JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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Statistics
G’Day all,
I recently had cause to examine rather carefully the official documentation published about the NOAA-20 satellite.
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/JPSS-1
The condition of the images provided are supposed to be first light captured from some of the instruments aboard that satellite. Check out the Thomas Fire image, I knew that satellite data cannot lie, but I did not know that satellites could see state/country boundaries from way up there!
/sarc off
30
Is there something you are specifically wanting us to see. That is a very long page you linked to.
What is wrong with the first light photos?
33
Do you deny the cold Mr leaf ?
40
what cold? Maybe don’t tell me and leave it is a zen sort of statement.
17
You mean where is the heat? Stuff happens.
20
Well Mr. Leaf, if I told you all the things I find wrong with that publication I would fill several pages and you would learn nothing.
The ability to look and not see would it seem to be inherent in your psyche. I will give you just one clue.
How is it that a satellite image has state/country boarders clearly visible?
70
“How is it that a satellite image has state/country boarders clearly visible?”
Possibly to enable a viewer to identify a country/state/county/etc. when there is dense cloud cover?
It must be a doddle to superimpose any information required onto an image.
10
yes. It is an overlay. Someone thought it would help but it seems to upset Slithers. Perhaps Slithers you could direct your critique to the people who posted the photos as there is not much we can do, even if we cared, about your issue.
23
I am guessing you are looking at https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/assets/images/NOAA201.png
They are not border lines… they are composite lines… It’s a satellite image. The satellite doesn’t cover the whole thing at once, so they have to make a composite. Some of the lines do coincide slightly with the state borders whenever it happens to the border being a straight line, but I’d say that is just coincidence.
20
Composite liness i can understand, but what about the neat white coastal outlines ?
Perfect white sand/ surf exactly the same all along the coasts ?
30
Hmmm ?
My first reply seems to have dissapeared, but no matter.
Looking closely, they are obviously not composite lines..they are very specificaly added on manually.
As is the coastal outline .
40
I doubt it. It would be a doddle to scale geographic information to match the resolution of the image, and superimpose it.
00
Hook line and sinker!
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/JPSS-1 is the link I posted. I specifically pointed to the Thomas Fire image.
There are white lines in many places on that image. To look at those lines, click and save that image as a separate file, open that file with ‘PHOTO’ zoom in and move around the map follow those lines and have a good laugh at the deception being published as truth.
Those white lines follow California’s boarder. The white lines around the coast do not follow the coast exactly. The image is oriented North/South, the satellite (NOAA-20) travels along an inclined orbit around 9 degrees off true north. The Satellite travels at 6.5 km per second, there is no possibility that the image is from first light, it MAY be constructed from some first/2nd/nth images.
Almost a century ago two little girls captured and got published a photo of some fairies, some people still believe that is a true photo.
A picture is worth more than a thousand words, especially when the publisher has an agenda and constructs a fabrication and then labels it as Truth.
The notion the publishers wish to impart is that Satellite data cannot lie. One of their motives is to keep getting government funding (Your Tax $$$). The less I say about other motivations the better.
Published Satellite data has had grubby human hands and computer algorithms applied to it.
We have to learn how to see rather than just look.
50
Slithers , you link doesnt get you to the image.
You need this
https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/search/content/Thomas%20fires
40
It was never intended to. Instructions on how to look a what was published to get you the file that you can then look at using ‘Photo’ were given.
My suggestion to look at the Thomas Fire image was to get people to look and then ‘See’ the things that are not ‘right’ with images purporting to be Truthful images of what a satellite can see. If you Look at the other images published in that link there are other anomalies that the general public don’t see or care about.
Satellite data cannot lie, don’t you know!
00
Published Satellite data has had grubby human hands and computer algorithms applied to it.
Of course it does, otherwise you would not be able to interpret it.
Your 1st, 2nd, nth image analogy sounds like the technique of creating a composite large panoramic image of, say, Woodland, an ancient Windmill and a Church, from a moving train with a snapshot camera. It can be done, cutting and pasting contiguous images that overlap each other at their edges.
The foreground won’t look much because of the train’s speed, but the subjects are OK.
Now, is that image truly a lie?
Fortunately, the satellites have little foreground in space.
“First Light” appears to be a flexible term relating to first use of a camera and/or telescope, including the first creation of a composite image from same.
10
you are ruining a burgeoning conspiracy. One that Slithers owns (and can keep).
01
Hello all,
You seem to have missed my point completely, so you all swallowed the published data, deception and all, hook, line and sinker.
The OFFICIAL publication contains a few images with captions that state that those images are from instruments aboard NOAA-20 (JPSS1). The narrative does actually say that there has been some composition and even gives reference to the organizations that did that, ie the grubby hands and computer algorithms.
My point is that many, indeed most people seeing those captions and images will believe what they see and not read the rest of the wording and never look further, they will accept the wonders of satellite images.
I recommend that you position your mouse on the Thomas Fire image, click and save that image then open it with ‘Photo’ zoom in and walk around the image. There are quite a few anomalies contained there. Coast lines don’t quite match, the image is with North/South orientation, the satellite is travelling at an incline to n/s of some 9 degrees. Look at those horizontal lines they are stepped and surprise surprise those steps equate to an ‘adjustment’ of 9 degrees.
So someone created several composits of California and surrounding land/coast, fiddled with the scale and then fiddled with the satellite data and joined the dots.
THEY THEN MAKE STATEMENTS that it is first light from instruments aboard NOAA-20.
If that was done by a company selling a product, the false advertising people would have a field day, But OFFICIAL publications are never questioned!
They want to get people to believe they are as pure as driven snow!
20
shocking. how aweful.
00
How awful, or simply awesome.
Give Gee a job at Macquarie dictionary.
20
yeah… I almost always automatically stick in the e and don’t always edit it out.
00
“The OFFICIAL publication contains a few images with captions that state that those images are from instruments aboard NOAA-20 (JPSS1).”
Which they are. The output of the instruments are processed in near real time specifically to provide images that are easily interpreted by we humans.
Hence white ice, blue waters, green(ish) vegetation, etc.
“Coast lines don’t quite match”
Er, of course not.
When superimposing a flat map onto a “global” image, there will be some distortion.
I think that they made a good job of it.
“the image is with North/South orientation, the satellite is travelling at an incline to n/s of some 9 degrees”
Yup. But I think that most of us prefer a geographical image to be oriented NS. It just seems right, somehow.
“Look at those horizontal lines they are stepped”
The only horizontal and vertical lines (of the Nevada, Arizona, Utah borders) are not stepped.
Those maps that show these borders as horizontal and vertical, represent the Californiaa/Mexico border as gently sloping down to the Pacific Coast.
(At 9 degrees? If you say so. What a coinkydinky!)
“So someone created several composits of California and surrounding land/coast, fiddled with the scale and then fiddled with the satellite data and joined the dots.”
So, someone superimposed a line drawing of a map onto an image generated from the satellite’s data.
Wow! That really is suspicious!
“THEY THEN MAKE STATEMENTS that it is first light from instruments aboard NOAA-20.”
The instruments’ data are downloaded for processing and programs process that data to produce images intelligible to humans.
And the first time they do this is, apparently, First Light.
(To repeat myself: First Light appears to be a flexible term relating to first use of a camera and/or telescope, including the first creation of a composite image from same.
Confusingly, it is also the name of a French company that provided technical assistance to the JPL.)
00
There is some availability of real time data processing when the satellite is in line of site of the receiver being used. The ATMS instrument along generates 100 Gig of data every 12 hrs which is downloaded to Slavabad in northern Sweden. VERY large super computers are needed to process that data. See my comment above and use Zoom to look at those images.
00
I had not expected a reply but the weather outside is frightful, so I popped into Jo Nova’s site and peered into the murky corners of the blog.
See my comment above and use Zoom to look at those images.
Ho hum. That is what I did.
The image is oriented to North South (because that is what the Man on the Clapham Omnibus expects) and a low resolution simple line map of salient features “superimposed” upon it.
The only Horizontal and Vertical Lines are those of the State borders in the top right hand corner. They are not stepped, merely ragged because their lower resolution has been “upscaled” to that of the high resolution image.
The simple line map has stepped borders with Nevada and Mexico. Again a lower resolution image “upscaled” to a high resolution image.
So, a combination of ragged and stepped lines, not quite delineated lakes, coasts, etc. are merely due to combining a low resolution image with a high resolution image.
00
you bothered? Well done.
00
Not true that boarder runs along a line of latitude. The steps indicate quite clearly that is the Hand of Man whp fiddled with the image.
WHICH is my entire point!
They publish images claiming to be what they are NOT!!!!! So now go look at the coast line that sometimes is several KM out of alignment.
Look at San Fran Bay, NOT ANY INDICATION OF THE EARTH’s curvature.
Like I said if this was a company advert the false advertising authorities would be all over it and them!
10
“Not true that boarder runs along a line of latitude. The steps indicate quite clearly that is the Hand of Man who fiddled with the image.”
Try “Not true; that border runs along a line of latitude.”
It certainly does, but the data from the satellite is remapped to a Mercator grid, to eliminate overlapping pixels, and other graphic distortions that hinder the interpretation of the image.
(Mercator: Lines of Latitude are Horizontal, Lines of Longitude are Vertical.)
This is a known and accepted procedure. It is in the literature.
So, it was a doddle to take a Mercator line map of California without text, scale it to the Satellite image, and project it onto the map.
“So now go look at the coast line that sometimes is several KM out of alignment.”
However, it ain’t a certainty that an ad hoc image is going to project 100%, the twiddly bits may not map, but this is a First Light proof of concept exercise.
“Look at San Fran Bay, NOT ANY INDICATION OF THE EARTH’s curvature.”
Mercator removes the Earth’s curvature, it projects the globe onto a cylinder. I.E. a flat image.
[Snip. Lets not get personal – Jo]
00
The caption states First Light from VIIR.
The image is a fabrication.
Just how much of that image is from the VIIR instrument???
Check it out and see that only about 10% of that image is VIRR data.
Satellite data cannot lie, don’t you know but NOAA can and does use deception with impunity.
10
VIIRS: A 22-band radiometer that
collects infrared and visible light data to observe weather, climate, oceans, nightlight, wildfires, movement of ice, and changes in vegetation and landforms.
landform
“Geology.
A specific geomorphic feature on the surface of the earth, ranging from large-scale features such as plains, plateaus, and mountains to minor features such as hills, valleys, and alluvial fans.”
“Just how much of that image is from the VIIR instrument???” Instruments
Other than the superimposed borders – 100%. (Or nearly so, as other sensors might contribute data useful in constructing that image.)
“Satellite data cannot lie, don’t you know, but NOAA can and does use deception with impunity.”
In this instance, to what end?
