Renewable energy pollutes London but what’s a bit of smog if you’re saving the world?

Managing the global climate is a tough thing. Sacrifices are required.

The last 100 years has been a success story of cleaner air in London. But air pollution is on the rise again. The fear of carbon is partly responsible for over a million people returning to burning “renewable wood” instead of clean gas and turning around a century long trend. Welcome to the “progressive” 21st century. Too bad about about the dusty lungs and razed trees.

As much as a third of small particle pollution is due to wood fires.

Wood-burning stoves are increasingly popular in middle-class homes and hotels, with 1.5 million across Britain and 200,000 sold annually. Old fireplaces have also been opened up in many houses and can cause greater pollution than stoves. Wood burning is most popular in the southeast, where it is done in 16 per cent of households compared with less than 5 per cent in northern England and Scotland.

Between a quarter and a third of all fine particle pollution in London comes from domestic wood burning. During a period of very high air pollution in January, it contributed half the toxic emissions in some areas of the city, King’s College London found.

 It is alleged that air pollution causes “9,500 early deaths a year in London and 40,000 across Britain”.

h/t GWPF

The GWPF issued a press release  earlier this year saying Government Support For Wood-Burning Partly To Blame For Rising Smog Threat

Press Release, 24 January 2017 — In response to the London smog alert, the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) is calling on the Government to abolish all support for diesel engines and wood-burners which are posing a growing threat to the health of urban populations.

Unusually high amount of domestic wood burning, some of which are subsidised under the Renewable Heat Incentive, has been partly blamed for the latest smog alarm.

Wood-burning has been advocated and incentives by the Government as a policy to decarbonise the residential sector and has been increasing rapidly in recent years, largely due to a combination of green subsidies and climate campaigning.

As a result, there has been a deterioration of air quality in many cities which has contributed to the current smog hazard in London. Like wood-burning stoves, diesel engines have also been specifically encouraged by EU, and UK policies, in the interests of reduced CO2 emissions.

In a recent report, the Royal College of Physicians warned that ‘the increasing popularity of wood burning for heating, in part due to policies to reduce CO2 emissions, risks undoing some of the air quality improvements that have resulted from widespread adoption of gas for domestic heating.’

“The government has a responsibility to reduce the negative impact of wood-burning on health and should now abolish any support which is increasing the risk to the health and well-being of urban populations,” said Dr Benny Peiser, director of the GWPF.

9.7 out of 10 based on 93 ratings

183 comments to Renewable energy pollutes London but what’s a bit of smog if you’re saving the world?

  • #
    RobR

    The great law of inintended consequences strikes once more. When will the watermelons ever think things through before developing patently stupid policies and implementing them even against much more common sense knowledge?

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    • #
      William

      RobR, why is it we can all see these consequences well before they occur, but still they come as a complete and stunning surprise to the gormless alarmist camp? Yes, a rhetorical question I know, but will they ever learn? Again a rhetorical question.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Because, despite thier airs and graces they put on trying to look clever and sophistocated, they really are quite stupid.

        End of story.

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          TedM

          Yes Steve, an ignorance born of consumate arrogance. it is endemic within the Green movement.

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        • #

          A committee designed horse looks like a camel; these jokes have made the rounds for years, but we never learn. Our politicians aren’t just stupid [though they are that too], they have bad intentions.

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      About February the 30TH in whatever year you like.
      As I said on WE unthreaded I signed an on-line petition for the release of an opponent of oil palms in Cameroon. I have never understood why Greens can claim that destroying a forest, usually by burning it and releasing CO2, planting oil palms and harvesting the fruit, processing it and transporting the oil, releasing CO2, then burning the product releasing more CO2, can in any way be said to reduce CO2 emissions. Nor why politicians swallow such garbage.
      Then in the USA, Finland, Russia and Slovakia forests are being turned into wood pellets at an enormous rate (ONE firm alone in Russia exports 800,000 tonnes p.a.) to be burnt as “green fuel”. Especially when the evidence from the (half) conversion of Drax power station in England resulted in a 32-33% INCREASE in CO2 emitted.
      Indeed it is so common to find green ideas that result in the reverse of the stated aims we must wonder about their collective IQ.

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      • #
        Duster

        We might want be wondering about their intent too. Claiming that the harm is unintended certainly doesn’t make things less harmful. And, given how obvious the results are likely to be, why propose a bad idea to begin with? One Youtube page has predicted that, regardless of the obviously “anomalous” cold weather in many places, and an Arctic ice pack setting records for an early start on the seasonal growth and a record extent for the last 10 years, warmists will attribute any cooling to volcanism. Many warmist site are already “predicting” cooling due to volcanism. The cooling prior to the eruptions is being ignored.

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    • #
      Yonniestone

      London should go full retro and re-impose the window tax……and for those that question any green initiatives a Johari Window Tax.

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    • #
      AndyG55

      “unintended consequences ”

      BS.. the consequences were KNOWN and VERY PREDICTABLE.

      That means they MUST have been intended.

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      • #
        Greg Cavanagh

        For a sane person, the consequences were obvious. For an insane person, it’s a complete surprise.

        Magical Thinking.

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        • #
          OriginalSteve

          You see, if gas and electricity are super expensive in order to “save the world”, you cant have people able to heat thier hose cheaply via wood…oh no no no…we humans are scum and need to die from the cold….so we pay a fortune for the right to be cold…..

          Thus watermellons really are quite nasty…

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          • #
            Dennis

            Not very long ago the Greens promoted wood burning of a renewable resource.

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          • #
            Gerry, England

            Gas hasn’t been made expensive but electricity has due to global warming taxes. Most properties in London will have gas CH. I have gas CH but use a fire to reduce use but looking to the future when our electricity grid has regular failures, the CH won’t work so the fire is there and ready. Of course our government morons plan to ban gas as a domestic fuel in the 2030s.

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      • #

        Andy55
        There is another possible explanation for not taking into account the “unintended consequences“. The British Government were grossly negligent. It is because nobody critically checks Climate Change policy initiatives to see if it will achieve the intended aims and do not have serious side effects. It is not part of any conspiracy, but due to not questioning anything that is put forward. The Climate Change Act 2008 only looks at achieving targets and has no provisions for any critical audit of those arbitrary targets, nor any consideration of costs.

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    • #
      RobK

      Headline reads:
      “Higher electricity prices makes wood stoves competitive”
      (really, they are a pain to run and clean out and dusty)

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      • #
        Dennis

        But they are also very very efficient at warming all of a farmhouse like mine.

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      • #
        Rupert Ashford

        A-ha!! I was wondering about this when I read the post. The “intended” approach of making traditional energy sources like gas and base-load power (gasoline?) so expensive that renewable unreliables become affordable, causes households to reconsider their budgets and then a great number of them are forced to go “retro” just to survive. No-one will voluntarily start up wood-fired stoves and heaters (and old fireplaces) just because it’s “cool” (it’s not, hard work to maintain and dirty) so there must be a monetary reason.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        I don’t know about the rest of the country, but London used to suffer from something called “smog” – a contraction of the words “smoke” and “fog” – in the early 1950’s. The greater London area is low-lying, and forms a natural basin for the smog to hang around in.

        Smoke from wood fires, or burners, produces large particulates, with a high acid content. You would not want to breath the stuff, for too long.

        Unless they have been taken down, you can find film clips on Youtube of people walking to work with surgical masks over their faces.

        Here is one, I discovered in a ten-second search: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN4GhEqtUJ0

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    • #
      Roger

      What is lacking from this subject is some joined-up thinking rather than political posturing.

      Mayor Khan began the air scare with particulates from diesel vehicles and is now banning / imposing additional ‘congestion charge’ costs on these. He blamed diesel vehicles for the pollution – despite the EU and Government policies of just a few years ago to encourage drivers to shift from petrol to diesel.

      He has now turned his attention to wood-burning stoves which it appears are responsible for between one quarter and one third of London’s air pollution. Although Khan hasn’t said this, it appears a ban on woodburners would achieve a far greater reduction in air pollution than could be achieved by removing or restricting diesel vehicles …… but that won’t stop him attacking private vehicles.

      The reality is that the greatest causes of pollution from vehicles in London is directly caused by the Congestion and the constant stop / start / acceleration that decreases fuel consumption and causes an increase in incompletely burned fuel from exhausts. The congestion was made very much worse under a previous left-wing Labour Mayor, Ken Livingstone, who introduced vast numbers of speed humps, closed roads, one-way systems, bicycle and bus lanes, and rephasing of traffic lights. It followed a very common Labour Council approach which has been ongoing for many years of causing as much congestion as possible to try and force people to use public transpotr rather than private vehicles. In Slough for example in the 1970s and 1980s it was possible to drive the 4 or 5 miles through the town on the old Bath Road (A4) without stopping once; there were about 12 sets of traffic lights but were all phased so that a vehicle travelling at 35-40 mph met green lights all the way. In the 1990s the Labour council rephased the lights to ensure that vehicles had to stop at every set of lights …… journey times , congestion and pollution immediately increased.

      Around 10 years ago the London Ambulance Service produced a report which showed that the ‘traffic calming’ measures that the Mayor had said were to reduce speeds and accidents were causing the deaths of More people than they were saving lives. This was because of the significant increase in response times by emergency services – ambulance, fire and rescue and police – to life threatening events such as strokes, heart attacks, fires, road traffic accidents. They were held up by speed humps, one way systems and traffic congestion from those and re-phased traffic lights.

      Is there going to be any commonsense debate around these topics in London? I doubt it very much with most decisions nowadays being made from political, anti-science ‘green’ dogma by politicians who have hitched their politics to the socialist-marxist green blob..

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      • #
        Annie

        Roger, I seem to remember that one had to hit 30mph at the first traffic light through Slough on the old A4 in order to keep moving. I did drive through there a few times and it worked.

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        • #
          Roger

          Sort of but the Bath Road had then, as now, a 40mph limit, if you were stopped at the first then so long as you drove on at between 35-40mph you had a free run through. If you drove at 30mph then you would get stopped by lights further along as your speed was putting you out of sync with the lights.

          The volume of traffic today compared to the 1970s is unbelievable – my grown-up children find it hard to understand that in the the mid 1970s there was less traffic on the M4 during rush hour in Berkshire than you find today at 3.00 am. And at midnight in the 1970s you could safely drive at 160mph (and more) on the M4 and might pass just half a dozen vehicles in 15 miles …….

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          • #
            KinkyKeith

            Roger

            Was that supposed to be 160 kph?

            If that was mph, wow.

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            • #
              Roger

              KK, definitely MPH.

              In the 1970s I had a succession of what would today be called supercars to use. I was running a BMW dealership at the age of 24, was very well paid and living with parents so no major living expenses ….. bought some fabulous second-hand cars to use, each for 2-3 months before selling and buying another, didn’t lose any money on any of them so it didn’t cost me and as I would go to work in them sometimes rather than my BMW 3.0 CSi demonstrator the garage paid my fuel costs … heaven

              Porsche 933 Turbo would go well off the end of the speedo which only showed to 160mph, absolutely horrible on big roundabouts in the winter as the turbo wasn’t as progressive as they are now and it would suddenly kick in …
              Lamborghini Jarama – only 12 ever made in RHD and better handling than any other car I have ever driven – would show 175 +
              Ferrari boxer similar speed to the Lambo,
              BMW 3.0 CSL (lightweight ‘Batmobile’) 160ish
              Maserati Bora 175;
              Aston DBS V8 155 or so – fastest lorry ever made and a nightmare on country lanes due to size
              V12 E type – never dared more than 130 or so as the power steering was not speed related and it was as finger-tip light to turn at that speed as it was when parking!
              and a few other slower , but fun cars such as Rolls Corniche Convertible, Jensen interceptor, Marcos mantis, Mercedes 600 Pullman, Merc 300 SEL 6.3 (peanuts to buy in 1974 at the height of the fuel crisis) etc.

