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… No one needed a smart meter when we had smart baseload. Beware Australians, despite the promises and threats, smart meters may or may not make UK customers a paltry saving. When all is said and done it’s not even clear the benefits outweigh the costs. People who have smart meters installed are expected to save an average of £11 annually on their energy bills, much less than originally hoped. A report from a parliamentary group now predicts a dual fuel saving of £26. Customer pays, but energy firms save more: Customers have financed the smart meter programme by paying a levy on their energy bills, while suppliers have frequently blamed the levy for rising costs. However, the report claimed most of the eventual savings would be made by energy firms, rather than consumers. It is an £11 billion programme. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears the country would be richer if the government just gave back £170 to each person instead. Smart meter looks like a dumb elephant: The report also said that: More than half of smart meters “go dumb” after switching, meaning they stop communicating with the […] July 22nd, 2018 | Tags: Electricity Grids, UK | Category: Cost, Global Warming, Grids |  Print This Post | | Skeptics are winning Stephen Harper must have watched the Tony Abbott win, the Trump win, and the Doug Ford win in Ontario. He gets the message. When will Australian conservatives? Fully 48% of Australian’s are happy to pull out of Paris. Plus 14% more are undecided, there for the taking — convince them. Trudeau’s aggressive climate action plan appears dead Trudeau’s Tough Climate Polices Face a Mounting Backlash Bloomberg, Christopher Flavelle and Josh Wingrove As that [carbon] price is about to take effect, growing opposition has put Trudeau on the defensive and has provincial governments rolling back other measures, raising questions about the appetite of this oil-exporting country to tackle climate change. Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, said Thursday it would join a legal challenge against Trudeau’s carbon pricing. Polls suggest Alberta, the center of Canada’s oil and gas industry, will soon elect a government that opposes the plan. And Trudeau’s own chances of reelection next year have fallen, as his opponents seize on public resistance to carbon pricing. Trudeau’s carbon tax looks pretty much dead now that most provinces are out Click to enlarge Financial Post, […] Say you want to speak something you believe to be true, but it may offend or upset some people. Violent thugs threaten to turn up. In Victoria the police bills the non-violent speaker — in this case $68,000 in order to keep the peace. How is this not “protection money” and with the police working in cohoots with bullies? Andrew Bolt: I am calling out Victoria’s Police and their masters in the Labor government. Why are you cooperating with violent fascists of the Left to stop conservatives or people of the right from holding meetings? This $68,000 bill to protect Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux is a disgrace. Tim Andrews, AustralianTaxPayers Alliance Rather than going after people who actually cause violence, the Victorian police are trying to shut down a legal, law-abiding speaker and prevent her from giving a lecture. Because of threats made by some Marxist thugs. This is just not on. If you believe – like I do – in freedom of speech, then join us in our campaign and contact the Victorian Government to demand action. This goes to the very heart of freedom of speech […] In one of the more pointless and inane “scientific” publications of the year, Brulle et al has added up climate lobbying dollars across the years and sectors, but missed the two largest sectors and blended friend and foe unto homogenised pap. Even Brulle admits that gas companies lobby for climate legislation, while coal companies lobby against it, yet Brulle still lumps them all into the archetypal ogre called “Fossil Fuels”. Let’s perpetuate a mindless stereotype, eh? Was that an accident or an aim? Thus and verily do “fossil fuels” predictably outspend environmental organisations: “Unsurprisingly, sectors that could be negatively affected by bills limiting carbon emissions, such as the electrical utilities sector, fossil fuel companies and transportation corporations had the deepest pockets. Their lobbying efforts dwarfed those of environmental organizations, the renewable energy industry and volunteer groups.” Fossil fuels didn’t just outspend enviromentalists, they might as well have been them. Shell leaned on World Bank to nobble the