JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
Jo appreciates your support to help her keep doing what she does. This blog is funded by donations. Thanks!
Follow Jo's Tweets To report "lost" comments or defamatory and offensive remarks, email the moderators at: support.jonova AT proton.me
Statistics
Dreadful post from the BBC, explaining how doomed you all apparently are in Australia.
“How Australia’s extreme heat might be here to stay” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-42657234
I’m too angry to comment politely at the moment.
250
10C this morning with that funny stuff that Flannery said would never fall coming down in copious quantities the last few days.
Yep! Extreme heat causes everything.
150
And the Apple Isle is experiencing extreme heat as well: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-13/hail-and-ice-fall-in-tasmania-in-january/9327084
100
Having been in Tasmania since late December and now in Gippsland Victoria apart from a couple of hardly extreme heat days mostly there has been a need for light comfortably warm clothing.
Right now it’s 11C at 7.46am.
120
It’s 9C here atm…at most. Warm winter dressing–gown required.
110
It’s cold and soggy outside after all the rain yesterday. Happily the sun is out and a slight breeze has come up. 21C forecast for today.
80
How can you see the sun through all that CO2?
130
Obviously you can’t, as this image shows.. 😉
http://l7.alamy.com/zooms/6ad7280cdca74e5582ceab2f6bff9492/late-afternoon-sun-through-the-steam-from-the-cooling-towers-of-a-dweeae.jpg
90
Look at all that H2O, or CO2, or something chemical, whatever, everybody panic!
00
Well it’s just 20 °C here on the south coast of New South Wales at the moment. And windy.
Big rain overnight after a wet and blustery day yesterday with temp in the high teens.
That alleged extreme heat is a furphy I regret to say. My tan’s going the way of the Dodo.
Perhaps I’ll drive back to sunny Perth earlier than planned if this keeps up.
At least the fish are biting and the oysters are fat and luscious.
50
Well, we have had another perfect day in paradise, here in the western isles.
Not that days like today are unusual, of course, but it is nice to reflect …
11
Well, its around 21 degrees,
slight southerly breeze,
here in Melbourne, Riviera
of the Southern Hemisphere.
All’s well…
00
‘I’m too angry to comment politely at the moment.’
Its frustrating, but don’t take it to heart, only a matter of time before their lies are exposed.
Global cooling has begun and blocking highs are symptomatic, couple of days too hot and then a few days too cool.
120
I wonder if climate change triggers false alarms in Hawaii? Poor old Hawaiians….
Part of me wonders if it wasnt…er…an accident….
I wonder when the BBC will be sold off…although it *is* valuable as an agitprop dissemination service…
50
Bingo….
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/368907-white-house-hawaii-false-alarm-purely-a-state-exercise
31
“Global cooling has begun and blocking highs are symptomatic, couple of days too hot and then a few days too cool.” Chur bro’, you know.
Woke-up extra early before work (on a Sunday!) to check Thredbo / Kosci webcams: saved 2 pics of both with freshly-fallen snow on the tops, 6:09 am NSW time, -1.4˚C at Thredbo Top Station. Anyone could see it coming a mile away – except the experts and their warmy models.
Meanwhile, grabbing snatches of news on the radio at work today – driving wine tours around a funky little island off the funky little North Island of NZ – a breathless, young, journo-intern reported a “record 32˚C in Invercargill today!” … wait for it… “matching 1921’s hottest day ever.” Invers is New Zealand’s most-southerly town, renowned for cold, rain, gales, sleet, storms, snow, surf: think more south than Tassie, almost Tierra del Fuego territory, half-way to Antarctica. 32˚C? Excellent.
As for South Pacific blocking highs, there’s another forming east of us this week, and it’s gonna eat that Trumbull Carbon Freezing Sustainable Summer Snowfall stormy-thingy cold-front cool-change whatever. Surfers and fishermen call it ‘weather’.
80
🙂
00
Woke up this morning , it was 14C in the house…mid January….
Watching tv in trackies and jumpers last night….dont mind it though….
Could do with some global warming…..ha ha…failing that we could burn some hockey sticks to stay warm…. 🙂
70
el gordo:
“Global cooling has begun … ”
If there is one thing I’ve learned
in 20 years of climate science reading,
it’s that no one can predict the future climate,
and it is wild guess (wrong) predictions of the
average temperature that have been used
to scare people about CO2.
I highly recommend to skeptics that they
never predict the future climate,
because the specific causes of climate change
are not known — obviously not CO2 — so even
a “correct” prediction would be a lucky guess,
I happen to know warming will continue,
unless it gets cooler,
or the temperature remains the same,
and my confidence level is way beyond
those IPCC fools (95%) — my confidence
level is 100%.
http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com
10
As a fan of many of the Beeb’s old productions, I tried to watch a recent BBC history series the other day. Then I realised that the main attraction of every episode was again going to be a presenter looking deliriously pleased with herself while she walked, stood, sat, smirked and generally posed. (As a small mercy, Lucy Worsley didn’t have an extensive huge scarf collection she was intent on modelling for the viewers. But that was the only mercy.)
The BBC is the complete modern medium, thoroughly corporatized, slavish, corrupt and smug. Okay, so it’s not as smug as Australia’s ABC…but who is?
190
What really angers me is that our elected to be representatives have continued to ignore ABC and BOM complaints since the Abbott Government was formed in September 2013, and despite Prime Minister Abbott and a minority of his Cabinet sought to take action to deal with out of control taxpayer funded operations.
Obviously, the Turnbull Party no only ignores complaints but encourages the spreading of deceptive information.
140
I fear that the Turnbull party is the party of ABC listeners who wear scarves in summer.
60
I saw that story and began collecting warm jackets to ship that way.
If we can collect enough of them, we can save some of the folks that are unprepared for a change in the weather.
40
You could just puke,
There is a record which wasn’t a record for one second in a place that was urban now but wasn’t when the last record was set while at the same time Tasmania gets snow in January and all the BBC focuses on is that one second hot temp.
Yesterday channel nine was screaming about extreme heat in Brisbane, it was only 36! At my place it got to 41.5 but it’s the height of summer, in Australia, the sunburnt country.
80
“I love a sunburnt country,
. . .
. . .
Of droughts and flooding rains.”
[1908, by Dorothea Mackellar]
30
And sixty years closer to when Dorothea wrote that, it was commonplace during summer to have 10 days in a row when the temperature ranged from 100 to 107°F. (37.8 to 41.7°C.)
No air conditioning, just get through it.
Recent summers have been very mild by comparison.
Help Dorothea, someone has turned our heater down a notch.
Long live the weather.
And free speech.
KK
70
It really is the “Smartphone Effect” at play….
In the old common sense language, we’d say data is cherry picked from a small section of a graph but touted as the whole picture…ignoring all historical data….now that sounds familiar …..
The Smartphone Effect keeps punters focussed in the here and now, hypes it up to the max, tantalizes them with hysteria, then moves on to the next “sky is falling” bit of misinformation fluff…..
Smartphones and their owners are like Specialists – they a awful lot about very little….
30
Should read:
“Smartphones and their owners are like Specialists – they know an awful lot about very little….”
Coffee No. 2 now brewing…much needed this morning….
30
I is now Jan 15, the mid point of Summer in OZ which, as I recall for over 70 years, usually is hot. In Melbourne so far this Summer we have had one hot day.
30
And I’ wearing a woollen cardigan.
10
i’m
10
I think Australia will be around a while in spite of predictions to the contrary. What amazes me is that the prognosticators have no sense of shame and aren’t the least bit ashamed of themselves when they turn out to be wrong.
00
Jo, are you going to mention the NY mayor trying to sue the Fossil Fuel companies (hilarious), or is it best to ignore what is essentially a publicity stunt?
New York would of course be a scene of unthinkable crime, death and starvation after a fortnight without fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel companies are a bunch of Jim Taggarts.
It’s like a child suing it’s mother for feeding it.
140
He’s already being called out for his hypocrisy: http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/12/hypocrite-de-blasio-got-savaged-by-the-media-for-suing-oil-companies-over-global-warming/
80
As Marano calls him, “the SUV riding , NYC mayor”
80
One non-controversy which should be a controversy is the dumping of rubble from the construction of the WTC back in the late 60s. To save trouble and get more real estate the mouth of the Hudson was narrowed about 400 feet, as I remember. This in a city built near sea level in a notorious (since 1635’s Great Colonial Hurricane) storm belt.
No wonder certain people are happy to change the subject to anything “global” when NY’s vulnerability to climate is mentioned.
120
For a refresher course in plumbing
http://www.jokes2go.com/lists/list60.html
140
In South Australia we demolish power stations to stop anyone using them to burn coal.
In Germany (H/T Paul Homewood) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5262641/German-cathedral-torn-make-way-coal-mining.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline
130
The guy who did it ran his first Parkrun on Saturday. I wonder if he’s preparing for a new career!
10
A bit like burning your boats on the beach….no going back….until you need to use a boat for fishing to feed yourself….
20
To survive Green Blob Australia needs to be as ruthlessly hypocritical as producing nations like Germany and China. We need a shameless leadership to gabble about the planet and make empty commitments for the Guardian-perusing classes while we forge ahead with our splendid coal and minerals. Talk green, dig black.
Mind you, we should keep higher standards than Germany and China when it comes to conservation, the forgotten value. We need to copy their comical hypocrisy, not their serious vandalism.
10
Josh F. is in the Fairfax press talking about EVs and how monumnetally disruptive they will be, comparing them to smartphones. Lists out and discusses barriers to progress price/range/charging facilities. Talks about it glowing terms.
Never once talks about where all the power is coming from in a strapped grid with baseload evaporating. Tony from Oz often highlights the overnight 18GW minimum overnight in on the East coast, adding millions of EVs to that every night needing to charge regardless of weather seems to just be a given. More fairy dust I guess.
170
There’s a good point to made in this.
I didn’t want to comment earlier, (Off Topic) but the Minister quoted overall power consumption just to recharge the batteries as being 5.2TWH a year. That might seem a lot, but yes, that would be the case, and 5.2TW is around 2.5% of Australia’s (current) consumed power, and again, see how figures can become so able to seem misleading. Quote the figure of 2.5% and it seems small enough to be insignificant, and 5.2TWH is 5,200,000,000KWH when the average home consumes around 20KWH per day. One figure small, one figure large, so guess which one gets used.
So, the Minister mentions that the grid is already capable enough to handle that and he’s basically correct, but he hopes the infrastructure will be in place so people can charge their EV batteries at home, but not during Peak periods, but late at night early in the morning (midnight to 6AM) when consumption is at its lowest.
That quoted total of 5.2TWH is a yearly total, so that total is going to be consumed no matter when it is being done, so all we can do is to average it out, and then do the calculation using those times.
Now, not everyone will be charging their batteries back to full every night, but keep in mind that total of 5.2TWH is what WILL be consumed overall, so that amount of power must be added in to be there if needed.
That’s an average of around 600MW extra power needed to be in place for consumption, so you can see, the grid can already handle that, but as I said, not everyone will do it at the same time, so there will be days less, and days more.
I might suggest that it would effectively raise that Base Load to around 19,000MW, and in times of talking about lowering consumption, here we have a case of raising consumption, of shutting down coal fired power plants (Liddell, minus 2000MW) and then raising consumption with EV’s.
And it’s not like it’s going to be coming from renewable power, because it will just come from the overall grid, which is already 80% supplied by coal fired power at those times. Not from rooftop solar power at those times, when there is none, so basically it means that coal fired power will need to ramp up even further to cover the extra consumption at those times.
The Minister also mentions the cost. That 5.2TWH which he hopes the charging will be done at home, adds around $1.5 Billion to the Residential power bill.
Tony
210
Recharging EV from coal fired power stations is far less efficient and requires more greenhouse gas emissions being produced than burning liquid fossil fuel in internal combustion engines.
And the costs involved in changing over the existing motor vehicle fleet would be an enormous imposition on owners of existing vehicles, and then the cost of rolling out recharging stations sufficient to service the Australian fleet as conveniently as refuelling is now.
Another UN IPCC based exercise in solving a problem that does not exist, saving the planet from the mythical man-made global warming.
130
And how is rural Australia going to be hooked up to cover the ev draw?
IIRC max motor size on our SWER lines is around 5 hp so about 3750 watts
Or about 2 kettles
90
We can’t average out the battery charging. Batteries have to be charged when the wind blows, or when the sun shines. Plan accordingly.
30
But but but; Solar power only happens in the middle of the day. So people should charge their cars in the middle of the day when the available power is at its highest (and greenest).
How could minister Frydenberg get that so wrong?
100
I also wonder if potential EV owners have factored in the cost of rewiring their homes for the charging to be done at home, and being a hard wiring, that means you stay with the home for the duration of your EV, because you can’t take the house wiring with you when you move home.
A typical home charger might take 7 hours plus to charge the batteries, and that cost for a typical home installation is around $2000 Plus. Then on top of that the charge is at the full rate, so you get charged for that full rate, when there is anything up to 15% losses during charging.
And remember whatever the output of the batteries, then that’s what you have to put back into the battery. Nissan Leaf is 24KWH from memory and Tesla up around 60KWH, so multiply that by the cost of Residential power, and pretty soon your home power bill sure adds up. Top up the battery with a 15% loss rate, losses that an ICE doesn’t give you, and those losses become an added charge you’re paying for and getting nothing in return.
I know you’re saving on petrol costs, but when those power bills come in Monthly or Quarterly, that’s different from paying for each petrol fill at the Servo.
It’s not as good as it seems when you drill down.
Tony.
140
Tony:
I make that just over $10,000 p.a. for 50km average daily (18,250km p.a.) at S.A. rates. And one has to pay more to buy the EV.
30
I did a rough calculation, it seems your average EV will use about 20 kwh to charge it.
So presumably, everyone drives home, plugs in their EV ( coz all petrol cars are evil and eat children for breakfast, fade your curtains, and encourage civil disobedience to our Eco-Overlords….) and immediately doubles the normal power consumption of their home, all at the same time, across all suburbs across the whole country….
Wonder how the grid will cope with such a massive lift in requirement?
I predict blackouts.
60
Not so much the cars plugging in as the electric B-doubles and triple-bottom road trains. Interesting to see how they will charge up at Nullarbor or Eucla or Mundrabilla – guess they will have to install new gen-sets and diesel tanks or go wind and solar. At least the drivers won’t be driving for too long and will have plenty of time to recover from the (minimal) fatigue while the truck charges!
40
Well look here….to save us from ourselves and protect our mental health, another “crisis” which can be solved by…drum roll….EVs and ride sharing.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-15/electric-cars-breaking-australia-roads-reform-road-user-charging/9235564
“A study linked to the Oregon trial by the Oregon State University found that drivers of high-efficiency vehicles would pay more regardless of how far they travel.
Urban drivers were found to be more likely to drive fuel efficient vehicles, so they would be likely to pay more under a user charging program.
…………..