              No speed cameras in those days, no motorway police, no breathalyser and police had no real concern about drink driving – driving could be fun then – unlike nowadays in the UK !

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              • #
                Alfred

                I was at a boarding school (Stowe) near Buckingham in the 1960’s. The M1 had just opened and it was quite empty.

                Once I got a lift from a Dad taking his boy to London. I sat in the cramped rear of the Aston Martin DB6 while he drove at some ridiculous speed. Can’t do it today.

                20

            • #
              Annie

              My OH had friends who had a Jaguar and drove down the A30 at about 100mph!

              50

              • #
                OriginalSteve

                I remember driving around the M25 at 2am with our 350 quid little A reg Jetta screaming its head off at 70mph, and a lambo lopes past as barely ticking over….I miss the UK for its love of speed and sensible approach to policing…

                20

          • #
            Annie

            In the 60’s in my case Roger, and it was 30 mph. Starting from the first set one went as quickly as possible to 30mph and then the system really did work. I had a Morris Minor in those days!

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            • #
              Annie

              It’s top speed was 55mph! 🙁

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              • #
                Peter C

                I had a Jaguar XJC V12 until recently. It cost me a considerable amount of money. But it was almost worth it. If the engine did not start instantly, which it sometimes did, it was like starting a jet engine. When running it was very smooth with a useful response to full throttle.

                The best part was the leather seats, the deep pile carpets and the wood grain dash board with lots of instruments. It was a cross between a fighter plane and a nice city club to just to sit in.

                However one draw back was; I could pass anything on the road, except a petrol station. That was almost embarrassing once or twice, even though it had two petrol tanks.

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              • #
                Dennis

                I obtained my driver’s licence driving a Morris Minor 1000 utility. Which reminds me of a silly story about an Aussie farmer who had one and often parked in the rear of his favourite pub opposite the road home to the farm. One day he turned into his lane and discovered the council grader had been at work on the gravel surface. Driving on, and after a long hard day and nice cool beers, tired, his vehicle mounted gravel piled on one side of the lane.

                A neighbour arrived shortly afterwards and pulled up behind, puzzled as to why his neighbour was sitting in his Morris with the wheels spinning but going nowhere. He walked to the driver side window and asked: “what are you doing”. The driver glanced over at the central speedometer and replied: “about 60”.

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            • #
              Roger

              I’d love to have a Moggy today.

              20

        • #
          Radical Rodent

          One point that many seem to overlook is that, by slowing the traffic, you are creating MORE traffic congestion; the longer (in time) the journey is made, then the more vehicles there will be on the road at any one time. Let people get to their destination as quickly and safely as practicable, and traffic congestion with reduce.

          130

          • #
            Roger

            That is really well illustrated now with ‘smart motorways’ – main places you find real congestion (often nearly bumper to bumper) is where the motorway controllers have turned on a 40, 50 or 60mph speed limit for ‘congestion’ or ‘queueing, the only reason for the congestion is cars forced to slow up because of the mandatory limit the signs impose.

            See it most weekends at the M4 M25 junction because of signs saying “40mph Queuing at Junction” , the signs cause the congestion. Used to see the same near Rotherham on M1 for same reason – nobody queueing but seriously congested traffic until past the junction.

            But UK Highways agency have spent multi-millions on these ‘smart motorways’ so I guess they have to turn the signs on to justify the vast amounts of money spent.

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            • #
              Annie

              The M4/M25 jct just carries too much traffic.
              The variable speeds seemed to me to improve matters on the M42 around Birmingham.

              10

      • #
        Roger

        BTW in terms of particulate emissions from diesel vehicles these have been reduced through the use of diesel particulate filters 9DPF) by over 96% from 1988 and the latest EU standards which come into force in the next year or so will see those reduce even further to around ~99%. In the 1990s the scare was over PM10s but has since moved on, as these have been nearly eliminated, to the small PM2.5s. NOx and CO emissions have also been reducted by around 98%.

        Air quality in London has long been a problem but the political, green-driven initiatives have shifted from NOx and CO to particulates using research which suggests that ingestions of PM10s and PM2.5s can shorten lives …. but whether that is by a day or a year is something the research seems to have been unable to identify or qualtify.

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        • #
          Dennis

          My new Euro5 Standard Diesel Engine collects particulates and burns them them periodically emission being white.

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          • #
            OriginalSteve

            Is that the new standard that all oily sludge burning engines apparently can ….er….meet….with the right software hacks….*cough*

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    • #
      clive hoskin

      We are talking about the”Greens”here.They are like”Politicians”,not capable of an original thought.Have you ever seen a scheme that the Greenies have thought up,that hasn’t been a disaster?That’s because they are”Brain Dead”and are NEVER held to account for their stuff-ups,just like”Politicians”If they were held to account for their actions,they would ALL be in jail.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        There seems to be more support building for keeping liberal, labor and greens out of office at the next election….

        People are now sufficiently ticked off enough due to high power & gas prices to consider barring most of the main political parties from positions of power, as they are ( correctly ) seen as toxic to most australians welfare.

        As such, being booted from power and remaining in the political wilderness for at least 1 term will be sufficient time for them to think about their poor behaviour, while the rest of Oz gets on fixing the mess and discovering they can live happily without the these parties that represent globalist oligarchies.

        Its happening at the grassroots, its happeneing in the middle class….its becoming wide spread and it cant be stopped.

        The next election will be a political bloodbath….and not about time, too.

        All the talking heads will be unemployed.

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    • #
      daveR

      Khan’s just following necessary pc correctness. Any idea he’s a scooby about ‘carbon’ let alone excited carbon is first order waffle. He knows this but is quite complicit in furthering his political career.

      10

  • #
    manalive

    Unusually high amount of domestic wood burning, some of which are subsidised under the Renewable Heat Incentive, has been partly blamed for the latest smog alarm …

    LoL government policies to cut ‘pollution’ (CO2) causes pollution.

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  • #
    TdeF

    This is happening in Melbourne. Inner city. Pallet loads of firewood outside the supermarket. An old Victoria and Federation inner city suburb, people are once again lighting fires in a suburb full of fireplaces. It could be disastrous as old decayed chimneys light up.

    No one cares that we are bound to rediscover the reason the fireplaces were disused, the old briquette heaters thrown out. History doomed to repeat itself in the highest proportion Green area in the country. There is nothing Green about firewood. It was a curse now to be rediscovered by a new generation of people who think Green means a return to paleolithic living, where life was short and brutal. I can see it coming. A new Green carbon tax on firewood.

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    • #
      Asp

      Be positive. This has the potential of creating jobs for chimney sweeps.

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    • #

      TdeF brown coal briquettes have an high oxygen content, are easy to light and do not produce soot. A heap of briquettes left in the open so it can absorb moisture can self-ignite. When briquettes are burnt the temperature is relatively low. When heated without burning (pyrolysis) brown coal briquettes tend to first give off CO2 and then CO, when these are gone and heated further some methane will be given off. There are varieties of wood and they react differently depending on type. Most wood has a higher moisture content(t15 to 30%)than briquettes (about 13%). With pyrolysis oils can be given off particularly Eucalypts. The oil from sap can break down to give soot.
      In the old days it was black coal burnt in fire places that caused much soot and smog from chimneys. Coke was the preferred fuel but it was hard to light and of course more expensive.
      Wood is OK if very dry and allowed to burn at high temperature but ironbark is no good it turns to charcoal.

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      • #
        TdeF

        Yes, briquettes are far preferable to wood. Not only for convenience in many ways but particulate matter. Weight is another big plus as removal of water makes it much lighter. Even better is to burn the coal 100km away in a power station with traps for soot and scrubbers for sulphur and with complete combustion and higher efficiency at much higher temperature. Charcoal was the start of the iron age. Coke was the key to the very recent age of steel which created our modern quality of life. The one the Greens hate, the single invention which made their elite inner city lifestyle possible.

        According to Australian Greens leader Dr. Richard di Natale, Whyalla can make steel as long as they do not use coal. It shows you can be a GP and not know any chemistry, a fundamental requirement for membership of the Greens. Nor any idea what photosynthesis does or the role of Carbon Dioxide in all life. What are they teaching in medical courses?

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        • #
          TdeF

          Also in our Victoria terrace, there is a coal fireplace in every room. This was for coal, not wood or briquettes. Briquettes needed a closed system. Early Victoria did not have any briquettes until 1892, a way to dry and sell the abundant brown coal. So the houses ran on black coal with coal scuttles and they were damaged when people started to burn wood, which simply did not fit in the fireplace and burned too hot, wrecking the iron work.

          The house also had endless lead piping in the walls and in the roof for the town gas, generated nearby. There was no running water or sewerage, but the old houses had gas. In fact most Victorian houses were plumbed for the very early gas, with huge gasometers in most suburbs as in England. This stopped with the discovery of abundant Natural Gas in Bass Straight and the gasometers vanished. Now brown coal is stopping, we will quickly run our of gas and the production from Bass straight is half what it was.

          You would think the hundred years of clean energy development has all been forgotten. As written, the stores have tons of plastic wrapped firewood for sale. What politician has any idea of the history of heating homes as they follow their nutty dream of a windmill driven society while we keep the brown coal in the ground.

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          • #
            TdeF

            Looking up the history of briquettes, the wide supply of briquettes did not start until they were made by the SEC after 1910. I have no idea where early inhabitants of Melbourne sourced their coal. It looks like coal brought by boat to Port Melbourne pier. Gas distribution though started in 1872, which would surprise most people.

            A fascinating history at the local gasworks park

            In all the government and all parties worked hard to provide secure, cheap and clean power to the state and the people. What happened to politicians? They are the ones destroying what was built.

            Then you get the giant Australian Gas & Light company whose directors can see massive profits in windmills and destruction of everything on which their company was based? This sort of short termism gives capitalism and democracy a bad name, but I suppose that is the elitist idea.

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            • #

              TdeF I think you will find there was a black coal mine at Wonthaggi Vic. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonthaggi. However, most black coal for gas production and steam raising was sourced from NSW mainly Newcastle. I know that black coal was brought into Geelong by ship upto about 1972 when natural gas became available in Geelong. I think gas making stopped in Melbourne around 1969.
              I think much of the Newcastle coal was loaded at Catherine Bay and transhipped on larger vessels at Ball’s Head in Sydney harbor through the company Coal & Allied.

              70

              • #
                TdeF

                Very interesting. In the gasworks park history, they talk of real problems with black coal during and after the war, the move to gasification of brown coal in 1957 just before the discovery of natural gas reserves in 1960. We have a real history of moving slowly until recently when thanks to the RET, we have made our entire coal network unprofitable by massive government interference in the market. Now even our biggest coal power producers are calling coal uneconomic against wind. There is no money to be made supplying plentiful, cheap and reliable coal power.

                Who decided this? Not the people of Australia. Just a few politicians trying to please a minority. It is absolutely crazy to make coal unprofitable by taxation. Now coal power, 4c kw/hr at wholesale is uncompetitive and we are paying 40c kw/hr for coal power, all to middle men. The destruction of our entire way of life is accelerating aided wittingly and unwittingly by the idiots we call politicians.

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              • #
                TdeF

                While only one in a hundred people is a scientist, perhaps we need affirmative action in our parliament to ensure that science competent people are elected. To have our country run by activist Green lawyers like Malcolm Turnbull, Christopher Pyne, George Brandis and friends is appalling. Once you get past addition, they are lost. The Periodic Table is a total mystery. Photosynthesis is a cheap Chinese camera.