(And they have done so very well, 8 years of VIIRS images and nobody has found them out!)
00
SMH Story about insurers talking of the “climate risk” and how it changes everything in terms of insurability.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/qbe-warns-of-climate-risk-as-300m-hit-to-revenue-alongside-unusual-weather-20200217-p541e3.html
Insurers are pretty smart. They’re the ultimate bookies. So I wonder what they’re really doing here? Is it a cover story for them? A smoke and mirrors justification for them to increase premiums and deny cover to those they’d rather not cover?
90
The “Climate Risk” according to an actuary friend, is the political risk that climate legislation will impact
coverages and payouts. This can happen in a variety of ways, as the payout circumstances can change long after the
premiums are collected. A huge issue in Florida would be if rising water were blamed officially on “climate”
which was “Foreseeable”, rather than categorized as flood, which is exempt from property & casualty if one doesn’t
carry specific flood insurance.
70
How former stratosphere gets near to surface rapidly and continuously:
For those wondering how such ultra-dry 0.0% relative humidity stratospheric air can intrude so rapidly down to the lower-troposphere level, I produced the following .gif animation. It neatly displays how incredibly efficient, rapid and direct the process can be, taking less than 24 hours to get from the lower stratosphere almost to the surface. I’ve seen it as low as 2,000 ft. It mixes in and dilutes quickly at such low altitudes so loses its identity rapidly. The sinking formerly stratospheric air often takes this sort of route displayed (but there are others), which is particularly clearly seen within the Equatorial-Jet’s supporting adjacent Lows and Highs, which greatly speed up the descent of ultra -dry air that powers the jet flow which is straddling the equator, currently.
Jet flow currently straddling the Equator (plus notes):
https://i.ibb.co/vvJ2dMX/Equatorial-Jets-Geopotential-Pressure-Screenshot-2020-02-18-Windy-as-forecasted.png
The sinking cold ultra-dry air warms as it sinks, because it is compressing as it falls (but still remains colder than its surroundings at the lower altitudes). It either creates a full tropospheric depth low extending down from the base of the stratosphere, or else it enters the top of an existing cold-core Low. This amplifies the Low in the upper and mid-levels. Once a stratosphere air column is inside the low the air falls venturi-like down to about 18,000 ft where it moves out of the Low’s core, and forms and enters a lower-tropospheric High, in the following instance a High forms immediately beside the strong mid-level Low to accommodate the sinking former stratosphere air, and deliver it near to the surface.
This lower stratospheric Low continues all the way down to the ocean’s surface as does the High it sinks within, which High drops from about 18,000 foot level down to sea level. I’ve seen this sort of close association of Low and High several times, especially with respect to the novel eastern-Pacific and tropical Atlantic Equatorial-jetstream Lows and Highs.
Detailed GIF animation of stratosphere rapidly sinking into a cold-core Low to the near surface:
https://i.ibb.co/DMjb4KT/Zero-Percent-RH-Stratospheric-Air-Intrusion-Mechanism.gif
This rapid descent of copious amounts of dry stratosphere in the mid-latitudes then tends to create very strong jetstream flows adjacent and downstream of the resulting pool of ultra-dry air. Thus the stratospheric air can come down very quickly and continuously, in large volumes, within such full troposphere depth high or Lows, or in a combination of full depth Lows and lower level High. The high generally drops it lower and distributes it within the High’s radially-dispersing trade-wind flow, nearer to the surface (which will become drier and colder due to a sharp increase in OLR associated with the ultra dry air intruding to low level, especially in the tropics and sub-tropics).
I suspect we’ll be building scores of new drought-mitigation dams in the next decade no matter what the greenie punks and fools say if such rapidly sinking air remains a global feature affecting planetary weather for the next several decades.
IMO this is going to create greater weather variability of all kinds. That will be the primary effect felt. Summers days will become hotter, Winters will get colder, stormier and snowier. But the rising OLR trend will cumulatively lean the planet back towards natural cooling, a return cycle for the prior natural warming phase.
But when the rate of falling becomes very high the jetstream gets so fast plus so deep that it can contact the ground, and create much more severe weather events. This can also create standing stable jet structures which can sit over the same region for months to years and create periods of very damaging weather (repeated floods, blizzards, cyclones major drought, very cold or very hot). All weather variability increases, and in very unexpected ways and locations as the location of the in-falling determines the structures and connections of the jet’s Highs and Lows, and this determines the surface weather trends under them.
You can be in a very lucky location, or a very unlucky location. As we saw this year, Central Asia and northern Pakistan were rather unlucky, while the UK and Western Europe are a bit unlucky right now. All countries are going to be at the mercy of where the stratospheric air intrudes and the rate at which it intrudes there. The faster the rate of in-fall the more variable the weather will become, and the sooner the increased OLR causes the Earth’s surface layer to cool. The very current excited state of the global jetstream indicates that the rate of in-fall is currently high and continuous. If sustained we’ll feel more severe effects from here. Whatever the jetstream ‘structure’ is upstream, is what you can expect to keep getting. For instance, Iceland, Norway, Saudi, Iran and Central Asia have been getting very high snowfall since about Christmas. That pattern will roughly continue for as long as the sinking stratosphere keeps producing the same structures in the same locations.
Eastern North America is producing very strong jets one after another, affecting the UK, but they’re weakening.
https://i.ibb.co/z2snmCg/Screenshot-2020-02-18-Windy-as-forecasted.jpg
It keeps occurring because of the huge pool of sinking stratosphere at 45 k feet:
https://i.ibb.co/9T4Z2nP/Screenshot-2020-02-18-Windy-as-forecasted.png
I’m guessing that eventually a multi-year sustained rise in solar activity will be what returns us to a lower-rate of stratospheric sinking, thus OLR will drop and humidity will rise once again and the planet will gradually warm and green once more.
CO2 is effectively an irrelevant GHG in the stratospheric sinking process and will contribute almost nothing to weather stemming from it.
161
WX,
Interesting. Did this type of downwelling intrusion exist forever (so far as we know) or are you postulating new and likely to be common in future? You make a few assumptions that you might benefit from explaining in more detail. Geoff S
60
I’m entirely guessing that its always been present Geoff, but that it drops to a very low level during the last multi-decade warming phase (i.e. it could add to intermittent seasonal variability during some years), but it has now suddenly re-emerged in high volume once more, from mid to late last-Spring. It was almost certainly increasing unnoticed prior to that, for a year or more. My suspicion is the switch to overt sinking tendency in higher volume, which finally affects the jetstream as strongly as it does now, developed over many years.
Possibly it tips to more rapid sinking due to lowered solar activity but I have no basis for asserting that except there is a real cause at work here, and that seems to be the most likely option. That’s what I’m thinking for now, but I’m spending most of my time just trying to notice and understand what’s occurring because its expression is still evolving fairly quickly. I’ll think more about a mechanism when the dynamics become more stale. Hopefully someone else will figure out the causal mechanisms first so we can focus on it while it is still occurring.
I certainly welcome an opportunity to explore the possibilities or questions to try to better understand it.
90
Exactly.
Turbulence?
Well, it’s Turbulent, and keeps heading off in all different directions.
It needs to be observed but it’s relevance to the global warming thing is obscure.
The issue that’s causing us all so much grief is the politicisation of the matter so that someone else can gouge and skim from the public.
There’s no legal status to this activity and no physical basis for the claim that CO2 causes Global Warming.
We are Nominally a Democracy; under this present situation we are nothing but Slaves fighting a nonsense enemy in the form of a harmless gas that is in fact, the Gas of Life.
That’s the issue.
KK
00
Does solar modulation determine the height of the atmosphere?
I need to know whether the troposphere or stratosphere shrinks when the sun is quiet, so that I can understand precisely what causes the jet stream to meander?
21
I can’t say. All I do know is that during late Nov and mid-Dec 2019 the jets were ~5k ft lower than normal (down from 34k ft to ~30k ft). But as the jets generally accelerated their core speed zone expanded vertically, as well, so the jets ceased to be found at only one main altitude, thy could be seen to be at similar elevated speeds at 24k, 30k, 34k, and 39k, simultaneously and oscillated vertically as they moved east in time. I even saw extreme speeds at 45k ft.
What occurs is the jet passes in-between a stronger Low and stronger High, and this is what accelerates it. It accelerates because the air in it is being squeezed more tightly from either side by the steeper pressure gradient, so it can only expand vertically, it’s too constricted to expand any other way. So it must expand both upwards and downwards simultaneously. And it oscillates as the elevation of the squeezing Low and the High varies. The pressure gradient in never at a uniform height. Hence the vertical oscillations.
As for dynamic meridianal eastwards flow arrangements, I think that’s a problem because as I’ve recently described the jets have emerged a sustained structure, that’s being produced and held in place by sinking stratosphere locations and patterns.
The result has been what’s seen within this screen link. A massive zonal jet that stretched 2/3rds of the way around the planet and was (and still is) locked in place, but it’s gradually degrading (for now) after emerging at the beginning of January 2020.
https://i.ibb.co/Ydx26zK/1-Equatorial-Jet-FORECAST-on-2nd-Jan-2019-ECMWF-Mosaic.png
It was that LOCKED jet STRUCTURE which gave rise to the equatorial jets, which you can see forming in that screen.
So as I see it this in-falling stratosphere actually interfered with a strong and sustained meridianal flow pattern developing within the sub-tropical jet (which is indeed more equatorward, as expected), and instead the meridianal movement was seen to be occurring mostly within an expanded, deeper and more visible and active polar-jet (which no one really expected). And the locked structure prevented the expected more meridianal flows from developing.
Instead I see locked jets with more blocking structures defined by where the stratosphere sinks in, in volume. So the sort of arrangement envisioned by Stephen Wilde is not what’s actually occurring, it’s actually much more interesting and structured.
Frankly, the realization that extremely strong deep jets that simultaneously reach both the lower stratosphere and all the way to the surface, can become locked in place, for many months, is far more disturbing from a weather extremes point of view. This I think is much more worrying for affected regions and a jet that moves off. As we see right now the UK has been hit by two very strong but rapidly decaying mega-jets moving east. And a third major jet is going to cross the UK during this week, and a further weaker jet will follow on after that. So the bad weather conditions in the UK are far from over. There’s much more wind, rain, snow and high waves coming. If that went on for 3 or 4 months straight (and now can if the stratosphere sinks in an inopportune somewhat ‘locked’ location), the UK would be a bit of mess after it. Fortunately the fastest of the jets tend to occur over water so far. But if these mega-jets continue we’re going to see some really sustained major weather events.
It may be that a more meridianal fluid flow will emerge after the rate of stratosphere sinking reduces. But for now, it’s not doing as advertised. If it’s really governed by the Sun’s activity level, it could go one for awhile. I don’t want to seem to claim to know how this will play-out, but that’s the trend I’m perceiving right now.
