Bill shock debacle: Solar rooftop subsidies in Australia doubling, will cost $1.3 billion this year, $160 per household

And we wonder why electricity bills are rising?

Many Australians don’t realize that those without solar panels pay are forced to pay for those who do through their electricity bills. That pain point is about to launch itself above the horizon and into public view. For those readers with solar panels (there are a lot) this is not about you, this is about the system. Our badly managed grid is now so obscenely inefficient and expensive, droves of people are installing solar panels because they feel they have no choice.

Tony Abbott says “Australians are paying too much for our emissions obsession”.

NSW MP Craig Kelly: “It’s effectively a reverse Robin Hood scheme where we are ­increasing the electricity prices on the poor to reduce electricity ­prices for the rich.”

As Jo says: We could have put that billion into a new hospital. Instead we put magic squares on our houses, hoping to get nicer weather.

Solar Subsidies must end Solar Panels on Australian rooftops cost electricity customers $500m last year, and are projected to cost a staggering $1.3 billion this year:

The Clean Energy Regulator has released figures showing that more than 1057 megawatts of ­capacity was […]

Tim Flannery in 2007: after a two month crash course in climate change, the man was a prophet

Tim Flannery, 2004, The West Australian.

Flannery will be on Q&A tonight (bet you can’t wait, copy your questions and tweets below please!). Let’s check the exact wording of his original 2004 prediction that Perth would become a ghost town. It tells us something, not just about Flannery and a messiah complex (he really does talk of himself as an old testament prophet), but about journalism. Back then journalists interviewed critics too. Flannery was even called “alarmist” in 2004.

The original story had the calm headline: “Perth Will Die, says Top Scientist”. That article has gone beyond the space time continuum, but thankfully, it was preserved by the Wayback Machine.

Perth will become a ghost city within decades as rising global temperatures turn the Wheatbelt into a desert and drive species to the brink of extinction, a leading Australian scientist warns.

–Carmelo Amalfi, The West Australian

Perth in 2018, is wet, cool and productive and 30% larger:

Dams are at their equal highest level at the end of summer since 2002, and Perth has 67 billion litres more than any year of the last seven. The desert seems to be shrinking, arid regions […]

Weekend Unthreaded

7.9 out of 10 based on 30 ratings

The witchdoctors at work: ABC FourCorners parades four farmers and a fireman who “believe” in climate change

Four Corners has become TwoCorners — it represents both sides of politics — Green And Left

Brissenden has done no research, interviewed no critics, and asked no hard questions. When it comes to serving the Australian people, protecting them, and holding our government to account, he’s AWOL — promoting his own pet interests instead, hiding the scandals and critics. What do we pay him for?

The iconic show on the ABC won’t interview skeptics that walked on the moon or won Nobel and NASA prizes, but if a cherry farmer feels the climate is changing, send in the film squad!

After years of telling skeptics that you don’t ask a plumber to do heart surgery, the ABC “Weather Alert! last Monday was 90% plumbers.

The formerly iconic FourCorners “public affairs” show crafted a 43 minute advertisement for the Renewables Industry and Carbon Trading Bankers and the Green Blob. And we taxpayers paid for it all. As usual, most of their facts were correct, but only because they barely had any. The facts apparently are that at least four farmers across Australia have the feeling that their climate has changed and are “doing something”. Yeah. Plus a whole bunch of […]

Giant Spanish Bank spends €100 b on Earth’s weather, cos they are nice people

This absolutely definitely is not about profits or money.

Giant Spanish bank announces €100 billion plan to fight climate change

BBVA, the second largest bank in Spain, has launched a major new financing initiative to support sustainable development and combat climate change in the coming years.

Only gas and oil companies are “vested interests” seeking to profiteer from our demise. Banks are charities:

BBVA Group Executive Chairman Francisco González said, “At BBVA, we want to play a key role in mobilizing resources to halt climate change and promote sustainable development. It is an ambitious, long-term goal in line with our purpose of ‘bringing the age of opportunity to everyone.’”

Apparently, the bank’s role is to change Earth’s climate, and “bring the age of opportunity to everyone”.

Do their shareholders know, I wonder?

Can anyone see an elephant?

Warning — Meaningless acronym coming — SBTI:

BBVA has also become the first Spanish bank to commit to the Science Based Targets Initiative. The campaign helps major corporates work out how they have to cut emissions to prevent the impacts of climate change.

The group’s new strategy is called Pledge 2025…

If you wanted […]

Conservative voters are blind, with deficient mental software, says psychologists

The implications are staggering, half the population fail at blink tests, and can’t see newspaper headlines about “climate change”. If only we could make them see by using rhetorical and psychological trickery to get past their faulty filters, the world would be saved. Please send us another grant!

The research you’ve been waiting for:

Why some conservatives are blind to climate change

Naturally, this self-serving, circular, and poorly researched piece is brought to you by The Conversation. Where else?

The big insight looks like pattern seeking and confirmation bias to me:

When we modified the test to measure people’s attention to climate change, we found people who are concerned about climate change are better at seeing climate-related words, such as carbon, right after the first target than those who are less concerned.

When we analyzed the data, we found a pattern: Conservatives who were less concerned about climate change were less likely to see climate-related words than liberals who were worried about the issue.

In short, conservatives showed climate change blindness.

