Glaciers on the move: Two minutes of extreme climate change on Swiss Alps, Italian beaches

The next ice coming to Europe might look something like the last ice age shown in this simulation. A time when Venice will be top of a long paddock that stretches to Albania.

In school children are taught to hyperventilate about the last 30m retreat of glaciers that never stayed put ever.

Instead, they could be studying this… (click to start)

At the 24,000 year BC point glaciers have wiped out Zurich, Bern, Geneva.

Image the effect on people if this were shown everytime a Swiss Alps disaster story was run?

OK, so it is a model

Advance and retreat of the Alpine glaciers during the last glacial cycle from Julien Seguinot on Vimeo.

About 25000 years ago, Alpine Glaciers filled most of the valleys and even extended onto the plains. Using a computer model that contains knowledge on glacier physics based on modern observations of Greenland and Antarctica and laboratory experiments on ice, help from traces left by glaciers on the landscape, and one of the fastest computers in the world, this animation is an attempt to reconstruct of the evolution of Alpine Glaciers in time from 120000 years ago to today.

Meanwhile, WWF is worried climate change will wipe out cold loving Alpine flora forever:

Glacier recession has led to an upward migration of Alpine plants at a rate of 0.5 – 4 m per decade. In the long run, lowland plants will displace Alpine species to ever-higher altitudes until they simply have nowhere to go at all, effectively forcing them into extinction.

And other people are putting blankets on glaciers in summer to stop them melting.

But one day, sometime, they will come back. Then what?

Rhone Glacier, circa 1777

The Rhone Glacier, Glacier hotel and Furka Road, Valais, Switzerland. Circa 1890 – 1900.

 REFERENCE

J. Seguinot, S. Ivy-Ochs, G. Jouvet, M. Huss, M. Funk, and F. Preusser. Modelling last glacial cycle ice dynamics in the Alps, *The Cryosphere*, 12, 3265-3285, https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-12-3265-2018, 2018.

 

 

h/t Colin

9.7 out of 10 based on 61 ratings

182 comments to Glaciers on the move: Two minutes of extreme climate change on Swiss Alps, Italian beaches

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    And other people are putting blankets on glaciers in summer to stop them melting.

    What an obviously brilliant idea thought up by the next science genius — Einstein the II in the making I have no doubt.

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      We really should teach underwater basket weaving instead of propaganda. We could at least end up with some useful, even beautiful baskets. And no one would be worried about what happens to glaciers.

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      • #
        Sceptical Sam

        Well here’s a useful basket, Roy.

        Please excuse me weaving it in here but it ice related but not glacial.

        The climate models don’t actually underestimate the sensitivities but rather can’t replicate reality (or something).

        Through a fingerprint pattern matching method, we estimate that this internal variability contributes to about 40–50% of observed multi-decadal decline in Arctic sea ice. Our study also suggests that global climate models may not actually underestimate sea ice sensitivities in the Arctic, but have trouble fully replicating an observed linkage between the Arctic and lower latitudes in recent decades.

        Qinghua Ding et al. Fingerprints of internal drivers of Arctic sea ice loss in observations and model simulations. Nature Geoscience (2018).

        https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0256-8

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      They could accomplish as much if they would try to figure out how much less precipitation is feeding those glaciers and installed sprinklers to make up for the difference.

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  • #

    Before about 5500 years ago you couldn’t buy a glacier. (Well, maybe if you hunted around…)

    And it took a while after that to get a decent glacier. They reckon before the cooler times of the 14th century glaciers on Svalbard were only 3/4 the size of today. That “purely local and regional” Medieval Warming must have escaped its coop…again!

    As for blankets, in my youth the climate wallahs wanted to soot the poles, blast them with A-bombs even, to get some melt going. Now they want to tuck them in at night.

    Gawd. Just…gawd.

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  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Gawd. Just…gawd.

    Please don’t feel alone. You definitely are not.

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  • #
    garyh845

    Thank you Jo – this is fascinating. Towards the end – the approach to the Holocene – what a show as the Adriatic Sea advances on Venice, Italy . . as sea level rises 400 feet in relative fast order.

    Thanks

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    • #
      garyh845

      In fact, at a glance (looking at ocean depths on Google Earth), the coast line just prior to the great SLR, would have been roughly 200 miles away. More than 1/2 of the Adriatic Sea would have been land.

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      • #
        sophocles

        In the shorter term, the sea floor of the Adriatic is slowly sinking. There are Roman ports there, barely underwater after 2000 years or so of this slow subsidence of about a foot or two per century.

        Sea level rise, while not really a `rise’ in the strictly true sense of the word, is still not fast enough to entertain, amuse, bother or concern the people around there. If Thera (Santorini) goes bang again, then that will get attention and when Mt Etna on Sicily slides into the sea, the tsunami will get even more attention.

        That’s a tectonically very active region. It’s the Anatolian coast which is rising.

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        • #
          theRealUniverse

          Santorini was the one that wiped out the Minoans I think, that was big surf that did it!

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          • #
            sophocles

            It and the Greeks (Mycenaeans) wrote off the Minoan Empire.

            The tsunami along the northern coast of Crete almost crested the island’s spine in places. Crete recovered somewhat but as the Minoan fleet was headquartered in the harbour at Thera, the Minoan Empire didn’t. A lot of matchwood doesn’t project military might as much as naval ships.

            The Mycenaean pirates and privateers (merchants and entrepreneurs of those times) followed the tsunami looking through the devastation for whatever they could take. Slaves, valuables, anything they could carry away. The volcano achieved for the Mediterranean’s power structure at one stroke what the Japanese fleet almost accomplished at Pearl Harbour but didn’t quite.

            40

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    And to think I once didn’t believe a glacier could move myself. I bought the story that the great lakes were dug out by some magical giant fairy queen of the Cupids with a big pick and shovel so as to provide Niagara Falls as a honeymoon destination for newlyweds. 😉

    Does no one study natural history or geology anymore?

    And where are those glaciers now?

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      Truly there is nothing left that you can do but make fun of these clowns.

      130

    • #
      Yonniestone

      What happened to those glaciers?
      Democrats back then got their wish to abolish ICE……

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      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Very good, Yoni. I nearly fell out of my chair laughing.

        And here I thought the Democrats were a new phenomenon. But they must have been around since glaciers, oh, at least a couple of hundred thousand years. Do you suppose that could be why they’ve run out of good ideas — I mean, could they have exhausted all the useful liberal ideas a few millennia ago and no one told them they were dead so they never fell over?

        Have an extra green one on me 🙂

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      And right next to Niagara Falls they built a new retreat for us old guys and they called it Viagra Falls. Wasn’t that thoughtful of them?

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    • #

      And where are those glaciers now?

      Years ago I was entering Milford Sound and looking on my echo sounder at the glacial moraine deposited at the entrance. I explained to one of my crew that glaciers had left all those boulders behind thousands of years ago.

      “Where have the glaciers gone now?” he inquired.

      “Gone back up for another load of boulders.” I replied.

      🙂

      70

  • #
    J.H.

    That’s a lot of ice… We’re gonna need a lot of Bourbon. and lie sh*tfaced on the Adriatic plain under a full moon. I like it.

    50

  • #
    Kinky Keith

    The painting/photograph shows how incredibly brave the Swiss people are.

    Anyone who builds hotels that close to a glacier is brave.

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    • #
      Annie

      They obviously assumed that there would be no further ice ages.

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      • #
        sophocles

        Not really: they just work out the path the last one took and put the hotel up to the side of that.
        Simple engineering 🙂

        This may be Urban Myth so take it with a suitable charge of salt:

        We have a small town in the North Island of NZ called Te Aroha. It’s built up against the foot of Mt Te Aroha. There were tracts of empty land along the main street where nobody would build. Some developer recently (recent is after WW2 down there) bought them up, developed them and sold them off. About 20 years later the reason those sections were empty became apparent when the area had a one or two hundred year rain event. Most of those lovely homes were inundated and one or two washed out by the flash flood which came off the mountain. None of the older pre-war homes were touched…

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  • #
    Kinky Keith

    It’s hard to imagine the Earth as it was 25,000 years ago.

    Our local surf beaches would have been an extra 19 km out from their present position and that giant ice flow covering New York Central park was about 1.5 km deep.

    The park was closed.

    KK

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    • #
      Roy Hogue

      KK,

      The Grand Canyon’s South Rim Visitor Center is at about 7,000 feet above sea level and the canyon right there is just about a mile deep. Standing on the south overlook all you can see on the far wall of the canyon is layer after layer of sediment deposited mostly if not all in water since that’s the most usual origin of sedimentary rock. And there’s no sign of any end of the layers as you get to the bottom. That speaks to me of many changes in which that same area was under water then raised up again then under water again, etc., etc., etc.

      I have trouble visualizing my back yard as it was 10 years ago. How do you think I felt standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon?

      The degree of change this planet has seen makes concern for glaciers or anything else look so foolish I don’t know a word to describe it.

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      • #
        Kinky Keith

        Roy, the last paragraph hits it.

        It’s the Contrast.

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      • #
        Greebo

        I have trouble visualizing my back yard as it was 10 years ago. How do you think I felt standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon?

        Or crossing the Mojave Desert and viewing the Sierras, or visiting Yosemite.

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        • #
          theRealUniverse

          I loved the Grand canyon, great view it was dam hot treking down into it at 35C, and also Yosemite great place, mind the bears!

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          • #
            Greebo

            Bears? Sure, mind the bears, but it’s the moronic tourists that scare me. Maybe Yogi was right…

            I’m sure Michael Crichton was.

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        • #
          Roy Hogue

          Greebo,

          I’ve been there and it’s hard to get my head around the forces that could create any of those places. But I know this for certain. Grand Canyon is the most masterful understatement ever made. Stupefying is more like it. Not even stunning works to describe it.

          30

    • #
      • #
        Kinky Keith

        The reference is a bit dodgy on sea levels. It says that sea level arrived where it is today way back about 7,000 years ago.

        The reality is that sea levels overshot the present level by up to 6 metres and oscillated down through several waves.
        The present level is a result of the last drop which began about 2,000 years ago. It fell 1.2 metres.