“The only significant user-charging trial run in Australia, by toll-road company Transurban in Melbourne in 2015 and 2016, found drivers were open to a transparent, fair scheme.
But it’s not yet clear whether user charging is the best solution to improve the road network, particularly when a major goal is to reduce congestion.
Labor and the Greens both want greater investment in public transport options such as rail, and others have suggested modest road reforms in the meantime.
………………….
In the longer term, the expansion of ride-share services and fully autonomous vehicles could cause significant disruption to the way Australians use the roads.”
00
To be honest I think a lot of people overlook two overlapping technologies, that is the electric vehicles and driverless tech.
1) Driverless tech will remove the need for many people to own a car (much as Uber does now). Once fully driverless, Uber (using them only as an example, substitute Lyft or another name if you prefer) will be considerably cheaper to run, owning a car will seem like a quaint luxury. Sure if you want to go on long trips and the like… but then why not rent? The usage rates for the typical vehicle owned by individuals are pathetic… probably the worst depreciating asset you can buy.
2) Charged batteries for EVS will represent a huge storage unit which could engage in grid balancing in the sense that it would be cheaper to charge them off-peak where possible, and they could assist the grid (if charged and attached) while idle to iron out spikes. All this assumes the systems being in place to accommodate such transfers.
A side effect of 1) I see the need for parking lots massively diminished, so they could become the EV charging stations of the future or redeveloped into something more useful. Driverless tech is going to be massively disruptive, and we are only just seeing the start of it in automated haul systems in mines and railways.
Also, I think it is only a matter of time before it will become illegal to drive oneself, given automated systems will be far safer. Sure there are downsides such as these vehicles being hacked to crash them etc… but realistically that is a moot point. If people want you to crash your current vehicle, snipping brake lines and the like ain’t rocket surgery (not that I’d know where to look).
00
The whole driveless vehicle and EV thing is a human control grid being laid out – effectively removing private ownership of vehicles and their inherent freedom ( by making fuel so expensive and pushing EVs ) means you the private citizen are forced to using effectively use a State sanctioned and controlled car pool in addition to state controlle drail & buses.
Sure it might be privatrely run, but when was the last time you could really tell where govt ended and massive well known search engines started?
It means constant surveillance of peoples movements ( credit card, location for pickup, route taken, drop off location etc ) and if you have been a bad boy, your credit card is revoked and you cant go anywhere, except by bike or foot.
Now add in smart meters for control of power usage etc and it looks pretty bleak.
They try and put a “save the planet” or starry eyed “I love the future” spin on it, but underneath it seems to be “control-of-everything-we-do” agenda. I was wondering how they would force people out of private car ownership….
00
I don’t see how any of that can be applied to people way out in rural areas. The needs here are entirely different from Melbourne for example. BTW…despite the moaning…you actually have quite a good public transport system down there. You want to see ours…all but non-existant. No trains and one ‘bus per day. At best we have a good hour’s drive to Lilydale and then the best part of an hour on the train to Flinders St. Otherwise it’s 2 hours’ driving and then a parking headache and that’s before the Hoddle St roadworks nightmare.
00
Annie, part of the UN Agenda 21 nonsense is the plan to basically empty the countryside of people, and force them into mega cities ( for better containment of Gaia threatening innovate human species… )
10
It certainly seems so. Also, much diminished food-production and we go the way of the former USSR, China, North Korea, Venezuala, Cambodia, etc. etc.
10
OS…I expect the tower blocks will be useful in reducing the population size too. Non-opening windows and a need for a steady power supply to air-condition the buildings will give ‘good’ results when all the wondrous ‘renewables’ fail and there are blackouts.
10
“Where the self-driving car meets the uncontrolled railway crossing. ”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/
00
One must point out that charging an 85kwh battery pack over say 10 hours needs a 10kW battery charger or 40 amps. That’s about twice a normal household peak demand.
10
I’d like to wish everyone a good afternoon at 8:05 am, I’m off to dig a hole.
40
Portable or fixed-position hole?
30
Spewah style
Deep, so he can pull it up later, cut to length and sell them to the green fraternity as wells
30
Sounds like a typical cost analysis process used to justify bird shredders….
10
“Settled Science Update
Posted on January 13, 2018 by tonyheller
After lying about cold being caused by heat for the past five years, climate alarmists have changed their story to “it really isn’t very cold.” ”
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/01/settled-science-update-3/
100
See
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/01/settled-science-update-3/#comment-77685
and chuckle
70
Our temperature record is going to look like the face of an older hollywood actor after a while…stretched dead flat with the occasional ripple….
Once temps are homogenized, then cold winter data is “corrected”, we will have a dead flat line….
These people really are extremely silly…
30
https://www.city-journal.org/html/crudeness-and-truth-15668.html
Via a comment at
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2018/01/milo-vs-muslim-.html#comment-1147499
Local content there too
20
Powerline The Week in Pictures: Oprah! Edition. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/01/the-week-in-pictures-oprah-edition.php
20
Thought you were digging a hole? Great jokes BTW
20
Hole halfway there, I’m currently in a social-purgatory type of time delay, you’d think a man would get tired of digging themselves into holes.
20
Now where’s that shovel?
“They say that a man who volunteers to dig himself into a hole has a fool as a laborer. And, with God as my witness, I am that fool!”*
(*Adapted from an original quote by Gomez in The Addams Family(film))
10
“Dolphin Intelligence — Simply Amazing”
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2018/01/dolphin-intelligence-simply-amazing.html
10
” B A Deplorable Sewer Rat | January 13, 2018 10:07 AM | Reply
Trump now under witchcraft curse:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/01/nigerian-british-actress-threatens-president-trump-witchcraft-not-safe/ ”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2018/01/reader-tips-4081.html#comment-1147463
Likely to be about as successful as Australian aboriginal bone pointing was with Europeans
30
Ok it did post
10
As for Flannery’s “Angry summer”, could we please have some Global Warming here in Melbourne? We have visitors from St. Petersburg, Russia at 60 degrees north who think our summers in Melbourne are very cold. Since the CO2 drought, the summers have been freezing and CO2 is still rising steadily.
However if it is very hot anywhere in Australia, we can be sure that the BOM publicists will sensationalize it like the cricket. Really, what does the nation care if Penrith was unusually hot one day? Does that mean anything at all? Melbourne had a mere 5 hours of 41 and in the whole summer so far the temperature rarely reached 25. Should we be building coal power stations to try to warm the place?
131
TdeF
We’ve been having a rash of 40-ish temps here in western Qld but doesn’t seem any more summery than previously experienced.
Years ago one Xmas a friend of my sister remarked that it was almost too hot to pee.
We’d let you have a share of it if possible though
50
The summer, I trust. 😉
60
Annie!
Lot of evaporation out here in 30 years or so
10
TdeF,
I guess the visitors are a bit disappointed.
St Petersburg is far nicer than Melbourne.
40
Yes, but as perhaps the grandest city of palaces in Europe founded by 85 years before the first Australia day and capital of the largest country in the world, it outshines everywhere else. Trapped in a time warp since the Russian revolution, it is spectacular. However Melbourne for a late 19th century British city has its own charm even if the architecture is a little stolid. No pink or blue and white or yellow palaces topped with gold minarets or arcs of grand boulevards and glorious canals.
Neither attracts people for their hot weather and surf but at 37 degrees, you would expect Melbourne to be much hotter in summer. 37 would put Melbourne 500km South of Rome at 32 degrees. Neither has much to fear from Global Warming or as major ports has much to fear from sea level rise after three centuries of no observable change.
20
Beijing has been informed that their climate scientists couldn’t find a hockey stick in south west China.
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c01bb09e71f5f970d-pi
The dictatorship is confident the world media won’t notice, so they can continue to flog their renewables.
80
There are at least 3 Aluminum smelters in Australia, this might be good or bad news: But “the ABI smelter in Becancour, Que., locked out workers who rejected a contract offer.” This is some 1000 workers. If they are trying to push the price of Aluminum up well… we will see. Brazil makes a lot. But with electric prices in Australia where they are and a tough market, we may see a shrinking work forces in AU.
80
Isn’t it aluminium in Australia? I thought aluminum was American.
30
True
20
That is why you can conclude I am an American who might be worried about economics in AU!
30
Quebec not Queensland
10
You can all change your holiday plans.
CNN, BBC, MSM, ABC, WaPo, NYT, etc have all told us that Botswana, Haiti, Venezuela, etc are not $hitholes at all.
80
Obviously that is the empixellated view.
For an example of the un-empixellated view
http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/01/how-can-president-trump-look-at-this-haitian-beach-and-call-it-a-shithole.html
71
I think the hollow men of the MSM just oppose trump for the sake of opposing trump….
30
Poor people…that is appalling. President Trump appears to have hit the nail on the head if he said what he is reported to have said.
20
Annie
Years ago there was a report that Ernest Hemmingway had been greeted with awe at one of his favourite waterholes.
In honour of his having broken a shillelagh over his own head at the last visit.
His response “Good story not to denigh”.
And similar here methinks
10
And how many of them will be holidaying in said $hitholes , actually would South Australia count as one because Victoriastan is not far away from qualifying?
60
Actually, Botswana is pretty well run. I can tell that by the noticeable lack of Tswanas immigrating into South Africa. Compared to the number (about 3 million, last estimated) of illegal Zimbabweans, who just wanted to find somewhere where FOOD was available!
60
Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of Africa.
Such a downfall at the hands of one evil person.
(The sort that make up a lot of the UN, btw).
I wonder if the person taking his place as dictator will be any better. !
60
Andy
Did you know there was “The Natural Resources Act Southern Rhodesia 1941” when most of the rest of the world hadn’t strung those two words together in one sentence?
10
There is an interesting article on how climate became political:
https://judithcurry.com/2018/01/03/manufacturing-consensus-the-early-history-of-the-ipcc/#more-23734
It is a long article and there are a huge number of comments so it takes time to get through it. Many of the comments are insightful and add to the blog.
There are two aspects that I take from it. Firstly how science has chased the money. Secondly the “educated” young people will not have cause to question the validity of climate change; having a firm belief that human’s burning fossil fuels is changing the climate in catastrophic ways.
70
This link gives some data on the first month of operation of the SA’s BBB:
https://johnmenadue.com/dylan-mcconnell-a-month-in-teslas-sa-battery-is-surpassing-expectations/
The battery is being worked quite hard with daily average almost equivalent to one full capacity cycle. If it keeps working that hard it will be a good test of battery life. The out/in efficiency is only 80%. That indicates it is indeed working hard. There may also be a good deal of auxiliary power required for the installation.
80
Two points seem to arise from this article:
1. The battery efficiency seems to be around 80%. This is in line with expectations.
2. The battery response time would seem to be governed by the rate of the control signals. If this is correct, the fastest response must be 4.14 seconds, not 140 ms as quoted recently.
60
Hmm, not much real info there as to what it is actually doing, that was not being done before ?
The vital FCAS role was being filled effictively before the big battery came on the scene.
How did SA ang the grid get by without this magic device ?
If you study the data logs for the battery charge/discharge periods, its quite obvious that its being discharged mainly when the wholesale price is high and recharged during low price periods.
Thus profiting from the price differential
http://nemlog.com.au/nem/unit/HPRG1/
http://nemlog.com.au/nem/unit/HPRL1/
And when you look at the SA power generation reports, the battery capacity contribution (by capacity time shift ) is infinitesimal.
This is just another money mill sucking on tax payers dollars.
110
Good summary.
20
Left a comment on the site, asking how the battery could “surpass expectations” when the general public have not been advised of the original system design specs. What “expectations” did it surpass?
80
Does anyone have a good reference site on Glaciers?
I was short of an answer about this when my sister claimed that melting glaciers were a good proof of climate change.
Notwithstanding some better arguments such as CO2 causation , natural variabilty etc, I have not found a good internet source on glaciers with reliable up to date information on glacier advance and retreat.
50
PeterC there was a wuwt story some time back on glaciers and from memory there were more now than some years back .
50
Melting glaciers are a sign of global warming, we can’t deny it, so point to Greenland and say increasing mass balance is a global cooling signal.
https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/08/clip_image002_thumb3.jpg?w=624&h=244
70
Remember that comment from WUWT
“If it is melting its a glacier. If it is increasing its your imagination”
70
Peter C, it doesn’t matter. Most glaciers are melting for one obvious reason – we had a massive ice age a long time ago and the earth has been warming ever since. It’s not a good argument to use for either side since there are too many other variables, such as localised conditions. I’m sure there are some glaciers that are growing but it still doesn’t alter the fact the general trend over thousands of years is the earth has been warming since the ice-age. Of course if we are entering a min ice-age as some claim then we should see a general increase in the size of glaciers. Even so it will not convince global warming alarmists they have it wrong. They will simply stick to their agenda and continue to propagate their scam arguing the cooling period is short-term, which might in fact be the case. No one really knows. All we know for sure, at least those who are intelligent enough, is that the global warming scare is a scam.
90
‘…we had a massive ice age a long time ago and the earth has been warming ever since.’
Not quite, after pulling out of the last glacial maximum there was surge of warmth around the world and more water vapour. The oceans liberated CO2 and earth enjoyed abundance once again.
Then came the Younger Dryas, which rebounded, but most importantly every interglacial has a downside and temperatures from around 6000 years ago were on the slide.
‘No one really knows.’
That is until we come up with a new scientific paradigm linking the solar system to climate change on earth.
31
When in a recent tour of Norway, the guide remarked that the glacier we were at had been melting since the “ice age”. Didn’t seem right, so checked that evening and it turned out, as el gordo says, that most glaciers have been melting since about 6000-8000 years ago. However, I believe the highest percentage of the world’s glaciers are in east Antarctica, and these have not been melting but gaining. It’s interesting that the sign adjacent to the Franz Josef glacier in Australia’s East Island doesn’t mention global warming as a cause of its melting.
80
‘…most glaciers have been melting since about 6000-8000 years ago.’
Temperatures have been on the slide for 6000 years but in cold times like the Little Ice Age glaciers extend themselves and in warm epochs, such as the Medieval period, there was glacial retreat.
60
When we took a flight around the Franz Josef Glacier (and Mt Cook, Mt Tasman, etc.) the pilot pointed out where the moraine was that defined the extent of the glacier 12,000 years ago. It was clearly shown by the trees present and there was no talk of AGW/CC.
70
Now all you need is some ice from it for your drink…I mean you could even call it a prehistoric G & T ….
10
We once used huge hailstones for our G and T in a very heavy storm in France…that was fun, except for the dreadful damage to our car.
00
Many years ago we took a flight up Mt Cool, landed on the snow, threw a few snowballs and flew back down.
When I think of all the CO2 that excursion produced I feel ashamed.
But it was fun.
KK
10
Bl&&dy autocorrect.