I don’t know if the troposphere has actually sunken lower but it seems from what I’ve seen that it must have sunk lower, than during the wetter warming-phase. I’m guessing this is being fairly accurately sampled and logged each day by ADS-B equipped aircraft logging WX data on their flight path. If the troposphere is lower this should be able to be determined and mapped in detail via analysis of aircraft ADS-B, and balloon radiosonde WX data (which I hope there is a LOT of going on right now.).
I hope all that data is being stored long-term, because we can not rely on current WX institutions to wake up to themselves and report the facts, it will take another generation to sort through such data, after cAGW has finally been abandoned (in complete disgust).
100
Thanks for that, gives me lots to think about.
‘So the bad weather conditions in the UK are far from over.’
If we could come up with a successful seasonal forecast, which nobody else has predicted, it would be advantageous to the cause.
10
Judah Cohen (AER) has gone back to see if he can find a similar situation. Remember the great climate shift of 1976.
‘I did check historical winter polar cap geopotential height anomalies (PCHs), and the stretch of universally cold tropospheric and stratospheric PCHs that we observed this winter is extremely rare. The closest that I could find is the winter of 1975/76. When cold PCHs dominated the stratosphere and troposphere right through the end of March.
‘In general, I don’t like using data before 1979 but I could not find anything analogous since 1979 with 1989/90 being the closest. Though in February 1990 there was a sudden stratospheric warming. So there is precedent, though rare, for the positive AO/strong PV to continue right through March.’
10
FEG, followed by dry summers, iirc. 1990 was a very warm dry summer in England, so was 1976.
20
EG…sorry, fat finger.
10
1976 we were in Cyprus, which had a remarkably cool summer that year, to the relief of my parents when they visited us…coming to Cyprus from UK to cool off! The only few days of heat we were in Troodos where we needed blankets at night.
1990 we were over in UK from Australia for a summer school; it looked really baked, especially in the Yorkshire Dales and even Cumbria. Malvern in Worcs. had grassed areas that might have been mistaken for Australian summer lawns!
30
I remember that also Annie.
30
Also remember August, 1975 being very hot in the UK. I was working in London at the time and many locals were leaving early from work because of the heat. I believe it was the hottest August on record at the time.
20
The interactions are a lot more complex than variations in stratosphere temperature due to decadal variations in solar irradiance. The effects on Australian weather of the upper atmosphere warming over warming over Antarctica this year raises interest in the process. If you are really interested a paper on Mesosphere inversion layers and stratosphere temperature enhancements is now outside paywalls and provides a wealth of information. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003RG000133
30
Very illuminating paper, need more time to mull over and chase up any new discoveries along the same line.
00
We should keep in mind that the thermosphere shrinks when the sun is quiet.
‘As the Sun approaches solar minimum, the thermosphere cools and shrinks as the intensity of the X-ray and ultraviolet radiation decreases. Since the International Space Station and many satellites orbit through this layer, changes in thermospheric boundaries and densities can affect their operation and the maintenance of their orbits.’
Aaron Sidder 2019
10
Thanks Brian, interesting stuff.
30
especially when taken with this …
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2012GL051409
where they explain that —
Oxygen & nitrogen (O2/N2, air) are “radiatively important” “natural greenhouse gases” and comparable to methane – an 84Xs stronger GHG than CO2.
N2 reduces OLR by 4.6 W/m² compared to CO2’s 5.1 W/m².
Doubling N2 = 12 W/m² LW forcing.
2X CO2 = 3.7 W/m².
h/t to Kenneth Richard at https://twitter.com/Kenneth72712993
40
Is that reality poking its head in.
00
Daily-OLR verses observed Relative-Humidity as a .gif animation
It uses a closer chronological data correspondence than my first attempt several days back.
Daily-OLR verses Relative-Humidity, 3k ft to 30k ft, at Noon the 18th Feb 2020, ECMWF Observations:
https://i.ibb.co/bP0L64v/Daily-OLR-compared-to-RH-from-3k-ft-to-30k-ft-Noon-18th-Feb-2020-ECMWF-Observations.gif
The data is still not matching well chronologically, but it’s getting closer than my first attempt, which was about 36 hrs out of sync. This animation seems to be about 12 hours out of sync. This is because I don’t know what time-zone is capturing the OLR data, plus it is being published about 24 to 36 hours after its capture. Plus it covers a whole 24 hour OLR flux window, while this RH data is just a 3 hour observation time-slice (of a time-slice that I can nail down).
I also identified another complication with area distortion within the Daily OLR image because despite the scale on the OLR image showing +/-90 deg of the equator, the data is actually only showing to within about +/- 72 deg of the equator. The poles are not being shown. However this image is still auto generated daily with a +/-90 deg geometric algorithmic ‘correction’ applied within its processing.
Except that the geometric ‘correction’ factor is actually incorrect! … Doh!
It should corrected for only +/- 72 deg from the equator, but does =/- 90 deg instead. So the correction has actually created an even bigger area-distortion! As far as I can tell it’s apparently been doing this for at least a decade, so there’s little chance that error in the image projection being fixed. So I’ve had to attempt to diminish the resulting induced area-distortion within the animations I make, so that the landmasses match better (they still don’t). But I can never fully fix the mismatch due to that geometric incorrect ‘correction’ factor.
Fortunately the most important region for this visual comparison’s purposes is between +/- 45 deg of the equator, because that’s where the bulk of the troposphere’s water is being dynamically stored. It also fortunately turns out to be where the bulk of the 0.0% humidity air intrudes in the lower most troposphere. As a result I can still create a clear, useful direct visual confirmation that the highest OLR contours do indeed closely correspond with the pinkest lowest RH air (0.0% to 6.2% RH), between 3k feet up to 30k feet, where most of the troposphere’s water-vapor normally exists.
In the end the area-distortion error, and the chronological data mismatch doesn’t prevent a strong correlation between Daily OLR and 0.0% humidity air being clearly depicted, and immediately seen and recognised.
What it reveals:
(1) Wherever the ultra-low humidity (brightest pink) air has sunken down and displaced the normally higher water content air within these altitude levels the Daily OLR flux rises very sharply in response. Where water vapor becomes ultra-low in the lower troposphere IR photons flood back to space at a higher rate.
(2) The response of Daily OLR to ultra-low humidity content in this air firmly establishes that water vapor is acting as a strong Green-House-Gas in the lower-most troposphere, and middle troposphere.
(3) The response of Daily OLR to ultra-low humidity content in this air also firmly establishes that DWLWR is quite obviously a real spectral phenomena with regard to water vapor within the lower troposphere. And that absorbed energy within H2O vapor is indeed re-radiating it in all directions at IR wavelengths.
The animation confirms that Green-House-Effect is a real energy balance process that is continuously occurring even in the bottom of the troposphere, and that water vapor alone is by far the most important component of GHG gases. When the water is displaced in a vertical column by in-falling ultra-dry air from the stratosphere the GHG effect is proportionately reduced, which is physically confirmed by the sharply higher OLR flux from all of the bright pink drier-air regions (especially where multiple altitudes show pink in the same location). Conversely, where OLR is lowest, relative humidity is at the highest values within these depicted altitude levels.
I’m ignoring the altitude levels above 30k ft through 45k ft, because there’s almost no water present within those altitude levels (most of the time, and only in very limited areas). Thus next to no water vapor is present to be displaced by any in-falling ultra-dry stratosphere, thus OLR level does not rise much at those levels, even if flooded by ultra-dry air. The OLR response is all about the quantity of water vapor being displaced. Which shows that rising OLR is the result of falling GHG gases.
I’m also ignoring the altitude range from Surface to 3,000 ft, as almost no ultra-dry air falls below about 3,000 ft, although I have seen it a few times at ~2,000 ft, especially west of the US west coast, suggesting a high rate of sinking stratosphere within the area, associated with the Low and high east of it driving the Eastern pacific equatorial Jet.
From this it can be concluded that:
(a) An assertion that DWLWR does not even exist is clearly false and incompatible with sharp Daily OLR rise response to ultra-dry air intrusion to the lower most troposphere. That assertion is falsified.
(b) An assertion that GHG emissions can only occur toward the top of the troposphere is also revealed as inescapably false. Sharp OLR flux increases like these could not occur as humidity falls to very low levels in the lower troposphere if that were so. That way of thinking is also falsified.
OLR response is actually the strongest at the lowest altitudes within +/- 45 deg of the equator because that’s where the highest densities of water vapor within the global atmosphere are naturally being concentrated. So that same area is also where OLR flux levels are the most sensitive to water vapor displacements, via ultra-dry stratospheric air falling in down to as low as 2,000 ft above sea level. Ultra dry air falling below 10,000 ft generally produces strong OLR rises. But a strong response can also occur above 10,000 ft, if several altitudes of very dry air coincide, stacked.
Wherever water vapor is displaced by very dry air the Daily-OLR flux shoots up to the highest flux contour levels, because the NET GHG effect within that drying air column above declines to its lowest levels of DWLWR flux, due to the lowering content of water vapor present.
Which is very strongly consistent with water vapor being a GHG, at all altitudes in the troposphere, and re-radiating absorbed energy, within IR spectrum wavelength range, in all directions.
71
If you like a good conspiracy theory, here is one for you:
Chinese Study: “The [Wuhan] coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/17/chinese-study-the-killer-coronavirus-probably-originated-from-a-laboratory-in-wuhan/
20
If you like that one you’ll probably like this one too. It’s a beauty!
https://nexusnewsfeed.com/article/geopolitics/coronavirus-traced-to-the-british-crown
00
Heres an extra “what if” theory to throw into the possible mix…….what if the whole thing was pre-engineered before hand and basically left lying around in a canadian lab, lifted by some light fingered sorts, but it was a specific “trojan horse” of sorts, and those responsible have been well and truly caught with thier fingers in the till……..
If it was a honey trap, it was masterfully done…and those responsible appear to have severe egg on face….and very sore fingers….
If so, its an unparalleled act of war and a very clear message and hard punch to the face for china.
Ouch…..
10
What’s the difference between parasites and viruses? Yeah, I know.
00
Okay then, here’s two images to look at, for electrical power generated yesterday Monday 17Feb2020.
The first image at this link shows the total generated power as the black line at the top of the graph, and the green colour rolling along the bottom as wind generation, and wind generation came in at 3.9% of the overall.
The second image at this link again shows the same total, the black line, and the colours are those for all fossil fuels, and that totalled out at 79.8% of the overall total, with black coal and brown coal generation making up 66.2%.
For the remainder, rooftop solar made up 6.5%, solar power plants 3.2% and hydro, the biggest of the renewables with 7.6%, all renewables coming in at 21.2%.