        The writer, from the Sunshine coast, seems to have been out in the sun too long.

        🙂

        50

      • #
        Graeme#4

        Lived on the Nullarbor Plain for a while, an ancient sea bed, that is actually up on a plateau, well above today’s sea level. So our sea levels were also higher as well as lower.

        20

    • #
      theRealUniverse

      In the South Is of NZ you can see the glacial cut terraces 3000′ above the valley floor as they are now. 14000 years ago allot of ice.

      70

  • #
    Antoine D'Arche

    SO will the blankets stop the melting if it’s caused by geothermal heat? Infants. When glaciers recede, and polar ice increases, probably people should be asking how. Not automatically blaming CO2.
    But then how would the UN liberate trillions of dollars from wealthy countries? They would have to come up with another scheme.
    Wonder what that will be…..
    Cause it’s coming

    110

    • #
      Annie

      They have to do something to increase the rate of SLR to prove they are right…blankets over geothermally warmed ice would be a great help.

      40

      • #
        sophocles

        Geothermally warmed ice may also emit far far larger quantities of CO2.

        The myth of AGW and CC might just be a myth.

        40

        • #
          David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

          Nah,
          Myths are honest attempts to explain unknowns. CC needs a descriptor Jo doesn’t like.
          Cheers,
          Dave B

          10

          • #
            sophocles

            I don’t disagree. Myth is about fiction. It fits, because the causes of CC still escape the IPCC …

            Legend may be a better word for what you’re thinking of. It contains a kernel of truth

            00

  • #
    Graeme No.3

    I presume that when the glaciers start advancing again that we will hear squarks about CO2 causing Global Warming causing Climate Change.
    I think they will skip the Global Warming bit, as usual. No point in drawing people’s attention to the original flaky premise when you can just scare money from them.

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  • #
    glen Michel

    As you can see in the 1900 photo the glacier has receded greatly- as evidenced by moraine scree in the vicinity of the hotel. Note the depth of the material. Global warming having taken effect even then.

    100

  • #
    glen Michel

    Last went up that road in 2007 on a Yamaha 1300. Overnight in Chamonix. Great ride.

    50

  • #
    Asp


    “Content was blocked because it was not signed by a valid security certificate.”

    This is what I got in place of the first insert. Maybe someone did not like it.

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  • #
    OriginalSteve

    Is there a developing crisis in trust of science?

    https://cen.acs.org/research-integrity/Single-molecule-magnet-controversy-highlights/96/i45?utm_source=NonMember&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=CEN

    Single-molecule magnet controversy highlights transparency problems with U.K. research integrity system

    Universities’ reluctance to reveal details of such cases could undermine public trust in research, experts say 

    by Mark Peplow

    November 2, 2018 | APPEARED IN VOLUME 96, ISSUE 45

    “For Conrad A. P. Goodwin, June 6, 2017, was a pretty harrowing day.

    The organometallic chemist, then at the University of Manchester, had just finished his Ph.D. on a high. Earlier that year he had synthesized an organometallic complex called dysprosocenium that could be switched from one stable magnetic state to another. Single-molecule magnets (SMMs) like this might eventually be used in extremely-high-density memory devices, but researchers had previously been able to make SMMs that only operated at ultracold temperatures. Crucially, Goodwin’s molecule could retain its designated magnetic state at up to 60 K—the highest temperature yet for any SMM. By the end of May, Nature had accepted a paper about the work from Goodwin and his colleagues, subject to revisions.

    Then, on that fateful June day—months before Goodwin’s report actually published—a paper appeared in Angewandte Chemie describing exactly the same molecule, made in exactly the same way. Goodwin and his colleagues had been scooped. To make matters worse, the team behind the Angewandte paper was led by Richard A. Layfield, a professor whose office was just down the hall from Goodwin’s supervisor, David P. Mills.
    “We’d put so much work into it,” recalls Goodwin, who now works at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “The synthetic methodology was brand new, so we thought we were on to something cool. Then, suddenly, the novelty was gone.”

    This highly unusual situation, two groups at the same university working on the same project independently, sparked a complaint to the university, which subsequently convened a panel to investigate what happened.

    The panel reached its verdict on Jan. 8, 2018. But it took another eight months before the university made any public statement on the matter. Released on Sept. 5, the brief statement on Manchester’s website says that the investigation “reached a finding of research misconduct against a senior academic who is no longer in the employment of the University.” That senior academic, the university confirmed to C&EN, was Layfield, who moved to the University of Sussex in May 2018.

    Manchester’s statement prompted questions. Research misconduct comes in many forms, from lapses in judgment to outright falsification of results. But what exactly was Layfield accused of? What evidence supported the finding of research misconduct? And did Sussex know about all this before it hired Layfield?

    Until now, the answers have been shrouded in mystery. That’s because both Manchester and Sussex have refused to publicly release any further information and have recommended that employees do not discuss details of the case with C&EN. They argue that misconduct investigations are confidential and that they have data protection and other legal obligations that may prevent public disclosure.

    “As a young researcher, the way things have been swept under the rug is quite upsetting,” Goodwin says.

    Under the U.K.’s Freedom of Information Act, C&EN requested a copy of Manchester’s investigation report and received a partially redacted version. Although people’s names have been blacked out, information from researchers familiar with the case (who requested anonymity out of concern for the potential impact on their careers) helped fill those gaps.

    Taken together, these sources reveal how Layfield learned of the Mills group’s intention to make dysprosocenium and then raced to publish the synthesis first. The investigation found no problems with his scientific data or the paper’s conclusions. But it did determine that Layfield had presented his work—without disclosing the rival group’s discoveries—in an “unethical” way that “amounts to deception,” according to the report.

    When C&EN put the allegations in this article to Layfield, he provided a brief statement: “At the time of reporting my group’s findings, I understood them to be novel.” There is no evidence that Layfield has ever been involved in any other instances of research misconduct.
    Research integrity experts say that the air of secrecy around this case illustrates a wider problem with the way U.K. universities investigate allegations of research misconduct. All too often, there is a lack of transparency about how institutions run such investigations, and their findings often remain confidential. And although Manchester did belatedly issue a public notice that it had concluded an investigation, some universities do not even disclose that such investigations have taken place.

    “Most U.K. universities seem to regard any kind of investigation as confidential,” says Elizabeth Wager, a consultant on publication ethics and former chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

    Many argue that a lack of transparency risks undermining public trust in research and may also hamper science itself. “The community of scholars works on trust,” says C. K. Gunsalus, director of the National Center for Professional & Research Ethics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. “When that trust is broken, it’s incumbent on the institution to share the facts so that other scholars do not waste time, energy, and resources.”

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    • #
      sophocles

      KK:
      if you think Monetization of research, the reasons become crystal clear.

      20

    • #
      Peter C

      One good thing that comes of this is that the Result has been Replicated.

      As far as the ethical behavior of Scientists is concerned that might not be new. I have read that Isaac Newton spent a lot of the last half of his life trying to deny Liebnitz any credit for the Calculus discovery. Now we all use Leibnitz’s notation, because it is much more elegant than the Newton method, but Isaac Newton is still credited with the discovery in the English speaking world.

      20

      • #
        Peter C

        The reason for quoting Newton/Leibniz is that they apparently worked out the idea independently but at about the same time. Leibniz published first:

        Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy
        From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
        Jump to navigationJump to search
        The calculus controversy (German: Prioritätsstreit, “priority dispute”) was an argument between the mathematicians Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over who had first invented calculus. The question was a major intellectual controversy, which began simmering in 1699 and broke out in full force in 1711. Leibniz had published his work first, but Newton’s supporters accused Leibniz of plagiarizing Newton’s unpublished ideas. Leibniz died in disfavor in 1716 after his patron, the Elector Georg Ludwig of Hanover, became King George I of Great Britain in 1714. The modern consensus is that both men developed their ideas independently.

        Newton claimed to have begun working on a form of calculus (which he called “the method of fluxions and fluents”) in 1666, at the age of 23, but did not publish it except as a minor annotation in the back of one of his publications decades later (a relevant Newton manuscript of October 1666 is now published among his mathematical papers[1]). Gottfried Leibniz began working on his variant of calculus in 1674, and in 1684 published his first paper employing it, “Nova Methodus pro Maximis et Minimis”. L’Hôpital published a text on Leibniz’s calculus in 1696 (in which he recognized that Newton’s Principia of 1687 was “nearly all about this calculus”). Meanwhile, Newton, though he explained his (geometrical) form of calculus in Section I of Book I of the Principia of 1687,[2] did not explain his eventual fluxional notation for the calculus[3] in print until 1693 (in part) and 1704 (in full).

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz%E2%80%93Newton_calculus_controversy

        I mis-spelled Leibniz in the first post. 🙁

        10

  • #
    pat

    if this is ABC’s version, you have to wonder what more there is to the story!

    8 Nov: ABC: Cape York graziers say cattle stations bought for conservation are now going up in smoke
    By Charlie McKillop and Kristy Sexton-McGrath
    Graziers say massive fires burning in Cape York Peninsula have exposed devastating consequences from a Queensland Government policy to buy up cattle stations for conservation.

    The fires, believed to have been deliberately lit, have burnt tens of thousands of hectares of conservation and grazing land near Lakeland, about three hours drive north of Cairns.
    Landholders have told the ABC they are considering taking legal action against neighbouring property owners — including the Queensland Government-owned Springvale Station — for failing to contain or prepare for bushfires that have raged through the region for weeks…

    Joy Marriott said she and her daughter fought the fire on their Mountain View property, just north of Lakeland, for nine days and nights before it was safe…
    “There’s wallabies that have been coming on to our place with their faces singed off, all the quolls and anything on the ground, all the frilled-necked lizards, they are just dead, everywhere.”…

    Nearby, the privately managed Kings Plains Station, owned by the South Endeavour Trust, has lost around 70,000 hectares this year due to several fires.
    The property was purchased in 2013, “in order to protect its unique ecosystems from a range of weeds and other threats”…

    ‘We all know it was arson’
    Director of the trust, Tim Hughes, denied de-stocking the property to focus on carbon farming had in any way compromised fire management practices on Kings Plains
    “We did a vast amount of preventative burning at Kings Plains prior to the fire season,” he said.
    “These fires have cost us $150,000 in lost carbon credits alone.”