Mt Cook
10
But Mt Cook is cool KK! Don’t feel any guilt at your expedition. The blob want us to feel guilt and I refuse to. 🙂
10
“…there are 198,000 glaciers in the World. However, this is a slightly arbitrary quantity, as it depends on the quality of the digital elevation model used, mapping resolution, and the minimum-area threshold used. Most analysts use a minimum area threshold of 0.1 km2; they will not map anything smaller than this due to difficulties in distinguishing between glaciers and snowpacks. If these small glacierets are including, the number of glaciers in the World could be up to 400,000, but they would still only account for 1.4% of the World’s glacierised area.
Together, these glaciers cover 726,000 km2. The region with the most ice is the Antarctic and Subantarctic, with 132,900 km2, closely followed by Arctic Canada North (104,900 km2). At the other end of the scale, New Zealand has only 1160 km2 of ice. In total, 44% of the World’s glacierised area is in the Arctic regions, and 18% is in the Antarctic and Subantarctic. Glaciers cover 0.5% of the Earth’s land surface13.”
http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/glacier-recession/mapping-worlds-glaciers/
The vast majority of them are in Antarctica and it’s not melting anytime soon.
71
Their conclusion is the melting of the glaciers is contributing about one third of currently observed sea level rise. Using glaciers to gauge whether there is overall global warring or cooling is moot. Direct observation shows the earth’s temperature has been going up and down all over the place more rapidly over the past hundred years but the net result is negligible, and certainly has very little if anything to do with mankind.
40
Sceptical Sam,
I have only counted 197,998 glaciers.
Which two have I missed?
20
Like all things climate”science” they always round.
Up never down.
You are too wedded to Veritas.
However, they’re still some 202,000 short according to the second estimate.
So what’s the truth?
20
Moot. Regardless of what the glaciers are doing, the truth is Australia is pretty much alone in thinking coal fired plants are such a danger to mankind that we must close them down and not build new ones. The rest of the world is busy building about a thousand of them. Meanwhile Canberra keeps reminding us via TV adds how Japan and other countries are building low emissions high efficiency coal fired plants and then asking the question why aren’t we doing the same? They already know the answer. Canberra is deliberately creating sufficient disincentives. How more stupid can one be? At least the ALP wouldn’t be that stupid to place such an add on TV. GIVE ME A BREAK PEOPLES! If anyone still thinks we should vote for either major party then Australia deserves to be stuffed up big time to teach us a lesson.
70
I spent some time going through the CERES data for 2017. My understanding is that the radiation data is essentially calibrated, over the long term, against the ARGO ocean heat data. The value of the CERES data, if it has any validity, is that it is more responsive in time then the ARGO data. It should also lead the ARGO data.
The data indicates that the globe gained heat during 2017 at an average of 5.7W/sq.m. That amounts to a total of 9.1E22J for the year. Assuming this heat is absorbed in the top 2000m of the oceans it has increased temperature by 0.03 degrees K.
Monthly variation ranged with a high in February of 18.8W/sq.m down to -2.2W/sq.m in July. This suggests that the oceans are net heat absorbers and land net heat radiators.
The monthly data is published at the beginning of the following month so is timely in that regard.
30
Can you please explain how to get from your claimed 5.7W/m² (flux) to your claimed 9.1×10^22 Joules (energy)? What are the needed unknowns?:
1) Surface area used for power accumulation?
2) Time interval used to integrate power to energy?
3) Mass ocean to 2000 meters?
4) Specific heat of ocean mass?
5) Was all ocean mass temperature to (2000 m) increased by 0.03°C?
41
Answers as follows:
1) Total Earth surface area
2) The whole year
3) Rounded to 1t/Cu.m
4) Rounded to 4.2E6J/t/K
5) Assumed no additional heat stored on land or in atmosphere so all additional heat went into oceans to 2000m; assuming there is a thermal gradient such that there is greater temperature rise in the upper regions than below with no heating below 2000m on a time scale that is of interest to humans.
20
1) Total Earth surface area.. Why? what means 5.7W/m² (flux) in or out?
2) The whole year! Ok Joules is W-seconds. Year is 60 x 60 x 24 x 365.25 seconds. so what?
3) Rounded to 1t/Cu.m. with that much lightweight crap like fishies?
4) Rounded to 4.2E6J/t/K… 4.2J/g/K is OK for pure laboratory liquid H2O. What may be Ocean sensible heat, with all the extra junk?
Need I go on? All you seem to have is some abstract mathematical construct with absolutely no attempted understanding.
11
Does CERES data have any validity? I hope so. But there might be a bit of a problem if land is a net heat radiator. That means that land has to get extra heat from somewhere in order to radiate the extra heat.
I am more comfortable with the idea that tropical oceans are net heat absorbers and the heat is then transported by ocean currents towards the poles. The oceans and seas in the high latitudes can then radiate more heat than they get by direct solar input and also warm the air over adjacent land areas eg gulf stream warms Britain and Western Europe.
20
Willis E has had a couple of items using Ceres on WUWT in the not too distant past
20
NO!! Radiometric measurements can be quite accurate and repeatable; fine instrumentation, always confusing. It is the academic (political) interpretation of anything radiometric that needs be stomped to the dirt, pissed on, paved over, then the resulting construction of monument to human stupidity! EMR is difficult if not impossible for Earthlings!
41
PeterC wrote:
There is more ocean area in the southern hemisphere than the northern hemisphere and consequently more heat stored in the southern hemisphere than the northern. Deep ocean currents carry that heat northward where it keeps the land at high latitudes warmer than it otherwise would be. This link gives some detail on the deep ocean currents:
http://oceanmotion.org/html/impact/conveyor.htm
Comparing the winter temperature of cities at the same latitude on the east and west coast of North America shows the influence of ocean currents on heating the land. Portland on the west coast has an average January low of 36F while Boston, at a similar latitude on the east coast, has average Jan low of 22F.
If CERES data proves reliable it will be valuable in giving early indication of global warming or cooling.
The fact that most humans live on land makes weather over land important to humans. However the fact that land has negligible heat storage capacity means weather over land has little influence on global climate. The ocean heat absorption and heat distribution through current and wind circulations dominate global climate.
30
You go on and on about heat, heat distribution, weather, climate, global climate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera! You seem to be but a greedy bankster bot setup to promote nonsense for profit by banksters!
13
Will J being provocative.
My concept is that:
1. Land does not store much heat. Probably equilibrates in 1 day.
2. Ocean heat is transported by shallow Ocean currents. Deep ocean is cold. Gulf stream is a surface current.
20
point 3. Ocean currents do not heat the land. Ocean currents can heat the air which then passes over the land, reducing cooling.
Land is heated by the Sun.
30
Sure the sun heats the land but there is no heat storage capacity. Land generally loses more heat than it gains on an annual cycle. For example, at northern latitude 21 degrees and longitude 8 degrees in the middle of Sahara the heat flux over it ranges from a loss of 66W/sq.m in January 2017 to a loss of 6W/sq.m in August 2017. By comparison, the mid Atlantic at same latitude at 15 degrees west gains 94W/sq.m in August and drops to a loss of 15W/sq.m in January.
Over the year the ocean surface at this latitude gains heat and land loses heat. The annual neat heat loss from the land comes from the net heat gain in the oceans.
The linked image shows the whole globe using shading to represent the net flux.
https://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/view.php?datasetId=CERES_NETFLUX_M
The shapes of the land masses are generally visible. If you look at the cooler latitudes you see land loses more heat than the oceans and at warmer latitudes oceans gain more heat than the land.
The Earth would be considerably colder on average if there were no large bodies of water to store and distribute the heat.
00
Rick, your link shows the Australian coastline bordered by ocean that seems to be radiating more heat then the adjacent land. Yet you say that oceans absorb heat while land radiates. What am I missing?
10
The image represents net heat flux. Incoming is taken as positive and outgoing is taken as negative. If you look at the centre of Australia for December its net heat is slightly positive (light yellow shade). Moving to the same latitude in the Pacific you will see the net heat flux is much higher (almost red) meaning it is gaining heat in December much faster than any land at the same latitude.
If there was no difference between the net radiation over land and water, the land masses would not be evident in the image.
00
RickWill Jan 16,18 at 12:47 pm
Your scam shows nothing of flux W/m² only ‘radiance’ W/(m²·sr) The potential for EMR power transfer but always limited by opposing ‘radiance’ at every frequency direction, polarity, and, chirality/parity. EMR is hard to understand! Scams abound!
10
I agree! Earth’s land upper crust (surface) temperature less than one meter depth is highly variable diurnally. Although Earth’s atmosphere is thin (10km vs 3000km radius), such atmosphere remains sufficiently opaque at wavelengths greater than one micron, that any claimed EMR surface exitance from land or sea, remains trivially immeasurable! All EMR exitance to space remains at the LW EMR surface called the Tropopause! All lower altitude temperature effects are completely determined via the gas laws including that induced by static gravitational compression of Earth’s wonderful compressible atmosphere; including all airborne water, bugs, bees, bats, birds; and unfortunately Earthling aircraft. All such airborne never ever can express the Earthling nonsense called ‘weight’!
All the best!-will-
01
Hi Rick,
Living in Newcastle and having relatives living inland about 30 km I can vouch for the fact that the ocean can provide an insulating effect.
During winter it does get cold but we have never had water freezing in the pipes. Inland 30 ks and your tapwater may not flow.
In summer we can occasionally benefit from offshore winds that are slightly cooler after moving over the seawater.
Just whether there is a nett heating or cooling of the first 20 kms of Australia’s border is very uncertain.
We need to be very wary of accepting comments about Earth’s energy balance, it is a lot more complex than many would have us believe.
It may seem to be the height of erudition when someone plugs absolute values into the Stephan_ Boltzman equation to prove their skill.
All that is doing is showing their lack of practical experience.
I’d be very wary about energy balances on systems as complex as Earth’s.
KK
30
CERES provides the top of atmosphere incoming and outgoing radiation down to resolution of 0.25 degrees latitude and longitude. Hence it is possible to determine where the heat comes in and goes out. I am just using that data. I am now taking anyones word for it. I do take the leap of faith that CERES data is a fair representation of the emr fluxes. The raw data goes through considerable manipulation to produce power fluxes but those manipulations are consistent across the data set. Ultimately the CERES data is calibrated against long term trends in ocean heat.
00
Hi Rick,
I must admit that I know nothing of the Ceres programme but your comment seems to suggest that it is capable of giving data that would enable someone to calculate the nett energy gain or loss of our Planet over a one year period.
Maybe the Ceres data only applies to the oceans but whatever the case I would like to meet and congratulate any person or team which has managed to complete an energy balance on either the oceans or the land masses of the Earth.
Truly a huge task.
KK
40
See the note I inserted above. The CERES data covers the whole surface area and top of atmosphere on a grid as fine as 0.25 degrees lat and long. I used the 1 degree grid data for each month to keep the data set small.
10
Thanks
10
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/01/13/pandoras-moab-president-donald-john-trump/#more-144526 Read it and weep! 🙁
51
Yes but there’s a more vocal group, the leftists who argue from their point of view virtually the same thing, and are deliberately going out of their way to bring down Trump. Regardless of whether they succeed or not, they have set the path for US to destroy itself from within, just like every other empire throughout history.
70
ONLY if both the US and AU folk give up; and view themselves, rather than the enemy invaders (banksters), as SH*T-HOLE varmints from SH*T-HOLE locations!
61
All indications so far is AU has given up since both major parties are joined at the hip to destroying our economy by closing down our coal fired power plants one by one without replacing them with new ones or supplementing them with nuclear, as distinct from the rest of the world. So Australia has given up all alone, so far. I would welcome a change by Australians but that will only happen if they wake up and act accordingly. The only way at the moment is for voters to stop voting for either major party en mass. That is not happening so far, and in fact the current trend is there is a good chance ALP+Greens will be back in power next time. If that happens, that in itself proves Australians are stupid.
60
Huge difference in population ‘stupid’ and population intentionally brainwashed by few ‘clever’. I refuse to accept that you AU folk are ‘stupid’. Lazy\unaware yes! Watch when such become aware! Love snoozing meerkats!
32
The phrase stupid is as stupid has a lot of truth to it. In any we all do stupid things once and a while. It’s just that Australians for some reason are at the moment politically and collectively more stupid than usual. Otherwise, both major parties would be on the verge of extinction by now.
60
Now living in the White-house! How nice to see him surrounded by folk with both skill and personal integrity; (assisted by sufficient wealth to prevent corruption)! HOPE!
All the best!-will-
71
The Conservative Tree House is my “go to” site, first thing every morning and a last look every night. I have been following the blog now for the last couple of years. This is a real “page turner”.
The end is now in sight. Arrests have been made in the Uranium 1 scandal and in the next weeks, more to follow.
Sundance has been right on the money and the MSM, at last, slowly, is starting to catch on.
I believe the whole thing is now at the point where it will all blow up. There will be shock, horror and a lot of tears shed while the perpetrators are lead away in chains, ones you never expected.
60
Agree about the Treehouse. The coverage of what is really happening there is outstanding. Real investigative journalism. In the meantime, anyone who relies on the MSM is in for a very big and shocking surprise because that propaganda machine has not told their audience anything about it.
To borrow a phrase for the Climate Crisis’ gang, it is much worse than we thought or, for some people, worse than could possibly be imagined.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/
20
Sundance on CTH is a very good reporter! OTOH on the CTH blog, be banned to offer anything other than agreement of everything Sundance! The corruption has been accumulating for more than 120 years. Sundance still underestimates!
01
Donald Trump is a genius. His “leaked” “sh*thole” statement has 1) triggered Lefties into massive meltdown (excellent!!!) and 2) put up for discussion the fact that some countries are exactly as he described.
192
Leftie “logic”.
1) Those countries aren’t sh*tholes.
2) You can’t send illegals back to those countries because they’re sh*tholes.
The cognitive dissonance must be causing their poor excuses for brains to explode.
193
DM
Chiefio’s view
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2018/01/04/w-o-o-d-3-january-2018/#comment-90274
10
Stable genius; with sufficient wealth to be not corrupted by wealthy enemies! What you get will be ‘The Donald’, good\bad?, DUNNO! But much better than the prior could possibly become!
All the best!-will-
112
Its a minor distraction for local consumption.
Still no word from him on climate change, the most important issue of our time.
40
Climate, even changing, is but a word\phrase invented by sleazy Realtors to help sell ‘this desirable property’ . Excessive shivering does not help sell ‘this desirable property’ . 🙂
11
No need for words, Trump is a doer.
Out of the Paris Agreement.
Completed Pipe lines.
Started new Pipe lines.
Opened up Federal Lands to drilling.
98% of offshore USA now open for drilling.
EPA Regulations removed from coal and gas fired power plants.
The list goes on.
No more words need to be spoken about a hoax. I know it, you know it and Trump knows it.
140
Please remember that ‘The Donald’ is for ‘The Donald’, nothing else! Some in the US and AU riding in the P45 ‘little red wagon’ as supporters, will be fine. This still is WAR with total destruction of the ‘ENEMY\ENEMA’. Shove that up your anal bleaching!