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              • #
                TdeF

                What was amazing about Margaret Thatcher is that she was an Oxford Graduate in Honours Chemistry. Then married she obtained a law degree. So a scientist first and a lawyer second. Even she though was fooled by the overwhelming cry for minimal CO2 and frankly it suited her campaign against the activist coal miners of Wales. Later though she was to recant when it became obvious that CO2 based warming was simply not happening. Nor the rapid ocean rise. Nor anything else. Only we in Australia are fooled. Then what do expect in the Clever Country run by lawyers?

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              • #
                KinkyKeith

                Hi Cementa

                That’s Catherine Hill Bay.

                It stopped operating some time ago but the huge loading jetty is still there.

                10

            • #

              TdeF another point of history is that much of gas supply in the Vic. was through the company Colonial Gas (Iam sure there was a gas plant in Footscray & in some country towns). This turned ,I think, into the Gas Supply Company which in turn was taken over by BORAL (which stands for Bitumen Oil Refinery Australia Ltd) BORAL later took over SA Oil & Gas. The energy division of BORAL was hived off as Origin Energy. Origin has just sold off some of the assets of SA Oil & Gas located in Otway basin in bass strait & onshore in Vic & wells in the Moomba basin in SA & Qld to Beach Petroleum. Beach maybe better placed to fight the stupidity of the SA & Vic. governments with respect to gas production and supply than Origin which has its fingers in electricity production & supply.

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            • #
              KinkyKeith

              I keep using the word, the one word that still to me seems extreme, when describing the current lack of groundedness in our politicians.
              As a youngster I was sometimes sent to get a small bag of coal for our stove which had an oven and hotplates.

              Gas mantles still had to be replaced but were mainly used in my time, along with candles, when the electricity failed and there was a blackout.

              Gas was used in a newer oven and in the copper where water was heated for washing clothes and the bath tub.

              I can’t recall burning wood much except in bonfires on cracker night.

              The word that describes the current state of our energy production and distribution, the mess and weirdness of having energy policy based on the fairy story of global warming; there is only one word;

              BIZZARE.

              KK

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  • #
    Bitter&twisted

    Clearly the “scientists” who advise the U.K. government have got alt to answer for.

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  • #
    RobK

    I use firewood. I have seen what they pay for a small bag of pine rounds in England. One of the advantages for me on a fairly remote farm in a temperate climate is that you can use a lot of household rubbish for kindling, I bet they do too, it would be hard to resist.
    My farm has a lot of stumps and fallen branches so cost and supply aren’t an issue. I’m willing to bet some people in England burn building residue and packaging, some of which might be treated with chemicals.
    A couple of wheelbarrow loads of eucalyptus sees me through the year. Using pine rather than eucalyptus, I’m guessing that would only last a couple of nights if it was their only source of heat in an English winter.
    I got the impression wood stoves in England were expensive and used more for the “ambience”, making their use somewhat pretentious and primordial. That said, a ban seems a bit draconian.

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      RobK

      P.s. I don’t use the air intake restriction to try to extend the burning period because it causes a lot of dust and smoke. If I paid top dollar for the wood, I’d feel a bit different. I’m guessing the English tend more to put a few bits in and make it last as long as possible by choking the fire and producing lots of smoke and monoxides. Lovely.

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      • #
        Roger

        Woodburning stoves start at about £200 – Chinese made and often with “CE” ‘approval’stamps that don’t bear much investigating ….

        You can fit one for yourself But if you are a developer or builder then it must be fitted by a Qualified person and that means lining the chimney with a flexible stainless steel liner andinstalling air vents in a wall to ensure a good supply of fresh air to reduce the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning – not that I’ve ever heard of a case of this from a woodburner, Plenty from portable gas fired heaters though.

        We have one but always run it with the door open so it acts more as a traditional fire with plenty of radiated heat rather than convected warm air and it gets through a lot of wood…. an advantage of having a flexible steel liner inside a brick chimney is that you don’t need to have the chimney swept, just build up a good fire, close the top door and open the bottom to ensure a massive air flow asnd before you know it there a well-contained chimney fire that burns all of the soot away – as my wife discovered by accident…….

        All the supermarkets now seem to sell bags of wood / logs / briquettes for wood burners nowadays – they aren’t cheap. We simply use wood off the farm.

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          Yonniestone

          Firewood’s not cheap to buy, in Victoria 1 tonne of Redgum is about $350 delivered and that can burn fast mid winter in a family home, the times we had a wood heater I found cutting the blocks smaller then experimenting with burn/airflow rates found the heaters sweet spot, also a heat exchange off the flue could pump some what would’ve been wasted heat back into another area of the house.

          People collecting wood from state forests, public and crown land without permits is rising as the energy prices spiral out of control, watching some pollie on TV whinging about it I wondered if they can comprehend what needy people will do for food water or fuel?, I suspect a bit of wood gathering would soon go on the back burner.

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            Robert Rosicka

            No permits required now in vic but they allocate forest areas to go to , $350 for a trailer load must include city tax , if my back wasn’t so bad I could make a fortune by buying down here for under a hundred and reselling up in the city .
            Red box when seasoned properly is long lasting and burns to a very fine ash and is my pick when out getting firewood .

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              Annie

              That collection period is for limited periods in limited areas and you have to show that you are local. Also, a tally is kept of how much you have collected, at least, in our part of Victoria.
              Luckily we have some ‘de facto’ woodlots on our place where weed seedlings of river red gum are growing so harvest them a little at a time cut and stack to season.
              I still miss the wonderful Welsh anthracite we used to burn in England…wonderful stuff and gave out marvellous heat from our multi-burner stove.

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                Annie,

                would that multi burner stove have been an Aga Cooker?

                First one I remember seeing was in The Duchess Of Duke Street.

                Amazing things really.

                Tony.

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                Annie

                No Tony. It was something much smaller, a Villager, but burned very nicely. We used wood in it at first but decided to use the coal option eventually and it was brilliant…it kept us very comfortable and we hardly needed the gas CH. That was just used as background, low heating upstairs, mainly in the bathroom. It was a good selling point when we returned DownUnder.

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                Annie

                Actually, I always wanted an AGA! Most places we went out to supper in Gloucestershire had one and the food was absolutely delicious!
                Here we have a Metal Dynamics ‘Gourmet’ stove….a bread oven similar to the Nectre one. It’s lit now and I just cooked my breakfast eggs on it. It gives us loads of hot water and heats a large room and 5 small bore CH radiators, of which 3 are always on in the cool weather, the bathrooms and the study.

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                Rereke Whakaaro

                Which village, did your villager come from?

                I have noticed that the number of villages, that did not have a resident idiot, seems to be increasing, over time. Perhaps you have identified the cause?

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                Robert Rosicka

                Annie not sure which part of Victoriastan your from but there is two seasons for firewood per year here , never been asked for ID , never had to tally up how many loads I take .
                There would be a half dozen if not more areas within 70Klms , only regulations we have is it must be for domestic and your use and size of trailer /ute per load .
                Any area that you can get to in a car is usually slim pickings but areas you need a 4×4 to get to are pretty good .
                I burn through about 8 trailer loads per season maybe more , this year about 10 loads .

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              • #
                Annie

                Murrindindi area. One period per year for a few weeks and it is carefully regulated to exclude those coming in to get it for commercial use. I think it is on now but we’ve not used it as we have enough here so far.
                We had a rotting red ironbark tree a bit too near the house. Despite cutting and stacking and well drying it I do not like it for burning, it stinks! Stringybark is awful to cut up and burns so so. River redgum is great, wattle good for quick cooking needs and, surprisingly to us, after three summers in drying, the pine gives a great fire for quick cooking but doesn’t burn for long (!)…it’s a good quick boost though.

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      AndyG55

      “somewhat pretentious and primordial.”

      Which is why greenies love them !!

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      Robert Rosicka

      Two wheel barrow loads per winter ? I use that a day .

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    NB

    RobR: Q: ‘When will the watermelons ever think things through’?. A: Never.
    William: ‘will they ever learn?’. A: No.

    Doncha know, burning wood is inherently virtuous. After all, it is natural. Unlike gas, which is, um, a chemical. The problem is not the virtue of wood-burning, it is that there are too many people doing it, in too small an area. The solution? Reduce the number of people, with the remainder living virtuously in villages…
    Is that nuts? Ask pink-batt Pete. Years ago, on ABC radio I heard him advocating exactly this. He was being interviewed alongside Bob Geldoff. Even Geldoff had to suggest to him to get real! When Geldoff is asking you to do a reality check, you can be sure you have drifted far, far away.

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      William

      Yes NB, it must be inherently virtuous – I recall seeing a photo of Bob Brown standing in front of his cottage with wood smoke curling up out of the chimney. It confirmed that as he is relying on a CO2 emitting heat source, he is a complete hypocrite.

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    What Class?

    What happened to the Clean Air Act? I remember particularly thick Melbourne fogs in the early sixties and nasty pollution. These pillocks must have some memory of those filthy days or at least know why the air is so clean these days.

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      Robert Rosicka

      If I had natural gas where I am I wouldn’t be burning wood .

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        Another Ian

        Hell of a lot of time and energy on the part of the operater in wood for fuel vs gas

        I’ve never seen it sold as a fitness program either

        And Mum knew about that song “He holds the lantern while his mother chops the wood”

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    KinkyKeith

    From burning relatively clean coal to make electricity under highly controlled conditions to remove particulates and scrub noxious off gases they return to the past.

    Household burning of wood and industrial burning of biomass is BIZARRE in the context of a “clean” environment.

    Some obvious problems with timber include the oils and resins plus incombustible components.

    Absolutely completely bonkers.

    How did the world get into this mess.

    The first steps needed are to disband the EEU and The U.N.

    They have no concern for the average person and are evil.

    KK

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    PeterS

    I wonder how long before the people wake up and realise that Western civilisation is destroying itself better than any extremist terrorist group or foreign power such as North Korea or Russia. After decades of propaganda and dumbing down the population thanks to the “progressives” taking over the education system and now most of the other institutions and big companies it will take a hell of a lot of time and effort to turn things around, by which time of course it will be too late.

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      KinkyKeith

      As I said a few posts back Peter, who needs wars now that we have the present setup.

      The elites can easily collect from within their own borders now and the gullibles are more profitable where they are. Saves the expense of transport munitions and you come out way ahead.

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    cedarhill

    Modern wood stoves have catalytic combustion chambers that burn the smoke from the primary combustion, most produce over 55,000 Btu per hour and can burn for over eight hours with one load of wood. Pollution is incredibly low. When running, mine barely produces abit of white steam.

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    • #

      Recently had a quote to fit such a heater in an existing open fireplace.
      It was $A3000.
      Note the chimney is already there and used.
      Is there any burner available that heats water as a wet back and has an oven in it that can be fitted into an existing fireplace, rather than a free standing fire?
      Just looking forward to the black out season as solar and wind is adopted.

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    Smog used to be very common in Britain, especially in London. The worst was in 1952, when there were at least an estimated 4000 additional deaths. Deaths from bronchitis and pneumonia increased more than sevenfold. After an invesgation, the Clean Air Act of 1956 was passed, restricting the burning of coal in urban areas. The History Channel has an informative article for those interested.
    The reaction follows a smog in January when pollution levels exceeded those of Beijing. Only took them nine months to act to a known issue.

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      Sceptical Sam

      Smog used to be very common in Britain, especially in London. The worst was in 1952, when there were at least an estimated 4000 additional deaths. Deaths from bronchitis and pneumonia increased more than sevenfold.

      So did cigarette smoking.

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    The same thinking that sees wood burning stoves as “renewables” has resulted in the part conversion of Britain’s largest coal-fired power station, the 3.2GW Drax B, to wood pellets. Last year 68% of power generated was from wood pellets.
    In early 2014 I looked at the conversion of two 500MW units Ironbridge from coal to biomass, reducing power output by 26%. The Irony of Ironbridge is that just 1.6 miles (2.6km) away by road is the site where, in 1709, Abraham Darby I built the world’s first blast furnace fuelled by coke. The industrial revolution could not have happened without coal replacing wood as the heat source for iron manufacture.
    Ironbridge power station has now closed.