    Mr Hughes said he was struggling to understand why neighbours were blaming his property rather than the arsonists who lit the fires…

    Meanwhile, Ms Marriott said the State Government’s buying up of cattle stations for “nature reserves” had stifled economic development in the region.
    “There’s no development, nothing is happening and Lakeland is probably one of the last agricultural strongholds in Cape York, ” she said.
    “The State Government has a great desire to turn Lakeland into another Centrelink sink-hole.
    “We don’t want to be that.
    “Springvale and Kings Plains are now totally reliant on government money.”
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-08/graziers-want-more-done-to-fight-fires-on-conservation-land/10476300

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  • #
    Mark M

    2013: “An ancient forest has thawed from under a melting glacier in Alaska and is now exposed to the world for the first time in more than 1,000 years”

    https://www.livescience.com/39819-ancient-forest-thaws.html

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  • #
    pat

    8 Nov: ABC: Power bills up? Appliances burning out? You may have a voltage problem
    7.30 By Liz Hobday
    7.30 asked two companies to take a snapshot of electricity meters across most of Australia. Their findings give an indication of the scale of the issue…
    The readings taken at 1:00pm, when rooftop solar panels are boosting network voltage, averaged 245.8 volts — within allowable limits, but well above the 230 nominal level.
    But even at night, when extra voltage from solar power is not a factor, the network voltage is still running high.
    The average minimum reading recorded by Metropolis was 241.6 volts…

    The German battery company Sonnen also contributed data from 825 meters it has access to, taking hourly readings over five days, and the findings were similar.
    Most of the meters Sonnen surveyed were connected to rooftop solar systems.
    Twenty-six per cent of those meters logged readings above the 253-volt upper limit over the trial period…

    Mr Dillon said the rapid uptake of rooftop solar systems was a particular issue for the networks, because solar systems are supplying extra electricity to the grid, and boosting voltages.
    “There are technologies we could adopt today, to be able to manage the voltage challenges we have from solar better than we are now,” he said.
    “The problem we have is we are not willing to pay billions of dollars further on the network … [we’re] after a smart, cost-effective transition.”…

    High volts could mean wasted solar
    There is one area where high voltage is definitely causing headaches, and that is for people who have installed rooftop solar systems.
    Pensioner Paul Ryan installed solar panels on his house in the Victorian town of Warragul more than a year ago, but for much of that time they have not been working.
    The system often has to shut off to protect itself from high voltages coming in from the grid.
    “It turned out to be a bit of a white elephant in a sense,” Mr Ryan told 7.30.
    “It cost me an arm and a leg to set up this system and it’s not performing.”…

    Rooftop solar systems are designed to operate at a few volts higher than the grid, so they can feed electricity back into the local network.
    But with network voltage supplied to households already running at the high end, solar energy feeding into the grid can boost the volts even higher, and over the 253-volt limit — causing solar inverters to shut off.
    With 1.8 million solar systems installed in Australian homes and businesses, a significant amount of renewable energy may simply be wasted…
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-08/high-voltage-fuelling-increased-electricity-consumption/10460212

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  • #
    pat

    8 Nov: ABC: Labor makes Victorian election pledge to lift renewable energy target as it battles Greens
    Under Victoria’s legislated renewable energy target, 25 per cent of the state’s energy must come from renewable sources by 2020, and the target rises to 40 per cent by 2025.
    Premier Daniel Andrews today pledged that a re-elected Labor government would require half of the state’s energy to come from renewable sources by 2030.

    “This means billions of dollars of investment right across Victoria, thousands more jobs ***and lower power bills,” Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio told ABC Radio Melbourne…READ ON
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-08/victorian-election-labor-greens-renewable-energy-target-druery/10476290

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    • #
      Annie

      What qualifications do Andrews and D’Ambrosio have to be spouting these 50% ‘ruinables’ promises?

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      • #
        Annie

        There seems to be a lot of ‘downward pressure’ on intelligence about.

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      • #
        robert rosicka

        Ideology and socialism counts for qualifications surely

        20

      • #
        Another Ian

        Inebriated with the exuberance of their own verbosities?

        50

      • #
        Serp

        It’s a pity the Victorian Liberal opposition is “running dead” at this election as it means none of Labor’s policies is subject to scrutiny. And then there’s that mysterious MOU…

        50

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          Elections in Victoria…brought to you by the letter “F” and the letter “U” and the number “0”….

          Glorious Leader cozying up to overseas masters, what could possibly go wrong.

          The fact the “Liberals” ( in name only ) are actively doing nothing, implies collusion, does it not?

          Greenism – the game the whole political spectrum can play….

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        • #
          Kinky Keith

          Why would anyone believe that libls in Vic would be useful.

          Look at what they’ve done in S.A.. Zilch.

          Carry on.

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  • #
    ATheoK

    Meanwhile, WWF is worried climate change will wipe out cold loving Alpine flora forever:
    Glacier recession has led to an upward migration of Alpine plants at a rate of 0.5 – 4 m per decade. In the long run, lowland plants will displace Alpine species to ever-higher altitudes until they simply have nowhere to go at all, effectively forcing them into extinction.

    Sounds perfectly normal. Just as the same process has occurred many times before.

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  • #
    pat

    8 Nov: ABC: Insurance premiums to rise as extreme weather conditions become more common
    By senior business correspondent Peter Ryan
    Residential property owners and businesses are likely to face higher insurance premiums after a new actuarial index warned about rising financial risks from extreme weather events.
    The Australian Actuaries Climate Index tracks risk factors such as elevated sea levels, drought, bushfires, cyclones, flooding and extreme temperatures as being more frequent as growing evidence of climate change mounts.
    The index, developed by leading actuary and Finity Consulting principal Tim Andrew, warns the frequency of extreme conditions this autumn was higher than historical extremes in autumns between 1981 and 2010…

    The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), which oversees banks and insurers, warned last year that the risks of climate change were “foreseeable, material and actionable”.
    APRA executive Geoff Summerhayes said the index was an important step towards a cross-industry standard for disclosing risks of extreme weather events and the implications for business, consumers, developers and governments.
    “We believe this initiative is a positive step towards helping regulated entities to understand and manage the potential impact of climate risk on their businesses,” Mr Summerhayes said.

    ***The index — which will be updated each quarter and is backed by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO — builds on similar indexes currently used in Canada and the United States…
    The index was developed in consultation with regulators and natural hazard scientists with data collected nationally and grouped into twelve climatically similar reasons…

    Tim Andrews is keen to stay away from the politics surrounding cynicism about climate change but hopes the move towards greater awareness will not be overshadowed by climate change cynics.
    “That’s inevitably a risk with these issues. I’m often disappointed by the politics and I’m hoping this message doesn’t get lost.”
    AUDIO
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-08/insurance-premiums-rise-as-extreme-weather-becomes-more-common/10476288

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      OriginalSteve

      Perhaps its time to start dumping insurance, if the insurance companies are seen to be gilding the lilly….

      “The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), which oversees banks and insurers, warned last year that the risks of climate change were “foreseeable, material and actionable”.”

      So if that’s the case, coz the insurance companies *know for sure – with at least 97% accuracy* that offering insurance would surely be a mugs game, and insurance companies will therefore all be wiped by the assured decimation by claims going through the roof…..so they should all shut down.

      Waiting…….

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      Kinky Keith

      Insurance companies love Climate Change.

      20

  • #
    pat

    outrageous BoM:

    8 Nov: ABC: Port Macquarie pummelled by ‘life-threatening’ tennis ball-sized hailstones
    By Sarah Maunder, Michael Cavanagh and Kevin Nguyen
    Mark Wilgar from the Bureau of Meteorology described the hailstones as “extraordinary”.
    “That’s probably life-threatening at that size,” Mr Wilgar said.
    “With an impact that would be like, somebody standing on a cloud and throwing a cricket ball at your head.
    “Unbelievable stuff, mother nature showing off again. It seems so outrageous.”…
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-08/hailstorm-in-port-macquarie-severe-damage/10476306

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    • #

      I watched that video, and the hail looks too slow. Perhaps it’s an illusion of the recording, but a cricketball falling from a cloud would surely come in a lot faster than that?

      Does fluffy hail fall slower or is it a video-quirk?

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      • #
        Annie

        Fluffy hail! I’m not quite sure how to picture it but the attempt has put me into a mirthful mood! 🙂

        20

      • #
        Kinky Keith

        Hi Jo,

        The larger pieces are traveling so fast that you can just pick them out.

        Once they hit the ground and bounce they do seem big.

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        • #
          Peter C

          Yes,

          The slower hailstones seem to be one their first bounce. The cameraman should have kept the camera still instead of swinging it around so much.

          30

      • #
        Bill In Oz

        Ummmmm ? I watched the video also.
        Those hail balls were bouncing hard and solid Jo. Fluffy snow balls would tend to squash on impact rather than bounce.The sound on the roof of the hail hitting sounds firm & loud…I would not like to be out in that hail..

        But it’s still just a hailstorm..They happen even in Southern Qld on occasions…

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        beowulf

        I have witnessed tennis ball sized hailstones (with an extremely rough profile covered in protuberances) falling remarkably slowly. They still had enough force to smash our roof tiles, but the hailstones looked as if they were floating down somewhat. Quite a spooky sight. The contours of the hailstone must have a lot to do with its velocity in variable air currents with some updrafts we obviously cannot see. It’s not just a simplistic terminal velocity equation.

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        sophocles

        I was driving from south from Canberra sometime in January 1991. heading for Cooma on the Monaro Highway. There was one cloud to be seen on the south western horizon when I left. It looked so small, I more or less ignored it. It was a long time before I realized that that cloud and I were on a collision course. It was literally walking across the landscape on legs of lightning and was now gigantic.

        I think it was somewhere about Bredbo where cloud and I met. There was a petrol station being built on the road side, and I stopped the car under the forecourt canopy. It had started to hail.