25
‘No more words need to be spoken about a hoax. I know it, you know it and Trump knows it.’
Isolationism, doing all that stuff without explaining why, is unhelpful because it allows Beijing a strategic advantage.
Donald only has to tweet CO2 does not cause global warming, its a German hoax.
11
Putin is a genius (evil), he http://balance10.blogspot.com/2018/01/70-at-70-objective-for-putin-reelection.html
00
Putin is a genius (evil), he http://balance10.blogspot.com/2018/01/70-at-70-objective-for-putin-reelection.html
00
so sorry, i wouldn’t keep calling the guy by his name would I? http://balance10.blogspot.com/2018/01/zhanna-nemtsova-on-vladimir-putin.html
00
Look out Brisbane it’s going to be 38c today .
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-14/brisbane-set-to-reach-38-degrees-celsius/9327632
10
We were given some money for our 50th Wedding Anniversary and want to buy a home weather station. Our old gear was thrown out. We don’t need/want an all-singing, all-dancing linked-to-a-computer sort of set-up but something reasonably tough and accurate. Any suggestions welcomed, with thanks in advance.
There was something about one by Anthony Watts on WUWT recently but that means importing from the USA.
22
That depends. Do you want one that is approved by the BOM? Or do you want one that tells you what the real weather is doing?
80
🙂 Real weather preferably 🙂
30
Can you express what your ‘home weather station” is to provide? Aviation advisories need but a radio receiver, and someone to listen! Air temperature, wind-speed\direction instruments are cheap. Insolation and other radiometric instrumentation are spendy\notcheap. OTOH all need some skill to interpret! First thing to buy is some skill!
41
Naturally!
31
Having got my cheap shot away, you might want to have a look at the website: weatherstationexpert.com which is a site that compares various setups, and has “no obligation” links to Amazon, so you can look at pricing etc.
If I were in your situation, it is where I would start.
41
Thanks RW.
01
Here is what Mr. Watts suggested:
AW’s before Christmas post
He starts with telling you what not to buy.
What sources do you have, such as Amazon? Must also be local tech stores than can help.
31
That’s the one! Thanks John F H.
11
That’s sweet! My little red thumber is back….what’s the problem dear soul?
61
His problem is that he doesn’t want you to know the truth.
He’s a BoM troll.
He’s offended (they all are) that you don’t accept the BoM’s fictions and untruths.
31
Annie:
Is is not the problem, it is his problem. Probably incurable gullibility.
31
Annie
Use the Andy scoring system – count 10 green for a red thumb.
Or maybe go one better and score like the cheap wine raffle
First prize one bottle, second two etc
10
I cannot vouch for their objectivity, or indeed, for anything they present, but there is this site which may be of interest:
https://www.instrumentchoice.com.au
10
Thanks James M.
00
????
12 Jan: Greenpeace: How we can use wind power when there’s no wind
Posted by Mal Chadwick
Anyone who’s a fan of wind or solar power has heard the argument that “the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine”. This is called ‘intermittency’ – the idea that you might not get a constant flow of power from a particular source.
All energy sources are intermittent (coal plants can trip, pipelines can explode, and nuclear reactors can be invaded by jellyfish), but it’s a particular challenge for renewable energy.
Some people think this means we’ll always need lots of giant coal, gas or nuclear power stations (sometimes called ‘baseload’) to keep the lights on. But that’s not really how it works anymore.
Luckily, internet commenters weren’t the first to discover weather or night-time, and people have been working on solving intermittency for a while. Thanks to them, we now know that a good mix of renewable energy can do the job, even when the wind’s not blowing.
Check out our new video explainer to learn how it works – or keep scrolling for the text version.
VIDEO 3mins07secs PLUS TEXT
https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/renewables-reliable/
35
And the cow jumped over the moon.
90
Please tell that damnable Owl; I want both my kitten ‘Shadow’ and my green boat returned immediately if not sooner! 🙂
01
It sounds almost like …. wait for it … MAGIC!
30
It’s from greenfeces, sy no more.
10
Jonovians have a golden opportunity out now in the dead tree media…
The Scientific American Special Collectors Edition Winter 2017/2018
I have seen it loitering on the bookshelves in newsagents, waiting to brainwash an unsuspecting public.
If you see one of these magazines, please pick it up, quickly browse through it, have a laugh, then put it back on the shelf!
The front cover offers special reports on 8 topics where the stubborn public have not accepted settled science. The last one listed (bottom right) is Climate. I confess I was momentarily and naively hopeful that perhaps the controversy in climate science would finally be exposed and the confounding evidence referenced.
Inside the cover the Editorial introduction informed me that we live in a post-truth world where facts don’t affect people’s opinions, and what a terrible situation this was. The editor then highlighted two topics where the evidence was overwhelmingly clear; guns and climate. On guns the message from the evidence was that the more guns there are, the more gun violence there is, says the Editor of Scientific American. The message from Climate Science was as emphatic as it was sadly predictable.
I then dutifully opened to page 46 and the first thing I notice is the name of the author of this special report on Climate. Naomi Oreskes!
As my time in the shop was limited I felt no need to read that article at all as one knows what one is going to get from Oreskes. She is, if you recall, the activist who once stated that all of the solutions she advocates for climate change are solutions she’d be promoting even if climate change wasn’t real – because reducing inequality is the right thing to do. Now Sci-Am allows this admittedly biased activist to write about climate change ostensibly to present a fact-based scientific view.
But the editor had mentioned guns too, so I flipped back to that page to at least skim it, still holding out some hope that this magazine would present a rational conclusion from relevant evidence.
The infographic in the top left of the second page was just astonishing given the opinion of the editor.
I’ve tried to find an online copy but cannot so please bear with me as I describe the chart from memory.
In a pair of horizontal bar charts placed back-to-back it had each country listed in the vertical axis, then on each side of that axis were horizontal bars showing a different figure for each country. One side (LHS??) was the number of guns owned per capita, the other side was gun-related deaths per capita. Starting with the USA at the top of gun ownership, as the guns decreased the number of deaths increased. I had to look twice to check I had understood the chart. But yes, as the bar length on one side decreased, the bar length on the opposite increased.
Please can someone go to their nearest newsagent and find this magazine and check that infographic really shows what I recall?
Because if that was real evidence it is hard to see how the editor of Sci-Am reached their editorial conclusion.
Anyhow, at this point I decided not to become a collector of Sci-Am Special Editions and carefully placed the magazine back where I had found it. Oh how the mighty have fallen.
50
Nobody will read this, but… just to clarify what I was saying above with a bit of objective evidence.
https://imgur.com/dDgtBqB
My memory of the chart was roughly correct insofar as the low fatalities were clustered towards the top and the high fatalities were clustered more towards the bottom. But the relationship is not straightforward and there is intermixing of examples that defy the overall trend.
I may still flip-flop on my boycott policy and buy the collector’s edition anyway as what they say about the other 6 topics seems pretty interesting, if not quite as contentious.
00
ABC’s “Just In” page: Woman critical after collapsing from heat stress at Gold Coast market
who made the diagnosis?
actual headline, no attribution:
14 Jan: ABC: Brisbane set to reach 38 degrees Celsius, but relief on the way
Updated 18 minutes ago
A woman is fighting for her life in hospital after collapsing from severe heat stress at a Gold Coast market.
Paramedics were called to a night market in Helensvale on Saturday to a woman, 45, who was found to be in cardiac arrest.
She was taken to Gold Coast University Hospital in a critical condition…
The Sunshine Coast is expected to reach 37 degrees Celsius, the Gold Coast 34 degrees Celsius and Toowoomba 33C…
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Jonty Hall said by 8:30am it was already 33 degrees in Brisbane.
“A lot of temperatures are between eight and ten above average for morning temperatures, and that’s going to lead into a very hot day across the bulk of the state as well,” Mr Hall said…
“So we’re looking at temperatures climbing up to 5 or 6 degrees above average in general — the only exception really being the far south-west.”
But he said cooler times were ahead.
“There is a little bit of relief coming with a southerly change that has reached the south-west of Queensland today that will spread to the remainder of southern Queensland in the next couple of days and provide some relief from the hot temperatures for a few days at least,” he said…
The western Queensland towns of Winton and Cloncurry sweltered through their hottest January night on record.
Winton dropped down to 33.1 and Cloncurry 32.7 — both record breaking temperatures.
Longreach only got down to a minimum of 31.8, which is the warmest January night since January 5, 1902.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-14/brisbane-set-to-reach-38-degrees-celsius/9327632
30
Andrew:
I treasure my Oct. 1987 copy of The Scientifc American in which it fearlessly predicts that within 6 years Solar PV will be so cheap that no-one will want to build coal fired power stations. With 1600 coal fired power stations in the works that prediction is right up there with Algore and Flannery.
For you convenience I link the
Future Map of North America
Health Warnng: May cause Scepticism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5m65EPHLg0
40
lengthy, read all, if it interests you:
13 Jan: Atlantic Council: Larry Luxner: All Eyes on China
International Energy Agency chief, Fatih Birol, says China’s shift toward renewables has global implications
“By the end of 2017, China was No. 1 in solar, No. 1 in wind energy, No. 1 in electric cars and No. 1 in nuclear plants,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi on January 13. “This has implications for all energy markets. China is changing, and given the sheer size of the country, everything else will change,” he added.
Sharply falling prices for solar energy, China’s new pro-environment policies, and emerging US dominance in world oil and gas production are all shaping global energy markets for decades to come, said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Delivering a keynote address January 13 on the second and final day of the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi, Birol said the cost of solar power will tumble by half in the next three years as major countries turn to the sun as their preferred source of energy.
At the same time, he said, China’s new economic policy favors a shift from heavy industry such as manufacturing to a lighter, more modern and less polluting economic base…
Things are changing in India as well. For this reason, Birol advised his audience to keep his eye on those two giant countries, which together comprise 36.5 percent of the world’s population.
“Decisions which are made in New Delhi or Beijing will affect all of us,” he said, noting that six out of ten solar panels sold in the world today are produced by Chinese manufacturers.
“As a result of government policies, electric cars are growing substantially, and we believe that in twenty years’ time we may well have 300 million electric cars”—up from the current worldwide fleet of only two million such vehicles, he said…
Birol discounted the popular notion that electric cars are the answer to climate change. He noted that even if the use of electric vehicles (EVs) becomes as widespread as predicted by 2040, its impact on total global CO2 emissions will be less than 1 percent.
“This is because of two reasons,” he said. “First, cars in general are not a major source of CO2. Second, for electric cars to run, you need electricity from power plants, so we’ll still be using a significant amount of oil, gas or coal.”
“Electricity demand will grow twice as fast as total energy demand,” he predicted. “Air conditioning is becoming a major source of energy consumption. So is digitalization. Last year, for the first time in eighty years, electricity investments were higher than oil and gas investments.”…
Bader Al Lamki is executive director of clean energy at Masdar, a planned city being constructed 17 kilometers southeast of Abu Dhabi.
“We are witnessing today a global energy transformation driven by the convergence of technologies. We are seeing renewable costs falling rapidly, and energy storage coming into play,” said Al Lamki, estimating that by 2040, the world will need nearly $10 trillion worth of new investment just to keep up with energy demand. Nearly 70 percent of that, he predicted, will come from photovoltaic and wind energy…
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/all-eyes-on-china
20
pat:
Since we are paying 5 times the previous cost of coal-fired for Wind and Solar PV I am sceptical about the claims of renewables being “real cheap” soon. Yes, they have decreased in cost from 30 times conventional generation but I want to wait until they really are cheaper, which I note even Finkel thinks will take until 2030.
30
I would ask the names of those so ignorant that actually believe the ‘renewable’ scam of wind and insolation power generation? The Sun is running out of H2! Yes Earthlings are using ancient carbon (coal) and other hydrocarbons (oil) at prodigious rates in order to reduce most available metallic oxides to a high strength useful state.
It is a race to construct and maintain sufficient safe ‘nuclear’ power generating capability to keep the banksters and other self appointed aristocracy (politicians) from shivering. The cattle (workers\producers) are easily converted to food for the same self appointed aristocracy!! 🙁
01
A little thing I found out while I was in a Queensland Government Hospital for a day for some tests. Prince Charles in Brisbane.
I tried to log into Jonova.com.au using the hospital WiFi and was promptly told that the site was inappropriate and blocked by the Queensland Government.
I promptly switched off the WiFi on my phone and went to G4 and up came the site.
They must have something to fear ??
110
They must have something to fear ??
Do you suspect that to be something or someone other than a person from Hervey Bay?
40
I’m not that ugly !
20
Your opinion only! My kitten ‘Shadow’ licks her ass while being ‘beautiful’, then quickly reverts to ‘hiss wars my food’! Earthlings are so easy!
13
The BOM are at it again – with more “record hot temperature” announcements.
Today they claim that Winton and Cloncurry had their hottest overnight minimum temperatures “ever”, and Longreach its hottest since 1902.
Having heard this all before from the BOM, just tell me:
1/ is this based on the homogenised (adjusted) ACORN-SAT temperature series?
2/ does it exclude all the temperature records before ca 1900?
If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then the record claims are highly supicious, and just as in recent press releases, likely to be the product of adjustment or ignoring older temperatures.
The BOM needs to fully inform the public of the basis of its statements.
80
DaveR –
14 Jan: SBS: AAP: Qld woman fights for life after heatstroke
A woman is in a critical condition after she suffered heatstroke while working at a Gold Coast market.
The 45-year-old collapsed at the Night Quarter precinct at Helensvale at about 4pm on Saturday, while another two people were hospitalised with heat-related illnesses…
Mr Wyatt said it appeared she had been working at the market throughout the day, with reports she was in a shed-like area.
“Anything that results in a confined area results in an elevated temperature,” he said.
Mr Wyatt said it was an extreme case of heatstroke and urged other Queenslanders to be mindful of this weekend’s hot conditions.
Heat exhaustion causes people to sweat, feel thirsty, lethargic and possibly nauseous.
Mr Wyatt said heatstroke was much more serious and needed “time-critical” treatment.
“Their thirst has gone, they’re very dry to touch, they may have an altered level of consciousness, (be) confused, they can slip into having seizures and unconsciousness,” he said.
“That can result in neurological damage, damage to the kidneys and it is a significant and dangerous event.”…
Mr Wyatt said paramedics had been busy and received several call-outs for people with heat-related symptoms, as the temperature climbed towards a predicted top of 38C in Brisbane on Sunday.
Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Lauren Murphy said a southeasterly change would bring cooler temperatures in the late afternoon…
Ms Murphy said the predicted top of 38C was eight degrees above average for Brisbane in January.
“It’s unusual but it’s certainly not unprecedented,” she said, referring to the city’s record temperature of 43.2C.
But some records were broken in other parts of the state overnight.
Residents from the outback town of Winton endured their hottest ever overnight temperature on Saturday night, with the mercury dipping to just 33.1C.