Rooftop solar power is at best a calculated guess, and taking that out, so that just power plant generated power is worked out, then fossil fuels make up 84.2% of all the generated power.
The Nameplate for wind power is 6960MW and the nameplate for solar power plants is 3593MW, so 10,553MW in total Nameplate.
We have 57 wind plants and 46 solar power plants, and all they can manage is 7.5% of all the power generated by power plants. (minus rooftop solar power)
Imagine the cost for all those wind and solar plants, and all they can manage is 7.5% of generated power.
Now, imagine what the cost will be and how many will need to be constructed to get that up to 50% of generated power ….. ALL THE TIME, not just during daylight hours, and it has to be done in ten years.
Good luck with that.
Tony.
290
Hope you’ve taken your heart meds before reading this one Tony !
This is the kind of expert that the left are listening to and it’s a scary thought that someone with his expertise and credentials has put his name to this propaganda piece about CSP .
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-18/solar-thermal-power-should-be-major-export-expert-says/11971938
110
even better is to cut out the thermal part and just sell solar. All you need is a mirror on earth and a mirror in the sky to bounce to down to the solar panels in the destination country. You do this when it is night in the receiving country so they can have 24 hour solar.
Works in the reverse 12 hours later.
116
Mr. Leaf, you need to study and understand orbital mechanics as well as the cost of placing a very large mirror up there, and, more importantly keeping it there while you point it in the right direction twice a day.
The ball park costs in getting the required reaction mass up there would be several million times the supposed energy benefit for just one years operation.
61
Slithers – how do you expect this bloody imbecilic to understand or study anything?
31
“Mr. Leaf, you need to study and understand orbital mechanics”
Nah.. not going to happen…. ever. !
41
Did you forget your sarc tag GA? I thought I detected a tongue-in-cheek note there.
50
A big thumbs up for recognising reductio ad absurdum Annie.
20
Good god people. Do you really need a sarc tag?
Maybe my comment was taken seriously is not a surprise given the acceptance of alt-physics borrowed from parallel universes (gravity powered heating, directional photons, iron suns, electric universes etc) simply because they appear anti CO2 warming.
10
I agree,
Keep them guessing.
20
Robert, this was reported less than a year before by the ABC.
“The future of solar thermal power once promised so much, but has the shine worn off?”
Failure in solar thermal power generation to reach its nameplate capacity.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-09/has-the-shine-worn-off-solar-thermal-power/10983180
They still use the same photos in this article as they used in your February 18th posted ABC article. I suppose a billion in funding can’t buy you the services of a photographer. Research Or the truth.
100
Loved this, in relation to the recently closed Crescent Dunes Solar plant in California;
20
But he has 50 years experience in the field.
Australia, you got problems!
40
Tony;
an idle query, quite O/T but is there any way of getting the wholesale cost of electricity to Canberra recently?
I ask because the ACT is supposedly getting 100% “CHEAP Renewable electricity” because they signed up for output from SA wind farms. Being on (theoretically) 100% renewables means the retailer(s) doesn’t have to purchase ny RET certificates and they are for us PLEBs to pay for.
But for the last 2 weeks it has been physically impossible for the ACT to get any electricity from SA; and with an excess wind capacity the scramble for those subsidies (Certificates) has meant very low wholesale prices in SA.
40
Price of electricity in the ACT seems to be a bit confusing with only yearly rates quoted from what I can see .
https://www.canstarblue.com.au/electricity/canberra-act-electricity/
30
I think the ACT only has piddly little solar farms and nothing else.
But on the plus side i have heard the paint thier roundabouts in rainbow colours and unicorns are frequently spotted…
Seat of govt apparently….
50
Quarterly supply charge of $98, and about 23c per kWh
00
ACT sits in the middle of the primsrily coal fired NSW grid , which in turn has connections to the primarily coal fired grids in QLD and VIC. For them to say the are 100% “renewable” on the basis of generation in SA is delusional or disingenuous.
10
I’ve said before that a major stunt of the climatariat has been to shift attention from medium-term climate. They talk about climate many millions of years back as a warning, or climate of the last decade or two…also as a warning. What they don’t like is too much attention given to the massive shifts of just the last few thousand years. Nothing gets denied, just ignored.
Much of the investigation of Doggerland is happening because of dredging/excavation works and the interest of beachcombing locals. Yet it’s hard to think of a more interesting subject for those truly curious about climate change.
Here’s a new and surprisingly apolitical article with some nice maps and pics: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/relics-washed-beaches-reveal-lost-world-beneath-north-sea
At least someone is interested! It certainly helps me to reflect on that rollercoaster climate between the depths of the last glacial max some twenty thousand years ago, through the brief Allerod warming and the Younger Dryas chill, up to the climate optimum which was likely connected to the tsunami which sank Doggerland a bit over eight thousand years back.
Makes the shift from Med Warm to LIA to now look like a walk in the park, doesn’t it? But ssshhh…no talking about actual climate change. It’s rather rude.
110
Hi mosomoso,
The term glaciation is as big a deception as CAGW. To get a glacier you need a mountainous terrain where snow can collect and feed the resulting glacier. The proper term which is un-ambiguous is Ice Age. Just look at those fjords of Norway, the ice age had ice deep enough to feed the glaciers that in effect flow down from the tops of what were Norway’s highlands Over many thousands of years.
The Doggerlands are indeed very interesting as they reveal just how long the sea levels were so low that the ancients populated the area. The doggerlands were never covered in glaciers, although some glaciers formed in northern England and Scotland.
30
I understand that part of Doggerland is only 5-6 metres deep, and as the last bit it was submerged by tsunamis from landslides off the coast of Norway.
Also the article seems to have confused Neanderthal with Neolithic, as the inhabitants fleeing the rising water took agriculture to England.
50
The article only mentions a Neanderthal find from about 50 thousand years ago, and it specifies that the Neanderthals disappeared about 45 thousand years ago (though that would be disputed for a few reasons).
The penetration of Neolithic peoples (or their methods) into Britain is thought to have occurred some six thousand years ago, so after the Storegga Slides and the separation of Britain from the continent. I guess the pre-tsunami people or refugees from Doggerland would best be described as Mesolithic, hunting smaller game and gathering, still pretty nomadic and not doing the agriculture thing.
Of course, we might still be surprised by what those Doggerlanders were really up to in their lush lowlands. Must be exciting for the local beachcombers on the Dutch side when there’s some sand-moving or oiling.
A mob of balmy Poms still wait for a sandbank to emerge so they can play cricket on Doggerland. (Don’t tell Annie I said that.)
30
Part of the joy of being an eccentric Pommie Moso! 🙂
10
Slithers @ 6.1
Ice Age? NO.
Your definitions are too small and too limiting.
The planet has been in an Ice Age for the last 2.8 Million Years. Glaciation is the correct term.
The last glaciation was at its coldest 20,000 years ago and the glacier (continental glacier or ice sheet) covered most of the British Isles and extended north to the Arctic.
If you want to muck around with leggo-toy glaciers, or ice rivers, that’s up to you.
20
Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier
10
Sophocles, Wikipedia is of course the fountain of truth.
21
Sophocles,
If you want to muck around with leggo-toy glaciers, or ice rivers, that’s up to you.
You seem to think that the larges fjords on the planet were formed by toys!
Ice sheets want to move and do so very slowly, Glaciers are moving ice often tumbling quite fast down hill.
Ice falls would be a better way to describe the Glaciers that formed Norway fjords.
Fjords start at the coast and are gouged out inland as the pressure of ice from that very deep ice sheet pushes outwards. The Gulf stream and depth of the atlantics ocean prevented that ice from joining up with Greenland ice sheet. Greenland also has glaciers formed by the deep ice pushing off and down to the coast. there are some good fjords in the north wester coast of Greenland.
There was no tsunami up the English channel, there was a mega flood out of Scandinavia around 12,00 years ago,that removed the soft chalklands that were the bridge between England and France.
There is DNA evidence that hybrid human/Neanderthals existed perhaps Doggerland was where they lived in large numbers.
11
You are trying to use and redefine long accepted geological terms in your own incorrect ways. After you have read this, you will be able to fall down mountains as much as you like knowing that you are tumbling down an alpine glacier.
Glaciers are geological features and the geologists have known about them and their various types for many decades. Your attempts to incorrectly rename them will only add confusion, not clarity.
I stand by what I said earlier.
On Earth, (that’s this very real planet) 99% of glacial ice is contained within vast ice sheets (also known as “continental glaciers”) in the polar regions. Let’s take a look at glacier morphology, shall we?
Geologists have classified glaciers before you, Master Slithers, by size, shape and behavior,
Glaciers are categorized by their morphology, thermal characteristics, and behavior. Alpine glaciers form on the crests and slopes of mountains. A glacier that fills a valley is called a valley glacier, or alternatively an alpine glacier or a mountain glacier. A large body of glacial ice astride a mountain, mountain range, or volcano is termed an ice cap or ice field. Ice caps have an area less than 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi) by definition.
Glacial bodies larger than 50,000 sq.km (19,000 sq mi) are called ice sheets or continental glaciers. Several kilometers deep, they obscure the underlying topography. Only nunataks protrude from their surfaces. The only extant ice sheets are the two that cover most of Antarctica and Greenland. They contain vast quantities of fresh water, enough that if both melted, global sea levels would rise by over 70 m (230 ft for the metrically challenged). Portions of an ice sheet or cap that extend into water are called ice shelves; they tend to be thin with limited slopes and reduced velocities.[11] Narrow, fast-moving sections of an ice sheet are called ice streams. In Antarctica, many ice streams drain into large ice shelves. Some drain directly into the sea, often with an ice tongue, which you are trying to call a glacier, like Mertz Glacier.
Tidewater glaciers are glaciers that terminate in the sea, including most glaciers flowing from Greenland, Antarctica, Baffin and Ellesmere Islands in Canada, Southeast Alaska, and the Northern and Southern Patagonian Ice Fields. As the ice reaches the sea, pieces break off, or calve, forming icebergs. Most tidewater glaciers calve above sea level, which often results in a tremendous impact as the iceberg strikes the water. Tidewater glaciers undergo centuries-long cycles of advance and retreat that are much less affected by climate change than those of other glaciers.
Ice Age(s) — another term used less strictly than it should be:
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth’s climate alternates between ice ages and greenhouse periods, during which there are no glaciers on the planet. Earth is currently in the Quaternary glaciation, known in popular terminology as the Ice Age. Individual pulses of cold climate within an ice age are termed “glacial periods” (or, alternatively, “glacials”, “glaciations”, “glacial stages”, “stadials”(preferred), “stades”, or colloquially, “ice ages”(to be discouraged)), and intermittent warm periods within an ice age are called “interglacials” or “interstadials”, with both climatic pulses part of the Quaternary or other periods in Earth’s history.