        The hail stones were not falling gently, they seemed to be being flung down, they were the size of a cricket ball and they were hard: they were hitting the ground at a high velocity and bouncing, higher than that two storey petrol station building and higher than its canopy. They weren’t breaking or shattering. They were bouncing off whatever they hit. I was lucky to not be struck.

        I was invited inside by the builders so I was undamaged, and fortunately the car escaped damage too.

        I was then, and am still, highly impressed by those ice balls.

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          Annie

          The car we imported to Australia when we returned here a few years ago was very badly damaged by massive hail in a storm in France that lasted a good hour. It had been very hot and humid the last two days of our stay near Chamonix and we had booked a place in the Jura en route for the north of France. Like you Sophocles, we saw a gradually enlarging cloud to the west which finally burst over us minutes after we arrived at our destination. My husband had just brought the last of our stuff in when the storm broke…it was massive. We had to close the window to stop the enormous hailstones bouncing into the room but opened it enough to collect some to put into our G and T! The car was out in the storm and very badly damaged all over and we couldn’t do a thing about it. By some miracle the windscreen wasn’t smashed but every other surface was badly dented. We thought it would be written off but the insurance company decided to repair it. It took five weeks and in certain lights the odd dent can still be seen!

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        Graeme#4

        I have video footage of cricket ball sized hail that hit the place where I worked a few years ago. Also photos of the large holes punched in the car’s windscreens and rear windows. Most of the damaged cars were written off. Fortunately I had gone home early.

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        RickWill

        Hail that size will have a terminal velocity around 100kph. You do not see them coming:
        https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Vitaly_Khvorostyanov/publication/235754350/figure/fig10/AS:393389213274128@1470802705879/Terminal-velocity-of-hailstones-V-t-calculated-with-equations-from-this-work-0-and-C-0.png

        Places like South Africa that are prone to serious hail storms lose significant number of grazing animals through impact:
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_costly_or_deadly_hailstorms

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        • #
          Kinky Keith

          Hi Rick

          Humans in skydiving freefall are reported to reach about 120 mph while the hail quote is about 62.5 mph.

          They dont seem to match?

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        Kinky Keith

        Isn’t fluffy hail called Snow?

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        Greg Cavanagh

        Just put a search into youtube “big hail” or any variation, you’ll find hundreds of vidios from all around the world showing similar size hail, sometimes bigger. It might be uncommon, but it’s not unusual.

        I’ve seen a video of huge slabs of hail falling from the sky into a car park. The slabs were about 1m long each, falling at about 20 second intervals. I looked for the video but couldn’t find it.

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    pat

    7 Nov: Aljazeera: Australia, the Indian Ocean Dipole and El Nino
    After a winter of drought, Australia faces failing summer rains too as the oceans adopt an unfavourable pattern
    According to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), the pattern of sea surface temperatures in the Indian Ocean has reflected a positive IOD for the past two months.
    As of Wednesday, this was long enough for it to be officially declared as a positive IOD event.
    In the Pacific Ocean, the chance of an El Nino event developing soon and lasting over the northern hemisphere winter is over 70 percent, according to the calculations done by NOAA and BoM…

    El Nino effects in Australia over summer include higher risk of fires, a greater chance of heatwaves and fewer tropical cyclones…
    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/11/australia-indian-ocean-dipole-el-nino-181107130227069.html

    8 Nov: ABC: No funding for cyclone shelter promised to community on Australia’s most cyclone-prone coast
    ABC Kimberley By Ben Collins
    The Bidyadanga community is home to more than 600 people who live in what the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) calls “the most cyclone-prone region of the entire Australian coastline…
    Residents relying on luck as season approaches

    With the latest cyclone season just getting underway, Mr King said Bidyadanga residents were relying on luck to get them through while they wonder what has happened to the promise of a shelter, made by successive governments
    “The area sits right in the middle of our so-called cyclone corridor, and we’ve been exposed to dangerous cyclones in the past,” Mr King said.
    “A lot of people are feeling a bit anxious about the coming cyclone season, and keeping their fingers crossed that we don’t get any really high risk cyclones within the Broome/Bidyadanga area.”
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-08/no-funding-for-cyclone-shelter-promised-to-community/10473102

    8 Nov: ABC: El Nino is coming, so can you put away the mozzie spray this summer?
    The Conversation By Cameron Webb
    (Cameron Webb is a clinical lecturer and principal hospital scientist at the University of Sydney)
    The latest predictions from the Bureau of Meteorology are that there is a 70 per cent chance an El Nino will occur this year, about three times more than usual.
    At first, this may seem like good news for those averse to mosquito bites, but don’t pack away the repellent just yet…
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-08/mosquitoes-could-still-thrive-in-a-dry-el-nino-climate/10476378

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    robert rosicka

    Kids starting high school these days have the ability of a grade four student , no wonder they believe in CAGW when they can’t manage 2×2 !

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    theRealUniverse

    Glaciers only melt of the temp gets above 0. Ice falls of naturally as they move. Some are in retreat due to local conditions and some advance.
    Alpine glaciers are feed from the precipitation at higher altitudes how did they account for that.

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    robert rosicka

    Luke Foley declares I’m innocent, Quits , and appoints a mouthpiece .

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-08/nsw-labor-leader-luke-foley-to-resign/10477996

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    robert rosicka

    OT again but we are no longer Deplorable we are weeds .

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-08/obamas-america-seen-in-trump-defeats/10476474

    Democrats are incapable of learning from past mistakes .

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      pat

      robert rosicka –

      the FakeNewsABC piece is by Micheline Maynard, an American author and journalist…She previously worked as a reporter at The New York Times, made regular appearances on PBS NewsHour…She lectures at the University of Michigan, and taught at the university’s Ross School of Business – ABC.

      Maynard: How could the same country that elected an eloquent, well-principled black Democratic president for two terms swing so dramatically to put Republican flame thrower Donald Trump in office?

      2008: Politico: Obama brings a gun to a knife fight
      By BEN SMITH
      “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said in Philadelphia last night. “Because from what I understand, folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”…
      “Why is Barack Obama so negative? In the last 24 hours, he’s completely abandoned his campaign’s call for ‘new politics,’ equating the election to a ‘brawl’ and promising to ‘bring a gun,’ ” said the RNC’s Alex Conant…
      Obama never paid much of a price for his willingness to go negative. He also, to be fair, never promised that he wouldn’t attack, and indeed often promised to be tougher than past Democrats, and bragged of his Chicago training…

      Maynard: The contrast between the two men became oh so clear on Wednesday. Mr Trump held a news conference, where he belittled a young black female correspondent for public television, and got into an angry exchange with a CNN journalist.

      Dec 2016: NYT: James Risen: If Donald Trump Targets Journalists, Thank Obama
      If Donald J. Trump decides as president to throw a whistle-blower in jail for trying to talk to a reporter, or gets the F.B.I. to spy on a journalist, he will have one man to thank for bequeathing him such expansive power: Barack Obama…
      Over the past eight years, the (Obama) administration has prosecuted nine cases involving whistle-blowers and leakers, compared with only three by all previous administrations combined. It has repeatedly used the Espionage Act, a relic of World War I-era red-baiting, not to prosecute spies but to go after government officials who talked to journalists.
      Under Mr. Obama, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. have spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records, labeled one journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case for simply doing reporting and issued subpoenas to other reporters to try to force them to reveal their sources and testify in criminal cases…

      I experienced this pressure firsthand when the administration tried to compel me to testify to reveal my confidential sources in a criminal leak investigation…
      …critics say the crackdown has had a much greater chilling effect on press freedom than Mr. Obama acknowledges. In a scathing 2013 report for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Leonard Downie, a former executive editor of The Washington Post who now teaches at Arizona State University, said the war on leaks and other efforts to control information was “the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration, when I was one of the editors involved in The Washington Post’s investigation of Watergate.”…
      Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post, added: “Obama’s attorney general repeatedly allowed the F.B.I. to use intrusive measures against reporters more often than any time in recent memory…

      More significantly, the Obama administration won a ruling from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in my case that determined that there was no such thing as a “reporter’s privilege” — the right of journalists not to testify about their confidential sources in criminal cases. The Fourth Circuit covers Virginia and Maryland, home to the C.I.A., the Pentagon and the National Security Agency, and thus has jurisdiction over most leak cases involving classified information…

      Maynard: Just as Mr Trump turned a tide in 2016, now the pendulum has begun to swing away from his extremism.

      7 Nov: GatewayPundit: BREAKING: ANTIFA MOB CURRENTLY OUTSIDE HOME OF TUCKER CARLSON
      by Cassandra Fairbanks
      The group is threatening Carlson and demanding that he leave town, saying that “tonight, we remind you that you are not safe either.”…

      7 Nov: GatewayPundit: Cassandra Fairbanks: DC Antifa Publishes Home Addresses of Tucker Carlson and His Brother — As Well As Ann Coulter, Neil Patel, and Sean Hannity
      Hours after an Antifa mob showed up at the home of Fox News host Tucker Carlson, an affiliated Twitter account published his home address and the home address of his brother Buckley Carlson — along with the addresses of Ann Coulter, Daily Caller’s Neil Patel, and Sean Hannity.
      We will not be naming the account or linking to it — but it has not been removed by Twitter at the time of writing this.
      The account has over 3,000 followers…

      Obama did a few rallies for Dems, e.g. Gillum and Nelson – both lost – and Antifa came up at one!

      3 Nov: AP: Trump vs. Obama in the final weekend of the midterms
      By KEN THOMAS
      In Miami, Obama said democracy can’t work when words stop having meaning, encouraging a crowd of about 3,000 to vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum (LOST) and Sen. Bill Nelson (LOST)…

      During the former president’s speech, a protester shouted that Obama should “denounce ANTIFA” — the protesters who square off against neo-Nazis. Obama responded by citing anger among Trump supporters despite their candidate’s win and asked, “Why are they so mad?”
      That protester and two others were escorted from the venue…

      Republican Mike Braun defeats Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly (OBAMA RALLIED FOR DONNELLY)

      16 April: Capital Research: Origins of Antifa
      by Matthew Vadum
      Antifa is not a single organization: it is a movement or coalition of leftist groups, each of which claims to combat “fascism,” a political ideology whose definition academics have been arguing about for decades…
      Despite the name, the movement embraces fascistic tactics…
      Nonetheless, the left-wing billionaire George Soros has ties to Antifa through a group called the Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ). Soros’s philanthropy, known at the time as the Open Society Institute, gave $100,000 to AfGJ ($50,000 in 2004 and $50,000 in 2006).