Cloncurry also equalled its all-time warmest night with a low of 32.7C, while Longreach had its hottest night on record since 1902 with a minimum of 31.8C.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/qld-woman-fights-for-life-after-heatstroke
10
Cluncurry had its highest min for January only – it tied with 28th Dec, 1972.
However the records for Cluncurry from 1888 to 1952 show no daily temps so we will never know if it was a record for Jan.
30
Ian G –
thanks for the Cloncurry info. thought it was deceptive the way it was expressed in the ABC article.
10
Sorry – forgot the link.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_029009_All.shtml
10
I’m suprised at how few met stations in western Qld have early temperature records.
My father used to talk of a winter here where the first frost was in November. Of course we didn’t ask which year but it must have been before WW2. And not much chance of finding out now.
00
I spent night in Cloncurry in summer, when the temperature t 9:00pm was still 45C. It wasn’t too bd, ctully. (First letter of the alphabet is not plying today, unless I cn do spell check on it.)
10
Read on with images to “prove it” … https://goo.gl/uf9WMR
04
How do you figure that?
The three main warm periods in modern history: the minoan (1300BC), the roman (0BC), and the medieval (1100AD) were all much hotter than today, with sea levels for each between 1-3m higher than today.
It is believed the global sea-ice extent in each of these warm periods was substantially less than today.
The evidence comes from sedimentology, not paleontology.
90
I agree with Dave, nevertheless we appear to have a problem.
https://sunshinehours.net/2018/01/11/sea-ice-extent-global-antarctic-and-arctic-day-10-2018/
10
All the Arctic freeze has been visiting NE USA !
20
Apparently Northern Russia is also really copping the freeze badly.
How they would LUV some actual warming up there, Climate reanalyse is showing -50C in some areas.
10
So do I … missed the tag
Amazing how some never get it.
11
My problem with that is the Peri Reise map that in the 15 tenth century he said he copied from older maps. It shows the entire antarctic continent very accurately and ice free.
It would seem in the distant past our southern continent was ice free for mapping.
30
In 1958, the submarine USS Skate surfaced at the North Pole in a clear water opening.
https://www.navalhistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/uss_skate_north_pole1.jpg
Amundsen sailed through the North West passage in the early 1900s.
These are recent events which we don’t mention.
Nobody really knows, Andrew, what the GSIE was thousands of years ago.
(Antarctica just had its highest extent a few years ago.)
50
In 1944 Larsen sailed the St Roch through the passage alongside Banks Island
It has never been passable since, even with modern satellite ice charts available.
(Australian factor there, btw. The St Roch’s hull was hardened with Aussie Iron Bark timber.)
40
In the mid-late 1960’s, BP were planning to ship oil from the then developing Alaskan oil fields to Europe via the North West Passage, to make that development financially viable. IIRC it was going to rescue the European refineries and remove Europe’s dependency on the Middle East oil fields. However, the proposal died away quietly and no more was heard off it. Maybe the ice fields didn’t melt each year as predicted?
00
“We’re heading to the lowest global sea ice extent in about 118.000 years. ”
COMPLETE and UTTER BS !!
Not in the Arctic we are not.
Current levels are WELL ABOVE those of most of the last 10,000 years.
https://s19.postimg.org/vgdnb299v/Arctic-_Sea-_Ice-_Holocene-_Stein-17.jpg
A closer look from another peer-reviewed article shws that the ONLY time in the current interglacial that Arctic sea ice has been more extensive than now is during the short period of the Little Ice Age
https://s19.postimg.org/v6om69bj7/Arctic-_Sea-_Ice-_Extent-_North-of-_Iceland-3000-_Years-_Moffa-_S_nchez-.jpg
Icelandic sea ice records clearly show that the late 1970s was actually an EXTREME extent , up there with those of the LIA.
https://s19.postimg.org/bkgbf2prn/Icelandic_sea_ice_index_2.png
And the Antarctic has been COOLING for a long time
https://s19.postimg.org/nn6qmzrb7/antarcticacooling.gif
The guy is presenting IGNORANCE, and nothing else.
42
“118.000 years”
oh so 118 years… 🙂
Even that is probably wrong, 1940’s probably being similar to now.
21
The British Antarctic Survey is convinced that low sea ice around Antarctica is due to natural variables, such as the ‘unprecedented storms over the Southern Ocean.’
My guess is that it has something to do with the polar vortex in both hemispheres, which would explain the wild weather we are getting in mid latitudes.
20
In the Northern Hemisphere there is no doubt that the freezing temperatures in mid latitudes are caused by a weak stratospheric polar vortex, allowing cold air to spill over. Assuming the same is happening in the SH it must be connected to Sol.
20
It is connected somehow to the outer four Gas Giants and the relative location of all Solar system significant mass entities.
All the best!-will-
01
14 Jan: PerthNow: Perth to trade sunshine for up to 87mm summer soaking
by Josh Zimmerman
SCORCHING one day, a washout two days later – with up to 80mm forecast to drench Perth on Monday and a “superbomb” swell expected to excite surfers.
Perth’s beaches were packed on Saturday as people made the most of the perfect weekend weather, with the mercury reaching a blistering 37.3C at 3.18pm.
But they’ll be taking cover late on Sunday, the Bureau of Meteorology predicts a possible shower or thunderstorm, before a storm and downpour to start the new working week.
The remnants of ex-tropical Cyclone Joyce are set to deliver a soaking – with 40 to 80mm of rain now forecast to hit the city on Monday…
There had been uncertainty about how much rain it would deliver to Perth, with early forecasts of 50mm of rain at one stage being upgraded to 100mm, before being lowered again.
From Sunday evening, the bureau forecasts Perth could be drenched with nearly five times its average January rainfall (16.7mm) in the space of 48 hours.
Duty forecaster Darryl Vink said the unseasonably wet weather was the result of Joyce tracking south-west rather than south-east, the usual path for systems that develop in WA’s north. “In most cases, tropical cyclones are caught up in upper-level westerly winds which cause them to contract inland and not really affect Perth at all,” Mr Vink said.
“It’s not normal for them to come this far south and we are expecting the system to drop between 30mm and 110mm of rain over a 48-hour period.”…
Meanwhile, surfers are waxing up their boards in anticipation of a “superbomb” in the Southern Ocean, due to reach our coastline as soon as tonight.
The meteorological phenomenon will result in 3m swells in the South West which, though not unusually big, will be more powerful and travel much faster than typical summer swells.
Forecasters refer to a powerful low pressure system that drops in pressure by 24 hectopascals (hPa) or more in 24 hours as a “bomb” or “bombing low”. A weather system twice as powerful as a bomb is referred to as a superbomb.
According to surf forecasting agency Swellnet, WA will from tonight start to see the swell from a superbomb – the first since 2007.
It has been generated by the interaction and merging of two former tropical cyclones in the Indian Ocean – Ava, which struck Madagascar last week, and Irving, which tracked south-east from Mauritius…
He said the resulting storm had been forecast to drop “a phenomenal 47hPa in 24 hours at a latitude of 40-45 degrees south” which meant it would “fall into the superbomb classification, which is very rare”.
“The last time I can recall a system like this locally was March 2007 – almost 10 years ago – when the Bureau of Meteorology issued their first-ever hurricane wind warning for southern Australian waters,” Swellnet’s Craig Brokensha said…
https://www.perthnow.com.au/news/weather/perth-to-trade-sunshine-for-potential-110mm-summer-soaking-ng-b88713248z
20
I vink the good ole BOM has got it wrong again Pat. Perth was supposed to be drowned today (Sunday). Instead we have had a hot dry 38 degrees and a huge bushfire in the hills, showering Perth metro with ash. Now they are saying “But wait, it will rain heavily real soon now, let’s try for Monday instead”.
30
Sort of like the projection Hanrahan we’re having
“Ought to be here nextweek they said
It’ll rain a lot next week”
40
it seems like only yesterday Bloomberg was bragging:
Those Who Wrote Off Merkel Were Wrong Again
Bloomberg-12 Jan. 2018
however, it’s not going too well:
13 Jan: Reuters: No Grand Coalition (“GroKo”)! Opponents of Merkel alliance hit the road
by Thomas Escritt
WERNIGERODE, Germany – Opponents of a renewed German “grand coalition” took to the road on Saturday, hoping to persuade members of their Social Democratic Party (SPD) to vote against governing with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives for another four years.
The party’s rank-and-file, bruised after seeing the SPD’s previous stint as Merkel’s junior partner lead to its worst election result since 1933, is wary of its leaders’ calls for the party to step up for the sake of Germany’s stability…
“Important demands that the SPD made ahead of the elections are simply not in the document,” said Kevin Kuehnert, leader of the SPD’s Jusos youth wing, who will spend the next week criss-crossing the country arguing for delegates to vote “No” to coalition talks at a special party congress next Saturday.
“We Jusos aren’t going to make ourselves the servants of a Black (conservative) government that demands deportations or a refugee camp,” said Florian Luedke, a local youth delegate wearing a “NoGroKo” badge, to applause…
Their message resonated at the regional party conference in Wernigerode, where delegates voted 52-51 against pursuing negotiations on a grand coalition. There were four abstentions, the SPD said…
The SPD’s branch in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s largest state, also opposes a repeat of the coalition. Hit by the decline in the heavy industry that had provided its traditional voter base, it was toppled in the regional government by Merkel’s CDU last year.
Even some senior party figures are not completely sold on the idea.
“There is a great deal of scepticism,” Manuela Schwesig, SPD state premier in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, told NDR Info radio.
Across the country, voters have deserted the SPD for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party or the Left party, formed from the ashes of the former East German Communist party…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-politics/no-grand-coalition-opponents-of-merkel-alliance-hit-the-road-idUSKBN1F20HX
00
ouch!
13 Jan: UK Express: Macron DITCHING Merkel? French president forges alliance with Austria amid Germany crisis
EMMANUEL Macron has vowed to work closely with new Austrian prime minister Sebastian Kurz on European issues, after his usual ally Angela Merkel’s prolonged absence from the centre of the European Union.
By Rebecca Pinnington
Mr Kurz was in Paris on Friday, in his first bilateral foreign visit since taking office in December.
At a joint press conference, he and Mr Macron hailed their common views on a variety of European issues and vowed to work together to reform the bloc.
Ordinarily the French president would turn to Germany for this support, however Angela Merkel has had her mind on coalition negotiations since September, and had less time for Europe…
Approaches to work with other EU nations – even ones as eurosceptic as Austria – could be a sign France is no longer prepared to worship at the court of Queen Angela…
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/904040/Emmanuel-Macron-Angela-Merkel-new-alliance-Austria-Sebastian-Kurz
00
Just home from the movie theatre.
I watched “Darkest Hour”, a historical drama about Winston Churchill’s first 6 weeks in office as Prime Minister of Great Britain.
I thought that there were quite a few departures from the historical TRUTH but maybe the emotional essence was preserved.
Churchill finally gets control of the Ship of State when it is almost at the brink of sinking, His tenuous grip on control is largely due to support from the opposition Labour party. His own party, the Conservatives are ambivalent at best and a some of them are openly hostile.
Lord Halifax really wants to sue for a peace, abetted by the deposed Neville Chamberlain. They almost prevail.
Churchill wants to to fight the Nazis, but by the time he takes over; Czechoslovakia, Poland, Denmark and Norway are already lost. Then, with little warning, Holland and Belgium fall and France is doomed. The British Army (British Expeditionary Force) is trapped and wlll almost certainly be lost.
At the end the King comes around. He suggests that Churchill consults the British people ( a rather revolutionary thought). The British people are is favour of NOT GIVING UP.
So the film ends with the Fight on the Beachess Speech to parliament.
Is there a parallel message for our Times?
50
The opportunity for a parallel message is yet to arrive. It should be soon enough once things get really hot again in Europe. Meanwhile we have our own problems with the left in both major parties trying to sink Australia at the behest of most voters, and the left in the US trying to overturn democracy. Some think Trump could be our next Churchill. The problem though is there is so much hatred towards him from so many directions. I doubt Churchill would have survived if he had half the amount of resistance that Trump is receiving today. Time will only tell whether Trump withstands the attacks.
50
Time to stop employing the euphemism “The Left” and call them what they are. The Communists amongst us!
31
I would suggest that all hatred toward P45 comes from the Soros, Rockerfeller, paid NGO Council on Foreign Relations goons, including the so called MSM goons! ‘Tis total WAR! Destroy, take no captives! Many many US fine folk remain confused, but truly relate to the meaning of sh*t hole invaders, from sh*t hole places! High time to cease referring to corrupt congressional varmints as “The Honorable”!
Ted O’Brien. January 15, 2018 at 6:55 am
Politicians of any stripe! The arrogant self appointed elite from sh*t hole communistic locations; including Los Angeles CA!
All the best!-will-
11
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/01/weekend-unthreaded-194/#comment-1973599
30
Peter
The Haynes manual on the Merlin makes clear that Chamberlain did expand the production of war materials and aircraft engines in particular with the shadow factories. The year gained in “negotiation” allowed numbers to be increased – meager enough as they were at the Battle for Britain.
10
13 Jan: Newsbusters: Kyle Drennen: WashPost Assures Readers: Cold Weather ‘Weird,’ Earth Still Warming
In a laughable article for Thursday’s Washington Post, the paper’s Weather Editor Jason Samenow assured readers that record-breaking cold temperatures being experienced across the country this winter were “exceptionally weird” and in no way challenged the theory of global warming.
“The record-crushing cold that rang in 2018 was like a blast from the past that will become increasingly rare,” the piece began. Samenow continued: “The frigid spell was particularly noteworthy for occurring when the planet is steadily warming because of the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Climate warming from the increase in these heat-trapping gases does not eliminate cold waves, but it tends to weaken them.”
Citing predictions from “an international group of scientists,” he confidently proclaimed that “the recent piercing chill was 15 times less likely than it would’ve been 100 years ago” and “highly unusual in the current climate.”…
Friday’s CBS This Morning eagerly picked up on the defense of the climate change agenda, as co-host John Dickerson declared:
“The Washington Post says that in a fast-warming world, the recent cold wave was “exceptionally weird.” Scientists say the recent crushing cold will become increasingly rare…” ETC
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kyle-drennen/2018/01/13/washpost-assures-readers-cold-weather-weird-earth-still-warming
30
So citing a Newspaper reporter’s opinion is TV news. I think if Trump didn’t exist then he would have had to be invented.
20
10 Jan: ABC: Rhiannon Shine: CSIRO dives deeper than ever before for climate answers with new Argo submersible
A team of international researchers will set sail from Hobart on Thursday aboard the CSIRO research vessel Investigator to deploy 11 of the latest model deep-sea Argo floats near Antarctica…
Dr Rintoul said data collected during the six-week voyage would provide critical information.
“The Southern Ocean is important because it is the pathway by which the ocean stores heat and carbon and that slows down climate change,” he said.