In the terminology of glaciology, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in both northern and southern hemispheres. By this definition, we are in an interglacial period—the Holocene. The amount of heat trapping gases emitted into Earth’s oceans and atmosphere are predicted to prevent the next glacial period, which otherwise would begin in around 50,000 years, and likely more glacial cycles. That prediction will most likely fail — just like all its predecessors have failed.
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth’s climate alternates between ice ages and greenhouse periods, during which there are no glaciers on the planet. Earth is currently in the Quaternary glaciation, known in popular terminology as the Ice Age.[1] Individual pulses of cold climate within an ice age are termed “glacial periods” (or, alternatively, “glacials”, “glaciations”, “glacial stages”, “stadials”, “stades”, or colloquially, “ice ages”), and intermittent warm periods within an ice age are called “interglacials” or “interstadials”, with both climatic pulses part of the Quaternary or other periods in Earth’s history.[2]
In the terminology of glaciology, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in both northern and southern hemispheres.[3] By this definition, we are in an interglacial period—the Holocene. The amount of heat trapping gases emitted into Earth’s oceans and atmosphere are predicted to prevent the next glacial period, which otherwise would begin in around 50,000 years, and likely more glacial cycles.[4][5]
Now you have all the correct terms. Please use them — correctly — and leave off trying to redefine them.
10
And you are using miss appropriated words written by others that are out of context.
Consider this:- Its 2m years ago you are in northern Russia close to Finland about 100 m inland from the Arctic ocean. One day it starts to snow, it does not stop snowing for about 50 years!
The snow has got very deep and Gravity alone has compressed the bottom layers into….
When does that compressed snow become ice and when does it become Glacial?
In my dictionary a glacier is a moving body of ICE. That ice in northern Russia is NOT moving!
00
What makes glaciers unique is their ability to move.
A slow-moving mass or river of ice, formed from snow on mountains or near the North Pole or South Pole Topics Geography b2 Oxford Collocations Dictionary Glacier is used after these nouns:
With this definition:- A Glacier is moving ice. The Ice at the North pole is an ice sheet Glaciers do not form over salt water. That ice is moved by ocean currents and wind.
The current ice sheets at the South pole and Greenland are NOT moving.
What glaciers are in existence at those places is at the edge of the land mass or down a mountain side.
The Ice sheets that covered much of Northern Europe/Asia/Canada for hundreds of thousands of years was NOT moving. Yes the edges were overflowing but there was NO MOVEMENT at ground level, Hence no giant gouged out valley’s. Don’t believe this fact? Check out the Ural mountain range covered for a million years or so by an Ice Field and not one deep valley
Also,
If you wish to define the current period as inter-glacial how do you explain the existence of Glaciers?
00
You should bookmark this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier_morphology Wikipedia page, Master Slithers. It’s pretty truthful and factual — it agrees with my geology texts.
It explains and illustrates (a picture is worth a thousand words to the semi-literate) the different types of glaciers so you will no longer have any excuse to exercise your ignorance by claiming glaciation is a big deception. It is actually a precise word and an accurate term when used correctly.
Enjoy.
20
Thanks m,
Fascinating article. And it’s an interesting interaction of the amateur enthusiast and professional academic.
Cheers
Dave B
30
Reading between the lines you can almost see the ABC journo cheering on the East German eco ‘warriors’ (I would have used the T word, but the internet probably would disapprove):
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-18/australia-climate-how-germany-is-closing-down-its-coal-industry/11902884
Great ominous dark photography of the steam coming out of a coal plant.
41
They might be closing down some old stations (just like China) but they definitely building new ones. They have to, to replace the loss of electricity production from closing the nuclear plants.
It was only last year there photos of an old historic church in a village being bulldozed so they could get at the brown coal to feed one of the new plants.
40
I believe they’re pushing down a forest to build a coal mine somewhere in Germany , they keep using this country as a yardstick for renewable utopia but they keep leaving out the fine detail .
30
Maybe they’ll pelletise the forest and sell the pellets to Drax. ☺
20
They turned the mine into a museum.
They’ll follow that by turning their manufacturing industry into a museum too.
20
PLEASE SHARE and EDUCATE
The two links below are a series of educational charts on CO2 and Climate Change. These charts are as unbiased as you can make them.
The world of CO2
https://www.ric-communications.ch/referenzen/simple-science-1.html – N° 1 Earth’s atmospheric composition
– N° 2 Natural sources of CO2 emissions
– N° 3 Global anthropogenic CO2 emission
– N° 4 CO2 – Carbon dioxide molecule
– N° 5 The global carbon cycle
– N° 6 Carbon and plant respiration
– N° 7 Plant categories and abundance (C3, C4 & CAM Plants)
– N° 8 Photosynthesis, the C3 vs C4 gap
– N° 9 Plant respiration and CO2
– N° 10 The logarithmic temperature rise of higher CO2 levels.
– N° 11 Earth’s atmospheric composition in relationship to CO2
– N° 12 Human respiration and CO2 concentrations.
– N° 13 600 million years of temperature change and atmospheric CO2
The World of Climate Change
http://www.ric-communications.ch/referenzen/simple-science-2.html
– N° 1 600 million years of global temperature change
– N° 2 Earth‘s temperature record for the last 400,000 years
– N° 3 Holocene period and average northern hemispheric temperatures
– N° 4 140 years of global mean temperature
– N° 5 120 m of sea level rise over the past 20‘000 years
– N° 6 Eastern European alpine glacier history during the Holocene period.
I would think that most visitors to JoNova site understand the importance of CO2 and all its benefits. I therefore don’t think these charts are of interest since the opinion here is clear, CO2 is good and not evil. However we live in our bubble and the rest of the world isn’t so informed.
So if you need some helpful charts to better explain what CO2 is, this is the place to go. These step by step guides start at the beginning and are ideal for beginners. No propaganda, no tricks, only facts. The data is drawn from Scientists and institutions like NASA, GISS, NOAA and IPCC. YES the IPCC also provides data that is correct.
This is a small contribution in helping tone down the hysteria over Climate Change.
Ray
P.S. Dear JoNova, sorry that I keep reposting this list, but your platform is the best place to promote these charts.
00
Perth to get its third Tesla battery, and if you’re close enough, it looks like a sweet deal
https://reneweconomy.com.au/w-a-adds-more-tesla-community-batteries-to-shared-storage-trial-98003/
03
I can see how spending $600 to $700 a year beats buying and maintaining batteries, but not how this thing works. Do they run wires to your house behind the meter? Surely not. Maybe a deal with the power company?
There must be limits on how much power is drawn and when. And in what sense is it virtual?
20
I guess that WA decided not to have the less well off subsidise batteries for the wealthy but rather installed batteries that would provide backup power for all users.
00
David, I believe this is a newly-built community, so perhaps the wiring was installed when the estate was first laid out. Or there might be a central monitoring (substation?) point that monitors the power in and out of the community, and the battery costs are amortised across the community. Then you don’t need to run separate wires to each house.
00
Alan Jones/Sky mentioned this article on his program tonite, but didn’t mention Allwood is all for reaching net zero by other methods. note Bob Ward responded; however, his letter is behind paywall. otherwise, article is open access:
7 Feb: Financial Times: The only way to hit net zero by 2050 is to stop flying
Dreaming of electric planes and planting trees will not save our planet
by Julian Allwood
(The writer is professor of engineering and the environment at Cambridge university)
The UK aviation industry this week promised to bring its net carbon emissions down to zero by 2050 while growing by 70 per cent, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson boldly predicted that “viable electric planes” would be available in just a few years.
But past experience with innovation in aviation suggests that such ambitious targets are unrealistic and distracting. The only way the UK can get to net zero emission aviation by 2050 is by having a substantial period of no aviation at all. Let’s stop placing impossible hopes on breakthrough technologies, and try to hit emissions targets with today’s technologies. Our recent report “Absolute Zero” draws on work at six British universities to explain how.
There are three ways to deliver net-zero aviation: invent new electric aircraft, change the fuels of existing aircraft or take the emissions out of the atmosphere…
Taxing aircraft fuel at the level of the UK’s current road fuel tax would be a useful first step: I estimate that it would make flights up to four times more expensive…
Letter in response to this article:
Perhaps what we really need is negative growth/From Michael Hobbs, London UK
Air travel could again be preserve of the wealthy/From Bernd Ewald, Oslo, Norway…
***’End to aviaton’ outlook is far too pessimistic/From Bob Ward, London School of Economics, UK
https://www.ft.com/content/e00819ba-4814-11ea-aee2-9ddbdc86190d
getting out of Paris is the only good option.
10
what a laugh:
17 Feb: Financial Times: Letter: Remove Zuckerberg and Sandberg from their posts
From George Soros, Paris, France
Mark Zuckerberg should stop obfuscating the facts by piously arguing for government regulation (“We need more regulation of Big Tech”, February 17)(LINK).
Mr Zuckerberg appears to be engaged in some kind of mutual assistance arrangement with Donald Trump that will help him to get re-elected. Facebook does not need to wait for government regulations to stop accepting any political advertising in 2020 until after the elections on November 4. If there is any doubt whether an ad is political, it should err on the side of caution and refuse to publish. It is unlikely that Facebook will follow this course.
Therefore, I repeat my proposal, Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg should be removed from control of Facebook. (It goes without saying that I support government regulation of social media platforms.)
https://www.ft.com/content/88f6875a-519d-11ea-90ad-25e377c0ee1f?segmentid=acee4131-99c2-09d3-a635-873e61754ec6
10
Can we detect a teensy hint of resistance to the source of some `advertising’ funds and the resentment of that source?
00
17 Feb: SMH: Peer pressure needed to spark electric vehicle sales in Australia
By Mike Foley
Peer pressure is in part driving Australia’s sluggish uptake of electric vehicles, with new research showing Aussies are considering their family and friends’ opinions along with cost and car size.
Deakin University researcher James Davidson released his research on Monday showing “prevailing attitudes and social norms” were as important factors in driving consumer behaviour as tangible things like purchase price, operating costs, driving range, emissions and acceleration time…
“It doesn’t matter how good a vehicle is or how much it costs, if a potential buyer’s friends and family encourage it as the right choice that will make the real difference.”…
While industry forecasts assume electric vehicles will take over the automobile market in coming decades, they accounted for just 0.6 per cent of vehicles sold in Australia last year with 6718 sold in 2019, up from 2216 in 2018.