      Acting as a fiscal sponsor, AfGJ gave $50,000 to Refuse Fascism, an unincorporated Antifa group. Fiscal sponsors are recognized tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofits that take in donations on behalf of unincorporated or small groups so that donors can deduct the donations from their taxes, charging the group receiving the donation a processing fee.
      Refuse Fascism was created in the weeks after Donald Trump’s unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. The group’s goal was summed up in a slogan on its website: “It’s Fascism: Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime!”

      Refuse Fascism participated in rioting on Feb. 1, 2017, at the University of California, Berkeley, with the goal of preventing conservative controversialist Milo Yiannopoulos from giving a speech. The rioting caused more than $500,000 in damage…

      Except in the fantasies of Antifa and radical hate groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, it is fair to say that true fascists are hard to find in the U.S. today.
      Nevertheless, Antifa supporters are talented at finding fascists where they don’t exist…
      Meanwhile, here are just a few examples of Antifa violence from 2017…
      https://capitalresearch.org/article/origins-of-antifa/

      8 Nov: BusinessInsider: Trump actually did way better than Obama in his first midterm
      by Alex Lockie
      Barack Obama lost 63 in 2010 and Bill Clinton lost 52 in 1994.
      The elections haven’t all been called yet, but Trump likely lost around 30 House seats, making it a pretty strong showing…
      Bill Clinton lost 52 House seats in 1994 during his first midterm…

      7 Nov: Yahoo: Kristin Myers: Midterm elections: Were the billions spent worth it?
      As the dust settles and the final votes roll in, many are asking: was it worth it?
      The short answer is… it depends. Democrats spent $801 million to take back the House — a good bit more than the $547 million spent by Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics…
      In Maryland’s 6th district, Democrats spent more than $15 million to ensure a victory for David Trone. His opponent, Amie Hoebar, spent less than $1 million.

      Further south, Abigail Spanberger was able to flip Virginia’s traditionally conservative 7th district over incumbent Republican Dave Brat. Her campaign shelled out $5.3 million, compared to Brat’s $1.8 million.
      According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 89% of House races were won by the biggest spender – a pretty good record…
      https://finance.yahoo.com/news/midterm-elections-billions-spent-worth-211453691.html

      ABC should be shut down.

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    AndyG55

    I used to live out bush (Central West).

    First house I owned got literally hammered by hail about that size.

    Gal roof was pock-marked.

    Plastic siding on one side of the house was dimpled like a golf ball

    Fortunately, the only windows on that side of the house were under a veranda.

    Lawn was just a mass of big white balls for about 2-3 hours before it all melted.

    And those things were clear solid ice inside !!

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  • #
    tom0mason

    Oh the static view —

    Glacier recession has led to an upward migration of Alpine plants at a rate of 0.5 – 4 m per decade. In the long run, lowland plants will displace Alpine species to ever-higher altitudes until they simply have nowhere to go at all, effectively forcing them into extinction.

    Excuse me but all the flora and forna that currently exists on this planet has ancestry that survived both warmer and colder events in history. Nature adapts and evolves, only the utterly unimaginative would believe that nature should not change!

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    pat

    reply to Robert rosicka is in moderation.

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    TdeF

    This all makes a good point.

    The dramatic filling of the Adriatic between 10,000BC and 8,000BC shows how fast the sea can rise.
    Whatever caused the vanishing of the glaciers and the 100metre rise of the oceans was not carbon dioxide.
    We had not invented the internal combustion engine or discovered the power of coal. There were not 7 billion people on the planet. A billion motor cars. 30,000 jet aircraft. Thousands of coal power stations. Something caused this.

    Now in 100 years, CO2 has increased 50% and we are told carbon dioxide is a primary driver of dramatic global warming, heralding the greatest era of rapid temperature Armageddon, unprecedented in 10,000 years.
    Well, we’ve had 100 years of rapid CO2 growth. Where is the warming? Why aren’t we able to see this without instruments, tables and graphs?

    A 50% increase is major. Where is the disastrous warming? Where are the dramatic sea rises? What species have suddenly vanished? Why are polar bear numbers growing? Why isn’t Venice metres underwater all the time? Sydney? Even one metre is not too much to ask but in my lifetime, I would be surprised if it was noticeable anywhere. Where is it actually noticeably hotter above normal variation? Nothing has happened. Nothing at all. Zilch. Zero. Nil. Nada.

    There is only one word to describe man made carbon dioxide driven global warming climate change, even if true.

    Insignificant.

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      Kinky Keith

      Again, very well put.

      If only this perspective could be absorbed by the masses who are paying three to four times the proper price for electricity.

      Every time I pay my quarterly account I remember that the this should be enough for the whole year.

      Democracy, Freedom: all Gone.

      KK

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        TdeF

        Most simply, if something on which the atmospheric temperature is allegedly so dependent goes up 50%, surely there should be a effect? To have had so little effect in 100 years when other factors are pushing us into and out of ice ages, CO2 is clearly insignificant.

        98% of all CO2 is dissolved in the water. So the other is the outrageous claim that because CO2 has gone up, the water should get hotter. Anyone’s normal experience is that if the water gets warmer, CO2 should go up. Cause and effect, just switched around. We know why.

        The one I find most outrageous though is the corollary that if CO2 in the air goes up, pushing up air temperatures then CO2 in the water goes up, causing ‘acidification’. Of course no oceans are acid but this is the exact reverse of what Chemists know to be true. CO2 leaves hotter water.

        Then we are told that the hot water around the Great Barrier Reef is caused by CO2. The chain of logic to get to that point has never been explained. It is just one of those sky falling conclusions without any logic.

        Of course this is all in turn dependent on the ideas, without proof, that fossil fuels have caused the 50% increase in CO2. The only logic behind this is a vague ‘coincidence’ and it is demonstrably wrong from radio carbon dating the CO2 in the air.

        After 100 years of WW1, WW2, the building of 350,000 windmills, rapid industrialization, we can see no obvious effect in CO2 levels.

        The total failure of Global temperature to track CO2 in the last 100 years means they are not connected.

        So CO2 driven Global Warming is made up. Even without the man made story. It contradicts all the relevant hard science. No only insignificant, but man made CO2, man made Global warming, man made Climate Change is without any scientific foundation or evidence at all. After 100 years and 30 years of hard data, it is all nonsense which means it always was.

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      That old saying is made true again.

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      PeterS

      Pretty much describes very well the situation of the West. We can see the problem and culprit but too scared to do the only thing we can do, which is very simple: just jump off the board and let the social justice warrior fall down the cliff. We might be hit with a bullet but the chances are we would survive. The other option is to let things continue to the death and end of the West.

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        How did an SJW get a gun amnyway?

        The picture should show it pointing back at themselves – most of them would probably use it to hammer in a nail and say it was an awful hammer….should be CJW – Clueless Justice Warrior.

        Which also broing me to another thought – the “sharing economy” is another euphanism for communism.

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    TdeF

    Malcolm Turnbull is still outraged that anyone could do to him what he did to Nelson and Abbott.

    It seems Malcolm Turnbull was leading the Liberal and National parties to certain victory (really?) when he was deposed by a plot and insurgents. He is still outraged. After all he brought in Gay marriage. Rudd brought in the ‘apology’. So brave.

    Champions in their own minds, legends in their own lunchtimes. Completely out of touch with reality.

    In fact the evil plotters against popular leaders were Shorten, Gillard, Turnbull, Bishop and Pyne.

    It is pleasing to see high flying schemer Julie Bishop on the back bench on a basic salary and perks. No more parties in New York, no more first class travel, private jets, world recognition. No more $400 million gifts to her Green friends at the UN or the Clintons.

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      PeterS

      If the LNP don’t kick Turnbull out of the party (along with a few others) he will continue to white ant it and eventually destroy it. If it gets that far it means they richly deserve to be destroyed for being so blind to what is happening within the party. Personally I think it’s beyond repair and it should be destroyed to let a fresh new party takes its place. I’m already sick and tired of the rhetoric and doublespeak that’s still coming from Morrison.

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        robert rosicka

        If the Libs don’t put the ABC and Turnbull out of their misery and tell them why Turnbull’s leadership was challenged , they are going to send themselves into political obscurity.
        For gods sake Morrison grow a pair and call out Turnbull for what he is ,I don’t care what polling Turnbull claims to have had he was never going to win the next election .

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          TdeF

          It’s hard to understand that a man who nearly turned Abbott’s landslide victory into a loss could claim he was popular and likely to be successful? Would someone please tell him he was dreaming. If it wasn’t for Daniel Andrews in Victoria, Turnbull would have lost. He was only popular with people who voted Labor and Green, as if he didn’t know that. His dream of a Green Liberal party was just that.

          After the election he wasn’t even grateful for being reelected, hid in his house and sulked and when he came out, thanked no one. It seems clearer that he didn’t want the job, just the glory. Like Morrison, he doesn’t have any idea except to try to please everyone and try to do things to get attention, like Snowy II. The Hydro commission will make a decision on that expensive brain fade before 2019.

          Facing ejection, Turnbull ignored convention and stalled to stop Dutton and Abbott and put in Morrison. He also managed to destroy Bishop’s career, for which you can be sure she is very grateful. It was always his intent. With Turnbull the magnificent, there can be only one.

          In his own mind, Turnbull was Australia’s greatest and most popular Prime Minister. Too bad he didn’t have a clue and still doesn’t. He inherited his wealth and you could bottle the ego. It comes with a penalty of total blindness to others.

          As for Climate Change and melting glaciers, Turnbull is all things. He believes whatever people tell him will make him popular. Tony Abbott called it crap, socialism masquerading as envinromentalism.

          Tony was right. That’s why he won the election. He would again, but not if the media, the public service, the universities, the Black Hand can stop him. They are still angling to get him out of parliament by openly stacking his electorate. In another four years, we could see Tony Abbott back as PM. That is what the left fears above all.

