It takes a really big government to waste money on a scale like this
Carbon capture aims to stuff a harmless fertilizer underground in order to change the weather. With CCS, the hard part is deciding which obstacle is the most stupidly unachievable. One ton of solid coal generates nearly three tons of CO2 in a puffy, fluffy, expanded gas form. It doesn’t take a genius to know it won’t fit back into the same hole. And even if you get it down there, it may not stay there. The gas has to be compressed, or refrigerated (or both). Underground holes are hot. Not surprisingly, this takes a lot of energy, so that to build a coal plant with the capability to “store CO2” we must spend 60% more dollars, and then throw away 40% of the electricity as well.
You, I, global business, practically no one would spend their own money on it. The geniuses planning it thought the carbon price would rise from 30 euros to 100 euros which would make it a goer. Instead the carbon credit price feel to seven. (And that’s only after the EU propped it up.)
EUObserver spotted this CCS bonfire. I read it on Notalotofpeopleknowthat. h/t Paul Homewood
The Daily Express:
EU Wastes £520m On Abortive CCS Project
An investigation found that Brussels blew the colossal sum of cash on a drive to build underground storage facilities for CO2 emissions – but no such facilities were ever constructed.
This week the architect of the scheme, a former Lib Dem MEP, admitted this was because officials bungled their predictions for the environmental costs facing businesses.
The reports concern a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project the EU set up in 2007, which was designed to help companies reduce their emissions and so save money on Brussels’ green taxes.
Under the scheme businesses could buy pollution permits, or allowances, from eurocrats the proceeds of which would then be spent by the EU on capturing and storing carbon emissions.
However the fund, called NER300, did not support a single such project after officials catastrophically miscalculated carbon emissions pricing in Europe, which they expected to go up but which actually dropped drastically just after the programme was announced.
Pollies assumed they would have customers, but at seven euros a ton, there were no takers in the CCS scheme.
PS: Re Brexit — We all know a new hole in one place means a new hill in another. In the same story:
Britain’s departure from the bloc is set to blow a £9 billion a year hole in its budget, with a number of member states actively calling for Brussels’ largesse to be be reined in.
Hopefully a pile of Euro will be not crossing to the EU soon, and then there are extra benefits from the multiplier factor. Funding stupidity, multiplies it.
It’s OK, they can just print more money! According to Leftist/Green “economics”, doesn’t money come from the printing presses, not from the hard work of non-Lefties or otherwise stolen from future generations?
260
“‘Thank you. Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.
‘But we have also,’ continued the management consultant, ‘run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut.’
‘So in order to obviate this problem,’ he continued, ‘and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and…er, burn down all the forests. I think you’ll all agree that’s a sensible move under the circumstances.'”
Adams, Douglas, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
270
Seems to me that the left believes in zero sum economics. That is, there’s a fixed supply of wealth and for anyone to become wealthy, others must become poor. For some reason, the concept of economic growth seems to allude them. But then again, much of what the political left believes about immigration, economics, trade and foreign policy is based on a dangerously myopic view of reality.
110
There are the five laws of human stupidity and a scale here:
https://qz.com/967554/the-five-universal-laws-of-human-stupidity/
Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
And its corollary:
A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.
90
More wisdom, from John Cleese, on stupid people!
50
Summed up well by the research of Dunning and Kruger
… when psychologist actually managed some useful, well designed, well written and entertaining research, light years from schmuck pretenders like “Professor” Stephan Lewandowsky at Bristol University, aka, “I have become particularly interested in the variables that determine whether or not people accept scientific evidence, for example surrounding vaccinations or climate science.”
20
Update from the Clean Energy Regulator.
The latest advice received is that the current legislation does not provide any benefit to an emitter that captures, then sequesters or otherwise prevents, the release of CO2 into the atmosphere, unless they grow trees.
That means that even if a coal fired power station was to upgrade with technology that captures, then converts the CO2 into natural gas (the end user of which would be responsible for any emissions), the power station operator would still be required to purchase carbon credits solely for the financial benefit of wind/solar producers, i.e: payment for reducing emissions that do not exist.
This policy was initiated by the Labor Party (Rudd/Gillard/Rudd), however, it was enacted by Greg Hunt and Tony Abbott with agreement by the ALP and the Greens in the senate and ratified by Malcolm Turnbull.
There is now an opportunity to offer major corporations the ability to obtain a credit for captured CO2 conversion into natural gas and other downstream products, using Australian owned technology. This technology allows the production of very inexpensive hydrogen. Methane can then be produced at a lower cost than conventional methods at sub A$3 per GJ. There would be no economic need to source methane using other methods.
Australia would lead the world by example, without cost to taxpayers. In fact, there would be royalties received by governments, rather than taxes diverted to super funds for windmill and solar farms, set up by populist politicians.
30
I am extremely skeptical about the energy cost of turning CO2 into natural gas. Do this thought experiment. You have a car running on natural gas, it emits CO2 which you then capture from the exhaust pipe and convert to methane (natural gas) for less energy cost than you get from burning the gas and then you feed that back into the engine. It doesn’t make sense.
Is this the next green insanity?
50
A large source is required, upwards of 100kT per annum. Its ideal for big industrial processes. The methane produced may also be used for other processes. It just a convenient way of storing hydrogen, rather than ammonia.
21
they are idiots
but they will try
CCS use coal to make electricity , use electricity to turn CO2 back to coal so it will go back in hole
41
It may not have buried much cO2, but I’ll bet it funded some very impressive offices, with deep pile carpet, & the best of leather clad furniture.
I’d even hazard a guess it paid for some very good conferences in some very nice places.
370
I’ve seen this story but have not seen where the money went.
Was there a table showing where the money came from and where it went?
Someone point to that. Please. Thank you.
30
In short a very successful program.
20
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I am not sure about the universe” (Albert Einstein).
So what can we deduct from this? Well Albert was a genius & the EU is run by a bunch of idiots – there should be a Human Stupidity Scale with the end members being 1 (smartest e.g. Einstein) and 100 (dumbest e.g. EU bureaucrats).
120
“Three causes especially have excited the discontent of mankind; and, by impelling us to seek remedies for the irremediable, have bewildered us in a maze of madness and error. These are death, toil, and the ignorance of the future..”
― Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
And it helps that the Auditors haven’t approved the Accounts since last Century and no-one thinks there is anyhing wrong.
70
Question:
what is the difference between the stupid burocrat that waisted 520mln quid and the thief that tried to get away with say 1% of the sum?
Answer:
the stupid burocrat doesn’t go to jail.
70
My 1.3 response above was meant to be here.
20
Wow, just wow. I say that with no surprise. This simply has to stop as first world countries can not afford to keep this climate sham going. The credit card need some to be repaid at some point and China is just waiting on the side ready to call in their debts. Donald Trump may be classless but he understands what’s at stake for America and acts accordingly. This continual waste of money will be the endgame of our western lifestyle as we have enjoyed it.
161
I wonder how much money has been wasted with this Co2 hatred , we could have cured cancer ,maybe even found ways to eliminate world hunger but noooo let’s spend trillions on nothing instead !
231
To eliminate world hunger its important to develop a stable middle class, this may take a little while.
The process of bringing down the Klimatariat maybe at hand, a recent paper by Nikolov N and Zeller K proves that CO2 is innocent of all charges.
‘A key entailment from the model is that the atmospheric ‘greenhouse effect’ currently viewed as a radiative phenomenon is in fact an adiabatic (pressure-induced) thermal enhancement analogous to compression heating and independent of atmospheric composition. Consequently, the global down-welling long-wave flux presently assumed to drive Earth’s surface warming appears to be a product of the air temperature set by solar heating and atmospheric pressure. In other words, the so-called ‘greenhouse back radiation’ is globally a result of the atmospheric thermal effect rather than a cause for it.’
The Hockey Schtick
60
el gordo November 10, 2017 at 4:48 pm
To simple! Similar but still misinformation. Both the so called ‘back radiation’ and ‘atmospheric thermal effect’ are illusionary\non physical! The atmosphere remains not isothermal but gravitationally ‘isentropic’, no work done moving such atmospheric mass about. The lapse rate is but the “universal gas law” for above 10kPa di-atomic compressable fluid in the environment of a near constant gravitational compressive,not accelerative, field! This gravitational compression is the only thing that:
1) Prevents Earth’s atmosphere from drifting off to space.
2) Insures that the atmosphere independent of its variable airborne mass exhibits no weight at any location! Archimedes 271BC…Questions:
1) What is the nominal mass of the atmosphere given a near constant sea-level pressure of 101,325Pa?
2) What maintains that mass\pressure?
All the best!-will-
20
When I see this non stop rip off of tax payers by politicians , bureaucrats and climate con-men
rent seekers it seems a clean up is long overdue . As long as we give politicians blank credit cards we are
absolutely shafting future generations and will continue to hollow out the middle class.
The irony is most of the “renewable ” industry exists because of fossil fuels .
The underpinning to the climate fraud industry is the biggest joke of all . … failed climate models
which promoters like Al Gore exploit for personal gain .
Based on increasing evidence of internal Democrat corruption and possibly murder, paying off some scientists and
“journalists” is chump change .
61
If there is a subsidy to suck the greensters will be sucking.
150
Fake empire run by fake tans invents fake market dealing in 4% of a 0.04% fragment of thin air.
But then the fake tans decide they need to keep the carbon price in the toilet so Germany can keep making lots of stuff because someone somewhere has to make stuff. Which hammers the market in 4% of a 0.04% fragment of thin air, thus incinerating half a billion quid.
Doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea though. Just European. Pass the Apres-Soleil.
140
mosomoso,
Facts are forbidden.
70
I tellya, it’s those tanning lamps. They turn ordinary Europeans into globalist commie technocrat zombies.
60
Post #51 of Jo’s previous post on the Antarctic wind turbine I posted an “off topic” of the failure of the American CCS project as announced only a few days ago.
To repeat that post in this more relevant post of Jo’s
———
Looks like America’s clean coal CCS , [ Carbon Capture & Storage ] is finally dead which as anybody who had a close look at the technology and the geological requirements to store the “Captured” CO2 and the horrendous energy costs [ 40% more coal burnt just to capture and compress and liquify and pump the CO2 into the geological storage strata ] involved knew a long time ago the whole concept was nothing more than another tax payer rip off and the greens and climate change cultists pursuit of yet another climate change rainbow with yet another pot of CO2 gold supposedly at the end of that particular tax payer funded rainbow.