The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics forecasts 60 per cent of new cars sales would be electric by 2046…
Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor expects to release an electric vehicle strategy by the middle of the year…
The strategy will form part of the $3.5 billion Climate Solutions Package…
A Morrison government source said they are not considering setting targets for vehicle sales as part of the strategy…
Last year the government announced it would replace its Comcar fleet of Holden Caprice sedans with a range of imported vehicles, including hybrid electric Toyota and BMW sedans, after General Motors ceased local manufacturing in 2017…
Dr Davidson said his research, which surveyed 500 Australians about electric vehicles, showed the keener the driver, the less likely they were to prefer electric vehicles…
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/peer-pressure-needed-to-spark-electric-vehicle-sales-in-australia-20200217-p541m7.html
10
An EV is nothing more than a feel good urban shopping trolley……they are a joke.
Give me a diesel any day.
60
Does Angus Taylor know whether he is the:
Energy and (Emissions Reduction) Minister
or the:
(Energy and Emissions) Reduction Minister?
Could make quite a difference.
10
Oh! The Find highlight (a search on Angus – posting interrupted) gets carried over into the post itself.
I learn something new each day!
00
Oh! It doesn’t, after all.
This sort of thing could confuse a simple person.
00
Labor MPs deliver warning on coal to Anthony Albanese
The Australian – 17 Feb 2020
Anthony Albanese has been warned that Labor will struggle to win the support of workers across the resources sector — including in the West Australian iron ore and gas industries — if the party is viewed as hostile to coal. West Australian frontbencher Matt Keogh said the coal…
Anthony Albanese has failed to express his support for coal while in Queensland
The Australian – 7 hours ago
Anthony Albanese has failed to express his support for the coal sector while in Queensland amid internal concerns about a shift in rhetoric following the bushfires…
Bill Shorten says the mood on climate change has changed
The Australian – 16 Feb 2020
Bill Shorten says the public mood on climate change action has changed after the catastrophic bushfire season and people have become more worried about the cost of policy inaction…
10
I have been talking to old friends who live in the regions affected by bushfires.
They are absolutely ropable about amount of scrub and undergrowth that has been allowed to build up min many areas. Yes the mood has very much changed, but in the opposite way to what shortone thinks it has.
People are getting thoroughly p’d off by the constant yelping and screaming of the “climate change” brigade.
“climate change” ?.. they say BULL****, its the policies of local governments not doing their job of maintaining fire trails. Of locked gates into forest areas etc.
Its only the inner city gullible know-nothing leftists that short-for-brains would ever have any contact with anyway..
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17 Feb: Financial Times: Bezos pledges $10bn as Amazon faces climate critics
Ecommerce billionaire announces ‘earth fund’ to provide grants for scientists, activists and NGOs
Dave Lee in San Francisco
A source familiar with the fund said no investments would be made into private companies…
In January, hundreds of Amazon staff signed a letter attacking the company’s progress on reducing its carbon footprint, as well as its record on working conditions.
Amazon in September last year pledged to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2040, and to be operating on 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030…
The company is also investing in lowering its delivery footprint by buying 100,000 electric delivery vehicles due to enter its fleet in 2024.
Presently, however, Amazon’s last-mile deliveries are mostly made using diesel vans. The company ordered 20,000 from Mercedes-Benz in 2018 as part of its investment in faster deliveries for its Prime members…
Mr Bezos’s announcement was met with faint praise from the employee group, who suggested Amazon’s work with oil and gas companies, in providing cloud computing infrastructure, was hypocritical…
(Spokeswoman for Amazon Employees for Climate Justice): “The people of Earth need to know: When is Amazon going to stop helping oil & gas companies ravage Earth with still more oil and gas wells? When is Amazon going to stop funding climate-denying think-tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and climate-delaying policy?”
“We can save Earth,” Mr Bezos said on Instagram. “It’s going to take collective action from big companies, small companies, nation states, global organizations, and individuals.”…
“People are going to want to live on Earth, and they are going to want to live off Earth,” Mr Bezos told CBS News in July. “There are going to be very nice places to live off earth as well. People will make that choice.”
https://www.ft.com/content/441a3052-51be-11ea-8841-482eed0038b1
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17 Feb: BBC: Cambridge’s Trinity College lawn dug up by Extinction Rebellion
PIC: Trinity College did not want to make a report about the action, police said
Climate activists have dug up a lawn outside a Cambridge University college over its role in a major development in the Suffolk countryside.
Extinction Rebellion members said the action at Trinity College was taken against the “destruction of nature”.
Activists then took dug-up mud to a local Barclays Bank branch.
Innocence Farm in Trimley St Martin has been part of plans, involving Trinity, for a lorry park. The college said it supported work to fight climate change…
A Cambridgeshire Police spokeswoman said the force was liaising with the college and that “a crime has been recorded for criminal damage”…
Activists, who also chained themselves to an apple tree on the college’s front lawn, said they “were careful to ensure that the digging took place a safe distance from the tree so as not to cause any damage to it”.
The local group also claimed on Twitter the college invested more money in oil and gas companies than any other Oxbridge college…
Local businessman Dr Tim Norman described the action as “counter-productive vandalism”.
He said: “[It] seemed to confuse the tourists too, as it wasn’t clear what they were doing it for.”…
Members of the group have also been taking part in a week-long road blockade in the city – prompting police to use emergency powers to shut off roads.
Last week a meeting had to be abandoned when a protester abseiled into the council chamber.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-51534446
wouldn’t you think BBC might have mentioned the following! when this one was ongoing, I recall people online complaining that the police were just standing around, doing nothing to stop them:
14 Feb: Daily Mail: ‘Disgusting vandals!’: Extinction Rebellion protestors are slammed online for digging up lawn inches from Home Office and hurling mud and grass onto pavement before police arrest three women and four men
•Extinction Rebellion say they were acting in protest of coal mine expansion
•They are against the expansion of Banks Mining Pont Valley site in Durham
•Police officers stormed in to arrest them in central London this morning
•Several commenters on social media slammed them for being ‘hypocrites’
By Lara Keay
The militant environmental group were protesting against the expansion of an open-cast coal site in Bradley, Durham this morning.
Campaigners dressed in suits mounted the side of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government with spades and began digging up turf next door to the Home Office.
They carried banners addressing Tory Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick that read: ‘If you’re in a hole stop digging.’
Within the space of a few minutes, the green turf had completely disappeared, leaving brown earth in its place and all over the pavement.
Video footage shows dozens of police officers storming towards them as they lay down in the mud before being three women and four men were handcuffed and taken away…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7999507/Extinction-Rebellion-dig-lawn-outside-Home-Office-coal-mining-protest.html
10
older white men need not apply to older white men Doyle & Mathiesen:
17 Feb: ClimateChangeNews: Climate Home News launches front line climate justice reporting programme
Comment: We want your story ideas about how communities – especially women, youth and indigenous peoples – are building resilience to climate change in the most vulnerable regions of the world.
By Alister Doyle
In partnership with the ***Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF) (LINK), we are supporting original reporting that focuses on communities, mainly in developing nations, who are suffering most from climate change even though they have contributed little to the problem of rising greenhouse gas emissions…
We will highlight women, youth and indigenous peoples on the front lines of climate change who are creating and sharing their own solutions for resilience…
The grants will cover competitive rates and reasonable travel expenses, to be negotiated in advance.
We plan to publish eight articles under the project, lasting until 30 November 2020…
Local reporters will be given preference, although we would also consider pitches from travelling reporters for stories in areas where local reporting is harder to source…
You must have fluent spoken and written English. It helps if you have worked with international media before and have some awareness of climate change themes. For more on our editorial values and process, watch this 14-minute video presentation (LINK)…
Please send your pitches to acting editor ***Alister Doyle and editor ***Karl Mathiesen…
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2020/02/17/climate-home-news-launches-front-line-climate-justice-reporting-programme/
***LinkedIn: Alister Doyle, Freelance reporter – climate change, sealevelrise.com. Reuters environment correspondent 2004-19
Award-winning reporter for 36 years at Reuters until 2019, writing from about 50 countries – attended annual U.N. climate conferences in Milan, Montreal, Nairobi, Bali, Poznan, Copenhagen, Cancun, Doha, Warsaw, Lima, Paris, Marrakesh, Bonn…
Environment Correspondent
Sept 1982 – March 2019
University of Oxford
Bachelor’s degree – French & Spanish language and literature
1976-1980
Sea Level Rise: Higher Ground
The project describes how people are moving to higher ground because of rising sea levels, from Panama to Fiji…
https://no.linkedin.com/in/alister-doyle-a1546b12
***LinkedIn: Karl Methiesen
Karl is the editor of Climate Home. He has written for national newspapers, newswires and magazines in Australia and the UK. As a freelancer he has worked mostly with the Guardian’s environment desk. He is currently a consulting editor on the Guardian’s elephant conservation project.
Education
University of Tasmania
Master of Journalism, Media & Communications
2008-2010
University of Melbourne
Bachelor of Arts – Political Science & Government
2003-2006
The Guardian
Jun 2013 – present
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/karl-mathiesen-27a22742
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***Climate Justice Resilience Fund – About Us
The Climate Justice Resilience Fund was created in 2016 through a grant from the Oak Foundation. It is a project of ***New Venture Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity registered in the United States. In 2017, the Kendeda Fund became CJRF’s second member foundation…
SEE FELLOW FUNDERS
https://www.cjrfund.org/about-us
***InfluenceWatch: New Venture Fund (NVF)
The New Venture Fund (NVF) is a 501(c)(3) funding and fiscal sponsorship nonprofit that makes grants to left-of-center advocacy and organizing projects and provides incubation serves for other left-of-center organizations…
It is the largest 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the network of four nonprofits created and managed by Arabella Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based philanthropy consulting company that caters to major foundations and organizations on the political Left. A January 2020 profile of Arabella Advisors’ network by Inside Philanthropy noted that the company “handles over $400 million in philanthropic investments and advises on several billion dollars in overall resources.”
Critics argue that New Venture Fund is a “dark money” organization, serving as a way for left-leaning groups to anonymously funnel money toward various political advocacy issues, such as attacking vulnerable Republicans or pushing environmental restrictions. However, NVF also sponsors a number of “philanthropic projects” that engage in charitable causes…
NVF often operates alongside its 501(c)(4) “sister” nonprofit Sixteen Thirty Fund, which provides similar funding and fiscal sponsorship services to center-left advocacy organizations…
In 2018, NVF reported spending $49,728,842 on employee salaries and compensation…READ ON
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/new-venture-fund/
10
On an alternative energy tangent here :
a drop of rain can illuminate 100 LEDs.
Wit for link moderation to kick in no doubt…
No doubt the USA’s invention regulation act will suppress anything capable of producing anything more than 20% or so efficiency (as they make $$ from good old oil and we can’t have their dollar flow interrupted now can we…) which is why solar hasn’t evolved, Dr Nakamat’s cosmic particle harnesser, Browns water engine, Ponds & Fleischmann’s cold fusion etc etc went nowhere…
If it doesn’t make sense follow the money, as the saying went in the days when journalists actually had integrity, and that was BEFORE George Bush !
and back on to the nCOV virus – as I said previously – it’ll burn out before June.