          Like Brexit, the politicians, journalists and the elites plot against the people. The internet is the only thing keeping them to account.

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          PeterS

          The LNP has for a long time now lacking in vision and national spirit. It’s full of career politicians who don’t give a damn about the nation. I look forward to its funeral. That’s one thing we can thank the ALP for doing. We desperately need a new and vibrant party.

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            ando

            The ALP aren’t doing anything…The Liberal Party destruction is purely self inflicted by it’s brain dead march to left.
            I remember Michael Smith summed up the new Liberal Party to a tee, in a meme along the lines of showing 6 MPs who had never introduced a single bill on jobs, housing, power, education, health, living standards, etc, etc but were spending copious amounts of time and effort on their homosexual ‘marriage’ bill.

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    Chad

    Can we have a few simple blog guidelines ?….
    Why do regular posters (you know who you are !).. Frequently post totallt irrelavent information/news… (usually political) .. on trheads with a clearly defined subject.
    EG ..What has Luke Folley’s drunken antics , or Trumps election results, etc…got to do with Glacier melt rate ?
    Why dont you post this stuff under the “Unthreaded” subjects where it belongs ?
    Its just lazyness, not bothering to think and find the correct place to post.

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    • #
      Kinky Keith

      True, but part of the understanding of the underlying reasons for the curse of Climate Catastrophism comes from an analysis of politics and the antics of those associated with it.

      Climate Change is first and foremost put to the public, very strongly, as a scientific issue.

      It Is Not.

      In part this blog is trying to get to the Truth In All matters related to Global Warming, it is also trying to work out why Electricity Prices are linked to the so called science of that beast.

      No easy answer.

      KK

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      robert rosicka

      Politics and climate are unfortunately inextricably linked , I wish they weren’t but they are .
      I do use OT to tag off topic comments I make (usually) unless responding to another’s post .

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        Chad

        Related topics i can understand, but honestly, sometimes these threads are like a conversation in an aged care lounge full of deaf residents !
        Everyone chips in with the first subject that they want to air, relavent to the conversation or not, and few others take any notice.
        Worse, many subjects and news items get repeated posts because they have been lost in previous threads.
        …Foleys drunken groping…Turnbuls dumb rambleings,..Trump vs CNN, ?… Etc etc
        All valid and interesting topics in their own right , but unrelated to glacier history.
        Seriously, if we ever have any chance of conviening a serious debate against AGW and the politics associated with it, ..then we need to present our arguments in a more coordinated manner.
        Much of this just reads like “grumpy old men”. .rabbiting on to each other.
        What would be good is to have a organised forum format where anyone can start a topic thread that can run for more than a day or two before getting swamped by the next “hot news”item.

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          el gordo

          ** chuckle **

          Its an old men’s shed in the southern hemisphere, a lively bunch of contrarians from different backgrounds who wish to contribute to the cause.

          Order will eventually come about when the place is inundated with millennials asking questions, it will keep us all fully occupied. The blog could eventually morph into Climate Science 101: Atmospheric Science, Political Science, Economic History and Paleo Climate History.

          We already have a word cop in Gee Aye, but creating order out of chaos is yours, if you want it.

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            Kinky Keith

            🙂

            This blog is a place that seems to be looking for the Truth.
            As someone once said: the people coming to this site have a wide range of skills, educational qualifications and abilities that if collected for use might be enough to run a good sized state: or something like that.

            KK

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      TdeF

      So which actual post was about the physics, chemistry, mechanics of glaciers? This post is not about the science of glaciers study for discussion by experts in glaciation. The fundamental point being made is that nothing is happening compared to what has happened over the last 10,000 years. A secondary point is that warming is not a bad thing. My post is that in 100 years, despite a 50% increase in CO2, nothing has changed.

      It’s all about world climate politics, Australian politics and the $1.5Trillion dollar industry which claims that melting glaciers are a direct result of industrialization, not something which has happened before. That is simply not true. As a consequence of this blatant fraud, we in Australia have gone from the world’s cheapest electricity to the highest electricity prices in the world entirely through politics, fraud and theft. Billions of our dollars are being sent overseas. For nothing and without our knowledge.

      Consider when the IPCC announced the Himalayan glaciers were melting rapidly and 400million Indians were going to die of thirst by 2035? They now admit that was not ‘peer reviewed’. In fact it was just made up and printed as fact, supposedly from a passing comment from a single tour guide and even that is dubious. Then it was a typographical error and meant to be 2350. There was no science, no peer review, no truth.

      Now what’s this about glacier melt rate? Frozen forests. Morraine. Fjords. From our Prime Ministers down, none of this glacier melting rapidly like never before is true. We can only hope we do not head back the other way, about which we can do absolutely nothing.

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    robert rosicka

    Not sure if anyone watched the Trump press conference yesterday when Trump cracked it with a CNN journalist who had his Whitehouse press card removed for his behaviour.
    Watermelons now claim the footage of the journalist pushing an interns arm away has been doctored, he did what he did and deserves to be banned from the Whitehouse and all future press conferences.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-09/sarah-sanders-accused-of-sharing-doctored-jim-acosta-video/10480486

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      OriginalSteve

      No doubt its because something the journo did way back in highschool…

      Hey if its good for the goose….

      The journo in quiestion had a long history causing trouble, and only needed a final straw to finally turf him out.

      Speaking of news, the remaining conservative news service in the USA, Fox News, is apaprently going left wing as the sons of Murdoch take over. The older conservatives in Fox are likely to be shunted into a conservative pay channel to die off in obscurity…..

      its interesting – the sons of Murdoch likely had very good schooling and would know of the evils of socialism, and yet….

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      TdeF

      This has happened many times. CNN argue that Acosta 1) was setup 2) the Whitehouse doctored the video 3) that Trump doesn’t like hard questions 4) that Acosta was assaulted by the intern trying to take the mike etc. etc. Rubbish.

      In fact he has been in directly Trump’s face for many months, as close as he can get, confrontational, demanding more time than anyone else. Trump took questions from 37 other journalists over an hour and a half. Trump is the President and he gets to pick, not Acosta. There are rules of behaviour in a crowded press conference. Acosta was rude, selfish and abusive and not least disrespectful. The heavily loaded questions were also simply allegations. As usual. This is about behaviour, not free speech. As the President said very politely, they simply disagree. Journalists should be trying to extract information, not grandstand and accuse.

      The CNN is the Trump attack channel. Is this anything to do with Global Warming and Glaciers? Of course. By rejecting Paris, Trump is dooming the world to rapid drowning, according to CNN.

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    pat

    7 Nov: InvestorsBusinessDaily editorial: Climate Change Alarmists Suffer Huge Blow In Deep Blue Washington State
    Before the election, glowing stories in the press talked about Washington “taking up the fight” on climate change after President Donald Trump dropped out of the Paris climate deal. The state would make history. It would be a “bellwether,” and would start a trend across the country.
    The initiative proposed a $15 tax on each ton of carbon emissions in the state starting in 2020, with the tax rate climbing each year. It would have cost families in the state nearly $1,000 a year by 2035.

    Keep in mind that the proposed carbon tax was a tiny baby step toward what environmentalists’ claim will be needed to avoid a worldwide climate catastrophe. The United Nations says we’d need a global carbon tax of up to $5,500 to achieve that.
    Washington voters rejected even this minimalist step toward fighting what a large majority of them claim to believe is an existential threat to humanity…

    Think about it this way. Washington is a deep blue state where Trump got less than 37% of the vote in 2016. Only six states in the nation were more anti-Trump.
    Yet 56% of Washington voters rejected the CO2 tax. Only three counties in the state — Jefferson, King (where Seattle is located), and tiny San Juan — voted for the tax.
    This is also a deep green state.

    According to a 2016 survey, more than 80% of its residents “are sure climate change is occurring.” More than two thirds (69%) say they support the state’s taking action to reduce CO2 emissions.
    But when it came time for these voters to put their money where their mouths are, they snapped their purses shut.

    Washington state was a bellwether, as it turns out. It showed how so many of those who wring their hands about “climate change” don’t actually want to do anything about it.

    After all, if they really believed what climate alarmists are saying — that catastrophic warming is ahead unless the entire world takes drastic actions to reduce CO2 emissions immediately — they’d do anything to stop it.

    Arizona Says No
    Meanwhile, in Arizona, voters soundly rejected a high-profile attempt to require state utilities to get 50% of their electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar. (Today, 13% of the state’s energy is from renewables, most of it from hydroelectric dams.)
    Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer poured millions of dollars into that initiative. Fully 70% of Arizona voters opposed it.

    Of course, these defeats won’t stop environmentalists from trying.
    But if they can’t convince a liberal state like Washington that climate change is an urgent threat, what hope do they think they’ll have in the rest of the country?
    https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-carbon-tax-washington-state/

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      pat

      FROM IBD EDITORIAL: According to a 2016 survey, more than 80% of its residents “are sure climate change is occurring.” More than two thirds (69%) say they support the state’s taking action to reduce CO2 emissions…

      28 Nov 2016: PlanWashington blog: Washington State Opinion Polling Shows Strong Support for Climate Action
      by Hans D. Stroo
      One week after voters rejected the carbon tax initiative (I-732), Seattle business leaders met in Seattle to discuss the future of carbon policy. The event began with the release of new poll numbers from research commissioned jointly by The Nature Conservancy and Vulcan Inc…
      Opinion research firm FM3’s Dave Metz presented the results of a freshly completed poll on the opinions and beliefs of Washington State voters regarding I-732 and climate change more generally. FM3 conducted 602 interviews conducted with voters statewide in the days immediately following the election…

      ***Over 80% of Washington voters said they “are sure climate change is occurring.” 62 percent of voters said they believe it’s caused mostly by human activities. Roughly three-quarters of the electorate said they believe climate change will impact their lives personally. ***69% of Washington voters said they support the state of Washington taking action to reduce the carbon pollution that causes climate change, including 48% that hold that position “strongly.” Statewide 61% said they are more likely to support a state legislator who steps up to take action addressing climate change. Only 26% said they would be less likely to support such a legislator…

      This means there’s a 67% majority saying they want to take action on climate change. The bottom line is a strong consensus remains in Washington State on taking action to address climate change. Given the move towards Republican governance on the federal level, Metz offered a prediction: “My suspicion is it’s only going to become more likely… that voters at the state level feel more responsibility and more desire to do something locally to make sure this issue is addressed if they feel progress is being set aside.”
      http://planwashington.org/blog/archive/washington-state-opinion-polling-shows-strong-support-for-climate-action/

      ClimateOne.org: David Metz
      As a Principal Researcher for FM3, David Metz has provided opinion research and strategic guidance to hundreds of non-profit organizations, government agencies, businesses, and political campaigns
      He continues to provide opinion research on key message and policy issues to numerous environmental and conservation organizations, among them The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land, and the Natural Resources Defense Council…
      David Metz received his Bachelor’s degree in Government from Harvard University and his Master’s in Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California-Berkeley.