.
Via GWPF.
Headlines below dated; 8 Nov 2017;
With America’s ‘clean coal’ flagship dead, is the concept still credible?
.
US $7.5 billion later!
&
120
“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon, you’re talking REAL money!”
— — — the late Senator Everett Dirksen (R – Illinois; circa 1964)
60
The Telegraph ; 14 Oct 2017
Carbon capture in doubt after Norway buries 90pc of budget
60
As of September 30, 2016, the Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies program at MIT has closed.
I count 42 CCS projects listed here that have been cancelled, are dormant or on hold.
11 projects are in the planning stage with 2 projects operating including the now cancelled Kemper project and one pilot project operating.
.
The whole global CCS debacle reminds me of Monty Python’s “Norwegian Blue, Dead Parrot “ sketch.
70
Or the Black Knight.
Monty Python sketches are becoming more and more relevant every day, in this AGW fiasco.
70
$hit, only a Billion AUD.
And I’m willing to bet there’s people who thought they stopped too soon.
Tony.
190
.
Actually AUD $ 1.71 billion at todays exchange rate, Tony.
That would pay for a few connections on Rudd’s NBN [ sarc/]
80
Tony I overheard a bloke at work stating that solar and battery storage is getting so good that soon we won’t need a national power grid, I’m willing to bet that bloke is one of them. 🙁
40
Lots of arm chair advisors…as I said to someone at work, changing the make up of the grid requires significant re-engineering, but also a national coordinated effort. The issues run very deep and are complex, which is the danger of boofhead and ignorant politicians messing with stuff they dont understand.
I guarantee those behind making this mess know thier stuff, and just get the dim-witted pollies to pull the trigger ion it.
Find those behind the scenes who orchatesrate this, and you find those who are repsonsible…..they need to be exposed publically.
60
It is all a matter of relativities. The SA network is already on life support. The big battery and the CSP plant are being fused from general revenue. SA can longer increase electricity costs to recover the extra capital.
Solar and battery in a residential setting is already the lowest cost option in SA. All other states have the same industry destroying policies in various stages of implementation. Around 30% market share for wind and solar in Australia is the tipping point where grid power becomes more expensive than making your own. By that stage all heavy industry has departed and the grid is left with highly variable load and highly variable supply.
The fundamental driver is that there is no economy of scale with solar and little economy of scale with wind. Any sighting advantages are offset by the cost of transmission. Our grid was designed to take power generated at coal fields to the load centres. Coal generation is highly concentrated. That is in complete contrast to the more or less even dispersion of wind and solar energy as well as its unlimited supply. Grid connected wind and solar are highly disadvantaged by the cost of transmission compared to making your own.
70
Yonniestone mentions this:
I find it odd how supposedly rational people, that, whenever it comes to electrical power consumption, turn off their brains every time they drive out of their driveway, or walk into a Supermarket. They do not even consider just how much power is being consumed around them. When it comes to the consumption of electrical power, all they think of is what they use in their own home, and how rooftop solar and batteries may (just may) be able to alleviate the power consumption problem.
I live here in Rockhampton, a city with a population of more than 80,000 people, the 23rd largest city in Oz.
Probably far and away the largest consumer of electricity in this city would be, umm, let me think, Stockland Mall. It has a Coles, a Woolies (both huge) a K Mart, Big W and more than 150 other stores, and two large food courts.
Each one of those smallest stores in the Mall has a power bill larger than for the average home.
The Coles and Woolies would each individually have a power bill of the average home multiplied by around 250 to 300. (conservatively)
There is no way on Earth that rooftop solar and batteries are going to run the level of power consumption just for that one shopping Mall in one city.
Until people actually realise that power consumption is more than just the private homes we live in, this joke of rooftop solar and batteries will persist.
The residential sector (private homes) makes up barely 25% of overall power consumption. Even if EVERY single residence went the way of rooftop solar and batteries, that leaves more than 150TWH of power to find every year. (Look at you power bill expressed in KWH, so 150TWH is 150,000,000,000KWH)
When you’re talking rooftop solar and batteries, even then it would be only a small percentage of that 25% Residential consumption, and the cost would be horrendous.
Tony.
90
Luboš Motl ( “the reference frame” ) has posted with estimates of the electricity used in the mining of Bitcoins. His search box will bring up several. Note: he is not a fan.
20
Shopping centres are already installing solar to reduce power costs:
http://renuenergy.com.au/asx-announcement/renu-energy-signs-agreement-sca-property-group-2-9mw-solar-pv-four-embedded-networks/
With current price of LGCs plus the current commercial tariff in any state the $700,000 EBITDA looks to be easily achieved on the $4.3M investment – crazy not to invest. The initial system is unbuffered and would be sized to maximise income. So it remains heavily reliant on the grid supply but shifts the costs to those without solar. However once that money is sunk and the grid price continues to increase, as it must, it just accelerates the effort for less grid and more locally made. It is a downward spiral.
The NEM is in terminal decline. All heavy industry that currently relies on grid power will have to arrange their own supply or depart to places that have low cost electricity.
One significant example of the problems heavy industry face:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-19/boyne-smelter-job-cuts-electricity-price-hike-stanwell-contract/8194880
Aluminium smelters only make sense as base load for coal or nuclear fired generation. They are completely incompatible with wind and solar generation. Solar makes sense for a shopping centre because it has the appropriate load profile that roughly matches solar output on a sunny day.
The RET is the perfect platform for making those well off richer and those struggling poorer. BUT the crazy fact in all of this is that the organisations that represent those struggling are all for the RET.
30
The price of carbon dioxide is looking healthy, the Europeans are reforming the market.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-carbon-survey/analysts-raise-eu-carbon-price-forecasts-on-expectations-of-market-reform-survey-idUSKBN1CG1OO
40
With the approach of global cooling the price should go south, where it belongs.
http://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/co2-emissionsrechte
50
Ill buy some ..keep it..it may go north like bitcoins 30% a month..then Ill sell it again.
40
Carbon has no future, its a benign trace gas which sadly doesn’t make the world a warmer place.
On the other hand, bitcoin is a robust ‘commodity ‘ which cannot crash. I know a couple of punters who have ambitions of becoming day traders and the idea appeals to me, knowing global cooling has begun it might be possible to corner the market.
30
Did they use wind mills to “blow” that much money away? I’m sure it could have been put to far better uses, such as saving lives or helping to poor. Oh I forgot. Today people’s lives don’t matter. Governments are more interested in building monuments for Gaia. I’m pretty much convinced that all the money that has been wasted on so called global warming projects over the past few decades could have been used to find a cure for all cancers by now.
62
does anyone have a link to the true value of subsidies to 1) coal mining, 2) coal fired electricity generation? I need data for a rebuttal, not sure where to find trustworthy stuff. TIA
50
.04 cents .
http://www.minerals.org.au/file_upload/files/reports/MCA_electricity_subsidies_3March17.pdf
50
thank you!
30
essentially zero
30
Remembering the 300% tax on coal by the glorious leader of Victoriastan I’d say the subsidies in vic would be well into negative territory.
60
The people you encounter consider all the money taken in by a company to be for the tax bin. They want it all.
Any amount in whatever way left for the company to use will be considered a subsidy.
You won’t convince them of anything because the definition of terms is fluid — Yours will be flushed.
30
It seems that western governments are engaged in a modern version of ‘Beggar my neighbour’ called ‘Beggar my electorate’, the object of which is to have the greenest policies for their country whatever the cost to the poor and ordinary people in their land. These are the people who are forced to pay much higher energy costs; these higher costs also destroy jobs (and the associated pensions) in industry and commerce. This in turn leads to increased social security costs for those remaining in employment.
I find it very difficult to understand this self-destructive immolation without invoking powerful forces that have subverted our democracies. To what extent have green activist groups bought politicians through opaque lobbying practices? And to what extent have the political elites been craven in their attitude to supra-national organisations such as the United Nations and its off-shoots (e.g. the IPCC)? Why have not the political elites (not to mention the fourth estate!) demanded due diligence examination of green policies to ensure that such increased costs imposed on their electorates really are necessary?
The West really is in a bad place, and it seems that it has only itself to blame through allowing its democracies to be suborned.
Regards,
I_W.
90
Things cant get this bad unless pollies on all sides of parliament are acting together.
This us why i advocate blocking the following greenist political parties from holding any power at the next election:
Labor
Liberal
Greens
…and anyone else who is a UN flunky or believes in CAGW.
Its Democracy in action.
60
They only do and get away with it because they’re no longer held to account in the laser light of reason and critical analysis.
If the blerdie traitorous Fourth Estate were capable of doing their job properly and of adhering rigorously to the canons of journalism, the entire edifice from the UN, UNEP, ECOSOC, WHO, WMO, WTO, Green Fund, ETS, RET, local councils and national governments would implode virtually overnight. The eco-charade would be absolutely done, and very, very quickly too, like the dog’s dinner it is.
Those propaganda fake news b’stards of the MSM long ago subverted, infiltrated and wrecked journalism. Now, as Alinsky puppets in the hands of Soros and the globalist eco-marxist masters they make no pretence at being journos, any more than new-age academics even bother to attempt to be apolitical; they know which side their breads buttered, they know they’re owned and they long ago decided that their souls were cheap.
So, when this fetid lot are called out, exorcised, excised, resected and cauterised, and if indeed there are in existence sufficient lamp posts and miles of piano wire metaphorically speaking, reason and sanity may prevail and once again, and we may enjoy a prosperous free World that, for example, choses to spend £520m on the genetic treatment of calpain 2A muscular dystrophy instead of the institutionalised unicorns of the EU.
30
So, why aren’t WE building”More”COAL fired power plants in Australia?Could it be,because WE have a bunch of”Cowardly,Lying,Do Nothing,Career Politicians”who are too scared to stand up to the GREEN monsters and the UN?
Most people read “1984” as a warning. Progressive,Retards read it as a training manual.
00
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest..case closed.
50
What the E.U. were hoping to gain,
From the C.C.S. plan is inane,
Who, on plant food would pour,
In a carbon-sink store,
A billion and more down the drain.
180
WAY OFF TOPIC – but I got my Enchrona glasses today – thanks Science. This is what i posted on FB
I am colour blind and today my Enchrona glasses arrived. Enchorna glasses help colour blind people see colour how people with normal colour vision see. So at 47 years of age, for the first time I have experienced colour in the same way as everybody else.