Or in another hypothesis, conservatives had better filters for pointless news stories with a prediction success rate lower than random chance. From experience, […]

Midweek Unthreaded

8 out of 10 based on 21 ratings

UK Met Office Forecaster “knew” Beast was coming but kept it secret from Brits? Pull the other one…

Paul Homewood has either caught a Met Office prof rewriting history (the politest way I can put it) or Homewood has caught him issuing deliberately incorrect forecasts. Which is it — deception about the past, or deception about the future? Apparently he thought no one would check his past statements? (And as far as journalists go, he’s almost spot on.)

The Best from the East hit Europe and the UK on Feb 28th. Yesterday Professor Adam Scaife was bragging about his forecasting prowess a month before:

Published: 10:36, 4 March 2018

Ministers were warned about the Beast from the East a month ago by a Met Office forecaster who stockpiled provisions in preparation for the weather bomb.

Professor Adam Schaife, head of long-range forecasting at the Met Office, alerted the Cabinet Office to the incoming weather bomb four weeks ago.

He told them that they should expect Britain to be battered by a deep freeze.

In preparation for the polar vortex he stocked up on essentials.

‘I got extra oil, food and logs in, knowing this was coming,’ he said last week.

But Paul Homewood checked the […]

Weekend Unthreaded

6.9 out of 10 based on 22 ratings

Wild Winter Storm Riley hits NE USA, nine deaths, nearly 2 million without power

At least nine dead in the North East of the US after a savage storm dubbed “Riley”. Nearly 2 million people are without power. Airlines canceled more than 3,000 flights.

Waves hitting the shore in Scituate, Massachusetts. Photo from @BrynnCNN

Friday afternoon’s high tide in Boston was the third-highest observed tide on record, according to the National Weather Service.

March Brings the Most Variety of Extreme Weather in the U.S.

Jon Erdman argues that March in the US is notorious for storms due to jet streams and a mix of warmer humid air paired with cold winter air. His impressive list of previous March extreme weather is a good antidote to the “Climate Change” claims coming in 3, 2, 1 ….

The deadliest March snowstorm was the infamous Blizzard of 1888, which dumped 40 to 60 inches of snow in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey, wind-whipped into drifts which topped some homes. Four hundred were killed in the storm and its cold aftermath.

Here are a sampling of other notable March snowstorms:

Late March 1987: Three-day blizzard produced gusts to 78 mph at Dodge City, Kansas and Altus, Oklahoma. Pampa, Texas, picked up 20 […]

Cutting: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change, by the evil planet killer Marc Morano!

“…a central cell of the Climate-denial Machine”

In the climate debate, few men are more central, more loathed and feared than Marc Morano. In the flesh, few men are more warm, witty and polished — an absolute gentleman and a delight to be around. He’s so effective he’s been rated one of the top 17 “planet killers”, and according to the Daily Kos, “Evil Personified”. Thank goodness he’s on our side.

Not surprisingly, with so much going for him, he was the villain of the Merchants of Doubt documentary. Newsweek called him “King of the Skeptics” and Esquire Magazine devoted six thousand words to trying to unpack and investigate his key role in climate politics.

For a few years Morano worked for Senator Inhofe, who at the time was virtually the only Republican standing up to the media, academia and the UN on climate change. When Leonardo DiCaprio and National Geographic released their top ten list of climate deniers, Inhofe was number one, and Morano, number two.

Finally the man behind all this and Climate Depot — who is probably the closest to politics without being a politician — has written The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change.

Like […]

Russian Troll farm sought to undermine US government, energy, climate

The Washington Post reports on the Russian Troll Farm in St Petersburg known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA):

Russian trolls used Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to inflame U.S. political debate over energy policy and climate change…

The committee’s report found that between 2015 and 2017, more than 9,000 posts and tweets dealt with U.S. energy policy produced by 4,334 Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts controlled by the Internet Research Agency.

Twitter told the committee that more than 4 percent of tweets produced by the Russians dealt with energy and climate issues.

Keep your eye on the numbers — 96% of their effort was not about energy and climate, and presumably we’re talking about 400 posts and tweets? Drop in the ocean…

But for those who havent read about the Russian Troll Farm known at the IRA — it’s worth catching up. I found this account from an insider, last October, interesting:

Max says that IRA staff were tasked with monitoring tens of thousands of comments on major U.S. media outlets, in order to grasp the general trends of American Internet users. Once employees got a sense of […]

UK weather “going Mediterranean” so fast it overshoots to South Pole

The Guardian is covering the current Red Alert version of the Great British Snap Freeze

UK weather: Met office issues new red warning as wind and snow cause chaos – live

Having prepared so well for shorter winters, the National Grid in the UK warns that they may be running out of gas.

Hundreds are trapped on the M80 in cars and trucks between Glasgow and Stirling. Seventeen hours and counting…

But what about those UK vines and cacti?

Tony Heller reminds us that 10-15 years ago scientists were predicting that Drought may be the new norm, and that Climate Change may turn UK Mediterranean. Plant experts were telling Brits that passionfruit and cacti will “thrive in warmer climates”. They even painted what it will look like:

Future British Garden

Look out for those “milder, wetter UK winters“:

A 2C rise – which some climate scientists say is inevitable by the end of the century – would see the South East of England experiencing conditions similar to south west France, while a 4C rise would expose gardens to conditions seen in south-west Portugal, the Trust said.

Herbaceous borders and water-loving English […]