through July on a song and prayer then probably February 2018 for a more serious test of the intermittents.
As a long time sailor I have learnt never to offer an ETA. Wind is fickle. There are no guarantees when you rely on it.
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[…] Nova: South Australia will take top prize for World’s Most Expensive Electricity from Denmark on July 1… South Australia will overtake Denmark as having the world’s most expensive electricity when the […]
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