The colours in these photos I saw properly for the first time today.
Without the glasses I see the colours like a colour print that has been faded in the sun, and some colours are faded almost to white with a slight colour tinge.
With the glasses the colours just pop vibrantly. Pink is twenty times as intense, purple ten times. I can see beautiful definition in green leaves and some more subtle green tones I have seen for the first time today. Even brown looks more intense, defined and appealing. Long distance vistas close-in on me because now there are many more colour variations out there and sharper definition.
It is a beautiful colourful world. Thankyou technology for letting me see it the way it is meant to be seen.
330
I’m very pleased for you Maverick. It’s good to hear something positive 🙂
80
Re” EnChroma” glasses for the colour blind and how they were accidentally discovered;
EnChroma’s Accidental Spectacles Find Niche Among the Colorblind
Annies comment at # 18.1 got me thinking.
.
Enchroma Glasses were discovered and developed and are sold by somebody who was smart enough to realise what he had found and the benefits it would confer on colour blind sufferers .
The Internet arguably as big as an advance in human progress as Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press and the invention of the steam engine was developed as the Apranet between university researchers so as to be able to exchange data and information and this without the direct involvement of any Government or bureaucrats.
.
Governments were not involved in any way in these above major advances in mankind’s technological advancement .
.
Today Governments are involved, very deeply involved in picking technological winners without having ANY expertise what so ever to justify picking the so called “winners” and then massively subsidising with the citizens taxes, those so called “winners” which as it turns out is a dead cert to be another government massive failure , a failure that the politicians who picked those winners will , unlike a business person, will never ever be made responsible for and have to suffer financially and personally for making such bad choice for a so called winner. ;
The Government organised NBN here in Australia is a technological and financial catastrophe although when private enterprise takes it over again as they invariably will, then its potential with all that communications fibre running across Australia will begin to be realised.
Governments have destroyed the privately run, highly efficient, relatively cheap ultra reliable electrical power production system almost every where in the western world and replaced it with massive environmentally destructive wind turbines and solar panels which cannot guarantee any power for more than few minutes ahead, that need massive publicly funded subsidies to exist, that are grossly unreliable, save almost nothing in the so called CO2 emissions when the fossil fuelled back up systems are also counted in the renewable energy sectors emissions and all at a horrendous financial and national economic cost and now at an increasing serious social cost as more and more citizens can no longer afford the power costs.
Governments through their unwarranted and unneeded and highly destructive venturing into the control of the energy business are destroying industries with their high energy costs, are destroying jobs, 3 to 4 jobs in industry and business are destroyed [ Spanish data ] for every job created in the renewable energy sector, are holding back national economic advancement andholding back and even destroying the prospects of improved living standards and economic advancement and are making it impossible to start new business ventures and industries due to the horrendous costs of energy and the increasing unreliability of the supply of large amounts of power .
Governments are massively subsidising electric vehicles without any research on their practicality or if there is enough power from the electrical generation system or whether the electrical infrastructure particularly renewable energy of wind and solar can generate enough power and the infrastructure can support a large number of EV’s drawing power from the grid.
NONE of this has ever been researched by governments BEFORE they began to provide huge tax payer subsidies to EV manufacturers using ordinary citizens taxes to do so without the backing in any of those ordinary citizens to subsidise the EV manufacturers.
Governments are decreeing the use of EV’s despite unbelievably bad working conditions including near slave labour of children in the very primitive mining of cobalt for the EV batteries some African nations.
Governments are decreeing the use and massively subsidising EV’s without ANY research as to their practicality, efficiency, ability to cater for the community driving and transport requirements or their ultimate energy requirements and the disposal of their battery components .
Governments have and are massively subsidising renewable energy and heavily penalising a century old ultra reliable coal based energy production system without doing ANY research as to whether such renewable energy systems such as wind and solar are at all capable of powering a national demand for reliable and low cost energy .
Governments are deciding constantly which technologies will be the winners of the future and then throwing immense amounts of the citizens taxes at these government selected technologies which almost without exception fail dismally within decade or so.
And the entire sums of money splurged by governments on their choices of future technologies is lost to the community and is destroyed for has been channelled through gross corruption into some very nefarious pockets of the ultra rich elites .
Governments place immense fines in private individuals who deliberately or inadvertently kill wild life.
They fine coal and industrial companies massive fines if they break even minor environmental or health regulations
But they turn a totally blind eye to the massive destruction of birds and bats in particular by the wind turbine industry.
Governments turn a completely blind eye to the very serious health problems the rural people suffer when they are forced to live in the vicinity of wind turbines and their health destroying infra sound.
Governments won’t even hold a carefully controlled independent research and inquiry into the health destroying sound characteristics of the rural environment destroying wind turbines.
There is much, much more and my comments above are only the tip of the iceberg of total Government incompetence when the Government decides it is much smarter than anybody in private business and that it can pick winners and therefore it is entitled to use the citizens taxes to massively subsidise the ‘ winners’ that the government has selected.
Governments of today seem to be run by ignorants of the realities of life out there away from politics and have repeatedly demonstrated a total ignorance of the technologies that keep a civilisation and society functioning.
All allied with a overwhelming arrogance arising from that complete and total ignorance that gives the government politicians and bureaucrats the belief they are much better equipped and much smarter than the mob and it’s individuals so as to select what the society and community should be doing than just allowing that community and national society to just get on with their own business and create the advances that will take our species into the far future.
80
CCS – Stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon and look at the steep cliffs of carbonate rock. They’ve been there more than 300 million years. It’s a natural process that still occurs today in warm shallow seas. Figure out a way to use these natural processes that already recycle 98% is all CO2 emissions, natural and anthropogenic, by just increasing their uptake rate by 2 or 3 percent. Hint, the best place to do this is in the tropics.
63
What in the devil makes you think that CO2 has anything to do with the IPCC’s 100-year linear trend (1906-2005) of 0.74 [0.56 to 0.92] C° increase in temperature?
Given the benefits to world food production that comes from an increase in CO2 I’d think we need to “figure out” ways to use the natural and anthropogenic processes to decrease its uptake by 2 or 3 percent.
Hint: I’m not a delusional green-left activist.
50
Nope, Scep, that won’t do it either.
If you do that all you’ll get is a decrease in food production as well.
Thinks again.
Yep, we need to increase the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere to stimulate greater production.
And that’s what’s happening. So there. Fixed. Keep it going.
50
Carbonate rocks are an ideal place to store CO2. When we eventually run out of oil, we will need to liberate that stored carbon to replace the nutrients that had been added to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels. Otherwise, agriculture will surely crash and billions will die.
The likely hood of this scenario is infinitely greater than the zero possibility of catastrophic climate change from CO2 emissions. What’s more alarming? The inevitable death of billions from starvation or a hypothesized degree or two of warming, even if that warming were to actually arise from CO2 emissions.
30
According to Freeman Dyson, there are experiments that show methane forms when you mix water, carbonate rock and certain iron compound and expose them to heat and pressure:
From https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/10/freeman-dyson-on-heretical-thoughts-about-global-warmimg/
“They mixed together tiny quantities of three things that we know exist in the mantle of the earth, and observed them at the pressure and temperature appropriate to the mantle about two hundred kilometers down. The three things were calcium carbonate which is sedimentary rock, iron oxide which is a component of igneous rock, and water. These three things are certainly present when a slab of subducted ocean floor descends from a deep ocean trench into the mantle. The experiment showed that they react quickly to produce lots of methane, which is natural gas.”
So forming carbonate may be the first step in long term recycling of CO2.
10
And plunge the World into starvation, shrinking greenery and further impoverishment?
Ehh, no thanks, and no thanks from wider humanity.
20
Over eons, life on Earth has competed for ever diminishing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and water.
In fact if the technology to burn coal and other fossil fuels had not been developed over the past 200 years the globe would be much less greener than it is now.
With increasing carbon the less efficient carbon converters are beginning to overtake the more efficient converters. Grasslands are becoming woodlands again.
It is reasonable to expect that a balance will be achieved somewhere in the future where burning of fossil fuels by humans is balanced by the increase take up of carbon dioxide in vegetation. Earth has proven remarkably self correcting over billions of years.
20
A far more cost effective method would be to pay every citizen, and all visitors in the EU, €1 each to hold their breath for as long as possible every day for a week.
Do that 3 time a year and CO2 levels would quickly fall. 🙂
50
“Instead the carbon credit price feel to seven.” Should this be “Instead the carbon credit price fell to seven.”
40
We all know that greenies substitute feelz for thought.
40
My lizdexia (aka dyslexia) must be getting better as it only took 3 rereads before I got what you are saying. (feel > fell).
20
More information on this topic at the website WUWT: The EU Blows $683 million (£520m) on a carbon capture project – that captured nothing!
40
I captured a Carbon just a few days ago. I wish I had known someone would pay me for it. Unfortunately I had to let it go because I don’t have the facilities to keep it. 😉
100
The darned thing was eating my wife’s flowers and we can’t have that happening.
70
Well… Doesn’t that story make as much sense as anything else about this carbon capture nonsense?
Cmon now, admit it. Capturing a Carbon in my yard eating my wife’s flowers is as likely as the official carbon capture line of bull.
80
Much less dangerous too!
30
At least until they figure out where I live.
40
Sorry, but irresistible:
10 Obscure And Completely Delusional Nazi Schemes
Given the context, the above and below look comparatively sane.
70
ROTFL .
Yep. So Green. So Save the World.
In the words of Spike Milligna (the Well Typing Error):
“ Open your wallet and say after me: Help yourself! Thank you! Don’t mind if I do.”
The Battle of Spion Kop – The Goon Show.)
The perpetrator(s) of that are “ living proof of the existence of Piltdown Man!”
(series 05, episode 19 ~ “The Missing Scroll”)
The Battle of Spion Kop – The Goon Show.)
40
The political elite met their target. There was no mention that there was to be a useful result for the people who originally earn the money they spent. All the political elite had to do was spend £520m and that is just what they did.
After all, they are only doing what government has done since the first government: fail to deliver at an ever increasing cost. Why should you expect this government to be any different from any other government past, present, or future? It shouldn’t be a surprise.