“When the ship returns we will have a much better feeling for how the Southern Ocean works, what it means for climate and what it means for the future of the Earth.”…
On Wednesday the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) confirmed 2017 was Australia’s third-warmest year on record.
Dr Rintoul said the ocean was an important part of the climate system.
“As the Earth has warmed over the last 50 years, more than 93 per cent of the extra heat that has been stored by the planet has been stored in the oceans,” Dr Rintoul said.
“Seven of the warmest years on record have happened in the last 10 years.
“What our voyage will do is show how the Southern Ocean is responding to these changes in climate, but also how the Southern Ocean will in turn feed back on climate and drive further change in the future.”…
During the Investigator’s journey, an international team of scientists from agencies including the CSIRO, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research, and the University of Utah, will also conduct experiments to explore the interaction between aerosols and clouds.
Bureau of Meteorology project leader Alain Protat said that the experiments would use a combination of aircraft, ship-based and satellite observations to collect data on clouds and the interactions between incoming radiation, aerosol production, and the formation of precipitation.
“The Southern Ocean region is the cloudiest place on Earth, yet we don’t understand why these clouds are different from clouds in other regions,” Dr Protat said…
“The lack of pollution over this remote region is a possible explanation, which we will explore with these unprecedented observations.”…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-10/csiro-dives-deep-for-answers-on-climate-with-argo/9316880
14 Jan: Hobart Mercury: ANNE MATHER: CSIRO research vessel Investigator back home following medical issue
THE CSIRO’s research vessel has been forced to return to Hobart only three days into a six-week voyage to the edge of the Antarctic.
The state-of-the-art RV Investigator arrived back in the River Derwent just after 9am Sunday because of a crew member’s unspecified medical condition.
A CSIRO spokesman said the vessel had not yet reached its destination when it was forced to turn around about 300km from Hobart.
He said a crew member on board the Investigator was brought back to Hobart for “precautionary” medical reasons, rather than for an emergency…
A total of 40 scientists and an additional 20 crew are on-board the Investigator, which has headed south again…
The international team on board is gathering information about high clouds and deep sea that has not been probed before…
Before the research vessel left last week, chief voyage scientist Steve Rintoul said the insights would help build an understanding of oceans, how they are warming and their impact on the earth’s climate.
“The world’s climate is strongly influenced by oceans and the vast Southern Ocean plays a major role in how climate variability and change will play out in future decades,” Dr Rintoul said.
The Investigator is carrying 11 robots that will be deployed every few hundred kilometres, to reach sea depths of 5km.
The robots have been supplied by research institutes in the US, Japan and France.
http://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/csiro-research-vessel-investigator-back-home-following-medical-issue/news-story/d7003631f5ece7de045f6615bb6744df
10
13 Jan: Toronto Sun: Lorrie Goldstein: Trudeau’s carbon scheme costly and ineffective
The two key things to understand about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national carbon pricing scheme are that it will increase the prices of and/or taxes on almost all goods and services and that it will keep going up for decades to come.
It’s not going to end with the $10 charge per tonne of industrial carbon dioxide emissions Trudeau announced for 2018, rising by $10 annually to $50 in 2022…
As the National Post reported in March, 2017, based on an Environment Canada document, Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna was advised shortly after taking office that Canada’s carbon price would have to be $100 per tonne by 2020 (not $50 in 2022), to achieve Trudeau’s 2030 target.
And that was assuming a national carbon price starting in 2015, not 2018, or for that matter 2019, when Trudeau’s plan will come fully into effect.
The document also said Canada would need a carbon price of $200 to $300 per tonne by 2050 to meet future emission reduction targets, again assuming a 2015 start date.
Canada will only be able to achieve Trudeau’s targets, as the UN has noted, if it purchases billions of dollars of carbon allowances on international carbon markets.
Unfortunately, these markets are riddled by fraud…
http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-trudeaus-carbon-scheme-costly-and-ineffective
10 Jan: Phnom Penh Post: Virgin ‘stops purchases of Oddar Meanchey REDD credits’
by Yesenia Amaro
A Virgin Atlantic representative yesterday said that the British airline is no longer purchasing carbon credits from an area of Oddar Meanchey province set aside for a UN REDD+ program after a report describing widespread problems.
Meanwhile, the UK-based environmental organisation that published the findings in November defended its research yesterday after criticism. The report found deforestation had actually escalated in the area since the REDD+ scheme had been set up.
Natural Capital Partners – a company that has facilitated credit transfers to Virgin Atlantic – dismissed the research, saying that the information used was outdated.
Conservation experts have said Oddar Meanchey’s carbon crediting scheme – Cambodia’s first REDD+ project – has been highly problematic since it first started in 2008 at a time when many settlers in the area were soldiers, who were implicated in clearing the land…
Julia Christian, a resresentative of the UK-based organisation Fern, defended the report yesterday, saying that a two-year interval was simply not enough for the widespread deforestation to become a nonissue.
“The main thrust of our report/case study is that extensive deforestation has happened in [the] forest the project said it was going to save,” Christian wrote in an email. “This means the carbon credits the project has sold to other parties (including Virgin Airlines) are bogus – they are based on emissions savings that never happened, because the forest was destroyed not protected.”
She added that is not possible for “that central fact to be outdated, or for anything to have been done since then to rectify it”.
“If the forest was destroyed, it is still destroyed, and the credits sold for protecting it during that period are [and] will always be bogus,” she said…
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/virgin-stops-purchases-oddar-meanchey-redd-credits
40
Does this mean that Virgin customers who paid this surcharge can claim for restitution ?
50
comment in moderation re: 13 Jan: Toronto Sun: Lorrie Goldstein: Trudeau’s carbon scheme costly and ineffective
19 Dec 2017: Redd-Monitor: Virgin Atlantic is offsetting its flights with carbon credits from the Oddar Meanchey REDD project in Cambodia. Despite the project’s failure to stop deforestation
(Full disclosure: REDD-Monitor has in the past received funding from FERN)
Richard Branson’s carbon emitting business
Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, likes to talk about climate change. In September 2017, he was in New York speaking at the Climate Week Opening Ceremony. Last week he was in Paris for the One Planet Summit…
In 2006, Branson made a “firm commitment” to spend US$3 billion over the next ten years to develop a low carbon aviation fuel. In fact, he spent well under US$300 million, and failed to come up with a new biofuel.
Virgin Atlantic offers passengers the option to offset their flight emissions with carbon offsets bought from the Oddar Meanchey project.
Fern’s report looks at the Oddar Meanchey project through the lens of ICAO’s criteria for carbon offset programmes.
Out of eight criteria, the Oddar Meanchey project fails on five. Two are dubious, and one is unknown.
The reality is that the REDD project has failed to protect the forests in Oddar Meanchey. There have been a series of land conflicts associated with the project, and the project has been unable to stop the Cambodian military from clearing forest in the project area…
A spokeswoman for Virgin Atlantic told the website Runway Girl Network that the company has “contacted Natural Capital Partners to investigate the claims made by Fern”. Natural Capital Partners is an offsetting company that was previously known as The CarbonNeutral Company, and before that Future Forests…
The NGO that was running the project, Pact, ran out of funding in 2013. Microsoft walked away from buying carbon credits from the project. The Cambodian military bulldozed forest in the project area. The next audit is due sometime in 2018…
In January 2014, I asked two questions of Terra Global Capital, the company selling carbon credits from Oddar Meanchey…ETC
http://www.redd-monitor.org/2017/12/19/virgin-atlantic-is-offsetting-its-flights-with-carbon-credits-from-the-oddar-meanchey-redd-project-in-cambodia-despite-the-projects-failure-to-stop-deforestation/
12 Jan: Fern.org: Julia Christian: Virgin Atlantic: A small victory in a bigger battle
Solid evidence (LINK) has been in the public domain for years (LINK) that forests supposed to be protected by the project—which has been backed by the United Nations’ REDD+ scheme– have in fact been systematically cleared by the Cambodian military.
Finally this week Virgin Atlantic – which had sold carbon credits from the project to passengers who wanted to offset emissions from their flights – said they were pulling out of the project…
However, Virgin’s statement – made in a comment to the Phnom Penh post on 10 January announcing that they were pulling out of Oddar Meanchey – highlights why forest offsets simply don’t work, and why ICAO’s plans to massively ramp up their use is so dangerous…
The airline may have stopped purchasing Oddar Meanchey credits, but for the offsets they have already used, the emissions they were meant to ‘balance out’ are now forever in the atmosphere.
This can happen at any point in a forest offset project, even years after the project is finished. As soon as any forest is destroyed, its effect of balancing out emissions disappears. Storage of carbon in forests is highly reversible and volatile. It cannot be used to balance out the release of carbon into the atmosphere—which is permanent…
The Oddar Meanchey project was certified by Verified Carbon Standard (VCS)—seen by many as leaders in carbon verification standards. This proves these standards can’t be trusted. Yet ICAO’s forest offset plans are likely to rely heavily on these independent certification standards…
ICAO needs to come up with a plan to actually reduce emissions, rather than pretending they can hide these through dodgy forest offsets.
http://www.fern.org/node/6441
10
“Delingpole: Trump – Making the World Great Again, One Shithole at a Time”
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/01/14/james-delingpole-trump-making-world-great-one-shithole-time/
40
Worth reading imo
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/14/mike-rowe-schools-a-woman-who-labels-him-an-anti-education-science-doubting-ultra-right-wing-conservative/
20
“More Proof Of Climate Change”
https://realclimatescience.com/2018/01/more-proof-of-climate-change/
10
It seems like only yesterday they were calling it a Cold Air Outbreak, or maybe that only happens in summer.
00
The first comment I opened up on this morning was Mosomo’s item at 1.3 and immediately got a picture of the target, the BBC.
An excellent comment on modern life and one which I could relate to because of my experience with our local Kiddy Radio Tripple Jay JJJJ.
Occasionally while driving I come across jjj and invariably during the oh so smooothe talk there is a reference to old people or old men or old white men, the current kiddy put down. But then I realise that this is the new Politically Correct station and switch off.
Kids are listening to this and being told that all of life’s troubles are caused by old people. No doubt later in the program old people are linked with coal fired power.
Not conducive to building a coherent society but a good way to channel voters.
A sad country. What is the answer to this.
KK
70
Cricket fans would have noticed records tumbling yesterday at the first ODI match vs England. Highest run chase EVAH! highest score by an Englishman EVAH! highest whatever wicket partnership EVA! sorry EVAH! I blame global warming. Extreme cricket scores are the new normal.
50
Must use the same copywriters as the BOM.
40
15 Jan: Townsville Bulletin: A continued bid to derail Adani’s $16.5 billion coal mine
by DOMANII CAMERON
A PROPERTY southwest of Bowen has been bought for protesters to use as a base for their fight against Adani.
According to property records, the residence at 384 Normanby Rd, Bowen, was purchased by Brighter Future Solutions Pty Ltd on November 10, 2017.
The ABN for the company, which is registered to Scott Mackenzie, was created just days before the property sold on November 6.
According to the records, Mr Mackenzie is from Hamilton, NSW while his ABN’s registered address is 67 Forestry Rd, Brandy Creek, near Cannonvale.
The Bulletin understands the land was bought to be used primarily for protests in a continued bid to derail Adani’s $16.5 billion coal mine.
A police source told the Bulletin the trust related back to activist group Frontline Action on Coal.
“Scott (Mackenzie), we believe does all the work of motivating (protesters) and running the camp,” the source said.
“He does have one charge pending before the court
“Back in November there was an Adani core drill-machine doing an exploratory drill on the side of the road about 12km west of Collinsville.
“It’s alleged he went over and hit the emergency shutdown button on that.”…
A resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said people had moved on to the property before Christmas.
“Brighter Future Solutions, that’s the Greens,” he said….
The resident said no one could access the property.
“They have a big chain on the gate and a big combination lock,” the resident said. “You have to report there and if you want to go in you have to make an earlier appointment.”
Frontline Action on Coal did not comment.
Whitsunday Deputy Mayor John Collins said he was not aware of land being purchased for protesting.
COMMENTS:
by Ray: Sign on the gate says, Private Property Keep Out, Trespassers prosecuted, I wonder how the judge would see that if they tried to prosecute someone knowing their past of rampant trespassing, and flagrant disregard for the law
http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/news/a-continued-bid-to-derail-adanis-165-billion-coal-mine/news-story/85fda4cda0145ccfcf74ce9092d85be2
10
Hmm!
I wonder if coal fired power is being stretched a little thin, made to work too hard too often. It can do that, but when age comes in to play, it gets a little more difficult, considering how complex the process is.
I also suspect that the cooler conditions in Victoria especially give those operators a bit of breathing space to do some work if it is needed.
After weeks when only two or three Units were offline, this morning I noticed that seven Units were down across the AEMO coverage area.
Those seven Units amount to 3120MW, so it’s a considerable amount to have out of the system at a time when traditionally a lot of power is being consumed.
I did notice that a couple more units went offline on the Friday, but that’s understandable, as weekends always have lower power consumption (considerably so) but instead of them coming back up this morning, others joined them offline.
Lucky power consumption is lower across the board today really.
21500MW being consumed now, with 79.5% from coal fired power and 5.1% (each) from wind and hydro, and the remainder from gas fired power, the bulk of that, (1000MW of 2100MW) in South Australia alone.
Note how even at times when there are (more than usual) a number of Units offline, coal fired power still supplies the bulk of power. They just ramp the other ones up, something that some commentators might tell you does not happen, when it happens on a daily basis with nearly every plant doing it.
I have this weeks data and analysis for the Base Load Series at this link.
Tony.
30
Tony
I wondered that one afternoon about a week ago.
http://joannenova.com.au/2018/01/midweek-unthreaded-6/#comment-1972470
Looked to me like Qld was less than 10 positive at that stage
20
It’s only happened since late on Thursday just gone. Two down before that, then another late Thursday, and then another on Friday, and then I noticed this morning another three go down.
The three in Queensland total 1370MW and are at Gladstone – 280MW, Tarong – 350MW, and the biggie, Kogan Creek – 744MW, and Kogan Creek went down late Friday.
Tony.
20
Twitter: FrontLineActionCoal
https://twitter.com/FLACCoal?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
reminders – easy to find by searching the headlines:
2013: news.com.au: Phil Jacob: Green applause for sabotage of shares after hoaxer Jonathan Moylan cost Nathan Tinkler $180 million
“Congrats to Jonathan Moylan, Frontline Action on Coal, for exposing ANZ investment in coal mines,” Ms Rhiannon wrote on Twitter…
Ms Rhiannon has long been critical of ANZ’s activities, previously accusing one of Australia’s leading lenders of having “no sense of corporate social responsibility” in Laos over a multi-million dollar dam project…
2014: ABC: ANZ hoaxer Jonathan Moylan avoids jail over fake press release
Jonathan Moylan, from Newcastle, received a 20-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to disseminating false information, but Supreme Court Justice David Davies ordered his immediate release on a $1,000 bond…
Supreme Court Justice David Davies said Moylan was “undoubtedly an intelligent person” but noted he had prior convictions and fines for “persistent offending”, including trespassing.