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        pat

        so how did NBC report the CAGW mid-terms?

        9 Nov: NBC: James Rainey: A mixed vote on global warming: Ballot measures lose, but Democrats gain power
        (James Rainey: Reporter at NBC News digital in Los Angeles. Previously: LA Times and Variety)
        Environmentalists hope Democratic control of the House and several governorships will mean victories against fossil fuels and global warming.
        Environmentalists lost high-profile ballot fights this week to combat climate change and promote conservation. But they took heart that new Democratic control of the U.S. House of Representatives and several governorships could pave the way for future victories against fossil fuels and global warming.

        The biggest loss came in Washington state, where a measure to tax carbon dioxide emissions lost 56 percent to 44 percent, despite backing from a broad coalition of Democratic, environmental, union and Native American groups…

        In a phone call Wednesday, a half dozen environmental groups called the midterm election a success, mostly because of the increased focus they expect their issues to get from a House that will now be controlled by Democrats…

        The election results will accelerate action in the states, said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. Brune said that could mean the shutdown of more coal-fired power plants and tougher regulation of the oil, gas and coal industries. “Governors play a big role in all that,” Brune said.

        The environmental leaders said little about the loss of the Washington carbon tax…
        The leader of the ballot campaign said that, despite the loss, polls still showed that Washingtonians “agree that we must address global warming by weaning our state off of fossil fuels.” Now that campaign will turn to getting 100 percent of the state’s electricity from green sources and “electrifying” cars and trucks, the No. 1 source of global warming pollution, said Bruce Speight, director of Environment Washington, an environmental research and advocacy group…
        https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mixed-vote-global-warming-ballot-measures-lose-democrats-gain-power-n933766

        1 Nov: NBC: James Rainey: Washington eyes nation’s first state carbon tax to combat global warming
        “It could be a game-changer in the fight against climate change,” the executive director of the Sierra Club said.
        Initiative 1631 has inspired record spending, feisty debate and the intervention of powerful interests — from oil companies to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg…
        Two years after Washingtonians rejected a similar measure, an early-October poll showed the new carbon tax standing right at the majority needed for passage. In a Crosscut/Elway Poll completed Oct. 9, Initiative 1631 received support from 50 percent of those surveyed, with 36 percent opposed and 14 percent undecided. Among likely voters, the measure did even better, receiving 57 percent support. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 points…

        “With the Trump administration going backwards on fighting climate change, states around the country are taking matters into their own hands,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “I-1631 holds polluters accountable while investing in clean energy … It could be a game-changer in the fight against climate change.”…
        https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/washington-eyes-nation-s-first-state-carbon-tax-combat-global-n926416

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    pat

    7 Nov: WUWT: Anthony Watts: Uncritical News Media Gave Blanket Coverage To Flawed Climate Paper
    From the GWPF:
    A week ago, we were told that climate change was worse than we thought. But the underlying science contains a major error.
    Independent climate scientist Nicholas Lewis has uncovered a major error in a recent scientific paper that was given blanket coverage in the English-speaking media. The paper, written by a team led by Princeton oceanographer Laure Resplandy, claimed that the oceans have been warming faster than previously thought. It was announced, in news outlets including the BBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post and Scientific American that this meant that the Earth may warm even faster than currently estimated…READ ON
    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/07/uncritical-news-media-gave-blanket-coverage-to-flawed-climate-paper/

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  • #
    OriginalSteve

    Any news on Peter Ridds fight?

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    pat

    8 Nov: RenewEconomy: Victoria Labor boosts renewable energy target to 50% by 2030
    by Sophie Vorrath
    Daniel Andrews’ Labor, meanwhile, has gone hard in the other direction, with a slew of policy announcements ranging from household solar and battery rebates, to support for microgrids, large-scale wind and solar farms and batteries; and – just today – a new announcement on solar for renters.
    “In four short years, 732MW of new renewable energy capacity has been built, and more than 3,000MW of renewable capacity is under construction or contracted to be built,” Labor said in a statement on Thursday.

    “Victoria’s first renewable energy auction is delivering 928MW of renewable energy, with the six projects across the state producing enough electricity to power 646,273 households – the equivalent of powering the towns of Ballarat, Bendigo, and Geelong combined.
    “The power produced by these projects is also expected to drive a 16 per cent reduction in Victoria’s electricity sector greenhouse gas emissions by 2034/35.

    “Boosting the VRET builds on the government’s work to cut power bills for Victorians, from the $50 Power Saving Bonus, to subsidising solar panels and installing batteries or hot water systems on 720,000 houses across the state through the Solar Homes program – ***driving down energy prices and greenhouse gas emissions,” it said…

    “The industry is not calling for new subsidy, but we do need investment certainty,” said Clean Energy Council chief Kane Thornton in a statement on Thursday…
    “Building new low-cost clean energy such as solar and wind before our ageing coal-fired plants retire is the most effective way to ***drive down power prices for Victorian energy customers.”
    https://reneweconomy.com.au/victoria-labor-boosts-renewable-energy-target-to-50-by-2030/

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    pat

    all about infrastructure? where are Victoria’s solar panels manufactured?

    8 Nov: FlindersNews: AAP: Make China deal public over time: Shorten
    Victoria’s secret deal with China’s infrastructure program should be released to the public at some point, Labor leader Bill Shorten says…
    “I think over time, agreements that governments enter into – MoUs – should be available to the public.”…

    “There’s no departure from the convention, which is why I think you’ve got the federal government out there today having to explain why their MOU, which I think they signed only a few months ago, ***hasn’t been made public either,” Mr Andrews told reporters…

    WA’s Labor premier Mark McGowan said his Liberal predecessor Colin Barnett signed “numerous” memorandums of understanding on Chinese infrastructure dating back to 2011.
    “I don’t know why the issue of Daniel Andrews is being treated differently to that of Colin Barnett seven years ago – I think that’s an important question,” he told reporters…

    Centre Alliance’s Rex Patrick is preparing to spark a Senate inquiry into the deal, as well as Australia’s approach to China’s infrastructure plans, when the upper house sits in Canberra on Monday…
    https://www.theflindersnews.com.au/story/5746578/make-china-deal-public-over-time-shorten/

    30 Jul: SMH: Foreign Affairs ministry opts for secrecy over China infrastructure agreement
    By David Wroe
    The Turnbull government has refused to release an agreement it signed with China covering the controversial “Belt and Road Initiative” infrastructure program on the grounds Beijing does not want it made public.
    Trade Minister Steven Ciobo signed the memorandum of understanding last September for cooperation on building infrastructure such as roads, bridges and dams in third countries – including under the Belt and Road Initiative – during a visit to Beijing…

    Mr Ciobo told Fairfax Media that “both parties are required to agree to release the text of the MOU and China has not agreed to do so”.
    In response to the FOI application by Fairfax Media, department official Elly Lawson said MOUs were “held to be confidential between the parties unless otherwise agreed”.
    “As there is no such agreement in the current case, the element of confidentiality remains,” she said in a written response.
    “In my opinion, disclosure without the express consent of the Chinese government would also damage the government’s relationship with China … as well as with other governments and international organisations with whom Australia has concluded MOUs.”…

    By contrast, New Zealand signed a memorandum of arrangement covering cooperation with China on the BRI last year and released the document in full.
    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/foreign-affairs-ministry-opts-for-secrecy-over-china-infrastructure-agreement-20180730-p4zufm.html

    Victoria election: BRI deal a big step forward, says Colin Barnett
    The Australian – 12 hrs ago
    Former West Australian Liberal premier Colin Barnett has backed the Victorian … Victorian Labor government’s decision to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative but he … has done in signing the MOU if it’s in Victoria’s interests,” Mr Barnett said. … WA Labor Premier Mark McGowan also backed Mr Andrews …

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    pat

    9 Nov: ABC: Sharks ‘bigger and fatter’ and numbers ‘out of control’ in north Queensland, fisher says
    Mr Katter joined the LNP’s federal Hinkler MP Keith Pitt in calling for a shark cull, despite shark researchers dismissing the move as ineffective and the Queensland Government ruling out the placement of permanent drum lines in the Whitsundays…

    Bruce Batch has worked for the same commercial fishery for almost 48 years and fishes in waters from Townsville to Princess Charlotte Bay in far north Queensland.
    He said environmental campaigns and a halving in commercial catch numbers by a former federal Labor government had driven a spike in the state’s shark population…

    Mr Batch said there used to be a shark take of roughly 1,200 tonnes in Queensland but that was halved by the former federal Labor environment minister Peter Garrett…

    Mr Batch said the issue had also been compounded by the number of net-free and green zones in Queensland waters.
    “They sound like a good idea but they themselves were keeping a lot of the bull sharks in control,” he said…

    He said environmental groups campaigned against what he described as a very sustainable fishery industry, and persuaded major supermarkets to remove shark meat, known as flake, from shelves.
    “All the pensioners and older people used to be able to afford a feed of fish but they can’t afford that $60 to $70 per kilo stuff now,” he said.
    “This was a very sustainable industry until WWF [World Wildlife Fund] got involved in it and there are very very few people now who use flake, despite the fact there’s nothing wrong with it.