60
A hundred euros here, a million euros there, pretty soon yer talkin’
real money, guv-uh-mints spending O.T.P. (Other People’s Money) like
dust in the wind. Sing along, cits…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0zSB2WEtwU
50
https://principia-scientific.org/global-temperature-trends-2500-b-c-2040-d/
[It’s generally better to explain at least a little of what’s at the other end of a link. A link with nothing else in the comment is likely to get you into moderation. I’m approving this one because the link is easily self explanatory, giving a good idea of what’s there before you go there. But everyone, please remember to give other readers a little help. Thanks.] AZ
50
In 2006 I wrote this to a Parliamentary inquiry.
Wednesday, 16 August 2006
House of Representatives Standing Committee on Science and Innovation House of Representatives
PO Box 6021
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600 Fax: 61 2 6277 4827
Comments on Inquiry into Geosequestration Technology
Those who advocate the continuation of carbon-based energy production propose that carbon dioxide so produced can be permanently eliminated by effectively burying it in the ground in either exhausted gas fields or other porous rock formations. The following brief comments will attempt to address why this is an unwise idea, indeed one that could lead to a great catastrophe for future generations.
Sequestered carbon dioxide must be stored forever – this carbon should never be released into the environment. This is impossible to guarantee over geological periods, and assuming civilisation survives, its unintended release in the future could have devastating results.
Sequestered carbon dioxide will ALWAYS be potentially harmful. In comparison, nuclear waste eventually becomes harmless in geologically short periods of time. In addition, nuclear waste occupies smaller volumes, by many orders of magnitude, and there are many more suitable sites.
The mere fact that exhausted gas fields have held their contents for long periods of time is no evidence that they will continue to do so in the future. Firstly, it is likely that these fields have lost portions of some or most of their contents by natural processes over eons of time. The gas-containing volume is not truly hermetically sealed as may be supposed. Secondly, as gas is pumped out of fields the rock structure changes as it is no longer supported by internal pressure. It cracks and otherwise degrades. In addition, gas recovery is often enhanced by deliberately inducing cracks in the reservoir. Re- pressurising the field is not likely to repair this damage. Furthermore, there is no proof that once a field is filled with carbon dioxide, the plug can or will remain intact over the rest of time.
Most if not all gas fields contain water. The carbon dioxide will react with this water and create carbonic acid which may weaken the formation.
The potential for destruction by the accidental release of gas is tremendous. Furthermore terrorists are a great risk to this technology. They could easily compromise the seal on sequestered gas, or cause a gas reservoir to be released before it is ultimately sealed. A sudden release of carbon dioxide is extremely dangerous. In 1986 naturally accumulated carbon dioxide was suddenly released from the bottom of Lake Nyos, West of Cameroon and more than 1700 people were killed along with livestock up to 25 km away. This involved a much smaller volume of gas than may be sequestered from a typical power station.
Given all of the aforementioned problems it is difficult to imagine that there can be any strong case made for carbon-based electricity production with associated carbon sequestration. Further, there are few alternatives. Most “alternative” forms of energy are not of a sufficiently high energy density to ensure economic collection and distribution. Wind farming is environmentally destructive due to bird strikes, infra-sound and visual impact and does not work without subsidies. Solar cannot meet base load production requirements and is also expensive. There are limited hydro resources and these are currently almost fully exploited. Wave and tidal power is of limited application. The reality is that nuclear power is the only technology that can compete on a similar economic basis to carbon-based electricity production and has fewer problems with disposal of its waste products. Short of returning to the Stone Age, if we decide to remain an energy-based civilisation, we must use nuclear energy. The carbon dioxide problem cannot simply be buried in the ground as is advocated.
In summary, carbon dioxide sequestration is poorly conceived, cannot guarantee sequestration of gas forever as is necessary and has potential for great harm due to accidental or deliberate release. It is nothing more than a ploy by those who are not prepared to face reality and recognise the urgent necessity of developing large scale nuclear electricity generation which ultimately has far fewer potential problems than sequestration.
Sincerely,
Dr David Maddison
130
Incidentally the volume of liquid CO2 produced for CCS is about twice the volume of the coal burned to make the CO2. The volumes involved are staggering. People have no concept of the scale. Similarly they think a few windmills equates to a typical coal power station and have no idea that you need a few thousand windmills to equate to such a power station (when the wind is blowing).
120
Talking of wind mills and the manufacturers, reality starts to bite as …
Green Energy Crash: Vestas Shares Dive 17% On Concerns Over US Subsidy Cuts
30
Never base your business model on subsidies or protection from free market competition.
50
Sovereign risk = Sovereign corruption.
Paradise find. Poor old Charlie caught with his snout in the trough:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/07/prince-charles-profit-best-friend-hugh-van-cutsem-offshore-firm-paradise-papers
30
At David #30.1.1.1 – Never a truer statement spoken ye Gods!! Problem is so many of todays bright young things have never experienced an environment where somewhere somehow there is an emergency safety net to protect themselves from themselves.
20
Although CO2 is often described as a plant fertiliser, carbon dioxide does not meet the accepted definition of a fertiliser.
fertilizer
(also fertiliser)
NOUN
A chemical or natural substance added to soil or land to increase its fertility.
Carbon is more aptly described as the fundamental building block of all life on earth. All carbon in lifeforms was extracted from carbon dioxide in air or water.
Describing carbon dioxide as a fertiliser dramatically understates its importance to life. Plant life has evolved over the ages to survive on ever reducing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere.
70
A very happy OT , just received first electricity bill from new provider and it’s the equivalent of half of what I was paying , as a matter of fact less than half .
Still think the greenhouse gas emissions they show is a bit shonky considering our power comes from snowy hydro but very happy to halve my bill .
30
Please share what you are now paying. I’m about to negotiate a new deal after first 12 months on a 42% discount. Why list prices are so high is something the ACCC should investigate.
50
35 and 21 cents less 33% pay on time with Origin but I believe red energy are cheaper .
40
I’m paying 15.6 c/Kwh after a 42% discount with Origin, plus supply charge of 84.69 c/day and on another account 19.5 cents after 28% discount plus daily charge 114.53 c/day.
30
Yes you do have to wonder about the discounts don’t you .
40
Well, in Perth I pay 25.1 c/kWh plus 0.88 cents daily supply charge. Plus GST. No discount. And I don’t access the peak rate scheme because it doesn’t save me money. We use about 16 kWh per day average over the year. More in summer with the aircon.
40
The daily service charge distorts the true price. I think the best way to establish the true price is to find out the price for the expected number of kWh consumption over the billing period.
50
Dave:
The daily service charge DELIBERATELY distorts the true price. Those who judge only by the rate per kWh need to calculate their average daily usage and add the service charge pro rata.
30
I can see what you’re saying but the poles and wires charge was cheaper with my last provider and about $30 dearer for my new provider but the cheaper kw price and no penalty for using more than X in a month combined with a couple of other factors seems to have halved my bill .
Don’t care if my supply service charge is double or even triple if the kw charge is low enough to reduce my bill outright .
20
9 Nov: PowerMag: Sonal Patel: Babcock & Wilcox to Cut 30% of Renewable Workforce on Profitability Woes
Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises Inc. (B&W), which is already in the midst of a restructuring plan and ongoing cost controls, will slash 30% of its renewable energy workforce and implement cost-saving measures across the company to combat falling revenues…
However, B&W’s renewable segment—which brought in about $108.6 million, or about 26% of total revenues for the third quarter—fared even worse, seeing a 12.7% decrease compared to last year.
***B&W blamed the losses on the failure of a structural steel beam at an unnamed renewable new-build project, which required work to be stopped to stabilize the structure. A similar design was used on two other new-build projects in the UK, and although no structural failure occurred on these projects, work was also stopped for a short period of time, and reinforcement of the structure is underway, the company said.
Total costs associated with the structural steel design issue at the three projects, mainly due to the resulting schedule impact, are said to be in line with the company’s previously stated estimate—approximately $20 million…
B&W Vølund, the company’s division that manufactures, constructs, maintains, and operates renewable energy plants, will see a workforce reduction of about 30%…
http://www.powermag.com/babcock-wilcox-to-cut-30-of-renewable-workforce-on-profitability-woes/?pagenum=1
***don’t know if they are referring to this incident in the UK – the article doesn’t mention B&W:
30 Jan: WindAction.org: Daily Record: Safety probe launched after collapse of 480-foot wind turbine in Ayrshire
The astonishing structural failure of the £2 million machine has prompted demands for information by the community in Barrhill. Scottish Power Renewables failed to alert the public to the incident for seven days. …“Debris was spread over half a kilometre and a crane was been brought in to try and clear the damage.
Energy chiefs have launched an urgent probe following the collapse of the 160-ton turbine.
The catastrophic collapse of a giant wind turbine is being investigated…
The Kilgallioch wind farm is operated by Scottish Power Renewables which had failed to alert the public to the incident for seven days…
“Local people want the alarm raised as they feel things are going on unreported.”
It happened during the early hours of Friday, January 13 as the area was hit by high winds and snow squalls.
At the time 55mph gusts were blowing in from the north west…
The £300million Kilgallioch development has 96 mills and will generate 239 mega watts to power up to 130,000 homes when fully onstream later this year.
Spanish firm Gamesa and Scottish Power are carrying out a joint investigation…
Other collapses have been revealed in Northern Ireland, California and Denmark…
http://www.windaction.org/posts/46266-safety-probe-launched-after-collapse-
30
£520m or €520m?
33
EUObserver reports €587m which is £520.72m.
60
Yes I need to know too. After all, if it is the lower one, then there is no story here at all right?
Dmb arseee
60
There is certainly a story in these numbers…and a few others.
Seven euros is a bit different to the projected hundred euros carbon price. It’s odd that we have more stories about twerking or groping than about that. Especially when you consider how the carbon price gets pushed before it can jump. Like St Augustine, Brussels, Strasbourg and Berlin want to be chaste and pure…but not yet.
70
It does seem a bit strange that the Euorzone countries would convert their money to spend it in pounds.
22
They’re giving you the message to get out of the Euro now before they finish crashing it.
They’re not the full quid, you know. They’re green.
50
Not at all, as the report was taken from the UK Daily Express. No doubt they did the conversion for their UK-based readers.
50
I was pointing out the laziness.
12
Well, you see, the Daily Express is English so they industriously expressed the total in pounds for their English readership. It hardly matters, of course. It’s like someone might say that ZERO CCS projects were set up under the scheme and someone else might say that there were ZILCH projects.