He said he was convinced Moylan did not mean to harm shareholders and that his actions targeted ANZ and Whitehaven.
Justice Davies rejected Moylan’s claim journalists were to blame for the share price plunge.
“The market was manipulated,” he said…
3 Oct 2017: ABC TripleJ Hack: “I wanted to stop the mine”: Jonathan Moylan and the $300 million hoax
Jonathan Moylan was camping in the Leard State Forest in Northwestern New South Wales in early 2013 when he got a call from the Washington Post.
“[They said] ‘did you know, that your media release resulted in a 9% drop in Whitehaven’s share price?’ And I thought, hmmm… this could get interesting. And that’s when I started to get nervous,” the 29-year-old anti-coal activist remembers, almost five years on.
He’s revisiting the Maules Creek mine for the new ABC podcast How Do You Sleep At Night?…
TRANSCRIPT
The mine ultimately went ahead but Jonathan Moylan says he still chalks the Maules Creek blockade up as a success.
“Before we started this campaign, when a lot of people thought about climate change, they were thinking about the effect that expanding the industry globally would have but the actual impact on communities living in the Hunter Valley and in the Northwest were essentially invisible. So that’s one of the things we were trying to do and I think we achieved that.”…
Aug 2017: Greenpeace: Groundbreaking climate change case brought against Australia’s biggest bank
Filed by Environmental Justice Australia on behalf of Guy and Kim Abrahams, shareholders of over 20 years, the action is against one of Australia’s “Big Four” banks…
“The Commonwealth Bank’s multi-billion-dollar exposure to fossil fuels not only poses a threat to future generations and the Great Barrier Reef, but, as regulators and analysts have repeatedly warned, it also poses a risk to the Bank’s own shareholders,” said Greenpeace Australia Pacific campaigner, Jonathan Moylan…
Media contacts:
***Simon Black, Greenpeace Australia-Pacific Senior Media Campaigner, (+61) 418 219 086 [email protected]
***Apr 2017: Mumbrella: Abigail Dawson: Yahoo7’s head of news Simon Black departs for Greenpeace with Euan Black to take his place
Simon Black, Yahoo7’s head of news for Australia and New Zealand, has departed the company to join Greenpeace as a senior media campaigner.
Simon Black previously worked at ninemsn as a news editor for one year before moving into a network editor role for five months. He has also worked as a journalist at The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph…
“I’m incredibly excited to be able to spend my days campaigning around what I feel are the most important issues we are currently facing in Australia and the world.”…
17 Dec 2017: Futurism: The National Australia Bank Will No Longer Lend to New Thermal Coal Projects
by Chelsea Gohd
However, Greenpeace campaigner Jonathan Moylan pointed out in a press release that “This is a market-leading position for an Australian bank and is even stronger than the position taken by Commonwealth Bank last month because it is formal policy.”…
The decision to break away from coal is shared by more than just banks — ***Governments around the world have recently banded together in an effort to eradicate coal by 2030…
As an energy source that’s obsoletion is time-stamped, coal is officially on the way out…
12 Jan: Futurism: Climate Change Is Acidifying Our Lakes and Rivers the Same Way It Does With Oceans
By Chelsea Gohd
This body of research still needs further exploration, but it is clear that climate change is contributing to acidification in freshwater bodies of water as well as the oceans. There is one spot of hope: it has been suggested by some studies that this process could be mitigated in the ocean. As such, it is not out of reach to suggest that, as efforts to curb climate change continue, information like that found within this study could be used to do the same in freshwater.
https://futurism.com/climate-change-acidifying-lakes-rivers-same-way-oceans/
the CAGW mob is well organised…and no doubt well-funded.
20
Wow, simply wow… ABC has lost the plot entirely. They have this softer than soft puff piece about militaristic left-wing LARPers:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-15/redneck-revolt-and-the-hard-lefts-call-to-arms/9303758
I couldn’t let that BS stand unchallenged, but I guess the Mod Squad won’t let the following facts get in the way of their narrative:
To be clear, I think the far extremes on either end of the political spectrum are deplorable, and both have historic body counts to match. In fact the communists are more effective in killing people by the millions, but who’s keeping score?
Do you think the ABC would have run a similar soft puff piece on say the other side of the political spectrum? Yeah, I know… hard to type that with bursting out laughing.
30
There are ways to write about violent organisations like Antifa, BLM, and BAMN which could at least try to be objective, but, sadly, I would never expect it from the ABC. I’m glad I no longer need to pay tax in Australia, but it still disgusts me to see them go unchallenged.
Aside from firing someone for not following the herd mentality, and allegedly not being the right colour or gender, it certainly says something about Google that a number of employees have avatars which indicate support for such hate-groups.
30
Wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the Charter which they are hired under and supposed to uphold:
http://about.abc.net.au/how-the-abc-is-run/what-guides-us/legislative-framework/
Staunch Labor and Greens advocates have few issues with the ABC … any other group, well we know how that goes.
10
This could get out of control very quickly. Fossil fuel companies being sued billions for Climate Change!
http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/mining/new-york-city-sues-oil-companies-over-climate-change/news-story/62f094535840c8f389c966417c66b8ec
20
What’s next – class action against all gun manufacturers for all the murders committed with guns?
10
Speaking of records there are a few here that aren’t of the one second variety
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Brown_%28pilot%29
10
His final rank was Captain. A naval Captain is the equivalent of the Army Full Colonel. (US bird Colonel). The Army captain is equivalent to the naval lieutenant.
00
A reply to a comment a while back “Yes RB you are correct it is a different place altogether to the main Sydney one. However 47.3 – 30.5 = 16.8 I suggest that a big part of the 1(6).8 needs explaining.” from Siliggy.
Apologies for the lateness. If you look at Jan 13 2017 Richmond RAAF and Syd Ob you see 44.5 and 30.5. There sometime sis that big a difference between the Observatory and outer Sydney.
10
Mr Stock is an expert in what exactly and why wasn’t this labeled “opinion” piece ?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-15/renewable-energy-investment-bonanza-coming-to-australia/9328638
12
14 Jan: The National UAE: More money needed to address climate change, says UN official
Miroslav Lajcak gave a lecture at the Emirates Diplomatic Academy on the sidelines of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week
by Caline Malek
For the first time since the Second World War we are at a grave risk of leaving the planet in worse shape than how we received it from our predecessors, the President of the United Nations General Assembly said on Sunday.
Miroslav Lajcak, who is visiting the UAE for Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, said global warming was a reality that affected living conditions around the world.
“We can’t guarantee that the living conditions for our children will be better than they were for us and this is a grave risk,” he said before giving a lecture at the Emirates Diplomatic Academy.
“There are countries that are disappearing from the surface of the planet, there are people who were forced to leave their homes because they are no longer liveable so I believe this is no longer denied and we need to advance this.”
He said despite the world coming together in a pledge to fight climate change, hard action is still needed as well as financial resources, which are falling short.
“We agreed in Paris to limit the global warming below 2°C and eventually if possible below 1.5°C but we are not delivering,” Mr Lajcak said. “We’re short of 100 billion dollars a year to do so, so we need to talk about that. The good thing is we are able to agree on policies but this agreement should be followed by concrete action, and the action is missing in many cases so we need to have events like ADSW and speak about positive examples, speak openly about the problems and link our ambitions and plans with financial resources.”…
He spoke of the UAE as a leading example for countries in a number of areas, including sustainable development, sustainable energy and diversification of its economy…
https://www.thenational.ae/uae/environment/more-money-needed-to-address-climate-change-says-un-official-1.695313
00
AUDIO: 2mins35secs: 15 Jan: BBC Business Report: Will the EU limit the use of biofuels?
It took many years to encourage farmers to develop the industry of growing crops to make fuel, but this week the European Parliament may vote to limit the use of biofuels, especially diesel made from rape seed or palm oil.
Campaigners say these types of biofuels cause more carbon emissions, than diesel refined from oil drilled out of the ground, because they encourage the clearing of forests.
Laura Buffet, from the campaign group Transport and Environment in Brussels, tells the BBC’s Russell Padmore why we should stop using fuel made from crops.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05twd2q
same story, more detail:
20 Dec 017: GreenNewsIreland: Energy ministers under fire for calls to remove tighter limits on biofuels
A proposal from Europe’s environment and energy ministers to remove tighter limits on the use of biofuels put forward by the European Commission has come under fire from environmental groups who point to the potential rise in emissions and deforestation in origin countries.
At the Energy Council earlier this week, Ministers voted on proposed amendments for the reform of the Renewable Energy Directive for the period 2021-2030. The ministers agreed to reintroduce a binding 14 per cent renewable energy target for the transport sector across all member states by 2030 through mandates imposed on fuel suppliers.
However, Ministers rejected a proposal from the European Commission to lower the current seven per cent target for food-based crops in all transport to just under four per cent by 2030…
The move sparked environmental group Transport & Environment’s (T&E) clean fuels manager, Laura Buffet, to accuse Member States of “ignoring all the scientific evidence” linking biofuels imported from outside of the EU to deforestation and higher emissions than more traditional fuels.
The 2017 EU Energy Statistical Pocketbook (LINK) revealed that biodiesel, derived from rapeseed, palm and soya vegetable oils, comprises 80 per cent of the EU biofuels market. Bioethanol makes up the remaining 20 per cent.
A T&E report from 2016 also found that, on average, biodiesels from virgin vegetable oil can produce 80 per cent higher emissions over their full lifecycle than the fossil fuels they replace…
“We urge Members of the European Parliament to reject any new crop biofuels target in transport and phase out support for food-based biofuels in 2030. EU policy should focus on supporting truly sustainable alternatives for transport such as renewable electricity and sustainable advanced waste-based fuels,” Ms Buffet added…
In a statement, the Council said the seven per cent will be preserved in order to “provide certainty to investors”. The Council also decided on a sub-target of three per cent for “advanced biofuels” and a binding milestone of one per cent in 2025 to “increase investment security and guarantee the availability of fuels throughout the period”…
The European Parliament is expected to vote on its version of the proposed Renewable Energy Directive at a plenary session in Strasbourg in mid-January 2018.
https://greennews.ie/energy-ministers-under-fire-calls-remove-tighter-limit-biofuels/
10
15 Jan: Malaysia Star: Letter: Palm oil an asset to humanity
from PROFESSOR DATUK DR AHMAD IBRAHIM, Fellow Academy of Sciences Malaysia
PALM oil is again being persecuted as the bad boy in the ongoing climate change debate. It is being blamed for deforestation, contributing to global warming.
The palm oil industry in Malaysia is being taken to task for apparently decimating the population of orang utan. But there is no mention being made of the fact that palm oil helps the orang miskin (poor).
One thing is for sure, though. Palm oil smallholders are rattled by this new episode and this is understandable because any big reduction in palm oil import by a major market can have negative implications on their revenue. To these smallholders, palm oil was their saviour from an earlier impoverished livelihood.
It is unfortunate that these palm oil smallholders are mainly in South-East Asia, Africa and Latin America. There is no palm oil smallholder in France so nobody there appreciates the pain this new attack can unleash…
Ironically, the pioneer oil palm planter in Malaysia was a French man named Frauconeer. And now France is leading the charge to obliterate palm oil from the EU market especially as biofuel.
I have spoken to a few smallholders about this latest episode. Some are beginning to doubt climate change itself. Is it really happening, they are asking. Is it a ploy by the West to take control of the destiny of the developing world?
Some are now saying that Donald Trump, the controversial President of the United States, may be right in his pronouncements on climate change. He thinks climate change is fake news.
His rejection of the climate change arguments has rattled the scientists and politicians who have been championing for the reduction of carbon emissions. He has taken the US out of the much publicised Paris Agreement. He has vowed to revive the coal industry in his country.
That incidentally may have been the promise that won him the presidential election…
In the early days, genetically modified (GMO) crops were vehemently objected to by the panicking environmentalists. This has somehow dissipated after all the GMO trials show no adverse effects on the environment and food safety.
But palm oil is unique. It does not need genetic help to rise above all others in the yield game. By nature, palm oil yield is almost 10 times higher than the other rival edible oils. Therefore, growing oil palm requires less land. Why there are still goons out there who cannot appreciate this is beyond me. Palm oil is definitely an asset to humanity.
https://www.thestar.com.my/opinion/letters/2018/01/15/palm-oil-an-asset-to-humanity/
00
Thank you Pat, OTOH “By nature, palm oil yield is almost 10 times higher than the other rival edible oils.” What the hell can be meant by the word ‘yield’? Palm oil is toxic to humans compared to Mommy’s nourishment from luscious sweet smelling tits!
01
“A T&E report from 2016 also found that, on average, biodiesels from virgin vegetable oil can produce 80 per cent higher emissions over their full lifecycle than the fossil fuels they replace…”
Wonderful stuff, that means they produce nearly double as much CO2 as petrol or diesel. Now what was the logic for using them in the first place, that the first 100% was sourced from the air and didn’t count? What about the additional 80%?
For crop based biofuels, it means food prices are forced up and millions starve because we are burning crops and saving no CO2 at all? Clever. Another Looney left idea based on non science and devastating poor countries and even making rich countries poorer.
Then in Queensland it is legal to add 10% low energy biofuel without telling anyone, ripping off 98 octane prices and wrecking high tech low emissions engines. All in the name of their Green innumerate gods while the same cars burn more petrol to cover the same distance. Who wins? Someone trousers what should be illegal profits, blessed by Green governments.
40
Could whale oil be renewable and green ?
11
Malaysia isn’t the only country crying foul:
15 Jan: DailyFinland: Finnish, Swedish ministers underscore role of sustainable energy
Minister of the Environment, Energy and Housing of Finland Kimmo Tiilikainen and Minister for Policy Coordination and Energy of Sweden Ibrahim Baylan have sent a letter to the Members of the European Parliament, reminding them about the important role of sustainable bioenergy in reaching the EU’s climate and energy targets to 2030.
The European Parliament will vote on the Renewable Energy Directive (RED II) at the plenary session on 17 January 2018,said the press release from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment at the end of last week.
Bioenergy represents a significant share of the EU’s renewable energy. Sustainable bioenergy also has a major role in increasing the share of renewable energy in the EU and many of the Member States, including Finland and Sweden, and in the achievement of the climate targets.
“Finland has made a long-term effort to influence the work done in Brussels to ensure the sustainability of bioenergy and the climate and other benefits to be derived from it. We decided to join forces with Minister Baylan and to send a joint letter to the Members of the European Parliament before the important vote next week,” Tiilikainen said…
http://www.dailyfinland.fi/national/3832/Finnish-Swedish-ministers-underscore-role-of-sustainable-energy
10
a win for environmentalists:
9 Jan: ChicagoTribune: After community uproar, Obama Foundation moves parking garage underground
By Lolly Bowean; Chicago Tribune’s architecture critic Blair Kamin contributed
Bowing to community pressure, the Obama Foundation has scrapped its plan for an above-ground parking garage and will instead build an underground facility below the presidential center in Jackson Park, officials said late Monday.