Big picture – 2 months so far – 4 deaths out of 6 Billion outside of China.
50 or so people die every year in Oz getting out of bed!!!!
Try not to worship and wail at the wall of R0 nonsense.
The real pandemic is a while off yet…
This is but a battle in the war of reality.
00
BBC TV is probably the same, but I never switch it on – so can only report that Sky UK is going insane over flooding, as if it has never rained in Britain before!
18 Feb: Daily Mail: Climate of betrayal: Ministers never stop preaching about a ‘climate emergency’ – but they’re more interested in vanity projects than protecting communities, says ROSS CLARK
Were I one of the many people in Britain pulling up sodden carpets and sweeping out stinking mud yesterday, the very last thing I’d want to hear was a Cabinet minister saying he was ‘happy’ with the performance of our flood defences.
That was the, frankly, incredible message from Environment Secretary George Eustice following Storm Dennis this weekend.
Neither would I have been overjoyed to hear Sir James Bevan, chief executive of the Environment Agency, on Radio 4’s Today programme, blaming it all on the ‘climate emergency’.
Yes, it was pretty wet over the weekend, but the belief that we’ve suffered some kind of unprecedented deluge caused by global warming simply isn’t true.
Tredegar in South Wales, the wettest place in the UK this weekend, received 62.6mm of rain on Sunday.
That is less than a third of the 211mm which fell in a single day at the nearby Lluest-Wen Reservoir on November 11, 1929, long before anyone started worrying about climate change.
Britain has long been a storm‑lashed country, exposed to the worst that Atlantic weather systems have to offer. We’ve always had downpours and we’ve always had floods.
What makes flooding more common now is that while we persist in building new homes on natural floodplains which, in the past, were key to flood management, we refuse to invest in the defences needed to protect them.
Blaming it all on climate change is a feeble excuse. It does, however, beg a question: if climate change is making the country more vulnerable now and in the future, as government bodies keep telling us, why aren’t they taking flood defence more seriously?…
And then there is the perversity of government planning. How do ministers, who bang on about a ‘climate emergency’ and warn us that glaciers are melting and sea levels rising, justify a new nuclear power station on low-lying coastal land at Hinckley in Somerset and, possibly, another next to the sea at Sizewell, Suffolk?…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8014281/CLIMATE-BETRAYAL-Ministers-never-stop-preaching-climate-emergency.html
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18 Feb: Bloomberg: Here’s How the EU Could Tax Carbon Around the World
By Ewa Krukowska
PIC: dusk, chimney, “smoke”
The European Union has a bold plan for sharply reducing carbon emissions from its factories. It has what might be an even bolder plan for preventing the rest of the world from wiping out those cuts, and killing lots of European jobs at the same time. The plan is for taxing some of the carbon produced by the European factories’ global competitors, through what’s known as a border carbon adjustment mechanism. Other countries might call it a tariff, and a potentially illegal one at that. For the EU, the mechanism could be a way to hit two birds with one stone: protecting its industry while prodding other regions to move ahead with similar climate action. But there’s another as well: the cash such a carbon charge could bring in to strapped EU coffers.
1. What’s the problem?…(EVERYTHING)
2. What would that do to EU manufacturers?
They point to what’s already happening, as the cost of emissions permits has risen five-fold in the EU over the last three years, even before passage of Green Deal legislation. This year, carbon prices are likely to set records, rising by about a third to 30 euros ($32.50), according to a Bloomberg News survey of nine traders and analysts. ArcelorMittal SA, the Luxembourg-based steelmaker, cited that spike as one of the reasons behind its decision to temporarily reduce its European output by 7%. Makers of other goods whose production involves high levels of greenhouse gas emissions are also raising concerns even though analysts, including Jahn Olsen at BNEF, say there’s little evidence of industry fleeing the bloc…
ETC ETC…
6. What’s Europe’s response?
The idea also gives the European Union a tool for taking up leadership on an issue that Trump has backed away from…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-18/here-s-how-the-eu-could-tax-carbon-around-the-world-quicktake
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MSM continues to promote the notoriety these people crave:
16 Feb: Daily Mail: ‘I’ve been charged 22 times’: Glamorous vegan activist insists on breaking into farms to ‘rescue’ animals – despite the threat of jail time
•Vegan animal rights activist Leah Doellinger has been charged 22 times
•She said she would continue to break into farms to expose inhumane treatment
•Ms Doellinger organises mass trespasses to ‘rescue’ animals from factory farms
•She was charged with trespassing and stealing piglets from a piggery last year
By James Arbuthnott
Brisbane animal rights activist Leah Doellinger, who has over 36,000 followers on Instagram, has been hauled before the courts over a dozen times since 2017…
She is also the founder of ‘Meat The Victims’, a group that plans mass trespasses on animal farms to film what’s happening inside…
‘I take people into these farms to show them exactly what is happening so we can gain the footage and share it with the public,’ she told Yahoo News (LINK)…
Ms Doellinger took to Instagram on February 6 to encourage other activists not to be scared of a jail sentence, listing a group of friends who had been raided by police in recent weeks…
Ms Doellinger was charged with trespassing and stealing six piglets from a Queensland piggery in November after posting the location of the farm on social media.
Her friend and fellow activist Brianna Lee Thauer pleaded guilty to charges and received a good behaviour bond.
Ms Doellinger is reportedly planning to fight the charges…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8008283/Glamorous-vegan-activist-refuses-stop-trespassing.html
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no attempt to look at this from the perspective of the victims:
17 Feb: Daily Mail: Militant vegan who’s ‘proud’ of raiding farms and stealing livestock reveals he’s willing to go to jail instead of apologising – and vows there’ll be more ‘non-violent campaigns’
•James Warden rose to national attention last year after allegedly stealing a calf
•The militant activist has pleaded not guilty to aggravated burglary and stealing
•But Warden has admitted he is looking at jail time of up to 12 months if convicted
•He was also arrested in February 2019 after live-streaming from inside pork farm
By Charlie Coë
James Warden, 25, rose to national attention after allegedly stealing a $1,500 calf from a Western Australian farm in 2018.
He was also arrested in Perth in February of last year after live-streaming from inside a pork farm on the social media page of US animal activist group Direct Action Everywhere…
Warden – who has pleaded not guilty to stealing and aggravated burglary – admitted he is looking at time behind bars if convicted.
‘There’s a very good chance of prison time – I’d say I’m looking at between six to 12 months,’ he told The West Australian…
He has criticised the passive nature of Perth’s animal activism scene, saying there is a gap between assertive action and more direct protests regarding animal welfare…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009773/Vegan-whos-proud-raiding-farms-stealing-livestock-reveals-hes-willing-jail.html
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up from the 200m quid Boris Johnson was saying should be halved! and the protesters are all on the same page as all but one (Trump, if he goes) of the leaders and 99.99999% of the participants!
17 Feb: BBC: COP26: Climate summit policing bill estimated at £250m
The cost of policing the UN climate change conference in Glasgow later this year has now been estimated at £250m.
The “indicative” figure is detailed in a paper (LINK) which will go before the Scottish Police Authority on Wednesday…
In comparison to other major events, the cost of policing the 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles was £72m while the security bill for the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games was £90m…
As well as the security of delegates, planning for the global summit must also consider the potential impact of protests…
An SPA report last month said the summit will see the largest mobilisation of police officers in the UK.
On Sunday, a potential security breach was highlighted after detailed diagrams of the Scottish Events Campus site, which will host the summit, were accidentally put online.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-51535106
17 Feb: ScottishSun: Exclusive: DOUBLE TROUBLE Police Scotland to double riot cop numbers to deal with Glasgow marches and protest flare-ups
by Chris Musson
Sources said the aim is to increase the current total of 1,000 specially trained riot cops to 2,400 in the coming months…
Ms Taylor’s report said: “To address current and potential future challenges, including the policing demands of COP26, work is ongoing to increase public order capability and capacity within Police Scotland.”
Ms Taylor also detailed recent trouble linked to marches and climate protests in her report to the SPA…
A police source said: “The uplift in public order officers is primarily for COP26, but the numbers will also come in useful for the marching season given the rise in disorder.”…
Glasgow will host 90,000 people including 200 world leaders in November for the landmark climate summit at the SEC…
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/5292908/police-scotland-riot-cops-march/
10
Do the earths magnetic field and changes in the north south variation affect the climate?
if so, is it included in the climate modelling?
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006AGUFMGP51B..02F/abstract
just asking
40
Is the left winning or losing? Since we rarely hear directly from the “silent majority”,
its hard to know. They are, er, usually silent on the subject.
Premise one: the majority of folks are center-right on economics, especially personal economics, and center left on culture,
especially when expressed as the Libertarian notion of leaving other folks alone, and not bothering with other’s behavior that doesn’t bother you.
Premise two: the public voice is dominated by extremists on both sides. These tend very generally to be quiet when they are winning on an issue and loud when the are losing.
Premise three: The left has a tendency to reason by anecdote, the right by statistics. If there are numbers involved, the right is likely to try to tie their numbers to an objective reality, the left wishes their numbers to sit in a self-referential vacuum.
Premise four: the right wants things the can be replicated, the progressive wants, well, “progress”. Like windmills, reparations, and multiple genders. You need to figure out what these have in common to understand the left.
Since all of the above generate opinions on a continuum, one would think we could compromise from time to time. For a few hundred years, yes….today not so much.
Remember when a litmus test referred to to little strips of red to blue paper one used to check for acid or alkalies? No it googles most often as a political term.
And the reason the progressive left has been losing is, as their arguments become more difficult vis a vis reality, they have been more aggressive in applying tests
of conformity to their minions, and excluding apostates.
Those on the other side don’t see the gains, because it is rare to flip agressively; doubt — denial — disappointment — grudging acceptance of the failure of ones ideas,
opening the mind….to the right its ” it take a while for folks to come around” to the left “apostates are being reprogrammed by a right wing cult and have lost their
agency”.
It seems to me that one key to the ability of more conservative causes and parties to prevail in the last few years has been when the right can convince the middle that if you elect
the the left they will do what they say, and treat all citizens like they treat their own apostates, or citizens of other jurisdictions.
The virus in China is a good example of how, when push comes to shove the Chinese treat their own citizens. Those who run in free jurisdictions lauding the Chinese, or Cuban, or Venzualean economic and revolutionary miracle bear an increasing burden: We won’t do it THAT way!, they say. Yes, you will.
So the left really will ban fracking, really will force IC cars off the road, really will insist on 100% renewables and smart (run your power for you) meters, and rationing,
and social justice electricity and whatever ever else comes form their fever swamp.