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    toorightmate

    Time dims the memories.
    People have forgotten about the thousands who died in London and Pittsburgh in the late 1940s as a result of industrial and domestic smog.
    CO2 ain’t smog.
    The CO2 horsesh*t has to stop.

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      Strange that you should mention that manure.

      My first reality check was in conversation with the now departed dear of father-in-law of my aunt. He was born in the late 1800’s and told me that before cars were common, that the manure was piled up against the walls, up to the window sills of the houses in the village. That was more sh!t than they could deal with. Cars cleaned up the village really quickly!

      Now the EU and Greens-governed cities in Germany want roadside NOx levels to be one 80th of what is acceptable as indoor NOx. Their only “reason” is that emissions have to be reduced. There is no scientific justification or medical rationale for setting NOx levels at one 250th of what causes mild irritation in some individuals. Arbitrarily; motor vehicle emissions have to be reduced.

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    Zigmaster

    It’s great to hear about real pollution than CO2 which is not a pollutant. One day the warmists will understand the difference.

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      Dave in the States

      Don’t count on them understanding the difference. They don’t want to. Co2 as a pollutant has been a spectacularly successful propaganda tool on a scientifically illiterate populace, and as a legal tool the US EPA’s endangerment finding has made it very difficult to roll back the Obama era regulations and red tape.

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    pat

    occasionally, I’ve watched “Escape to the Continent” on cable (probably will be terminated post-Brexit!) and they usually get some British expat who has already made the move give advice to the latest lot contemplating the move. have noticed, particularly, when the house-hunting is in Italy, the expats say electricity is so expensive, make sure you have a wood stove and fireplace.

    yet I often feel these people all believe in CAGW.

    an oldie but goodie:

    July 2015: Insurance Journal: Don Jergler: Is Climate Change Now Its Own Industry?
    Interest in climate change is becoming an increasingly powerful economic driver, so much so that some see it as an industry in itself whose growth is driven in large part by policymaking.

    The $1.5 trillion global “climate change industry” grew at between 17 and 24 percent annually from 2005-2008, slowing to between 4 and 6 percent following the recession with the exception of 2011’s inexplicable 15 percent growth, according to Climate Change Business Journal.

    The San Diego, Calif.-based publication includes within that industry nine segments and 38 sub-segments. This encompasses sectors like renewables, green building and hybrid vehicles.

    That also includes the climate change consulting market, which a recent report by the journal estimates at $1.9 billion worldwide and $890 million in the U.S.

    Included in this sub-segment, which the report shows is one of the fastest growing areas of the climate change industry, are environmental consultants and engineers, risk managers, assurance, as well as legal and other professional services.

    Figures for the climate change consulting market are expected to more than double in the next five years, and the report’s authors believe the climate change industry as a whole will have an even steeper and faster growth trajectory than the environmental consulting industry – an industry that in 1976 had billings of $600 million and today generates $27 billion.

    This growth in the climate change consulting market will come from newly created consulting firms, as well as from existing firms adding resources to deal with a greater interest in preparing for the impacts of climate change, according to Grant Ferrier, the journal’s editor.
    “We see another firm coming out with a dedicated practice area every two or three weeks,” Ferrier said.

    The 200 page report on the climate change consulting market came out in April – ***it’s available for $995 on the publication’s website – but with two major policy turning points upon us it’s worth a new look.

    On Monday the final version of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Clean Power Plan, national air pollution regulation aimed at curbing carbon emissions from power plants, is scheduled to be released.

    Ferrier believes the plan may eventually prove to be a driver of further growth in the industry. That is if the plan withstands any legal challenges from states, industries and entities opposed to it.
    “I think the EPA’s Clean Power Plan has a lot more teeth to it than many other attempts of the past,” Ferrier said. “I think we’ll see more (growth) out of that.”

    Following this more climate change policy could come out of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December, also called COP21 or CMP11…
    Policy, or the anticipation of new policy, has been one of the biggest drivers of the industry, the report shows…

    “Growth in the climate change consulting market continues to shift from greenhouse gas (GHG) management and mitigation to climate change risk assessment and adaptation,” the report states. “Adaptation is increasingly folding into a broader concept of resilience which itself lines up with the even broader goal of sustainability—a focus on how companies, communities and nations can grow economically while enhancing environmental and social values.”

    The report credits Superstorm Sandy, along with Hurricane Irene, for jump-starting a new market for climate risk assessment and resiliency solutions in the Northeast and the Gulf Coast…READ ON
    http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2015/07/30/377086.htm

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    pat

    30 Sept: The Hill: Sterling Burnett: Trump and the end of Obama’s bitter ‘war on coal’
    (Sterling Burnett, Ph.D. is a research fellow on energy and the environment at The Heartland Institute)
    What a difference presidential leadership can make, for good or ill, for an industry’s fortunes.
    Before he was elected president, Barack Obama promised to bankrupt coal companies, and after eight years of his administration’s anti-energy policies, that pledge turned out to be one of the few promises he kept…

    As a candidate for president, Donald Trump promised he would enact policies that would end the “war on coal” launched by the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, halting or slowing the loss of jobs related to coal mining and coal-fired power plants, and he is doing just that.
    Coal’s virtue is its reliability and abundance; America has a coal supply beneath U.S. soil that could last 200 to 400 years…

    At Trump’s direction, EPA is in the process of reviewing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, and the expectation is the Trump administration will rescind or significantly reshape its limits on carbon-dioxide emissions from existing and new power plants…
    In June, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the United States had since the beginning of 2017 added more than 50,000 jobs throughout the coal supply and use chain.

    Additionally, under Trump’s leadership, the first and second largest coal companies in the United States, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal, which had been forced into insolvency in part by Obama’s climate policies, emerged from bankruptcy. And in June, Corsa Coal Company opened the Acosta Mine, the first new coal mine to open in the past six years.
    In early September, Paringa Resources announced it was building a new coal mine in Kentucky, which it expects to begin producing coal in mid-2018. Paringa is also constructing another mine, which will begin producing by early 2019…

    “All we had to do was raise the money,” (Parinaga’s CEO, Grant) Quasha said. “On the back of the Trump administration coming into the Oval Office and ending the war on coal, we were able to successfully raise approximately $40 million worth of financing in the ***Australian equity markets to help build out this mine.”…

    The coal industry has also benefitted from a boom in coal exports since Trump took office. U.S. coal exports to Europe have risen by 70 percent compared to the first quarter in 2016, while exports to Asia have risen by approximately 50 percent. Driven primarily by the growth in exports, coal production in the United States has increased by 14 percent since December 2016, and revenue at publicly traded U.S. coal companies grew by 19 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period one year ago…

    I have no love for coal — nor for any other particular source of energy, for that matter. I don’t think coal should be subsidized, but I also don’t think it should be discriminated against by the government, which uses harmful regulations that raise electric bills but do nothing to protect human health or the environment.

    Americans should have access to reliable, relatively inexpensive energy sources that can power the conveniences that make modern life modern. Coal’s virtues are its domestic abundance, relative affordability, and reliability as a source of fuel — characteristics solar and wind power just can’t match, even though they continue to receive massive subsidies from the government…

    One day — probably long after I’m dead — other ways to generate electricity will arise that, like coal and natural gas, are cheap and reliable. When that occurs, coal and natural gas will likely fade into history, as they should under those circumstances. Until then, three cheers for coal and the coal industry’s nascent recovery!
    http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/353232-trump-and-the-end-of-obamas-bitter-war-on-coal

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    pat

    posted Reuters report on this recently, but here is the AP version.

    ***Amy Farrell wins first prize for CAGW chutzpah, with Don Santa taking out second prize:

    29 Sept: AP: Administration favors change in electricity pricing
    By DAVID KOENIG
    The Trump administration is pushing for changes in the way electricity is priced to better reward coal and nuclear power, which face growing competition from natural gas and renewables.
    Energy Secretary Rick Perry on Friday called on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to act within 60 days to adopt rules raising payments to power plants that are considered more resilient. He maintained that a diverse mix of energy sources would strengthen the power grid, especially during natural disasters, by ensuring an adequate supply of backup power. The decline of traditional sources of power, on the other hand, would undermine reliability.

    Advocates of renewable energy reacted warily.
    “This would prolong the lives of a number of 50-year-old coal and nuclear power plants at the expense of newer and cleaner sources of electricity including wind and solar,” said Rob Gramlich, a consultant who formerly worked at a wind-energy trade association…
    Renewables led by solar and wind remain a small portion of the energy mix but are growing…

    Coal and nuclear plants are considered “baseload” energy sources because they provide large and steady amounts of electricity from material stored on site, which reduces the risk of interruptions in fuel supply.
    “America’s greatness depends on a reliable, resilient electric grid powered by an ‘all of the above’ mix of generation sources,” Perry wrote in a letter to the energy-regulating commission. The grid’s resiliency, he wrote, “is being threatened by the premature retirements of these fuel-secure traditional baseload resources.”

    Coal groups applauded Perry’s move. Paul Bailey, the president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, commended Perry for starting a process “that will finally value the on-site fuel security provided by the coal fleet.”

    But advocates for natural gas and renewables criticized Perry’s proposal.
    ***”We worry today’s proposal would upend competitive markets that save consumers billions of dollars a year,” said Amy Farrell, a senior vice president for American Wind Energy Association. ***She said electricity prices should be based on performance, “not guaranteed payments for some, based on a government-prescribed definition.”

    The president of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, Don Santa, said Perry’s plan ***would favor “a very limited set of fuels and technologies” and ignored the reliability of natural-gas power in recent hurricanes.
    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ELECTRIC_GRID?SITE=MYPSP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-09-29-18-06-17

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    pat

    The Guardian turned this piece, which doesn’t mention CAGW at all…

    22 Sept: LA Times: L.A.’s palm trees are dying and it’s changing the city’s famous skyline
    By Ally J. Levine
    They are dying of fatal fungus and under threat of invasive insects in parks and along streets. And for the most part, the city has chosen to replace them not with new palms but with native trees that are more drought-tolerant and shadier, said Leon Borodinsky, a tree surgeon for the department of Recreation and Parks.
    City officials say they don’t know how many palm trees have been lost. In 1990, a city tally put the number of palms on L.A.’s streets at 75,000. That number has declined, officials said, but they are not sure by how much…

    Palm trees flourished in Los Angeles alongside the automobile and expansive freeways. “They came to represent the modern auto-based, decentralized metropolis that is L.A.,” (author of Trees in Paradise Jared) Farmer said…

    There will probably be palm trees in Los Angeles for decades, or even into the next century. Developers and homeowners are likely to continue planting palms on private properties despite the threats the trees face.
    And while the city will not replace every palm, it has vowed to maintain trees in areas that are iconic or have historic significance. So far, six areas have been identified…
    http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-palm-trees-dying-skyline-los-angeles/

    into this typical Guardian CAGW beat-up:

    30 Sept: Guardian: Rory Carroll: Los Angeles’ legendary palm trees are dying – and few will be replaced
    A beetle and a fungus are killing off the trees that have become synonymous with the city, making way for trees that give more shade and use less water
    A city tally in 1990 estimated the number of palms on city streets at 75,000, a number which has not been updated but is destined to plunge in coming decades, the Los Angeles Times reported this week, citing officials…

    Authorities will instead plant other species that give more shade and consume less water – important factors for an overheating city. By the middle of the century, LA is expected to be three to five degrees fahrenheit warmer and to have triple the number of extreme heat days.
    “Palms are decorative and iconic, but Los Angeles is facing more and more heatwaves, so it’s important that we plant trees that provide adequate shade to protect people and cool the city down,” said Elizabeth Skrzat, programme director for City Plants, the city’s tree planting arm…

    Even so, the looming die-off dismayed Becky Saava, 40, a tourist from Uganda who stood beneath giant palms on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “They should sustain them – find out what fungus is killing them and fix it, leave the city the way it is now. Palm trees are part of it. They make the place so beautiful.”