competition. It begged for Big-Green subsidies to sequester carbon and lobbied for carbon trading. BP committed to a low carbon world, and went so far as to join Greenpeace and lobby the BBC itself. Gas companies benefit from climate change […] July 20th, 2018 | Tags: Climate Money | Category: Big-Government, Global Warming | Print This Post | | Our understanding of the sun’s effect of Earth’s weather is so immature Remarkably, some Japanese families kept weather record diaries in the 1700 and 1800s, and some for as long as 150 years. The connections they reveal are tantalizing but so incomplete. We are trying to fish out primitive signals from murky water. The Sun turns around on itself every 27 days, so these researchers are looking for repeating patterns in lightning that fit, but the poles of the sun spin slower than the equator and the sun spots can take their own time. Hence, it’s not a neat “27” days. During periods of high solar activity, they found regular peaks in lightning activity with the right timing, from May to September when the cold Siberian air mass is not so influential. Other studies we’ve discussed here have investigated long solar cycles on the 11 year or 200 year scales. But here, the researchers are thinking of day to day weather, and looking for a solar influence on timeframe that might improve weather forecasting. Obviously there is a long way to go. As for mechanisms they suspect that it’s the solar wind that is influential, but they don’t know, when […] … 8.8 out of 10 based on 15 ratings The idea of Pulling out of Paris is barely discussed in Australia. Tony Abbott made it a national discussion for five minutes last week, but apparently that’s all it takes, or even less. After 30 years of non-stop agitprop and years of bipartisan rah, rah, solemn “history in the making” cheer, the truth is Australian’s mostly don’t give a toss. All we had to do was ask them. It’s a loaded question framesd as “if pulling out could result in lower electricity prices”… Purists may protest that this overstates the result. Not so. If we had any kind of rational national discussion it would be obvious to all that the “could” is a wishy washy misleading and loaded term — seeding the possibility that pulling out might not lower prices. If people knew that no nation on Earth with lots of unreliables also has cheap electricity, even more people would want to abandon Paris. By more than two to one, people want cheaper power, not Paris points: Almost two thirds, 63 per cent, of voters also claimed that cheaper power should be governments’ priority with only 24 per cent believing reducing emissions should take precedence. NewsPoll, Australia […] All gravy taps flow to Paris Trump got the US out of Paris, but US taxpayers are still funding pointless climate-control deals. The World Bank is supposed to be sorting out poverty. Instead it’s enriching the renewables industry, and keeping the poor stuck on unreliable low grade energy. Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accords, but the US is spending billions to implement it Tim Pearce, Daily Caller The World Bank is spending millions in government funding from various countries, including the U.S., to implement climate mitigation strategies in line with an international agreement to fight climate change — the Paris climate accords. No other country could sort out the World Bank as quickly as the US: The U.S. is the World Bank’s largest supporter and shareholder owning 17 percent of organization’s shares. The next largest owner, Japan, owns just under 8 percent. Several bills moving through Congress would grant the World Bank, along with other Multilateral Development Banks, roughly $1.8 billion. “Climate change is a threat to the core mission of the World Bank Group,” the World Bank’s 83 page Climate Change Action Plan for 2016-2020 states. Leapfrog […] Someone finally found a way to reduce electricity bills with solar and wind contracts TORONTO — Ontario’s new Progressive Conservative government is cancelling 758 renewable energy contracts, in what it says is an effort to reduce electricity bills in the province. Energy Minister Greg Rickford said the move will save provincial ratepayers $790 million — a figure industry officials dispute, saying it will just mean job losses for small business. In a statement Friday, Rickford said the government plans to introduce legislation during its summer sitting that would protect hydro consumers from any costs incurred from the cancellation. “For 15 years, Ontario families and businesses have been forced to pay inflated hydro prices so the government could spend on unnecessary and expensive energy