    “We used to have a 1,200-tonne take a year in Queensland and that now is probably down to less than 100 tonnes and those sharks are still getting caught but you haven’t got a market for them so you can’t use them — you just discard them.”
    Mr Batch said everyone attending today’s round table meeting at Airlie Beach needed to go out with fishermen who were regularly in the area to see the shark numbers for themselves.
    “When you’re out here on the water and you see the amount of sharks and the amount of large sharks, it’s out of control and I don’t know what the answer is,” he said…

    People need to learn better co-exist with sharks
    Marine biologist Richard Fitzpatrick said the first step to finding a solution was to research the environment and sharks involved.
    He said people needed to learn to better co-exist with the predators, as they have with other dangerous animals…
    He said funding was needed to research the types of sharks involved…
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-09/shark-numbers-out-of-control-north-qld-commercial-fisher-says/10480520

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    pat

    9 Nov: ABC: Water prices double, makes farmers think twice about profitability of crops
    ABC Riverland By Nadia Isa
    Growers are struggling to keep up with doubling water prices brought on by little rain and high demand…
    Current water entitlement prices are estimated at a little less than $5,000 per megalitre and some stakeholders have predicted the value will rise to more than $7,000 before Christmas…

    Adding to the monetary strain for irrigators, less water is now available for growers because more than 2,000 gigalitres of water is now owned by the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder, which irrigation experts have labelled ‘significant’ as roughly 30 per cent of water has been taken out of the system.
    The transfer of water was part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan to ensure environmental benefits could occur to look after the Murray River and the ecology around the river.
    “While that’s a good thing … the irrigation community now do not have access to that 2,200 gigalitres worth of water,” Mr Duggin said…READ ON
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-09/increasing-water-market-making-farmers-think-twice/10474518

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    William

    What is very noticeable from the animation is how remarkable stable the temperature was for millennia, staying exactly the same and only rising at the end, just like a hockey stick!

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    pat

    8 Nov: The Hill: Appeals court grants Trump admin request to stay youth climate lawsuit
    By John Bowden
    A federal appeals court in Oregon on Thursday granted a motion from the Trump administration for a temporary stay in a lawsuit brought forward by a group of young people who argue that the government is violating their rights by not adequately battling climate change.

    The Associated Press reported Thursday that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a 15-day stay (LINK) in the case for either it or the Supreme Court to consider a motion (LINK) by the Trump administration to dismiss the case…

    Philip Gregory, a co-counsel for the plaintiffs, told the AP that he hoped the temporary stay would be followed by the trial proceeding as planned…
    “Given the urgency of climate change, we hope the Ninth Circuit will recognize the importance to these young Americans of having a prompt trial date,” Gregory said.
    “We are pleased this stay is only temporary,” he added. “We want to commence presenting the climate science in court as soon as possible.”…
    https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/415865-appeals-court-grants-trump-admin-request-to-hold-youth-climate

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      William

      They want to present the science in court? Excellent! I hope the trial goes ahead and that the Administration calls expert witnesses for the defence -Richard Lindzen and Judith Curry for a start, and Christopher Monckton would be great it in court!

      We would finally have a situation where sceptics and alarmists would be under oath and being cross examined. My money will be on the sceptics!

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        Kinky Keith

        Well the truth would be on the side of the sceptics but is that necessarily useful in court?

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          William

          Keith, the plaintiffs will need to bring in their experts to prove their case. Few of them would be able to stand up against a well briefed barrister whereas the sceptics are well practised on science rather than scare tactics.

          Alarmist scientists have been avoiding debating sceptics so this might be the next best option.

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            Kinky Keith

            I’d love to see it.
            A professor of Physics.
            A Metallurgist for the dysfunctional Modelling, complex process interactions and mass, heat and momentum transfer assessments.
            A professor of Geology to recount the sea level movements of the last half a million years.
            And so on.

            Interesting.

            KK

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              pat

              lol.

              Our Children’s Trust: The science
              Internationally renowned climatologist James Hansen provides his work in support of our youth’s efforts…
              To understand how the climate science intertwines with our legal actions, take a look at the Declaration Dr. Hansen filed in our case now pending at the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. Read Dr. Hansen’s Declaration here (LINK)..
              https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/the-science/

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                Kinky Keith

                I can’t watch it.

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                Graeme No.3

                Wanting to go back to 350 ppm CO2 and 1℃ maximum warming above the Little Ice Age surely indicate that James Hansen needs a long stay in a quiet place isolated from the real world. He needs asylum.

                But such a position might be open to a certain amount of difficulty if the facts that a thousand years ago the world was warmer than now without civilization collapsing and the life of the population actually improving were to be introduced.

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    pat

    the unelected making demands as usual:

    9 Nov: BBC: Climate change: NI pension fund ‘not doing enough’
    By Conor Macauley, BBC NI Agriculture & Environment Correspondent
    Northern Ireland’s biggest pension fund is not doing enough to protect its investments from the risk of climate change, environmentalists have claimed.
    The Northern Ireland Local Government Pension Scheme (NILGOSC) has 118,000 members employed by public bodies.
    They include education and library boards, universities, councils and Translink.

    A report by Friends of the Earth and Platform London assessed 17 local government pension funds in the UK.
    It found the one in Northern Ireland had a high exposure to fossil fuel investments compared to the UK average…
    Last year environmentalists called on NILGOSC to take its money out of oil and gas…

    Deirdre Duff, from Friends of the Earth, said less than 20% of fossil fuel reserves could be used if countries were to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement.
    “It makes neither ethical nor financial sense to invest in the fossil fuel industry when such a proportion of its assets are unburnable,” she said.
    She added that fossil fuel investments were “morally indefensible” and posed a risk to funds by sinking money into “soon to be devalued” gas oil and coal companies.
    Sakina Sheikh, from Platform London, said those who managed workers’ pensions had a responsibility to ensure they were not locked into “stranded assets”.

    Last year, campaigners claimed that the Northern Ireland Pension Fund had £155m tied up in fossil fuel companies.
    Fund managers said its total pension pot was £7.7bn
    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-46146866

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      Graeme No.3

      Simple solution……fire lots of public servants, starting with useless Departments for renewable energies and predictable nonsense etc.

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    robert rosicka

    OT (sorry Chad)

    There’s been another attack in Melbourne by a man who stabbed some bystanders and attacked two cops , not a terrorist incident according to police and can’t mention anything to do with him but dressed as a duck looked like a duck I’m calling it a duck .

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    pat

    unattributed, but it’s an AFP report:

    8 Nov: Times Now News: Donald Trump to snub Emmanuel Macron’s ‘Peace Forum’ on Armistice weekend
    Emmanuel Macron has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump’s “America First” policies and of his decisions to pull out of international agreements such as the Paris climate accord, and the Iran nuclear deal.
    Trump is due in the French capital along with around 70 other leaders for a ceremony on the Champs-Elysees on Sunday morning to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the war. Many of the invitees, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Germany’s Angela Merkel, are then expected to attend the opening of the inaugural Paris Peace Forum, which Macron will host.

    Ending uncertainty about whether the US leader would participate, chief organiser Justin Vaisse confirmed to AFP on Thursday that Trump did not plan to attend. In an interview earlier this week, Vaisse had played down the importance of his presence and said the Forum was part of Macron’s efforts to organise a “fightback” against the threat of rising nationalism.
    “The aim of the forum is to show that there are lots of forces in the international system — states, NGOs, foundations, intellectuals, companies — who believe we need a world of rules, an open world and a multilateral world,” he said. “This world needs to meet up and defend itself,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if those who don’t believe in multilateralism aren’t there.”…

    Macron has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s “America First” policies and of his decisions to pull out of international agreements such as the Paris climate accord etc…
    Macron, a pro-EU centrist elected last year, has used the WWI commemorations to issue a series of warnings about the rise of nationalism across the world — embodied by Trump — and has likened it to “leprosy”.
    “I am struck by similarities between the times we live in and those of between the two world wars,” he told a French newspaper earlier this month. The 40-year-old hopes the three-day forum will become an annual gathering of political leaders and civil society groups to discuss democracy — along the same lines as the Davos meeting in Switzerland, which is devoted to economics…

    With its workshops and roundtable discussions devoted to global governance, climate change or internet regulation, it is not hard to see why Trump, who has consistently attacked international institutions, decided to skip it. “It’s completely contrary to his agenda,” said Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank, told AFP. “And he doesn’t like conferences.”

    Shapiro, who will moderate a discussion on philanthropy at the Forum, said he expected the mood to be downbeat following recent electoral developments that have seen Brazil turn to a far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. “My mood is pretty grim,” he said, adding that part of the problem was that Macron and Merkel, the biggest counterforces internationally to right-wing nationalism, were both weakened figures.
    “Macron has fallen in the polls and doesn’t look quite as shiny and new as he did a year ago,” Shapiro said. “Obviously Merkel has had similar problems, but at a different point in her political career.”…
    https://www.timesnownews.com/international/article/donald-trump-to-snub-emmanuel-macrons-peace-forum-on-armistice-weekend/311130

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    pat

    behind paywall, but apparently by Maurice Newman:

    Zero at the equator? The so-called climate experts have gone troppo
    The Australian-17 hours ago
    … to agencies inventing “warming” trends and confess that “unapproved data sets” were used to sensationalise headlines ahead of the Paris climate conference.

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    Philip Mulholland

    It’s a model, and like all model’s it demonstrates the limitations of the modeller’s knowledge and data. On a family holiday to Switzerland in the 1960s, we drove from Lucerne to Lugano via the St Gotthard Pass. In those days the tunnel did not exist and they were just starting to build the express route, so our road was the old pavement via the 6,900 feet summit. On the descent into the Canton of Ticino, I was astonished at the depth of the U shaped glaciated valley occupied by the River Ticino. Years later, on a visit to Riva del Garda, we viewed Lake Garda extending south into the distance, filling a glaciated trough of again enormous size, with a barrier moraine at the lake’s southern end, where it reaches the plains of the Po valley.

    The model fails to show Lake Garda being filled with ice, even at peak glaciation 24,280 years ago, and I conclude that the precipitation data being used here, massively underestimates the volumes of ice that existed on the southern flanks of the Alps.
    Lake Garda: An Outstanding Archive of Quaternary Geomorphological Evolution

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