Of course, even to say there we NO projects would hardly be lazy.
40
9 Nov: ClimateChangeNews: Rich countries not talking climate change seriously, say African officials
By Karl Mathiesen and Mantoe Phakathi in Bonn
In 2009, developed countries have promised to deliver $100bn a year by 2020 in public and private fund to help struggling countries cope with climate change. Estimates of current flows range between $17bn and $61bn.
Under the Paris Agreement, signed in 2015, rich nations also agreed to create a higher target by 2025.
But at UN climate talks in Bonn, Seyni Nafo, who leads the group of African states, said the rich were refusing to advance even on procedural discussions around finance…
“Uncertainty on climate finance. That is at the the highest level right now,” he told Climate Home News.
The heads of the Africa group and least developed countries (LDCs) group have made climate finance their top priority for the meeting. But progress in the talks and outside is flagging.
“Where are we seriously on the $100bn? What’s happening on the ground? Are we seeing any significant change on the ground? The promise of this post-2025 goal. When are we starting that discussion?” said Nafo.
“We haven’t reached yet a confidence crisis, but [African heads of state] are becoming a bit anxious now.”
He said at least five African heads of state would be present at the meeting, whereas only two – France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel – would come from Europe…
A Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) report published ahead of the conference found that a 12% decline in funds meant for climate change in 2017 initiatives was a result of a 10% plunge in technology costs, particularly solar…
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/11/09/rich-countries-not-talking-climate-change-seriously-say-african-officials/
9 Nov: InsideClimateNews: Bob Berwyn: How Responsible Is Each Country When an Extreme Climate Event Strikes?
As international climate negotiators meet in Germany this week, a team of scientists has published a method for estimating how individual countries’ shares of global greenhouse gas emissions over time contributed to the risk of specific extreme climate events, like heat waves, occurring in other countries…
The new techniques “make it possible to assign extreme events to human-induced climate change and historical emissions,” and “allow losses and damage associated with such events to be assigned country-level responsibility,” the scientists, from World Weather Attribution (LINK) and the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research (LINK), wrote in a study describing their methods. The peer-reviewed article was published in the journal Nature Climate Change (LINK)…
The scientists used the 2013-14 heat wave in Argentina as an example of how the process could work…
Previous research showed human-caused climate change made that heat wave 400 percent more likely…
The research shouldn’t be construed as a finger-pointing exercise, said lead author Friederike Otto, with the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford…
Otto said she doesn’t think the science will unleash a flood of disruptive lawsuits. If anything, it could help inform courts already facing complex environmental cases, she said. “I think courts struggle with this kind of evidence mainly because there is no authoritative protocol that says how you do this kind of science right,” she said. “But … it might not be that far in the future that courts will be able to assess if the science is sound.”…
The new study fine-tunes long-available science on the attribution of emissions, said climate scientist James Hansen, who is also part of a citizen lawsuit challenging Norwegian government approval for drilling in the Barents Sea. His granddaughter, Sophie Kivlehan, is one of the plaintiffs taking the federal government to court in the Children’s Climate Case.
***The study “kind of serves as a warning to newly developing countries that there will be a disadvantage of burning a lot of fossil fuels to develop — probably better find some clean energy,” he said.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08112017/extreme-weather-climate-change-liability-greenhouse-gas-emissions-heat-wave
30
African heads of state “are becoming a bit anxious now.”
Yep, a transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, based on poor science and no due diligence, is not going to happen through the UN.
Beijing’s silk road has more promise of reducing poverty in the Third World.
50
Yeh! Of course they are getting a bit anxious.
I would be too if I wasn’t getting that regular multi million dollar payment from the UN and the USA through on time.
The Generals and Colonels and the Relatives and Cousins and Chiefs are all getting a bit restive when I can’t give each of them their usual $100,000 each week because the bloody USA and those very wealthy rip off merchants from Europe haven’t come through with all that climate compensation money they owe us poor folk here in these European and American exploited, very poor third world countries.
20
Like every empire and suzerainty and overlord nation that has ever existed in the history of mankind, the Chinese and Xi are well on the way to finding the “Limits of Power” as resentment and xenophobia amongst the nations that the Chinese are now on the way to exploiting begins to become a significant factor in they relationship with the monolithic Chinese Dragon.
Or at least the mirage of a monolithic Chinese dragon, a mirage because in all relationships between nations and powers all is not what it usually seems as seen from the outside..
The European powers of the 19th century, the American hegemony of the 20th century, the Russian Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and central Asia and without going back to the Roman and Persian empires and etc, all these major and dominant world powers of their times found the limits of their powers they came up against the desire of other nations and peoples to rule themselves or preferred to have their own bastards in control of their destinies.
Which stopped all those past empires and suzerainties from expanding beyond certain geographical and political and ethnic limits
And those limits eventually led to the decline and eventual fall of those empires and powers, a situation which has occurred at least three times in the Chinese history of its past empires.
And the Chinese certainly have a history of quite extreme xenophobia as a part of their heritage which will be one of the most virulent strikes against a Chinese hegemony over much of the Asian and the Central Asian world .
Its already happening with Chinese workers doing all the construction of the Chinese dominated “Belt and Road” in Pakistan and the locals merely acting as guards for the Chinese construction worlkers as happened identically in Tanzania in the late 1960’s when the local Tanzanians were excluded from getting any training in rail road construction as the Chinese built the Tanzam railroad across Tanzania and central Africa..
The Chinese left Africa and it was over 30 years, a full generation and a changed China before they returned.
Never ever underestimate the “Limits of Power “when it comes to domination of other nations and realms and peoples across this Earth by what at the time might seem to be an irresistible and world dominating power in the making..
30
We all know ‘sequestration’ has to be (one of) the dumbest idea ever to raise it’s silly head in the carbon energy debate!
Regards GeoffW
50
doesn’t name any Australian:
10 Nov: InterAksyon Philippines: COP 23: EU, Australia claim ‘insufficient evidence’ climate change causes extreme weather
By Alanah Torralba (special to InterAksyon)
BONN, Germany — The European Union and Australia told a global conference to discuss climate policy that discussions on finance should not be included in negotiations for loss and damage because “not every disaster is caused by climate change.”…
Loss and damage was included in the Paris Agreement, the climate accord signed by 195 countries in 2015, but remains a controversial topic among negotiators as developed countries are wary of assuming liability for the causes of climate change…
While saying they are willing to support countries tackling slow onset events through capacity-building and skills organization, developed countries have declined to engage in dialogue about additional finance for loss and damage.
Lack of correlation between climate change and extreme weather events
“There is no financial conversation yet on loss and damage,” said Pierre Candelon, a representative of the UNFCCC youth constituency YOUNGO.
Developed countries are careful to touch on the subject of loss and damage and often maintain that extreme weather events, such as the recent hurricane in Puerto Rico, cannot be directly attributed to climate change.
Some claim extreme weather events are only intensified by climate change but not necessarily caused singularly by it. They also argue that the devastation from these natural disasters depend on a variety of factors such as geography, infrastructure, as well as the strength of a country’s political institutions.
But in a report released in August by the US Global Change Research Program, scientists said that climate change drives droughts and storms more intensely.
For example, the report said human activity has contributed greatly to the warming of the Atlantic Ocean, which is linked to the increasing occurrence of hurricanes in the area…
‘Tragedy’ of Paris Agreement
The lack of a clause in the Paris Agreement that assigns accountability to high-emitting countries and companies is a “tragedy” for the Paris Agreement, Gerry Arances of the Center for Energy Ecology and Development said.
The Paris Agreement, a non-legally binding treaty, does not include measures for legal accountability…
Bargain to developed countries: provide action and support
“Compensation and liability” will not be included in the language of the rulebook as a compromise, Action Aid Global Lead on Climate Change Harjeet Singh said during an interview…
http://www.interaksyon.com/cop-23-eu-australia-claim-insufficient-evidence-climate-change-causes-extreme-weather/
9 Nov: ImperialCollegeLondon: Insurance failing 70 per cent of global warming damage, climate experts warn
by Miss Lottie Butler
BONN: Specialised schemes could protect lives and jobs against extreme weather, say experts at Imperial’s COP23 side-event.
The effects of climate change, such as droughts, wild-fires and extreme weather are a particular concern for those living in countries where people cannot afford to protect themselves against such disasters.
Globally, 70% of the damage caused by climate change events, and 98% in developing countries, doesn’t get compensated unless the government steps in, delegates heard at the 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP23) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which is taking place in Bonn, Germany…
***These concerns were raised by experts at an official side-event organised by the Imperial College London delegation at COP23, with Munich Climate Insurance Initiative (MCII)_and Munich Re Foundation…
To find out more about climate risk insurance, download MCII’s latest publication, “The role of insurance in integrated disaster & climate risk management: evidence and lessons learned” (LINK)…
Read the Grantham Institute blog for more on the team’s activities at COP23 (LINK).
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_9-11-2017-14-30-31
20
The Atlantic is not warming.
‘Irma developed into a major hurricane over relatively cool waters in the Atlantic. Surface temperatures where the hurricane formed were 26.5C, about two degrees below what is considered necessary to build a major hurricane, climate scientist Judith Curry said.
“So why did Irma develop into a major hurricane?” Curry asked. “We can’t blame 26.5C temperatures in the mid-Atlantic on global warming.”
‘Other weather factors may explain the development. In particular, a weak wind shear and favourable circulation field allowed the circular formation to generate quickly.’
Oz
30
9 Nov: AP: Alaska signs gas pipeline project deal with China
By MARK THIESSEN
The state of Alaska has taken a major step toward realizing a long-sought pipeline to move natural gas from the North Slope to Asia.
The agreement Alaska Gov. Bill Walker signed Thursday in Beijing with Sinopec, China Investment Corp. and the Bank of China does not guarantee a pipeline will be built, but it gives the lingering liquefied natural gas project a jolt of life.
The agreement was signed as both U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping watched. No financial terms were released, but it’s been estimated that the project could cost $43 billion
The state is siding with interests from China after major oil companies stepped back from the project.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_ALASKA_NATURAL_GAS_PIPELINE?SITE=MYPSP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-11-09-01-20-38
not quite the praise Brown was expecting! mind u, Woolfe, is ex-UKIP:
8 Nov: Sacramento Bee: Christopher Cadelago: Jerry Brown blasts climate change ‘denialists in the room’ at European Parliament
Brussels — Gov. Jerry Brown, arriving in Brussels after collegial events in Germany, sparred publicly with British politicians when confronted over his climate change record at the European Parliament on Wednesday.