    Across the street, Marcel Hidouche, a tour bus operator standing beneath another palm, said LA would rue their dwindling. “They’re relaxing. I feel like I’m on vacation, like I’m on an island and not in a big city. We come for the sunlight, not the shade.”…

    David Fink, policy director of Climate Resolve, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes climate solutions for southern California, said the city’s love affair with palms was not necessarily a mistake but that it was time to move on.
    “The iconic association of palm trees with Los Angeles is a positive, but we’re now in a period where we have a better understanding of what’s needed. It makes sense that we replace the palms with trees that have wide expanses of shade and help cool things down.” Heat, he added, killed more people than other weather events combined…

    Climate change has made California hotter and drier, a boon to bugs that destroy vegetation, said Andy Lipkis, the president of TreePeople, an LA-based advocacy group. Palms afforded LA little protection from heat, drought and flooding, plus they served as a habitat for the Norway rat, but their die-off signalled a wider crisis, he said.
    “It’s a wake-up call. Millions of trees are dying in southern California. One price tag for removing the dead trees over the next 30 years is $37bn. Trees have a much harder time growing and thriving in cities today because the climate is much harsher.”…
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/29/los-angeles-palm-trees-dying

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    Richard Ilfeld

    Any solution but the obvious most cost-effective most efficient one.
    The free market is always wrong.
    The neo-luddites are developing their own form of madness.
    From wood pellets (http://theconversation.com/british-power-stations-are-burning-wood-from-us-forests-to-meet-renewables-targets-54969) to fireplaces, they seem to be some of the finest minds of the eighteenth century.
    The solution, of course, will be more regulation, more intrusion on your personal space, more compelled behaviour by those who
    know better than you how to run your life.
    The divine right of kings took centuries to moderate.
    Cuius regio, eius religio was perhaps 8 centuries old when the diet of Augsburg in 1530 or so first formalized some compromise.
    Like so many other anachronisms, the neo-luddite environmental authoritarian elites wish to bring it back in the form of
    mandated gaian purity.
    I’m so tempted to go over to the nearest solar silliness field and fasten 95 theses to the surroounding chain link fence, but neither humor nor history seem to be part of today’s academic or governmental worlds.
    Sigh!

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    Curious George

    No one mentioned London Fog, a victim of hydrocarbons. It will stage a comeback, thanks to a traditionalist mayor Sadiq Khan.

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    Watt

    In the Great Smog of 1952 cattle were being given whisky at the London Smithfield show to keep them alive. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/on-demand/0/the-crown-how-the-telegraph-covered-the-london-smog-of-1952/

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      Dennis

      Which suggests that if you smoke a pipe you should also drink whisky.

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      Manfred

      As I understand it after the London Clean Air Act of 1956, which was in effect until 1964, the Act allowed the burning of smokeless fuels, so London and many other towns and cities became smokeless zones where one could only burn or use clean coal anthracite, gas and electricity.

      To return to burning ‘renewable’ wood on huge industrial and domestic scale, wood that is transported daily across the Atlantic in ships from Canadian and North American forests defies rationality … but not Green ideology. The environmental consequences were entirely predictable, and follow as others have pointed out here, a similar legislative and environmental trajectory as diesel vehicles.

      I grew up in a country village not far from London. We had a coal burning range that was installed when the house was built in the 1880’s, along with fireplaces in all rooms. It was a dirty and unending task to keep the huge place warm in winter. By the late ’60’s the fireplaces were closed up, the coal range taken out and oil fired central heating and hot water. We moved away but I subsequently learned that when domestic heating oil became too expensive, a new gas fired central heating system was installed. In turn, this was more recently removed and replaced with a wood burning boiler!

      Among the unending litany of drawbacks of Green ideology is intentional and it seems, unintentional primitivisation.

      “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsiblity to bring that about?”
      – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme

      “A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.”
      – Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies

      “The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.”
      – Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

      “Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control.”
      – Professor Maurice King

      “We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects. We must reclaim the roads and plowed land, halt dam construction, tear down existing dams, free shackled rivers and return to wilderness millions of acres of presently settled land.”
      – David Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!

      “Complex technology of any sort is an assault on human dignity. It would be little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it.”
      – Amory Lovins, Rocky Mountain Institute

      “The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet.”
      – Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation

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        Annie

        These people are dangerous nutters. Whyever do they think they are the ones to tell everyone else what to do? I bet they wouldn’t go back to stone-age living. The sheer impertinence of them…it’s mind-boggling.

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          Eddie

          Impertinence – there’s not enough use of that word. Impertinence is usually something the impertinent can’t see.

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    Robert Rosicka

    OT but I think I’ve cracked the man made global warming debate , if you look at the global temp chart and compare it to when daylight savings was introduced there is a strong correlation.
    My research suggests that the increased daylight hours not only fades curtains it is also heating the world more .
    Less dark plus more daylight equals higher temps .

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      Graeme No.3

      Well done. Let’s see the Green Gullibles explain that away.

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      Robert Rosicka

      I know I’ve got to stop but just looking at causation – correlation with world temps from noaa and have found another thing that closely follows the ups and downs of temps since the start of records .
      It is the electric vehicle, check out the history and you even see a jump during WW2 then a taper off in production then a trend line from the late sixties early seventies to today where musk rat is pumping them out as fast as they can make them and the world temps are going up as well .

      Yeah I know take some koolaide ,bex and a lie down .

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    David Maddison

    Where are they getting the wood to burn? There are hardly any spare trees in the UK or even Europe that can be burned.

    Perhaps they are cutting down US forests as for the Drax power station? Or maybe the forests of Third World countries?

    Where is all this wood coming from!

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      Graeme No.3

      Finland, Slovakia and Russia. There is one company in Russia exporting 800,000 tonnes of wood pellets to Europe.

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    el gordo

    In the NSW country areas the EPA has been trying to stop people burning wood after the gas came through. This story from 2014 explains clearly, before the price of gas and electricity went through the roof, why people are returning to wood fuel stoves.

    http://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/story/2525475/stoking-up-the-wood-heater-debate-clean-and-cost-effective-says-bill/

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      Annie

      One of my siblings now has a brand new enclosed gas-log, balanced flue heater. I could still smell the gas…yuk, and it makes me feel sick and drowsy. Professionally fitted and all that. I would not have one.

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    Roy Hogue

    I suspect I have a reputation for speaking my mind on this blog. But believe it or not, I do try not to be so direct as what I think is the only response to this pushing of wood burning to combat climate change. So here goes…

    What stupid son of a monkey thought that one up? Reagan was right, government is the problem. Does no one have the basic biology and chemistry knowledge to understand that 3 things are true: wood is a hydrocarbon just like gas or diesel fuel; burning it produces CO2 in proportion to the amount of wood burned; surely it does not take Joanne Nova to explain that smoke also results from burning wood.

    Someone should do a little thinking ahead before jumping. The drop to the bottom may hurt.

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      Roy Hogue

      In a rare wise move California finally banned fireplaces in all new construction. But there are still hundreds if not thousands of them in housing tracts all over Southern California, including here. So if you were to walk outside on some cold nights when neighbors around me have a fire going you would realize why thay are no longer a good idea as you start choking and coughing because the smoke hugs the ground instead of rising.

      I hated to see the grand tradition of a fireplace go the way of the Dodo Bird. But the plain truth is that the smoke is a real problem.

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        I hate to act like a tree hugger, which I am not but somewhere some tree is thanking the legislature and the governor that its offspring will be a little bit safer from the ax. 😉

        And that’s not a bad thing either.

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        Lionell Griffith

        Investigate catalytic converter wood burning stove or fireplace insert. I and my family used a Blaze King fireplace insert for our only source of heating. We were living at 3400 ft in the mountains above Palmdale, CA. We often experienced real winter weather, bitter cold, high winds, and sometimes blizzards.

        For three years we burned two to three cords of eucalyptus wood during the heating season. The smoke and oil vapors were burned by passing them through the converter once it was up to working temperature. A bit of steam, no smoke, and a lot of heat. The cost was actually less than LP Gas which was cheap at the time. We finally installed central HVAC and used LP Gas for heat.

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          Roy Hogue

          If I’m not mistaken that would also be a relatively rural area where the smoke wouldn’t be so much of a problem. But one question — if you burned eucalyptus the smoke is really greasy and oily. Didn’t the converter get clogged? Or do I have my woods mixed up?

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          • #
            Lionell Griffith

            Yes, it was on the north side of Hyw 14 about three miles up crown valley above Acton. When we moved into the place in the fall of 1979. There were a few houses and thousands of acres of pine bushes, mustard, and yucca arround us. It was at the convergence of coastal weather and high desert weather. An inversion layer sometimes formed at about a 1000 foot lower elevation on really cold days.

            My experience was that eucalyptus gave the most heat for the price. The oily smoke burned in the converter and appeared to give a significant fraction of the heat from the wood. The key seemed to be was to make sure that the converter was raised to working temperature every day.

            The interesting thing was that eucalyptus wood was a lousy open fireplace wood without help from other types of wood but worked wonderfully in the thermostatically controlled Blaze King fireplace insert all by itself. It would provide soft gentle heat all night and had enough coals left to start a fresh fire to worm the cold morning.

            I really can’t say how it would behave in a dense urban area but there was no typical smell of burning wood from it. It produced visible smoke for the few minutes it took for the converter to get to working temperature. After that, only a few wisps of steam. It appeared to work better than your typical Franklin Firebox and much better than an open fireplace.

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            • #
              Roy Hogue

              Yes, it was on the north side of Hyw 14 about three miles up crown valley above Acton.

              I know Acton well and could probably take you right to Crown Valley Road. Acton isn’t on Highway 14 but a little ways off down Solidad Canyon Road. It’s also, or at least it was in the past a wide spot, a siding used for passing trains, on the Southern Pacific Railroad — now Burlington Northern Santa Fe.

              You might say I know Acton too well but I don’t remember any of this tale told by my mother. To wit: one day as they were out driving my dad stopped in Actton because there was a freight train stopped on the siding. He was a train nut’s train nut like his father and I’m sure that was his only reason for stopping and chatting up the train crew. I was just a toddler and I have no idea how he brokered this deal but he passed me up into the cab of a Southern Pacific 4000 class cab in front steam locomotive and then they raced the train down Solidad Canyon Road to Saugus where the train was supposed to stop again so he could pick me up. I’m sure it wasn’t much of a race because that freight train would take a lot longer to get to Saugus than an automobile. But still… ???

              Anyway, if you’ve never heard a steam locomotive in operation they make the devil’s own assortment of noises to frighten a toddler and in the cab you sit just inches from a boiler running 250 PSI for that class of locomotive and at that pressure the boiling point of water is up at about 400° F. I’ve been in the cab of a locomotive running a lot lower pressure and it’s like opening the gate to hell when working in the cab, even on a cold day.

              I would doubt the truth of this story except it was told by my mother who was there and witnessed the whole thing.

              I’ve always wondered how 4 adults, my parents and the locomotive crew could do such a bonehead stunt. But they got away with it and apparently I was unharmed. Today you would be arrested for child endangerment if nt terminal stupidity. Ad the locomotive crew was risking their jobs into the bargain.

              And that’s how come I remember Acton, California.

              Here’s number 4247 in operation at the head end of a long freight train, not in Solidad Canyon and I don’t know the location.

              I looked up the picture, the boiler pressure and the temperature. The internet can find you anything.