The garage will accommodate about 400 to 450 cars beneath the southern portion of the campus, between where the library building and athletic center will be situated…
Officials with the foundation would not reveal how much the new underground garage will cost but, in a statement, acknowledged the change was made because of opposition from the community…
Since August, when the first garage plan was made public, the design has drawn criticism from open-space advocates who called it an intrusion on public land…
Michael McNamee, co-chair of the group Save the Midway, has said his organization wants the space where the garage was to have been built preserved because of its historical value.
The Midway, like Jackson and Washington parks, was designed by the noted 19th-century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. All three are on the National Register of Historic Places. The Obama Foundation should not expand its footprint from Jackson Park to the Midway, McNamee said in December…
Some community groups have been pressuring the foundation to sign a contract guaranteeing jobs and other amenities to residents who live nearby. Obama has said he will not sign a community benefits agreement…
Monday’s announcement comes as a group of University of Chicago professors, faculty and staff have written a letter, electronically signed by more than 120 people, asking that the entire presidential center be moved from Jackson Park to another location.
“We are concerned that rather than becoming a bold vision for urban living in the future it will soon become an object-lesson in the mistakes of the past,” the letter states.
“We also note that the Obama Center has abandoned its original plans to be a Presidential Library,” it states, referring to the fact that the center will only have electronic archives on site…
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obamacenter/ct-met-obama-parking-garage-underground-20180108-story.html
15 Jan: Washington Examiner: The battle to shut down Obama’s presidential center
by Anna Giaritelli
What initially started out as a library has morphed into a 20-acre private “center,” and some environmentalists and historians are unhappy with the Obama Foundation’s plans to swoop in and take over a national historic place.
The Obama Foundation originally said it would house a presidential library on the property and vowed to have the National Archives oversee the facility because of its placement on public land. But that’s no longer the case, and some are balking at the change in plans.
“If President Obama and the Obama Foundation wish to construct this center on Chicago’s South Side, that’s fine, but not on public parkland. The University of Chicago, which orchestrated the winning bid for the project, has a lot of land on the South Side that they could and should use. Instead, they’ve been adamant since day one that they must have historic Olmsted and Vaux parkland for the purpose,” Charles Birnbaum, president and founder of D.C.-based nonprofit, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, told the Washington Examiner in a written statement Saturday.
The foundation is not alone. The group is working alongside a number of others, including Friends of the Parks, Jackson Park Watch, Openlands, National Association for Olmsted Parks, Save the Midway, Landmarks Illinois, and Preservation Chicago, all of which are hoping to block the project.
As a first step, the center’s proposal must be approved by Chicago’s planning department and the city council. That process is not expected to sit any snags, as Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is Chicago’s mayor…
But the federal process will be more complicated, and that’s where Birnbaum’s argument becomes especially relevant.
The Obama Foundation will have to get approval from the Environmental Protection Agency under the National Environmental Policy Act and Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. A spokesperson for Birnbaum’s group said it is difficult to predict how the Trump administration’s EPA will handle it…
This week, the Obama Foundation shared dozens of changes to its proposal, including road closures within the park, a revamping of the picturesque landscaping, a five-acre parking garage on adjacent parkland, and the consolidation and privatization of two golf courses. In addition, the newly designed main building would stretch 23 stories high at 235 feet tall.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-battle-to-shut-down-obamas-presidential-center/article/2645882
10
check the pics – how pretentious can u get?
PICS: 10 Jan: Washington Times: Obama presidential library design panned; likened to softboiled egg, ‘giant toenail’
By Bradford Richardson
The project has come under fire from community activists, conservationists and academics who are concerned about the location of the presidential library and whether it will have the desired effect on economic development in the area…
More than 100 faculty at the University of Chicago signed a public letter this week asking the Obama Foundation to move the library to a neighborhood more in need of economic development and with public transportation in place.
The center’s current location is on the shoreline overlooking Lake Michigan. The private facility will cost taxpayers as much as $100 million in infrastructure renovations to the surrounding area.
“We urge the Obama Foundation to explore alternative sites on the South Side that could be developed with more economic benefits, better public transportation, and less cost to taxpayers,” the professors wrote.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/10/obama-presidential-library-design-panned-toenail/
11 Jan: American Thinker: Plans revised for ‘Obama Presidential Center’: Taller, uglier, and a little bit less white
By Thomas Lifson
The failure of the citizenry to unite in praise and awe – there has been a firestorm of criticism – has led Obama Foundation officials to go and hire as their lawyer Langdon Neal, a man described in 2016 by the Chicago Sun-Times as the “Chicago machine’s $99[-]million man,” “one of the city’s most politically connected lawyers,” who “has made a fortune helping City Hall and other governments condemn land for schools, police stations, McCormick Place, O’Hare Airport expansion.” A few years ago, the Chicago Reader wrote:
“It’s not literally true that Langdon Neal and his law firm are involved in every major political deal in Chicago. But sometimes it seems that way.”
Just the kind of guy to overcome the community organizations (savor the irony!) who have objected to the grandiose monument that would steal park land and threaten a critical bird habitat. Oh, and by the way, in addition to being a fixer for land developers, Langdon Neal is chairman of the Cook County Board of Elections…
A “presidential library” may be good enough for every other president since Harry Truman, but the monument to Barack Obama planned for his adopted hometown of Chicago won’t serve as a depository for his presidential records and be subject to the demands of the National Archives. The Obama Foundation, which will be fundraising hundreds of millions of dollars for the monument from sources yet to be identified, and which oddly enough for a tax-exempt nonprofit uses the same logo as the Obama campaign, calls the project’s goal “a world-class cultural attraction on the South Side” that will feature such world-class amenities as a test kitchen and basketball courts.
One feature of the project which has received relatively little attention is the inclusion of a “world-class” (that same expression again!) golf course bearing the name of and some vague affiliation with Tiger Woods. Golf Digest noted three weeks ago:
“This time last year Tiger Woods announced he had signed on to an ambitious new project endorsed by President Obama and embraced by Mayor Rahm Emanuel on the South Side of Chicago, one that called for a world-class public golf facility to sit adjacent to the Obama Presidential Center. But 12 months following the unveiling, the Chicago Tribune reports that the endeavor has failed to make much progress.
“According to Mike Keiser, whose resume boasts visionary properties like Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley, bureaucracy is to blame.”…
The community organizers are less impressed. The group Jackson Park Birding writes:
“Jackson Park, on the South Side of Chicago, is an important stopping point for migratory birds.”…
“The Obama Presidential Center will soon be built on the western edge of the Park, [and] there are plans to remove large numbers of trees from the [p]ark to upgrade its golf course, merge it with the nearby South Shore Golf Course, and to expand the driving range west of Bobolink Meadow. The importance of Jackson Park’s habitat must be taken into account as these projects are planned, especially given global threats to migratory bird population.”
Hey, you can’t make a monument omelet without breaking a few bird eggs.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/01/plans_revised_for_obama_presidential_center_in_chicago_taller_uglier_and_a_little_bit_less_white.html
00
14 Jan: Financial Times: Saudi Aramco aims for cleaner car engines
Oil group’s tech chief says improving traditional power is best way to tackle climate change
by Patti Waldmeir in Novi, Michigan; Additional reporting by Anjli Raval in London
Improving the efficiency of traditional vehicle engines is a more effective way of tackling climate change than waiting for electric cars to gain significant market share, Saudi Aramco’s technology chief said on the eve of the Detroit auto show.
“The internal combustion engine is here to stay,” Ahmad Al Khowaiter said on a tour of the world’s largest oil group’s research plant near Detroit, where it is investing in new technologies to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions…
…Mr Al Khowaiter said his company was investing in improving internal combustion engines, which power 99 per cent of the world’s vehicles…
He said it was generally viewed that by mid-century about 90 per cent of transport would still be powered by the internal combustion engine, meaning the “greatest opportunity” to cut greenhouse gas emissions was by improving the engine.
Saudi Arabia believes there will be future demand for its oil, as emerging economies in Asia and Africa grow…
https://www.ft.com/content/84ac6e06-f91d-11e7-9b32-d7d59aace167
10
15 Jan: Brisbane Times: Nicole Hasham: Scrap registration fees, taxes on electric cars, industry urges
Electric Vehicle Council of Australia chief executive Behyad Jafari said the government must subsidise the upfront purchase cost of electric cars to encourage their uptake.
The council represents electric vehicle makers such as Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Nissan, as well as energy giants including AGL and Origin.
Mr Jafari said exemptions to vehicle registration and stamp duty, as well as fringe benefit and luxury car taxes, could cut upfront costs by about $7000…
“We need something in the short term to really jump start the market.”…
Advocates say measures such as mandatory vehicle emissions standards would kickstart electric vehicle sales…
Urban Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher on Monday said an upcoming review into road user charging would consider how electric vehicle drivers, who do not pay fuel excise, could contribute more to road funding.
He rejected suggestions this meant motorists who embraced low-emission technology would be slugged with an extra charge, saying the road funding system must remain “sustainable” as electric car uptake increased…
Michael Lord, head of research at advocacy group Beyond Zero Emissions, said about 8 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions were produced by cars.
“They can all be electrified, and that could be cost-neutral for Australia,” he said.
Governments could provide more roadside charging stations, or require that new buildings have the infrastructure installed, he said.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/scrap-registration-fees-taxes-on-electric-cars-industry-urges-20180115-h0ifxi.html
00
comment in moderation re: PICS: 10 Jan: Washington Times: Obama presidential library design panned; likened to softboiled egg, ‘giant toenail’ which is a followup to comment #54
10
China “expert”/globalist who is willing to state a few truths!
8 Jan: Council on Foreign Relations: from Asia Unbound: China: Pretender to the Throne
by Elizabeth C. Economy
The New Year has brought a rash of new articles and proclamations to the effect that the retreat of the United States has left the door open for China to walk through and assume the mantle of global leadership. Let me offer an alternative argument: We suck, but China does too. The truth is that neither the United States nor China is currently up to the job of forging the type of consensus that addresses global challenges and advances the international system writ large. The only difference is that the United States now has a leader who makes clear that he simply doesn’t care about the rest of the world while China has a leader that at least pretends to care…
Most analysts raise the example of climate change in discussing Chinese leadership. I have written before about why China should not be considered a climate leader — at least not yet. But to sum up my argument briefly, China continues to develop significant numbers of carbon emitting coal-to-chemical plants that, if completed, are equal to roughly 10 percent of its current CO2 contribution and more than Germany’s total carbon emissions in 2015. (This doesn’t even include its planned export of more than 100 coal-fired power plants through its Belt and Road Initiative.) In 2018, the independent monitoring groups German Watch and Climate Action Network ranked China 41st in terms of how much it has done to avoid climate change and how much it plans to do. But most important, for real leadership on climate change, China should be rallying other countries to take on even more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets or leading the charge on transparency in monitoring and reporting — yet China is doing neither of these things and is even a drag on the transparency front…
Of course, no discussion of world leadership should ignore the quality of governance that a country brings to the table. President Xi suggested at the October 2017 19th Party Congress that China could serve as a model for — or at least advise — other countries on their development. Yet with its facial and voice recognition software, social credit system, and renewed effort to persuade Chinese citizens to report on each other, China is well on its way to becoming a police state…
Finally, part of being a world leader means that others will follow. Yet even in China’s own backyard, there is little indication that many countries are excited at the prospect of Chinese leadership. A quick look at the most recent Pew Poll suggests (***LINK) that among the larger countries in Asia, most citizens are far from willing to jump on the China express. Responding to a question of “How much confidence do you have in Chinese President Xi Jinping to do the right thing regarding world affairs?,” the response “a lot” was voiced by 12 percent in the Philippines and 0 percent in Japan. The rest of the countries — Australia, South Korea, Indonesia, India, and Vietnam — ranged from 3 to 4 percent. Astonishingly, in India, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, confidence in President Trump was higher than in President Xi…
https://www.cfr.org/article/china-pretender-throne
***Pew: In India, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, Xi ranks behind U.S. President Donald Trump.
Notably, however, in two U.S. treaty-allies in the region, ***Australia and South Korea, people have more confidence in Xi than in Trump. ( pat – BLAME OUR TOXIC, ANTI-TRUMP MSM FOR THAT)
20
Central America chills out.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/orthographic=-71.47,27.80,833/loc=-77.948,11.346
10
Interesting times later this week. Temp in SA and VIC ramping high to 40 ish for a couple of days, low winds forecast in SA. Will be interesting to watch.
00
The fine US folk agree, cautious careful but remain armed. The finest Military, the combined US armed forces will not interfere; but instead man the beer pretzel concessions. They are not stupid. There will be no prisoners taken! Help me Mommy!
What might be the best?-will-
02
Meanwhile —
January 15 —
1. Authorities have evacuated nearly 15 000 people living in the vicinity of Mayon volcano, Albay Province, Philippines
2. The Governor of Papua New Guinea’s East Sepik province has ordered the evacuation of 5 000 people from islands of Ruprup (Blup Blup) and Biem (Bam) to the mainland, including those already evacuated from Kadovar.
January 12 —
3. Severe cold wave in Bangladesh kills 27, two more waves expected. A similar event over the past week in India, Pakistan, and Nepal have claimed the lives of more than 70 people as intense cold wave descended upon the region.
4. First earthquake swarm under dormant Tenorio volcano, national park closed, Costa Rica, more than 40 earthquakes have been registered under dormant Tenorio volcano in Guanacaste, Costa Rica.
5. Very loud explosion at Stromboli volcano, Italy.
January 11 —
6. A strong and shallow earthquake registered by the USGS as M6.0 hit Myanmar at 18:26 UTC on January 11, 2018 (00:56 local time, January 12).
7. A rare snowstorm is affecting Shikoku and Kyushu, southwestern Japan today, January 11, 2018, causing traffic chaos throughout the region.
January 10 —
8. A very strong and shallow earthquake registered by the USGS as M7.6 hit north of Honduras at 02:51 UTC on January 10, 2018 (20:51 local time, January 9). The agency is reporting a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). EMSC reported M7.6 at a depth of 15 km (9 miles). Small tsunami observed.
January 9 —
9. A powerful explosive eruption occurred at Russia’s Sheveluch volcano at 22:40 UTC on January 9, 2018, ejecting a plume of ash up to 11 km (36 000 feet) above sea level.
More at [HERE]
00
It is high time that new Attorney General Jeff Sessions explain to all US folk his distinction of justice vs injustice, and what that may mean. We have had a whole year of ‘no possible indication of any injustice’ to obvious varmints! I appreciate your caution if any return to law and order become possible. Perhaps better to destroy said varmints so that “justice” again becomes viable. It is your department of Justice!! Hard job cleaning out such corruption.
All the best!-will-
01