Steven Woolfe, a British politician on the parliament, was first to pierce the pleasantries, accusing Brown of supporting state intervention “at a huge scale” and spending and increasing taxes “like it’s going out of fashion.”
Brown’s climate change policy, he argued, isolates the state from much of the U.S. Woolfe dismissed California’s cap-and-trade carbon market as a “tax-and-spend” policy. And he teased the governor as potentially being interested in joining the European Union.
“I am sure you are well-meaning in wanting to protect the environment,” Woolfe said. “But do you not recognize that the policies you are implementing help the rich more than the poor, and make the poor suffer in the long-run?”…
“Even the Trump administration couldn’t with a straight face curb a report that underscores the very opposite of what you denialists have expressed here,” Brown said, noting the release of a recent report warning of the impact of climate change.
“These are credentialed, serious, respected scientists, and they are telling us exactly what (other organizations) have said.”
Brown argued the increased denial of man-made climate change was backfiring. “The people, instead of growing in their skepticism, are growing in their conviction that climate change and global warming are real matters and we have to deal with them.”
And he concluded that those who will suffer the most if climate change goes unchecked are the poor…
“You want to just say all these scientists, ‘OK, we don’t believe them?’ ” Brown asked. “That’s a very risky operation.”…
http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article183533326.html
50
Moonbeam:
And so are scores skeptical scientists that disagree. Indeed many of the skeptical scientists are among the most experienced and with access to the best data. Moreover, One will find a far greater level of scientific literacy among regulars here, and other skeptic sites, than at many, many, primary and secondary schools, and certainly among the general population who are mostly either ambivalent of the issue or are only casual observers.
Brown is either living in a lefty academic bubble or is being disingenuous. Such is the insidiousness of the phony consensus.
50
Oz spent $44.1 mil on CCS during 2015/2016 , I’m assuming it was R and D .
50
And $100 million in the decade or so before that with the failed CO2-Coal CRC.
40
10 Nov: Yahoo7: AFP: Developing world says rich nations shirking on climate
by Marlowe Hood
The failure of wealthy nations to deliver on short-term climate commitments could hinder the rollout of a landmark treaty, a bloc of 134 developing countries, including India and China, warned Thursday at UN negotiations in Bonn…
“If we do not respect decisions that we have made, then how can we build trust among the parties?” said Chen Zhihua, China’s senior negotiator, referring to long-standing pledges by rich nations to enhance financial support and “revisit” targets for curbing greenhouse gas emissions before 2020.
“And how can we lay a good foundation for the implementation of the Paris Agreement?” he added at a press conference, flanked by diplomats from India, Iran, Nicaragua and Ecuador…
“The science is clear: if we don’t get our act together before 2020, you can forget about the 2 C and 1.5 C targets,” said Paul Oquist, Nicaragua’s chief negotiator at the talks.
“There has been a failure to comply with existing commitments,” he added…
Efforts to resolve the issue have so far been fruitless.
“It would be a bad thing if this hangs over into the second week and becomes a political issue for ministers,” said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington DC.
“It has been a pretty sterile debate that has degenerated into a finger-pointing exercise,” he told AFP
https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/37815928/developing-world-says-rich-nations-shirking-on-climate/
40
It would appear that the Paris agreement is going thro’ a rough time without US funding.
GeoffW
30
The purpose of the Paris accord was to drain the wealth out of the US and pass it to every tin pot dictator of the world. We the People played our Trump card and simply said “NO, you will have to pay for your free lunch on your own dime.”
Rather being a pack of wolves and a lamb deciding what was for dinner. The lamb became an eagle and the pack of wolves didn’t get their anticipated lunch. Not feeding them really works. We didn’t have to fire a shot. All we needed to do is refuse to continue to be stupid and stop paying for the global party.
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How to waste millions upon millions of dollars with ARENA , scroll down to page 23 then look at the pages of wasted money like over $500 thou for predicting clouds .
It’s obscene the amount of money being wasted on rent seeking .
http://www.minerals.org.au/file_upload/files/reports/MCA_electricity_subsidies_3March17.pdf
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9 Nov: ClimateDepot: Israeli Astrophysicist rejects UN IPCC – Finds ‘the sun completely overturns the way we should see global warming’
Award-winning Astrophysicist Dr. Shaviv is in Germany with many other skeptical scientists during the UN climate summit. Shaviv is warning about the scientific fallacies presented by the UN IPCC panel about global warming climate change. His full presentation at the conference is on November 10th.
Dr. Nir Shaviv on Cambridge Debate: ‘I was quite shocked to see how the audience was so one sided (though far less than the ridiculous 97:3 ratio we hear about!) and unwilling to listen to scientific arguments.’
Dr. Shaviv’s Key scientific points: ‘Evidence for warming is not evidence for warming by humans.’…READ ON
http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/11/09/israeli-astrophysicist-rejects-un-ipcc-finds-the-sun-completely-overturns-the-way-we-should-see-global-warming/
9 Nov: Local, Denmark: AFP: Danish wind turbine giant blown off course by cloudy outlook
Shares in Vestas, the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, tumbled more than 17 percent Thursday after the Danish firm tweaked its annual outlook and its quarterly net profit slid…
Vestas’s chief executive Anders Runevad put the results into the wider context of the headwinds the turbine sector is facing.
“In the third quarter, Vestas delivered increased order intake and healthy earnings in a market that is seeing accelerated competition and decreasing profitability,” he said in the earnings statement…
Vestas’s shares already tumbled 11 percent last Friday after US tax reform plans included cutting the deduction for turbine manufacturers. The United States is one of Vestas’s largest markets…
One of Vestas’s main competitors, the newly merged turbine units of Germany’s Siemens and Spain’s Gamesa, announced on Monday it would cut up to 6,000 jobs as worked to combine their operations.
It also said its expects revenue to drop to 9.0-9.6 billion euros for this financial year, with an operating profit margin of 7-8 percent.
https://www.thelocal.dk/20171109/danish-wind-turbine-giant-blown-off-course-by-cloudy-outlook
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behind paywall:
9 Nov: UK Times: Council thwarted in bid to impose near-total wind farm ban
by Seán McCárthaigh, Senior Ireland News Reporter
The government has been forced to intervene to prevent a county council from imposing an almost complete restriction on wind farms.
Damien English, the minister for local government, has ordered Laois county council to amend its development plan after it tried to ban all new wind farms within 1.5km of houses, schools, community centres and public roads. The “setback” distance would have restricted the development of wind farms anywhere in the county except for a small area at its extreme southern end near Rathdowney.
The government has supported the construction of wind farms to help Ireland meet its EU targets for reducing greenhouse gases. If it does not meet the targets it risks heavy financial penalties from 2020. However, there is strong opposition to wind…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/council-thwarted-in-bid-to-impose-near-total-wind-farm-ban-9gqfdl0n8
9 Nov: SanFranciscoChronicle: California’s plans for offshore wind power run into Navy opposition
By Robert Collier
(Robert Collier is a policy analyst at the Green Economy Program at the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education)
State and federal officials are engaged in an intensive planning process for the first auction of zones for development of giant wind farms in the Pacific.
But right before the first auction was to be announced, opposition emerged from an unexpected source: the U.S. Navy. After a year and a half of public hearings and outreach by a state-federal task force, the Navy suddenly signaled in August that it would veto the ocean area off San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties that was expected for the first wind farms. What’s more, the Navy claimed the entire offshore zone stretching from Los Angeles north to Big Sur, comprising 36,000 square miles, saying it is needed for military testing and thus is off-limits to wind farms…
State and federal officials are negotiating with the Navy to find a solution. But if the Navy refuses to budge, state officials will need to switch to their designated Plan B — a series of potential areas off Sonoma, Humboldt and Del Norte counties, where the Navy has raised no objections. Although interconnection to the grid would be more difficult in these areas, they would be suitable for initial wind farm projects while negotiations continue farther south…
What makes California challenging for offshore wind is that unlike the shallow waters on the East Coast, where turbines can be fixed to the ocean floor, the deep waters off our coast require turbines to be on floating platforms…
As described in a new report by the UC Berkeley Labor Center, this supply chain is unlikely to take root without an unprecedented, “high road” strategy for long-term planning. Such an approach would include major upgrades to ports, transportation and transmission, as well as legislative and regulatory action to direct utilities and community choice providers to consider offshore wind in their power acquisition plans for the 2020s…
Like other, much-vaunted clean-tech solutions of the future such as advanced batteries, offshore wind is not yet cost-competitive with existing power sources…
California, a climate leader in so many ways, is lagging behind on offshore wind. The Navy needs to be persuaded to get out of the way and allow California to start the hard work of catching up.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Wind-farm-auctions-delayed-as-US-Navy-says-12345413.php
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10 Nov: EurActiv: Sam Morgan: EU Emissions Trading Deal Fails To Impress
EU negotiators from member states and the institutions reached a compromise on an Emissions Trading System (ETS) reform early on Thursday (9 November). But green groups have criticised the deal for ditching flagship climate policy status for a fossil fuel subsidy…
“Today’s landmark deal demonstrates that the European Union is turning its Paris commitment and ambition into concrete action,” Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete said.
He also welcomed the “robust carbon leakage scheme” and insisted “Europe is once again leading the way in the fight against climate change”…
Attac France’s Maxime Combes said that “while an increasing number of member states are phasing out coal power, it is absurd that emissions trading revenues may end up supporting this type of fossil-energy generation in other parts of the EU.”
Dutch Green MEP Bas Eickhout said the ETS was “improved” by this morning’s deal but warned it will no longer be “the flagship for EU climate policies. Additional national and European policies remain essential.”…
The ETS deal must now get a final stamp of approval from MEPs and the member states…
Positions
Director of CAN Europe Wendel Trio said: “The ETS will continue to play the role it has been playing the last couple of years, one close to meaningless. We now need to focus our attention on additional measures at the national level, such as the unilateral cancellation of the massive surplus of allowances. Through this insufficient reform, the EU institutions are undermining the concept of European action.”
http://www.euractiv.com/section/emissions-trading-scheme/news/emissions-trading-deal-fails-to-impress/
FT spin:
9 Nov: Financial Times: EU emissions reforms send a strong smoke signal
Surge in price of carbon permits predicted
by Andrew Ward in London and Rochelle Toplensky in Brussels
The deal, between EU member states and the European Parliament on Thursday, was timed to send a signal of EU commitment to tackling global warming during the latest international climate talks, which started this week in Bonn.