              And no one will care but me but I had fun looking up the information. 😉

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                Roy Hogue

                And if I could learn to do at least one or the other of…

                1. type accurately

                2. proofread

                the world would turn upside down. And if I did both at the same time I think the world would end for sure. 🙁

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    David Maddison

    In the People’s Republik of Victoriastan they have banned people from collecting firewood in various areas thus ensuring that the next bushfires will be of much higher intensity plus contributing to the socialist objective of letting the plebs freeze in the dark.

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      Robert Rosicka

      They’ve actually opened up the forests now David , they just need to do the same with all the new national parks they created which are now a fire hazard in waiting .

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    David Maddison

    It’s simply appalling that the once civilised world is being forced by “green” policies to revert to nature for energy such as wind and firewood.

    The reasons these things were immediately abandoned in the first place as soon as viable alternatives like the steam engine and fossil fuels became available are not known by the current youngest two generations due to the deliberate dumbing down of the education system under the auspices of Cultural Marxism over the last 50 yrs or so.

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    pat

    never mind…the next generation will be more sensible:

    28 Sept: WaPo Magazine: The World According to Washington’s Third-Graders
    Story by Britt Peterson
    Illustration by Adam Hayes
    Video by Daniel Mich and Nicki DeMarco

    We selected four third-grade classrooms around the D.C. region, with an eye toward building a cross section of the area’s demographics…
    At an age where, as Yale University psychologist Yarrow Dunham told me, “kids are almost at their peak in terms of being interested in fairness,” the third-graders were highly aware of the big questions roiling our society — and just beginning to put together stories to explain what they are witnessing…

    ON CLIMATE CHANGE
    Dominic Bloch-Prime, Georgetown Day: (EXCERPT AT NEWSBUSTERS CONTINUES WITH) We can’t stop it, but we can slow it down a lot by using clean energy. You know how Trump always wants to bring back jobs like the coal miners and all of that? Coal — that age, it’s over, okay? But we can create more jobs by using solar- and wind-powered energy. And eventually when we figure nuclear fusion out we can use that, too…

    Anthony Crockett, Robert R. Gray: Well, this concerns me because I’ve been hearing stuff about the ice caps melting, and I watched this video and basically they said … the North Pole could possibly be on top of the entire North American continent.

    Cary Stenberg, Georgetown Day: The fact that animals are dying because of climate change, it’s bad.

    Surya Maroju, Bellows Spring: Climate change is really weird because you’d think it would be extra hot because of global warming, but it’s a cold summer, and it’s weird.

    Donte Gibson, Robert R. Gray: I don’t really understand climate change, but didn’t Donald Trump do it?
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/lifestyle/magazine/third-graders/?utm_term=.0a8325ffe308

    Georgetown Day School: The school is known as one of the city’s most academically rigorous and selective institutions, and it has educated the children of several high-ranking government officials, including former United States Attorney General Eric Holder, Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu (D).

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    pat

    meant to post this first:

    1 Oct: Newsbusters: Tim Graham: WashPost Lines Up Third Graders to Denounce Trump
    In July, The Washington Post assembled a grade-school “Kids Chorus” to sing/mock Trump’s tweets over bongo drums. That same spirit infuses a story in Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine, interviewing third-grade students for their opinions on Trump and issues they think define Trump — racism, immigration, police brutality, “inequality and privilege,” and climate change. And for Hillary Clinton, they asked about gender stereotyping and when we’ll get a female president…

    Of course, on climate change, we were treated to the third-grade version of Al Gore, that if we don’t do something the oceans will cover all the land:

    Dominic Bloch-Prime, Georgetown Day: About the Paris climate agreement, I think that it was so bad that they took us out of it, because you want to protect your great-grandchildren and other generations. … Because when you limit carbon emissions, the oceans will rise and it will cover land and then eventually all the land will just sink down if we don’t do something.

    The third-grader even concluded with smack talk to coal states, just like the adults, Barack and Hillary: “Coal — that age is over, okay?”…
    https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2017/10/01/

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      Annie

      Those little ignoramuses are the future? Heaven help the human race because it doesn’t look like it’ll be capable of doing anything itself.

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        Dave in the States

        The Kids are being coached by adults to say those things. No normal 3rd grader would on their own. It is a terrible thing for adults to use innocent little children to push their agendas.

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    pat

    more evidence FakeNewsMSM won’t be calling out the CAGW nonsense any time soon.
    btw thought fact-checking was already fundamental to journalism:

    25 Sept: NYT: AP to Enhance Fact Checks With $245,000 From Knight
    by Associated Press
    NEW YORK — The Associated Press is joining with the ***John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to expand its fact-checking efforts and ability to debunk misinformation.
    Knight is granting $245,000 to enable the AP to experiment with new forms of storytelling for social media and mobile platforms and to use data and automation to better understand how consumers make decisions about what kinds of information to trust.
    AP will also add additional full-time journalists dedicated to fact-checking…
    ***Karen Mahabir will lead AP’s global fact-check team. Mahabir ***rejoins AP from HuffPost, where she led breaking news coverage as managing editor for news.

    Dec 2016: Inside Philanthropy: Tate Williams: Inside the Knight Foundation’s Push to Give Nonprofit Journalism a Boost at a Critical Moment
    The Knight Foundation doesn’t immediately come to mind as one of the foundations likely to rise in strong opposition to Donald Trump’s agenda. It doesn’t have an explicit progressive profile and its main funding interests—media, arts and cities—might seem well removed from coming battles over issues like immigration, climate change and healthcare…
    In hindsight, Knight’s historic $60 million gift earlier this year to create a First Amendment Institute at Columbia University was prescient. Now, in rolling out a $1.5 million initiative to support nonprofit news this week, the foundation has shown a readiness to step up quickly to the exigencies of a new moment…
    That’s one impressive thing about this initiative—it doesn’t just support national nonprofit journalism outfits like ProPublica (pat – NEW HOME OF FORMER NYT ALARMIST ANDREW REVKIN)…
    https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2016/12/22/knight-acts-fast-to-give-journalisms-post-election-moment-a-boost

    Knight Foundation is also involved in this “worthy” project!

    19 Sept: (Harvard Uni) NiemanLab: Report for America wants to place (and help pay for) young reporters in local newsrooms that need them
    By Laura Hazard Owen
    Report for America, a partnership between the GroundTruth Project and ***Google News Lab with support from the Lenfest Institute, the ***Knight Foundation, and a number of other journalism organizations, has the ambitious goal of putting 1,000 journalists into underserved newsrooms across America over the next five years …

    Owen: What kind of training will you provide?

    (GroundTruth founder and CEO Charles) Sennott: With the GroundTruth project, for almost five years, we’ve been doing trainings around the world and in the U.S. We’ve developed a formula for some basics and some custom-tailored modules that work for the different places we are.
    ***We’ve been doing a lot of reporting on climate change, for instance, so we developed modules for that. But we also work with young journalists just to train them on the basics — how to capture standards that are core and essential…
    —-

    with nearly $2.5 billion in assets in 2014, check the $100m-plus grants made annually:

    Wikipedia: John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
    Assets and grant making
    CHART
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_S._and_James_L._Knight_Foundation#Grants

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    John F. Hultquist

    “<em"Old fireplaces have also been opened up …”

    Most fireplaces (not just my observation) are poorly designed for heating.
    One of the requirements for fire is Oxygen. In a building, that means parts of the house have to allow an inflow of air from outside. So, cold air in, warm gasses up and out. There are some solutions, but to retrofit a preexisting firebox is difficult and costly.
    Interested? Start with looking at negative pressure.

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      Len

      One of the more important trade skills of a brick layer is to be able to build a fireplace that allows the smoke ot go up the chimney. Usually a skill passed from older tradesmen to younger one. (If they will listen).

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    Robert Rosicka

    OT but their ABC is at it again with this opinion piece disguised as news , sea level rise in Fremantle.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-02/sea-levels-threaten-key-perth-infrastructure,-researchers-say/8998962

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  • #

    After a CO2 molecule absorbs an IR photon it takes about 6 µs for it to emit a photon but, within about 0.0002 µs it starts bumping in to other molecules, transferring energy and momentum with each contact. At low altitude and away from the N & S poles there are about 35 water vapor molecules for each CO2 molecule. Each WV molecule has more than 170 absorb/emit bands at lower energy level (longer wavelength) than CO2 molecules. The energy in EMR absorbed by CO2 near ground level is effectively rerouted up via water vapor. Higher up, as WV dwindles, CO2 participation in EMR rises above insignificant. The rerouting eliminates CO2 as having a significant effect on climate.

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      KinkyKeith

      Well put Dan.
      CO2 molecules interact with all other molecules in the air and do not have some sort of protective barrier isolating them.

      Equilibrium cannot be avoided.

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    Robert Rosicka

    We are now being called climate contrairionists not sure of spelling or even if it’s a word .

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    William

    Regular readers may recall that about three years ago I installed a wood burning stove in my living room here in the Dandenongs outside of Melbourne.
    At the time, my wife’s greenie friends were not very discreet in their making derogatory remarks, and making pointed references to my lack of concern for the the environment or my carbon foot print.
    This winter continued the trend of the previous five winters, with each one being colder than the one before.
    The significant thing that I noticed this winter was that on cold days, there was a parade of my wife’s greenie friends who “just happened to be in the neighborhood” and just “dropped in for a coffee”. These coffee breaks would last for hours.
    In my unending cynicism, I couldn’t help but notice that when it was freezing cold outside, and my wood burning stove was all cranked up, the living room was toasty warm, and the house was full of greenies.

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      Robert Rosicka

      Proof you need to get rid of it then , a house full of greenies you poor bugger .
      What is the collective noun for a house full of greenies I wonder ?

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      William

      As I noted elsewhere William, I remember an article about Bob Brown illustrated by a picture of him in front of his cottage with wood smoke coming out of the chimney.

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    William

    Regular readers may recall that about three years ago I installed a wood burning stove in my living room here in the Dandenongs outside of Melbourne.
    At the time, my wife’s greenie friends were not very discreet in their making derogatory remarks, and making pointed references to my lack of concern for the the environment or my carbon foot print.
    This winter continued the trend of the previous five winters, with each one being colder than the one before.
    The significant thing that I noticed this winter was that on cold days, there was a parade of my wife’s greenie friends who “just happened to be in the neighborhood” and just “dropped in for a coffee”. These coffee breaks would last for hours.
    In my unending cynicism, I couldn’t help but notice that when it was freezing cold outside, and my wood burning stove was all cranked up, the living room was toasty warm, and the house was full of greenies.

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    pat

    hidden way down in google news results (ALMOST ENTIRELY ALARMIST) for “climate change” today is this ABSOLUTE GEM:

    1 Oct: The Hindu: Lalatendu Mishra:
    Coal is still the secret of our energy
    Does coal, the principal source of energy for now, face a dark future?
    “No, it can’t be. If the future of coal is dark, then the future of the country will be dark,” said Partha Bhattacharya, former chairman of Coal India Ltd.
    “You can’t live without coal. Coal is at the centre of everything. With all this hype [about] renewables, today in power generation, 81% is out of coal,” he pointed out. “Going forward, the share will definitely come down. But the growth in renewable does not mean the generation from coal will come down. It will never come down, at least in next few decades,” he said emphatically…

    “If coal had a bleak future in India, then the coal block auctions could not have happened or succeeded,” Sushil Kumar Jiwarajka, chairman, Renewable Energy Mini Grid Committee, FICCI, said.

    This is evident from the fact that captive power plants purchased 80% of the coal offered on a five-year contract at an auction at an average premium of 25% over the notified price. At a similar auction held last year, Coal India had managed to receive a premium of 19% over the notified price.
    “In India we cannot do without coal. Despite the ramping up of renewable capacity, both solar and wind energy cannot go beyond 40% of the energy mix. So, coal has no problem for the next 20 years in India unless some new source of energy is invented overnight,” Mr. Jiwarajka added. The abundance of coal in India makes it the most important fuel. In power generation today, the share of coal in total capacity is about 62% but the share in generation is about 80%.