Australia burns and the grid goes marginal. California burns and its utility goes bankrupt. And the left simply yells louder and tells bigger lies to cover reality, but in the silent majority minds are slowly changing.
The propositions become more extreme…the flak is heaviest over the target.
Usually, the left get a percentage of their ideas institutionalized before suffering a crushing defeat. Climate change notions, as expressed by power costs, can hopefully be the exception, and we can return to the normal goals of reliability and least cost efficiency.
That’s certainly what the silent majority want, along with local employment, a good economy, a safe neighborhood, and a government that focuses upon and can manage well a black swan event like covid-19.
That’s the opposite of what progressives are promising, and doing where they have power.
They are losing, and very PO’d about it — which in turn accounts for much of their attitude.
The next US election can be a tipping point; preserving and further growing our economy may drag much of the world along. Here’s hoping.
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That’s a big one Richard.
Also we must remember that there are politicians on both sides of the fence who love the gouging and skimming of the public purse for their own benefit.
When politicians like Trump and Boris are empowered by the “people” it’s a good start. Both appear to want to clean out those in the nation’s administrative superstructure who participate in the gouging and skimming.
It’s a start.
KK
20
I believe this is a worthwhile read:
https://issuesinsights.com/2020/02/18/jeff-bezos-blows-10-billion-with-his-climate-change-pledge/
30
曾錚 Jennifer Zeng@jenniferatntd
Yanyi Wang(also Wang Yanyi), director of #Wuhan Institute of Virology, issued a notice to researchers on Jan. 2 to pass on telephone message by #China‘s Nation Health Commission, forbidding anyone to release info of #COVID19. Original and English translation here. #Coronavirus
00
This is a great read about the current UK floods and the absurdity of EU environment rules. There will be no excuse for the UK Government now they are out of the EU.
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/18/boris-tories-floods-arent-our-responsibility-blame-climate-change/#
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“Russia Bars All Chinese As Companies Warn Of Looming Slowdown Russia Bars All Chinese As Companies Warn Of Looming Slowdown ”
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/japan-confirms-88-more-cases-aboard-diamond-princess-one-day-quarantine-set-end
Via Tip of the Spear
20
Brazil’s Senate is considering a bill to ban sales of “oil” powered cars in 2030 and driving them in 2040. It just passed their “environment committee.”
https://www12.senado.leg.br/noticias/audios/2020/02/ccj-aprova-proibicao-de-carros-a-gasolina-e-diesel-a-partir-de-2040
https://www25.senado.leg.br/web/atividade/materias/-/materia/130612
There appears to be no consideration of funding the enormous amount of charging stations, grid rebuilding and new generation capacity required.
40
The new world order apparently does not want people to have the freedom of private transport, by order the one world government.
30
David, considering Brazil has massive oil reserves which I presume the country derives great financial benefit from, this has to be biggest joke and act of hypocrisy I have heard of for some time. Are they going to close down their O&G industry at the same time (including plugging all existing producing wells) ??
10
Oil would take a big hit, jobs and all. If all that new power generation is gas fired then gas might be okay. But if they are this green they will go wind and solar.
I do not expect this to become law but we need to fight hard to make sure it does not.
00
David
Must be a generation later that is on that bandwagon..
Brasil is about a million square kilometers bigger than Australia. They built most of the communication network post the 1960’s, using bitumen and diesel trucks. But, at that stage, they had little oil production.
So they got hammered in the oil crices of the 1970’s onward. Hence their move to alcohol fuel for vehicles.
Deep drilling and Brasilian oil came later.
00
Water flowing again at Bre ….
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-18/drone-brewarrina-weir-1/11975408
00
One of our colleagues recently bemoaned that our carbon sinks had reached saturation point, which is nonsense, nature will have its way.
https://theconversation.com/yes-more-carbon-dioxide-in-the-atmosphere-helps-plants-grow-but-its-no-excuse-to-downplay-climate-change-130603
12
If carbon sinks were not saturated the partial pressure of CO2 would not be increasing. Biomass is a self limiting sink. It will absorb but then it will die and decay, releasing CO2. Alternatively it can burn in wildfire as our bush did or the Europeans can burn biomass as a renewable. With coal we are releasing in a few centuries CO2 that was stored from buried vegetation over tens of millions of years.
02
“Biomass is a self limiting sink.”
What a weird, totally illogical, idea.
Seems world biomass is increasing, so it NOT self-limiting,
Plenty of room for more.
30
Brian, where is your evidence for “Biomass is a self limiting sink.”
maybe the idea of nature being a more inventive system than anything man can devise goes against your obvious bias.
So where is your evidence for I don’t see your statement as anything near correct.
30
Brian,
You say “With coal we are releasing in a few centuries CO2 that was stored from buried vegetation over tens of millions of years.”
I say so what? As atmospheric CO2 levels measured in 100s of parts per million are irrelevant to influencing climate, but greatly improves the biosphere as it rises, the more the better!
40
Brian,
Even high school chemistry has the answer to your comment but you seem to be unqualified in that area.
10
In Europe car manufacturers now have to comply with CO2 emissions per km targets…
10
I just posted this at the ABC news FaceBook page in response to this presentation on the bush fires.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-19/australia-bushfires-how-heat-and-drought-created-a-tinderbox/11976134?sf230329036=1&fbclid=IwAR2aS0XJyS_fRv7qq-X1EvVgo40uGc3s2uV-jkQJB8HBPWFuCVF1q0Q4dHM
The visual quality of this presentation is outstanding. The reporters who are responsible for the way in which the devastation of these summer bushfires is presented deserve an award for their outstanding work.
However, their explanation as to the primary cause of these bushfires falls flat on its face because they use the old magicians trick of sleight of hand. They are correct in pointing out that these bush fires are caused by severe drought, low humidity (caused hot temperatures and dry conditions), high winds and massive (unprecedented) fuel loads.
Where their explanation completely breaks down, is their unscientific conclusion that these conditions were a direct result of human-induced climate change. Other than the bloviating of the pseudo-scientific charlatan Dr. Michael Mann, they have no direct evidence supporting their case. Indeed, what evidence does exist actually contradicts their un-scientific assertions. They argue that:
a) the two to three extremely dry years prior to the terrible fires were caused by human-induced climate change. No rational scientist would make such a ludicrous claim. CO2 levels have been systematically increasing since the 1940s and 1950s. While this increase in CO2 was occurring, the annual rainfall totals in S.E. Australia actually went up, not down and droughts become less frequent. Indeed, the data shows that droughts were far more frequent prior to WWII compared to the last 50 years.
b) the extremely dry conditions in SE Australia in late 2019 were a direct result of the unusually strong positive Indian Ocean Dipole. The extremely dry weather caused by this led to the low humidity levels and helped dry out the pre-existing (unprecedented) fuel loads. What they say about this cannot be disputed. However, there is absolutely no scientific evidence linking the purported effects of human-induced global warming to more frequent and/or more intense Indian Ocean Diploes. It is up to those who make this un-supported assertion to provide evidence to bak their spurious claim.
c) the increasingly higher summer-time temperatures exacerbate the fire conditions and that these higher temperatures are primarily the result of human-induced climate change. The first part of this statement cannot be disputed. However, the second part is not supported by scientific evidence. Observations show that the world’s mean temperature increased by about 0.6 C between the 1900s and the 1940s. This global increase in temperature occurred without any accompanying increase in the levels of CO2 (i.e. it must have been due to natural variations in the Earth’s climate). These same observations show that the world’s mean temperature increased by 0.7 C between 1970 and the 2010s, a period over which CO2 levels systematically rose. Given the significant natural warming in the world’s mean temperature in the earlier part of the 20th century, no rational scientist could claim that the correlation between increasing levels of CO2 and increasing temperatures is indisputable proof that the higher temperatures are predominantly caused by human CO2 emissions.
d) the high fuel loads are partly responsible for the devastating fire.
Ask yourself the question, why are they only mentioning the fuel loads in passing? Why aren’t they asking about the reason for these (unprecedented) fuel loads? Could it be because they know that the build-up of these (unprecedented) fuel loads were not caused by human-induced climate change but human-induced stupidity? It does not take a super genius to realize that the fuel load build-up was a direct result of the criminal mismanagement of our native forests by humans.
Those who claim that the devastating summer bush-fires were a direct result of human-induced climate change are dragging the name of science through the mud. They are causing irreparable damage to the reputation of science that will last for generations. They should be ashamed of themselves.
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As is said, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” So here’s my tiny thought. Everyone seems to be sagely mumbling IOD, IOD, Indian Ocean Dipole, and rubbing their chins thoughtfully. Cool water off the WA coast caused the lack of humidity, and the drought in SE Aus, was the result. And also I have seen it said the Sub Tropical Ridge vanished.
And yet any time I saw a pressure map, in the last 2 yrs, there was a wacking great high, centred on Alice Springs, dominating the country. So I’m wondering, instead of vanishing, it looks like the STR was our weather! Month after month after month, and I wasn’t hearing anyone remarking that that was strange. The Townsville floods was one time low pressure tried to penetrate south, and it was held up for 6 days, before wandering off to the East. High after high after high for months and years.
And yes there was cool water off the West coast, but even if it had been warm water, how is a high supposed to pick it up? High pressure means air is descending, it’s not going to be raising moist air, so it cools off, and then condenses as rain. High altitude dry air is being forced down. Surely it’s not going to be picking up anything!
And there may be some mechanism where a positive IOD causes the STR to move north, but no one seems to be considering it? What was the STR doing around the rest of the globe? No one knows! No one cares!
‘It’s climate change,’ needs to be answered with,’ can you please explain the mechanism?’ ‘Higher temperatures’ is way beyond a lame explanation, you have to explain the the mechanism..
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Not sure which part of the WA coast you are referring to – presume it’s the NW coast.
However, the SW coast is quite different. When the Indian Ocean is warm there, it’s hot and dry in Perth. Conversely, when it’s cool as now, it’s cloudy and humid.
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Whatever part of the western Indian Ocean, where the cool water is supposedly controlling SE Australia’s weather. Perth was under the highs too. The Kiwi cricket test.
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It is the IOD’s turn – it hasn’t had a go at the headlines for a while (/s)
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Misleading propaganda video from climatecouncil claims rainfall is decreasing.
https://twitter.com/etzpcm/status/1230067673704300544
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“Climate Change: The Facts 2019”
Link at
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/02/coronavirus-demographics-very-much-a-risk-for-older-people-and-the-strange-split-in-severe-case-rate/#comments
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Oops. Zhao Jianping, head of a Hubei containment team has stated that some patients designated as recovered continue to show traces of the virus through nucleic acid tests. He indicated that these people could continue to be contagious. There were similar results in Canada, where nose and throat swabs taken from a couple who had recovered from Covid-19 revealed they still had traces of the virus.
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