Analysts predicted a surge in the price of carbon permits — the emissions allowances traded among industrial polluters — as a result of the agreement, increasing the economic incentive for companies to reduce their carbon footprints…
EU carbon permits traded 3.4 per cent higher after the agreement at about €8 per tonne. Analysts at Barclays forecast that the price could rise above €10 in the second half of next year and to between €15 and €20 in 2019-20…
“Today’s deal ignores the urgency to reduce emissions quickly and hands out billions in pollution subsidies, meaning that the EU carbon market will continue to fail at its task to spur green investments and phase out coal,” said Femke de Jong, EU policy director at Carbon Market Watch.
https://www.ft.com/content/26826eec-c55c-11e7-a1d2-6786f39ef675
9 Nov: SanFranciscoChronicle: Green groups criticize EU emissions trading deal
By Frank Jordans, Associated Press
Environmental campaigners on Thursday slammed a proposal to reform the European Union’s emissions trading system, saying it undermines international efforts to curb climate change
Environmental group WWF said that while the deal will reduce the oversupply of emissions allowances that had weighed on the market, heavily polluting sectors will continue to get emissions certificates worth billions of euros for free until 2030.
“You couldn’t make it up,” said Sam Van den Plas, a climate specialist at WWF’s European policy office. “While EU negotiators at COP23 in Bonn are making progress on the Paris Agreement, EU decision-makers back in Brussels are busy undermining it.”
“Today’s shameful agreement … means Europe’s largest emitters will be paid to pollute, rather than having to pay,” he added…
The Climate Action Network Europe, an alliance of environmental groups, said the EU deal would throw a lifeline to the continued use of coal, one of the most polluting forms of fossil fuel.
“Instead of making polluters pay, the EU decided to do the exact opposite,” said Wendel Trio, the group’s director of CAN Europe. “It allowed its flagship climate tool to continue subsidizing coal plants.”
Several European countries, especially Germany and Poland, still rely heavily on coal to produce electricity…
On Thursday, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced he is donating $50 million to encourage countries outside the United States to move away from coal. Bloomberg has already spent $64 million to campaign against the use of coal in America.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/world/article/Green-groups-criticize-EU-emissions-trading-deal-12344044.php
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9 Nov: LongfordLeaderIreland: Aisling Kiernan: Massive opposition to Coole wind farm
The North Westmeath Turbine Action Group (NWTAG) was established earlier this year to oppose the development of a wind farm at Coole in Co Westmeath by Element Power.
Chairperson, Jen Gallagher said that opposition both locally and at Co Council level is evident and the plans that are in place do not fit in with the local authority’s own guidelines in respect of such developments.
“The Council has asked Element Power for a further 54 issues to be clarified in the submission,” she added, before pointing to the fact that 133 submissions have already been sent to the local authority from various groups about this application, six of which indicated their acceptance of the development.
Ms Gallagher also said that on October 6 last, Westmeath Co Council sent a letter to all those who has put in submissions, stating that Element Power had withdrawn their planning application for the Coole Wind Farm.
“Two weeks later,” she continued, “Element Power resubmitted their plans with some small changes.
“So we have had to start all over again; all submissions have to be re-done, more people have to be contacted and in an area with more low incomes than high ones people have to pay €20 again for their submissions.”…
“Despite the widespread opposition to the proposal that culminated in 130 plus written objections from local people when the proposal went before Council in August, Element Power seems determined to push ahead with their proposal to erect 13 giant wind turbines that will rise to a height of 175 metres which is over twice the height of Mullingar Cathedral.
“In the information I received from Element Power to my home, contained in a glossy leaflet, it is clear they have ignored the multitude of concerns expressed by local people, particularly in relation to the minimum setback that allows for some of their turbines to be located within 750 metres of people’s homes.
“This will undoubtedly result in shadow flicker and noise pollution meaning the health and general well-being of people will be severely compromised.”…
http://www.longfordleader.ie/news/home/280589/massive-opposition-to-coole-wind-farm.html
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8 Nov: WileyOnline: Royal Meteorological Society: In this issue of Weather
Abstract
This November 2017 issue focusses on climatic change. It coincides with the meetings of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference Of Parties (COP23) to be held in Bonn, Germany between 6 and 17 November.
We have included five papers which cover different aspects of the climate issue.
In ‘Recent United Kingdom and global temperature variations’ on p. 323, Tim Osborne, Phil Jones and Manoj Joshi review global and UK temperature trends, setting the UK climate and its recent trends in the context of world climate, laying out the uncertainties that climatologists must grapple with, as well as showing that human influence is the main factor in long-term changes of climate…
Have you ever wondered how nations approach the need to negotiate changes in human activity resulting from the evidence that we are changing global climate? Well, David Warrilow reviews the use of scientific evidence in the development of the international response to climate change on p. 330 in ‘Science and the international climate negotiations’.
On p. 340, Jason Lowe, Nigel Arnell, Rachel Warren, Ajay Gambhir, Dan Bernie and Erica Thompson discuss the impacts of different levels of warming and how warming might be limited through programmes to limit the output of greenhouse gases in ‘Avoiding dangerous climate: results from the AVOID2 programme’.
Our fourth main paper asks ‘Can Arctic warming influence UK extreme weather?’ Edward Hanna, Richard Hall and James Overland consider the possible links between the loss of Arctic sea ice and extreme weather over the UK on p. 346.
On page 353, Emily Shuckburgh, Dann Mitchell and Peter Stott provide a short review paper, ‘Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria: how natural were these ‘natural disasters’?’ on the formation and effects of the hurricanes that affected many areas surrounding the Caribbean Sea last September…
This month’s issue is the result of a decision by the Society to enhance its activities on climate change whilst maintaining its core interest in weather…CONTINUE
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wea.3193/abstract;jsessionid=E782696DD2BBEBD707F1A38E3323BB0A.f01t03
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9 Nov: GoulburnPost: Coronial inquiry will address unanswered questions over Currandooley fire
The devastating January 17 Currandooley fire destroyed valuable pasture, core breeding stock, structures and livelihoods. Tim De Mestre’s Merigan property was one of the most heavily affected when fire tore through most of his 950-acre holding, destroyed windbreaks, 30km of fencing and injuring stock. Thankfully, the homestead was saved.
Almost 10 months on, Mr De Mestre told the Post the farm had been slow to recover…
It does well to remember people’s experience because big questions remain over the blaze. Wind farm company Infigen denies culpability and will vigorously defend both civil and coronial proceedings. But at the very least the fire’s cause exposes the need for fire mitigation around high-voltage lines whether on a wind farm or somewhere else. Given the proliferation of wind farms in this region, any coronial recommendations on this point would at least reassure the community of maximum protection efforts…
Infigen has a fight on its hands with a class action representing 27 parties also underway in the NSW Supreme Court. The company will argue that birds commonly catch fire from high-voltage lines and it cannot be blamed for this fact alone.
But a coronial inquiry will likely delve much deeper, investigating whether materials and design may be improved.
It’s essential for everyone’s sake that this inquiry goes ahead…
http://www.goulburnpost.com.au/story/5046164/questions-linger-over-currandooley-fire/
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Adelaide at 32C today so aircons cranked up. Sun doing quite well for time of year at 60% of capacity but increasing portion going behind the meter so only managing 350MW to grid. Wind is back to its typical contribution when needed of a paltry 60MW. Victoria has been asked to help and is supplying 79MW. Gas is doing the heavy lifting.
Price at $205/MWh but forecast to drop as Queensland (via NSW and Victoria) takes a larger slice of the evening peak. Tassie also making more than it is using.
Mid November and Queensland (via NSW and Vic) forecast to be contributing 300MW during the evening peak. Demand only 1700MW.
Mid next week should see another high sitting east of SA with hot but light northerlies requiring lots of aircon. The foreshadowed rationing for end of November is on the cards.
Also of interest is that the Murraylink was out of action yesterday and is still showing zero now. That reduces the capacity of SA’s lifelines.
It will be wonderful when Queensland can generate its own LGCs and gets rid of all that dirty coal plant. It is glorious to have all these State Labor governments saving the planet by rationing power in Australia. Just part of our obligation to the might of the UN.
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AEMO is still forecasting reserve shortfalls of 793 MW for Vic and 289 MW for SA Nov 21-23. It’s unclear what is expected to bring about that situation. And I still don’t understand why gas generation in SA seems to have become the new base load.
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Robber I checked earlier in the day and SA were exporting to Victoriastan but yes wind has definitely died down but it is weather dependent as you know .
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SA only has gas for reliable supply. There is no coal.
The outcome of the stability review by AEMO was a requirement to have more connected inertia on the SA network. It requires a minimum of around 400MW of gas on line all the time. That should reduce a little when the big battery is connected and tested.
SA is down to about 600MW of base load on a mild day now. The heavy industry is leaving and there is an ever increasing amount of households and business using solar to make their own when the sun shines. That drop the midday demand to some quite low values.
It is reasonably foreseeable that within a year or two the wind generators will be forced to shut down during the middle of the day to maintain stability. That just makes the likelihood of more wind generators being connected less likely.
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An infuriating and profligate waste. Our hot water service has suffered a costly infarct. Some of that EU money would have gone to good use helping us buy a new cylinder. I’ll wager that those wastrels at the EU aren’t having billy washes tonight.
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9 Nov: Bloomberg: Wind Energy Feels the Force of World Markets
Vestas shares plunge and another question mark is raised over the profitability of green energy.
By Anna Hirtenstein
The prevailing wind has dramatically changed for the world’s biggest maker of the swooshing blades that dot landscapes from Argentina to Mongolia.
Vestas Wind Systems A/S lost about a fifth of its stock market value after the Danish company said it was squeezing less profit out of sales of equipment and services compared with a year ago because of increased competition…
For skeptics in the energy industry, it provides fuel for their old argument that renewables just don’t make enough money. But the change in fortunes more reflects a formerly niche industry that relied on government support for so long and is now having to fight its own corner against the market forces of capitalism.