    With reliable supply of energy becoming critical to provide round-the-clock electricity across the country and to achieve 100% electrification by December 2018, super thermal power plants and other modern thermal plants are being nudged by the Centre to produce more energy from the same capacity…

    The NITI Aayog, which had sought suggestions from experts for meeting the electricity demand under the current circumstances, was advised to allow thermal plants to enhance output without adding any capacity.
    “Demand for coal will go on increasing. For existing plants, coal-based generation is the cheapest mode and most affordable [source of] power in the country. One is only [incurring] variable cost. The capacity is already there,” said Mr. Bhattacharya, who had advised the NITI Aayog…

    Today, the plant load factor (PLF) for India’s thermal power capacity has dropped to 52% from 79% in 2007-8 but the country’s thermal plants are equipped to operate at about 85 to 90% PLF. Assuming the PLF is scaled up from 55% to 85%, one can see a 50% increase in output from the same capacity. The only cost involved here is the variable cost of coal…

    This variable cost is far lower than that for solar power. It is expected to be about ₹1.50 per unit and the price difference is expected to be in the range of ₹0.70 to ₹1 per unit with solar or wind energy, according to industry players.
    “It makes eminent sense for the country to increase the output from existing plants. The additional generation will be close to 500 billion units. With an average cost saving of ₹0.80 is ₹40,000 crore. This benefit will go to discoms and consumers if the country adopts this kind of a strategy,” Mr. Bhattacharya said indicating that this had been suggested to the think tank.

    To produce 500 billion units, 350 million tonnes of coal would be required — this is the additional demand. Even at a requirement of 300 million tonnes of coal, coal demand will increase by 7% a year from now.
    India uses about 800 million tonnes of coal. The current coal production in the country is 650 million tonnes, while the balance is imported…

    ***Conflict with the West?
    Will the developed world tie our hands given their own interests? No, they cannot, said industry analysts. India’s share in pollution is far less than its share of the global population. Developed countries did want to club India with China and said that what applied to China, applied to India too. Fortunately, India has not succumbed to that. “They cannot put on us that kind of pressure,” said an analyst at an Indian brokerage, citing developed countries…

    Besides, India is well within the COP 21 obligation till it uses 1,500 million tonnes of coal a year as compared with 800 million tonnes now to generate energy. Analysts also said India could continue with a coal-based growth plan, which is cost effective. This is what China has done to place its economy on a solid footing, said an analyst with a foreign brokerage firm.

    The Chinese share in global emissions is now close to 30%, whereas its share in global population is just about 17%. India’ share in global population is 16%, while its share in emissions is only 6%-7%, said an analyst, highlighting the contrast…

    “That is in COP 21, our obligation is not as stringent as China’s. China is obliged to provide for green alternatives to counter pollution from the burning of 4 billion tonnes of coal. We are in a different situation altogether,” said Mr. Bhattacharya…

    The International Energy Agency (IEA) in a recent report titled India Energy Outlook has said, “The rapid change anticipated for the Indian energy system in the New Policies Scenario does not translate into a dramatic shift in the energy mix. Coal retains a central position in the mix, increasing its overall share in primary energy from 44% in 2013 to 49% in 2040.”…

    India’s total coal reserve is estimated at a little more than 300 billion tonnes. If 50% of that is extractable, a 1-billion-tonne annual consumption will translate into availability for 150 years.
    http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/coal-is-still-the-secret-of-our-energy/article19781521.ece

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    Antoine D'Arche

    there’s a street in Bath where they have cleaned most of the houses completely free of particulate pollution. But they have left the front (limestone, I think) facade of one of the houses blackened, as it had been typically in the 19th century, as testament to the terrible, appalling domestic pollution and air quality.
    The difference is so stark it is quite incredible.
    Yes they burnt coal domestically but that’s not the point.
    The point is they learned to produce the energy en masse, outside of the city, and transport the energy in, thus dramatically improving air quality.
    And reducing respiratory disease very significantly.
    Incidentally, ask one of the respiratory physicians in Launceston what he thinks about the air quality there in winter, where the town lives in a hollow and everyone burns wood for heat in winter….. and the dramatic increase in presentations to doctors and the local ED for exacerbations of asthma and COPD and other respiratory disease.

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      Graeme No.3

      They cleaned up the Town Hall and GPO in Adelaide (almost opposite) and people were astonished by the change in colour. Can’t remember when, the 70s?
      As for Launceston you don’t need to be there in winter, just climb the hills surrounding it and look down. Almost as bad as Melbourne or Sydney except those two are ‘saved’ by occasional high winds.

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    pat

    made the mistake of watching ABC “Four Corners” for the first time in years recently – it was an attack piece on Gold Coast mayor, Tom Tate, called “All that glitters Developers, deals and donations on the Gold Coast”.

    it was a complete joke, which omitted all the plans to develop “The Spit” by politicians/developers over decades. it was repeatedly stated there was nothing illegal about anything they were reporting, so why all the innuendo.

    the funniest bit was why were they so concerned about the low-lying “Spit” when they would normally be saying it was going to be washed away by CAGW, yet that was never mentioned! lol.

    anyway, tonite it’s an all-out attack on Adani, with the help of an activist lawyer in India, who has had his own political party, and so on. am not watching it, nor do I intend to watch it online, but full transcript is posted below.

    check Sally Neighbour’s obsessive anti-Adani Twitter page first:

    Twitter: ABC’s Sally Neighbour, Executive Producer of Australia’s premier public affairs TV program, ABC’s 4 Corners
    https://twitter.com/neighbour_s

    no surprise Bongiorno likes it:

    Twitter: Paul Bongiorno
    Another stunning ABC Four Corners exposing the highly dubious pedigree of the Adani Carmichael coal mine.

    2 Oct: ABC Four Corners: Digging into Adani
    VIDEO: Expires: Sunday 3 October 2032 8:30pm
    Digging into Adani: The dubious dealings of India’s corporate colossus.
    “Why would the crime branch want to see us?” Stephen Long, reporter

    When Four Corners travelled to India to investigate the activities of the giant Adani group, they soon discovered the power of the company.
    While attempting to film and gather information about Adani’s operations, the Four Corners team had their cameras shut down, their footage deleted and were questioned for hours by police.

    The team were left in no doubt that their investigations into the Indian company triggered the police action…

    The program analyses the Adani Group’s opaque financial operations and investigates the ramifications for their Australian operations.
    “What this tells you is that here is a business group that will not stop at anything to maximise its profits.” Economist

    This investigation examines whether, in the rush to secure jobs and shore up the mining industry, Australian politicians have failed to properly scrutinise the company that’s now hoping to receive a taxpayer funded loan of up to $1 billion for its project…
    Digging into Adani, reported by Stephen Long and presented by Sarah Ferguson, goes to air on Monday 2nd October at 8.30pm. It is replayed on Tuesday 3rd October at 1.00pm and Wednesday 4th at 11pm. It can also be seen on ABC NEWS channel on Saturday at 8.10pm AEST, ABC iview …
    FULL TRANSCRIPT…
    SANDRA CORREIA, MOTHER: I feel sick, because Adani is heartless.
    SAVIO CORREIA, FATHER: They have flouted all possible regulations, they have, their compliance has been pathetic.
    STEPHEN LONG, REPORTER: Stanislaus Correia is six years old.
    He’s struggling to breath – there’s coal dust in his lungs…READ ON
    http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/digging-into-adani/9008500

    shut down the ABC.

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      Robert Rosicka

      Pat the ABC didn’t invent cheque book journalism but they’ve certainly embraced it and built a business model around it and fake news , their opinion pieces disguised as news are also in the realm of gutter journalism.
      They will report on anything knowing more often than not that the story is overblown,irrelevant or even fake , it just has to fit the meme of the ABC and the ideology of the reporter .

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        Robert Rosicka

        Oh I forgot to add I overheard the other day someone saying how bad the Adani coal mine was going to be and they couldn’t believe they would be allowed to mine the Great Barrier Reef for coal , I asked where they got that from and they said they heard it on the ABC .

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    pat

    Twitter: Sally Neighbour
    Indian public interest lawyer @pbhushan1 accuses the Adani Group of ‘financial crimes’ tonight on #4Corners @abcnews
    from replies:

    Pinch@salt Anurag‏: He is not an indian public interest lawyer…he is always advocate terrorist..fight their legal case …dont miss lead…

    Pankaj Desai:‏ This is one-sided story without doubt. Adani is being targeted for political reasons. All these politicians are against BJP so it is obvious

    VIR: Sally this guy bhushan himself has a very dubious reputation in India! He and his dad are involved in multiple land grabbing cases!

    Anand Chaudhary‏: FYIP Bhushan is just a vendetta pawn, do ask him why he even got kicked out from the party he was founding member.

    Madam Sally, this guy Bhushan, a victim of Modiphobia, is also a false allegation expert, use to apologise every now and then.
    https://twitter.com/neighbour_s/status/914770508696117248

    Updated April 2016: The Hindu: Jayant Sriram: AAP expels Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan
    Rebel leaders Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were on Monday expelled from the Aam Aadmi Party. Along with the two founding members, senior leaders Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha have also been expelled by AAP’s national disciplinary action committee which found all four guilty of anti-party activities.
    “The party’s national disciplinary committee has taken a decision to expel Prashant Bhusan, Yogendra Yadav, Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha. They were expelled for gross indiscipline, anti-party activities and violation of code of conduct of the party,” said party spokesperson Deepak Bajpai.

    Mr. Yadav and Mr. Bhushan had called a meeting of party volunteers last week to launch a Swaraj Abhiyan (self-rule campaign) which would potentially lay the ground for the formation of a breakaway party…
    http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/aap-expels-four-rebel-leaders/article7123615.ece

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    pat

    someone might check what is wrong with the map of India as shown in the reply to Prashant Bhushan!

    Twitter: Prashant Bhushan
    Watch:Australian Broadcasting Corp’s expose of Adani’s operations at 4 pm today at:
    https://www.facebook.com/abc4corners/
    Or at:
    http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/

    vj @ poetryinstone: do you endorse the India map shown by @4corners ***MAP

    vj @ poetryinstone: but can we also see you voicing your disgust against @4corners for showing incorrect map of India

    Long Tongued Indian: @abcnews broadcasts content showcasing statements from p bhushan who has apologised twice in 3 weeks for fake tweets!
    China will be pleased?
    https://twitter.com/pbhushan1/status/914789213157023744

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    pat

    Updated 30 Sept: BrisbaneTimes: ‘Stuck in the dark ages’: Pacific island leader vents after Australia’s emissions hit record high
    by Nicole Hasham
    Desperate Pacific islands at risk of sinking beneath the sea say Australia is “stuck in the Dark Ages” by relying on fossil fuels, in response to alarming data showing this nation’s energy emissions have hit record highs.
    The outcry from Australia’s smallest neighbours comes just weeks after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visited Samoa and reportedly promised Pacific leaders that he understood “very clearly” the threat of sea level rise to low-lying islands.

    As Fairfax Media reported on Friday (LINK), a national audit prepared for The Australia Institute by energy analyst Hugh Saddler shows Australia’s emissions from energy combustion reached a record high in the year to June, driven largely by petroleum, and specifically diesel, consumption.
    The audit showed the increase in Australia’s annual retail diesel emissions in the year to June on its own exceeded the total annual emissions of any Pacific nation…

    “While the rest of the world is moving ahead to renewable energy, Australia is stuck in the Dark Ages with its reliance on dirty fossil fuels. This is bad news for the Pacific”, (Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga) said, adding that Australia’s continued mining of coal was “extremely disappointing”.
    Genevieve Jiva, spokeswoman for the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network, said the findings would prompt Pacific leaders to exert further pressure on Australia at international climate talks in Bonn, Germany, in November. Fiji will chair the talks.
    “It isn’t the Pacific way to be confrontational, but Australia needs to be told that climate change is destroying our islands and way of life,” Ms Jiva said.