schemes,” Rickford said. “Those days are over.” Opponents complained that this would cost jobs. Obviously they forget the Green job multiplier: for every Green job lost 3 – 5 real jobs will be created. Renewables fans said this will lead to big lawsuits and called it a war on science. What they did not say was how this was an opportunity missed because all these projects would be […] … 8.9 out of 10 based on 19 ratings Last week only fringe loonies who were clinging to a dead technology were calling for a coal revival (mock mock mock). But now that the ACCC has spent months investigating and 400 pages reporting, they discovered that Tony Abbott and Craig Kelly and the Monash group were, hey, all right all along. This is Turnbulls get-out-of-jail card, if he used it as an excuse to be sensible. He has in the past taken those cards and set fire to them. In a best case, he might, with arm twisted in a one-spare-seat-government, “build new coal” sometime in the far distant future, but whatever he does he won’t do anything other than minor hand waving about the Crony Green-Theft runaway train profits. Turnbull weighs coal fix for energy wars Simon Benson and Ben Packham, The Australian A proposal for the federal government to financially guarantee the construction and operation of new dispatchable power generation, which could include clean coal-fired plants, is expected to be taken to cabinet with the backing of the Prime Minister. Malcolm Turnbull yesterday confirmed he would seriously consider the key recommendation of a report by the competition watchdog to underwrite and […] They’re running our largest Hydro Lake down The large Hazelwood Coal Units closed a year ago, so the Snowy Mountain Hydro Scheme has been working hard to fill the holes in the unreliable generation that replaced it. And they’ve been collecting tidy profits from earning RET certificates too. What could possibly go wrong? This — levels of Lake Eucumbene have fallen to 24%. This is the lowest since 2010. It’s not the lowest ever (so that’s alright then). The rain will just fill it right up, unless there is an El Nino. Don’t look now… Odds are “above average”. Who I say, who could have predicted this?! Graham Lloyd, The Australian Snowy Hydro’s biggest storage dam has fallen to less than 25 per cent capacity due to poor rains and high electricity generation following the closure of the Hazelwood coal power station in Victoria. Lake Eucumbene is now at its lowest level since 2010 and on its way to a repeat of 2007 when electricity generation had to be stopped in favour of a heavily polluting fossil-fuel generator in Victoria. The Hydro chief said they had been generating more to “take advantage of tight […] The ACCC is a powerful body created to protect consumers in Australia. Now, after ten years of poor people being forced to pay for middle and upper class solar panels in a kind of semi-secret subsidy-tax, NOW, it says maybe it is time to stop? Go ACCC. Competition watchdog calls for solar subsidies to be axed Ben Packham, Sam Buckingham-Jones, The Australian The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission’s electricity affordability report reveals the huge cost of environmental schemes across the National Energy Market, including the large-scale renewable energy target, the small-scale renewable energy scheme and solar feed-in tariffs. The schemes add a combined $170 to household energy bills in South Australia, $155 in Tasmania, $109 in NSW, $93 in Victoria and $76 in Queensland. The ACCC waffles some reasons: The ACCC said the costs associated with the LRET were expected to fall significantly after 2020, and did not recommend any action to wind up the scheme before its 2030 end date. But it said the SRES, which cost $130 million in 2016-17, should be wound down and abolished by 2021, almost a decade ahead of schedule, to reduce costs for consumers. […] July 12th, 2018 | Tags: Solar Energy (PV), Subsidies | Category: Big-Government, Global Warming, Renewable | Print This Post | | … 8.9 out of 10 based on 16 ratings “Truly heading for the status of colony” Britain is suddenly very interesting (for the eight hundredth time in the History of Western Civilization). It’s a defining moment. Fans of the establishment didn’t want Brexit, so they tried a scare campaign, which failed. They tried on a second vote and legal means, and namecalling “xenophobic isolationist” — all the usual. Anything but a polite list of good reasons to stay in (something to counter the brilliant Daniel Hannan’s points, not to mention the happy existence of Switzerland and Norway). Now they wear the cloak and try the Remain By Stealth option (like our Carbon Tax by Stealth). Call it Brexit but make the reality the same. It is an absolute scandal for the working class and poor in the UK. Hence the string of resignations… The peasants don’t want people in Brussels deciding what kind of hair dryer and vacuum cleaner they may buy. James Delingpole is in fine form as a spokesperson for the downtrodden: Brexit, it is now becoming clear, was our Peasants’ Revolt in more ways than one. It was our Peasants’ Revolt in the sense that it was an uprising […] July 11th, 2018 | Tags: Brexit | Category: Big-Government, Human Rights, Politics | Print This Post | | We’re planning to spend $5,000 million on something to smooth out the bumps from unreliable generators. It is entirely unnecessary in a system where coal supplies the baseload and we have not created artificial rules forcing people to use green electrons in preference over stable and predictable ones. Most estimates of costs from wind and solar ignore the hidden costs — the destructive effect on the whole grid. Wikipedia on Pumped Storage Hydroelectricity: “the round-trip energy efficiency of PSH varies between 70%–80%,[4][5][6][7] with some sources claiming up to 87%.[8] h/t Peter Rees, Michael Crawford, Ian Waters. Even after Snowy Hydro 2.0, power will cost $90/MWh Joe Kelly, The Australian last week: Energy project financier David Carland — the executive director of Australian Resources Development Limited — argues that once the Snowy Hydro project is operating it will provide only partial back-up energy at a high cost. Using Snowy Hydro’s modelling assumptions, Dr Carland’s calculations show the “levelised cost of energy” — or unit-cost of electricity over the lifetime of an asset — will deliver power significantly in excess of $90/MWh, after allowing for the cost of storage, cycle losses and the initial cost of […] July 9th, 2018 | Tags: Electricity Cost, Hydroelectricity | Category: Cost, Electricity, Hydroelectricity | Print This Post | | … 8.6 out of 10 based on 19 ratings Scientists wondered whether climate change was affecting super high clouds that people rarely see and there is virtually no data on. So they used models which fail on clouds and water vapor only ten kilometers above the Earth and tried to predict what happened to both way up at 80 kilometers up and 150 years ago. They “found” (their phrase, not mine) the increase was man made. So once again, your car exhaust and dinner steak are to blame for changing these night-shining clouds. How could it be any other way? This is pure crystal ball science that starts with errors and ends with extrapolations. Researchers are fooling themselves using words like “results”, “indicator” and “significant” as if this was an actual experiment. PUBLIC RELEASE: 2-JUL-2018 Climate change is making night-shining clouds more visible AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION WASHINGTON — Increased water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere due to human activities is making shimmering high-altitude clouds more visible, a new study finds. The results suggest these strange but increasingly common clouds seen only on summer nights are an indicator of human-caused climate change, according to the study’s authors. Noctilucent, or night-shining, clouds are […] Everyone is talking about the NEG (National Energy Guarantee) which will supposedly attain the mythical trifecta of cheap, reliable, and planet cooling electricity. In terms of meeting our Paris “commitment” Tom Quirk wondered how we are doing in other sectors, like farms, cars, rubbish — and whether we had cut emissions there. Well, ho, ho, here’s that report. Thank you, Tom. Looks like a lot of cows and sheep will have to go. Still, we want to stop storms don’t we? Key points: The NEG is not enough on its own to reduce Australian emissions from 608Mt to 444Mt. Most of our reductions so far have come from just two sectors: the electricity sector and from changes to land-clearing. We’ve “achieved” nothing in other sectors like agriculture, transport, waste and industry. Methane emissions from sheep and cattle amount to 60Mt. Trashing the live-export trade may help reduce With enough bad luck, and poor management, plus some sacrificial lambs on the altar, we might be the only country on Earth that meets its Paris agreement. Rejoice. This is assuming that our population stops growing and Australia blocks all immigration tomorrow. That’s right, Tom Quirk has not made any allowance for the […] July 5th, 2018 | Tags: Emissions (CO2), Paris, Quirk (Tom) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | |
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