“You’ve got Vestas competing with the Chinese and it’s a bloodbath,” Bruce Huber, founder and managing partner at Alexa Capital, an advisory firm on energy and technology…
The Danish company is not the only wind turbine maker adjusting to the new marketplace. Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA said earlier this week it will cut 6,000 jobs while shares of General Electric Co., the largest turbine manufacturer in the U.S., has plunged by 36 percent this year…
A skeptic over climate change, President Donald Trump openly dislikes wind energy, saying the turbines are ugly and kill birds…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-09/wind-energy-feels-the-force-of-world-markets
8 Nov: STV TV: Wind farms turn woman’s home into ‘torture chamber’
by Emma O’Neill & Saul DeMoritz
An Ayrshire woman claims wind farms have turned her home into a prison.
Pat Spence says she has been forced to sleep in her car as the effects of wind farm syndrome make it impossible to sleep at her home on Dochroyle Farm.
Ms Spence first noticed the noise after waking one night with heart palpitations…
Ms Spence regularly drives miles away from her house to sleep in her car after being unable to nod off at night.
She added: “I can’t put it on the market because it would be morally so wrong to sell these problems on to somebody else.
“Nobody would want to buy it anyway, because nobody in their right mind would want these problems.”…
ScottishPower Renewables says it is in regular contact with Ms Spence and has a programme of ongoing noise monitoring to ensure its wind farms operate in full compliance with the conditions of their consents…
https://stv.tv/news/west-central/1401787-wind-farm-turned-woman-s-home-into-torture-chamber/
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The Chinese cannot lose. The economic balance is so far skewed in their favour they could be incredibly poor managers and still kill any European competition.
Chinese power their industry with reliable Australian coal. The Danes have a mixture of hydro and wind and the Germans are trying to eliminate their reliable nuclear and coal plants and do more with wind and solar. Even with only 30% market share for wind and solar it has positioned Germany at the very top end electricity prices. That ensures the death of its heavy industry.
A few minutes of thought on the topic reveals that wind and solar generating plants cannot produce enough reliable power over their life to enable the units to be replaced. The only way they can be replicated is to rely on coal or nuclear generation to build them. So as at technologies wind and solar generation are unrenewable.
10
It would be good if there was somewhere on the front page for story tips (or a contact for same): maybe they exist already, but I couldn’t see it.
Anyhoooo… as well all know, the Thermageddon Cult tells us that our Polynesian friends are all going to be inundated unless they can somehow move between now and about 2150 (they better hurry!), because the Antarctic is going to melt: not only that, but it’s all humans’ fault.
Turns out that NASA’s JPL has done some looking-at-stuff using science and what-not, and turns out that there may well be a gigantic volcanic plume under a major ice shelf (that kinda goes into the “Der, Fred” pile – Mount Erebus is a bit of a hint and it’s been there for long enough for most people to notice).
A popular-access version of the story is here – https://www.rt.com/news/409333-supervolcano-melting-antarctic-ice-sheet/ – and probably warrants further examination.
Since it’s on RT (and the “R” stands for “Russia”) it turns out that if you read it you’re a Putin’s-stooge-Trump-loving-denier. You probably already knew that though.
Thanks Kratolastes. I should put up a mid-week tips post each week. Have been thinking of it. – Jo
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10 Nov: Courier Mail: Queensland Election 2017: Anti-Adani activists to target LNP voters
by JOHN McCARTHY
THE Stop Adani Alliance has switched its attention to the LNP and Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls.
A key member of the alliance, GetUp!, is planning on making 100,000 phone calls to voters in the lead-up to the election in a bid to pressure the LNP and other parties to scrap their support for the NAIF loan to Adani…
GetUp’s Reachtel poll taken last month found about 60 per cent of LNP voters did not think it was right for taxpayers to help fund the Adani mine. Among Labor voters the figure was 77 per cent.
Among GetUp’s own members 90 per cent wanted the loan stopped…
GetUp’s lead organiser in Queensland, Ellen Roberts, said members would be holding phone banking parties with the goal of making more 100,000 calls to the voters who will determine the future of Adani’s billion-dollar ***bailout…
The Australian Conservation Foundation said voters want Mr Nicholls to veto the loan, which could be up to $1 billion…
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/state-election-2017/queensland-election-2017-antiadani-activists-to-target-lnp-voters/news-story/df0d683b6c050422d45467099126ea56
still can’t find methodology/questions for what was called StopAdani/ReachTel poll, but which apparently is a GetUp!/ReachTel poll, but did find the following questions on a TAI PDF for The Australia Institute/ReachTel poll May 25 2017:
Question 2: Do you support or oppose Federal and State taxpayers’ money being used to fund Adani’s privately-owned proposed coal mine and infrastructure?…
Question 4: If the Queensland government accepts a federal subsidised loan of one billion dollars for Adani’s coal railway, this leaves less funding available for other industries, including agriculture, tourism and renewable energy. If it declines the loan, more funding is made available for other industries.
Should the Queensland government accept or decline the subsidised loan for Adani?
now there is this, which I had to access from the cached version, as it wouldn’t open otherwise:
9 Nov: Courier Mail: Queensland election: Palaszczuk pulled the pin after anti-Adani ***push polls
by Sarah Elks & Charlie Peel
The poll by ReachTel, which also does work for the Labor Party, was undertaken and reported about the time Labor figures claim to have heard of a pending smear campaign by Canberra conservatives that Ms Palaszczuk later cited as her reason for seeking a veto. The veto came 10 days after ReachTel asked leading questions of 1652 people.
***Question: “The Queensland Premier made an election commitment that her Labor government would not spend public funds on Adani’s private rail line for their coalmine,” pollsters said on the night of October 24.
“Do you agree or disagree that the Queensland government should keep its promise and use its power of veto to rule out any taxpayer funded loan of $1bn to Adani going ahead?”
Not surprisingly, 68.6 per cent agreed, although only 35.9 per cent said that if the government “breaks this promise” it would likely change their vote.
The Stop Adani campaign has links to GetUp!, which has taken credit for the veto and has now turned its attention to the LNP and One Nation over their support for the mine…
In the northern mining hub of Townsville, Labor Mayor Jenny Hill criticised the veto yesterday as LNP leader Tim Nicholls met her to outline his party’s position.
“I make no bones about it, I am disappointed in the decision of the Palaszczuk government to veto that, but it doesn’t mean the project’s dead,” said Ms Hill, who also stopped short of endorsing Ms Palaszczuk as the next premier.
“Adani has stated time and time again that they are able to continue with this project whether or not NAIF funding is an option.
“What we need to do now is get some clarity around all the different political agendas.”
Mr Nicholls was in Townsville for the second time in a week yesterday and accused Ms Palaszczuk of pandering to inner-city voters…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/queensland-election/queensland-election-palaszczuk-pulled-the-pin-after-antiadani-push-polls/news-story/47a33e8685f13c992a83e44b9186fa1a
music to theirABC’s ears:
9 Nov: BrisbaneTimes: Rachel Clun: Labor changes its tune on reason for blocking Adani loan
•Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced she would veto a $1 billion NAIF loan for the Adani mine six days ago.
•She initially said it was to avoid any accusation of a conflict of interest with her partner’s work, who she became aware had worked on Adani’s application to NAIF.
•Now, the premier and her treasurer have said the would veto the loan because voters did not want the mining company to be given taxpayer funds.
Treasurer Curtis Pitt told ABC’s 7.30 the Labor government had decided to veto the loan because of voter backlash.
“I think what this shows is that we are a government that responds and listens to the concerns that are being raised,” said Mr Pitt, who previously supported the loan.
“We’ve made ourselves clear this is a federal government loan scheme, but today we can say yet again that we are not backing a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money going to a foreign mining company, Adani.”
The treasurer’s comments came after a ReachTEL poll of 1652 Queensland voters, commissioned by the Stop Adani alliance, found 70 per cent did not want the mining company to be loaned taxpayer funds…
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For the interest of all but most particularly for the Harry Twinotters and other believers in the climate change / global warming cult.
From Ryan Maue’s coolwx site
(Unofficial) Record-breaking temperature across the Globe
Last updated at Fri Nov 10 10:40:21 UTC 2017 using 2216 observations from 10UTC
.
Unofficially, there are currently 0 stations that have broken their daily high record, 0 that are tying it, and 10 that are near it.
.
Unofficially, there are currently 51 stations that have broken their daily low record, 3 that are tying it, and 30 that are near it.
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ROM that’s scary when you think about it , will make sure the shed is full of wood this winter .
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On a global scale the data is next to useless. However at a population level it must be tough living in the north east of the USA this week.
Southern Australia is warming up at last.
10
read all:
10 Nov: ABC: Letter from ABC Chairman Justin Milne to Communications Minister the Hon Mitch Fifield
Disclosure of employee salaries
I refer to your letter dated 10 October 2017 and the request that the ABC provide disclosure of individual names and salaries of all employees earning above a threshold of $200,000.
In its response, the Board has been mindful of its responsibilities under Section 8 of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Act 1983 to maintain the integrity and independence of the ABC and to ensure that its functions are performed efficiently and with the maximum benefit to the people of Australia. These principles go to the heart of the ABC’s relationship with the Australian community.
The Board agrees with your statement that taxpayers are entitled to expect a high degree of transparency about how their taxes are being expended. The ABC is subject to a level of scrutiny well beyond that imposed on any other media organisation in Australia…
However, the Board does not believe that the disclosure and reporting suggested in your letter is warranted or in the best interests of the Corporation and its employees. The requirements are onerous, exceed best practice in the public and private sectors, and will prove counter-productive. They will also require overriding the Privacy Act.
The Board notes your intention to legislate to enforce the disclosure requirement. Ultimately, this is a matter for the Parliament to decide…
http://about.abc.net.au/statements/letter-to-senator-the-hon-mitch-fifield/
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EU CCS:
Overview: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/research-topic/carbon-capture-utilisation-and-storage
The law: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32009L0031&from=EN
Figure 3 shows Norways spends the most on ccs: http://s3platform.jrc.ec.europa.eu/carbon-capture-and-storage
http://road2020.nl/en/ shows the Rotterdam Capture and Storage Demonstration Project (ROAD), funded by the EU, Netherlands and the Global CCS Institute. The last two I suspect are in fact funded by the EU, which means the UK, Germany and hint of France.
The EUs CCS magazine!!! : https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/newsletters/setis-magazine-carbon-capture-utilisation-and-storage-issue
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