    Strategy.Policy.Research principal ***Philip Harrington, an expert consultant to federal, state and local governments, said his recent research showed electric fleet cars could be very cost effective but there were few models available for sale in Australia.
    “Among the industry stakeholders that we spoke to, it’s widely acknowledged that … there are no incentives for electric vehicles in Australia, whereas almost every other country in the world does [offer incentives]. Therefore electric vehicle manufacturers don’t bother to bring them here,” he said.

    Mr Harrington, said “bulk purchase initiatives” from fleet car buyers, such as governments and private companies, would create a guaranteed market and “provide enough confidence about sales for the global vehicle industry to be bothered bringing electric cars here”.

    The audit findings on road transport emissions suggest the electricity sector, where emissions cuts can most easily be made, must shoulder an even greater share of the emissions reduction burden if Australia is to meet its international obligations under the Paris climate deal…
    https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/stuck-in-the-dark-ages-pacific-island-leader-vents-after-australias-emissions-hit-record-high-20170929-gyrbi6.html

    ***Philip Harrington is quite the shill for EVs:

    22 Aug: CleanTechnica: Australia’s Electric Vehicle Transition Is Not A Matter Of If, But How & When
    Originally published on RenewEconomy.
    By Clive Attwater Jack Gilding and Phil Harrington
    (Clive Attwater is a Director of SGS Economics & Planning. Jack Gilding is the Executive Officer of the Tasmanian Renewable Energy Alliance. They are members of the Tasmanian branch of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association. Phil Harrington is Managing Director of Strategy. Policy. Research. Pty Ltd)
    One benefit of a transition which is consistently underestimated is the role that EVs could play in supporting a smarter, more versatile electricity grid. Next generation EVs will typically have 40-60 kWh of storage, around four times the capacity of the Tesla Powerwall 2 currently being installed in conjunction with solar PV.

    If most of the 18m vehicles in Australia were electric this would equate to 900 GWh of storage, of which as much as half could be made ‘accessible’.
    That is 3,500 times bigger than the Tesla battery to be installed in South Australia and about what might be required for a 100% renewable grid. Read story here

    Of course batteries in EVs will not be available for grid support 24/7 but they have the potential to be connected to the grid for 16-20 hours a day at either base or destination.
    Most will have spare capacity on most days.

    With the right control software and financial incentives they could provide services including catering to peak demand and providing fast response ancillary services without compromising the customer requirement for reliable re-charging and adequate range when needed…
    https://cleantechnica.com/2017/08/22/australias-electric-vehicle-transition-not-matter/

    previously:

    Oct 2016: TheFifthEstate: Pitt&Sherry and Phil Harrington’s team split, amicably
    Phil Harrington, senior principal with Pitt&Sherry today said he and his carbon and energy team will be operating under a separate brand, Strategy. Policy. Research. Pty Ltd (SPR), from the end of this week.
    “The separation from P&S is entirely amicable, and reflects a judgement by P&S that they want to refocus on their core engineering work,” Mr Harrington said. “From our perspective, we will be able to offer the same personnel and service as before, but with lower overheads and lower charge out rates – a bonus for our clients.”…

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    turnedoutnice

    The warmist problem is that climate scientists have made a basic mistake no competent engineer would make. Dissenters were kicked out of Academia and publications of dissenting papers banned. They then grabbed grants and promotions by pushing this fake science, the precursor of of fake news.

    And as for the mistake; it’s to fail to understand that Max Planck’s 1913 treatise is based on an assumption of equilibrium between radiative emitters in a vacuum. The atmosphere is not a vacuum. This explains the details of OLR and is countered by another mistake – extra extinction coefficient explains darker bases/higher albedo for rain/convective clouds. NASA claims that is due to lots of small droplets when it’s large droplets.

    The Planck misunderstanding creates 40% more radiative transfer in the atmosphere than reality. They then do a work-around using the big mistake in cloud physics – van der Hulst in1967, Hansen 1969. Thus they pretend rain and convective clouds are dark underneath – high albedo – is because droplets are small when it’s a large droplet phenomenon; ultimate scientific incompetence that was used as the basis for the NASA/IPCC fraud

    Sorry folks but allegedly even Stephen Hawkins is involved in the scam and has been protected by colleagues for 25 years. Planck’s vacuum assumption is fine but prohibits the use of his theory for much of radiative energy transfer at the junction between a solid surface and a ghg-containing gas.

    Myles Allen is escaping by blowing the whistle to survive the denouement of the incompetents.

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    David Maddison

    Apparently some of the deindustrialists count CO2 emissions from Australia’s fossil fuel exports when calculating Australia’s CO2 emissions…

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    Dave

    Hi Jo…. we installed some reverse cycle air conditioners in our house about 8yrs ago so we could warm the house without resorting to the use of the open fire….we were told at the time this was the best, greenest and most cost effective way to warm the home…As electricity prices have risen and risen and risen and continue to do so…guess what? We are back to the wood fire again.. fortunately we are on acreage and have a plentiful supply but….it just seems bazaar we heading back to the middle age style of energy?

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    Alfred

    Clearly, well-off Brits are keen for the smog of the 1950’s to return. That is nostalgia. Just read some Sherlock Holmes to get a feel for it.

    It caused major disruption by reducing visibility and even penetrating indoor areas, far more severe than previous smog events experienced in the past, called “pea-soupers”. Government medical reports in the following weeks, however, estimated that up until 8 December, 4,000 people had died as a direct result of the smog and 100,000 more were made ill by the smog’s effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably greater, about 12,000.

    Great Smog of London

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    pat

    3 Oct: PickeringPost: Larry Pickering: 4CORNERS CHASES ANOTHER GILLARD KNEEJERK MOMENT
    … while Adani is happy to **** either Annastacia or Pauline
    http://pickeringpost.com/story/4corners-chases-another-gillard-kneejerk-moment/7625

    Pickering gets it right.

    he mentions Alan Jones at the end. only heard a few minutes of his program this morning, once again ranting against the expansion of the Acland coal mine in Qld. he mentioned he’d already said all he had to say earlier in the program re ABC’s Adani 4Cnrs program. he said 4Corners had said everything he’d been saying about Carmichael mine for years!

    just to show Jones does not speak for all the people living in the area:

    19 Sept: Toowoomba Chronicle: Readers, union give Lock the Gate the boot over coal poll
    by Matthew Newton
    Oakey Chamber of Commerce president Andrew Langton last week took aim at Lock the Gate, saying they were trying to pressure the Palaszczuk Government by polling marginal electorates on an issue they probably only vaguely understood.

    Chronicle readers were more blunt.
    Taking to social media, Chronicle reader Fay Marie said people in Mansfield and Mt Ommaney – the two marginal suburbs polled – “wouldn’t even find Oakey on a map”.
    “Goes to show what grubs the Oakey Alliance and the shut the gate mob’s really are!” she said.

    Jodi Keane-Venz said: “It’s our community NOT theirs. These people in Brisbane have no idea what’s going on out here. Fools. APPROVE STAGE 3!!!”
    Toni Shard accused the Oakey Coal Action Alliance of being unable to get support locally.
    “…So they travel hundreds of km away to solicit support from people that don’t even know that these mines exist. There are no depths to which these people will not go!!!” she said.

    Fiona Lee Ireland said “playing politics with our livelihoods” was “lower than a gutter rat”…
    https://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/readers-union-give-lock-gate-boot-over-coal-poll/3225170/

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    pat

    pretty pathetic. ABC continues to push its own “former environment minister” said angle…repeatedly:

    AUDIO: 3mins: 3 Oct: ABC AM: Regional Queensland Chamber backs Adani
    By Annie Guest
    Local businesses in North Queensland are defending the proposed Adani Coal mine, despite more damning criticism of the company behind it.

    India’s former environment minister has told Four Corners the Adani Group has a poor environmental record.
    He also claims Australia’s due diligence on the project has been inadequate.

    Both state and federal governments are defending the approval process, and a north Queensland chamber of commerce is urging critics to accept it has been done properly.
    Featured:
    Bruce Hedditch, Bowen Chamber of Commerce
    Annastacia Palaszczuk, Queensland Premier
    http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/regional-queensland-chamber-backs-adani/9009896

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    These people who support CAGW Alarmism are crazed and will stop at nothing to destroy our health, our prosperity and our civilisation. They are religious fanatics of limited intellect that refuse to look at the facts and the real problems as their input switch is in the off position.

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    pat

    MSM love this but, judging from comments on FreeRepublic, not all of GM’s customers do:

    General Motors to switch to electric vehicles as gas vehicles die a slow death
    USA TODAY· 9h ago
    (GM product development chief Mark) Reuss declined to specify a year for the transition away from gas and diesel vehicles, saying GM is too large to say exactly when the switch would be complete…

    Death of gas and diesel begins as GM announces plans for ‘all-electric future’
    Washington Post· 6h ago

    GM: The future is all-electric
    CNNMoney· 6h ago

    GM Is Going All Electric, Will Ditch Gas- and Diesel-Powered Cars
    NBCNews.com· 6h ago

    3 Oct: Reuters: Joseph White: General Motors promises more electric vehicles, paid for by SUVs
    Detroit automaker General Motors Co outlined plans on Monday to add 20 new battery electric and fuel cell vehicles to its global lineup by 2023, financed by robust profits from sales of gasoline-fueled trucks and sport utility vehicles in the United States and China…

    Automakers, including electric vehicle market leader Tesla Inc, lose money on electric cars because battery costs are still higher than comparable internal combustion engines.
    GM funds its forays into new technology using cash generated by old-technology vehicles popular with its core customer base in the U.S. heartland. In comparison, Tesla has burned through an estimated $10 billion in cash and has yet to show a full-year profit.

    GM earned more than 90 percent of its $12.5 billion in pretax profits last year in North America, amid robust demand for its lineup of large sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks.
    The company’s profitable operations in China rely on consumer demand for an expanding lineup of gasoline-powered SUVs…
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-electric/gm-promises-more-electric-vehicles-paid-for-by-suvs-idUSKCN1C724C

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    belinda

    Robin Eubanks May 23,2016 post @ Invisible Serfs Collar, one of several
    research essays on K-12 education emphasis on social-emotional learning to
    lock in experiences at a deep level. Forget evidence based critical thinking,
    this make-over of the student is taking place in classrooms in the US and in Oz.

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    john

    Bio Fuel and Bio Fools

    https://www.globalresearch.ca/biofuels-and-biofools/5611827

    European politicians are enthralled to the biofuels lobby – they are living a fantasy and it’s time to wake up to the reality of an industry driving deforestation, land grabbing and poverty, says MOLLY SCOTT CATO MEP

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    Uncle Gus

    God I hate this kind of bollocks. It’s all about the difference between being “eco” and being environmentally responsible.

    Wood-burning stoves, like man-buns and craft beer, are extremely fashionable and also totally, absolutely *eco*. But environmentally, they are a complete arse. YOU HAVE TO KILL TREES TO FUEL THE BUGGERS! WHAT PART OF THAT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND????!!!

    (Sorry. Got a bit carried away there for a moment…)

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    Amber

    Never met a planet has a fever crusader who didn’t quickly
    sound off about there being too many people . The solution….
    renewable energy to rob tax payers undermine their health
    all while claiming to be self righteously green .
    London can turn into a Beijing smog bowl as long as the aristocrats are getting their subsidies .
    Renewable energy is a false flag designed to create more poor smurfs .

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