JoNova
A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
Jo appreciates your support to help her keep doing what she does. This blog is funded by donations. Thanks!
Follow Jo's Tweets To report "lost" comments or defamatory and offensive remarks, email the moderators at: support.jonova AT proton.me
Statistics
22 Reasons to be Skeptical of Man-Made Global Warming: https://chipstero7.blogspot.com/2018/09/20-reasons-to-be-skeptical-of-man-made.html
212
The red thumb is obviously at odds with FACTS. (would prefer the left wing media drivel).
41
Re, the assumption of logarithmic response of CO2.
Actual measurements of radiative absorption CO2 shows that this is an incorrect assumption.
It actually LEVELS OFF at around 280ppm.
50
This is only true if energy in isn’t limited, by my estimate only 9W/square meter is emitted in the CO2 absorption band and of that 7.5 Watts is already being absorbed, meaning there is only 1.5Watts per square metre of freedom in the system before energy saturation occurs.
10
Never the less, the work of the Connellys has shown that the atmosphere maintains vertical thermal equilibrium,
That means that even if such warming from CO2 did actually happen, it MUST be immediately countered by air movement due to pressure/density differentials.
Hence, warming by atmospheric CO2, despite any assumption or theory… can NEVER be measured,
and so, to all intent or purpose, it DOES NOT EXIST
132
Vertical thermal equilibrium as you put it occurs over a hot desert, cooler temperate forest and ocean. It is relative and independent of the actual temperature. So convection and associated lateral atmospheric transfer (Hadley cells etc) are integral to the the Earth’s total energy energy budget and have no cooling effect external to the system. The Earth’s solar energy budget is measured at the the top of atmosphere. The balance between the solar energy entering the Earth system and both reflected light and infra red radiation from the sun-warmed Earth determines the retained heat or Earth’s average temperature. This shows an increase which means that infrared energy that used to escape to space is now being retained. RThe assessment takes account of variations in solar irradiance and like it or the heat retention is due to the greenhouse effect.
37
“This shows an increase “
WRONG.!
OLR and tropospheric temperature trends are not diverging over time
That means that no extra energy is being “trapped”.
CO2 trapping energy is the biggest LIE of the whole AGW caper.
Vertical gradient is in thermal equilibrium. GET OVER IT.
That is why there is absolutely no measured or other empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2
That is why you cannot produce any.
IT DOESN’T EXIST.
62
Andy, I’m on your side of the AGW argument; but I believe you’re misusing the term “thermal equilibrium.” According to the American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, (see https://www.thefreedictionary.com/thermal+equilibrium) the definition of thermal equilibrium is
“n.
The condition under which two substances in physical contact with each other exchange no heat energy. Two substances in thermal equilibrium are said to be at the same temperature.”
If the atmosphere possesses a temperature gradient (i.e., a change in temperature as a function of altitude), then adjacent levels of the atmosphere are in physical contact and at different temperatures. By the above definition heat is being exchanged between those atmospheric levels and the atmosphere is not in “thermal equilibrium”–i.e., not at a uniform temperature. I prefer the phrase “Energy-Rate-Equilibrium (ERE)” to characterize what I believe you refer to as “thermal equilibrium.” In ERE, the rate thermal energy enters any and every region of a substance is equal to the rate energy leaves that region. Thus a non-zero temperature gradient is consistent with a state of ERE, but is inconsistent with a state of “thermal equilibrium.”
As to the concept of “greenhouse gases trapping heat,” I agree. The use of “trapping heat” may not be the biggest lie of the whole AGW caper, but it ranks near the top. No substance known to man exists such that if two objects are at different temperatures, surrounding the higher-temperature object with the substance will prevent heat from moving from the higher-temperature object to the lower-temperature object–i.e., “trap” heat in the higher-temperature object. In the absence of work being done, the only way to prevent heat from moving between objects is to bring the objects to the same temperature.
20
The Connollys showed that the atmospheric temperature is linear with respect to molecular density, to an R² of 0.99**
That is what is meant by thermal equilibrium.
That implies that the gravity based thermal gradient is totally in control of surface temperatures.
Even if there was some very slight warming by CO2, it would be countered immediately by the thermal gradient.
Warming by atmospheric CO2 has never been observed or measured,
because to all intents…. IT DOES OT EXIST.
40
Andy, I would appreciate it if you could provide a reference that either uses/defines “atmospheric thermal equilibrium” and/or uses/defines “thermal equilibrium” in terms of a linear relationship between “atmospheric temperature” and “molecular density.”
I’m with you in one regard: I believe, but am willing to consider counter points of view, that the atmospheric temperature gradient is predominately governed by gravity. In fact, for a hydrostatic, frictionless, incompressible fluid surrounding and bound by gravity to a stationary, impermeable, uniform-density, isolated, solid sphere using gravitational and pressure forces only I derived an equation for the pressure in the fluid as a function of the distance from the center of the solid sphere.
In addition, for an ideal (i.e., obeys the ideal gas law P*V=N*R*T), hydrostatic, frictionless, compressible gas surrounding and bound by gravity to a stationary, impermeable, uniform-density, isolated, solid sphere I derived a differential equation for the gas pressure as a function of the (a) the vertical temperature profile of the gas, and (b) the distance from the center of the solid sphere. I could not find a solution to that differential equation for an arbitrary vertical temperature profile, but I believe I could show that for a finite amount (mass) of the gas a zero-temperature-lapse-rate (i.e., a uniform temperature as a function of altitude) is not a solution of the differential equation.
10
Yes, but if the atmosphere develops a deeper and denser level of H2O (or even CO2 for that matter) it will take slightly longer for NET absorption and re-emissions to lead to photos escaping to space (or in Andy’s case, slightly longer to reach a dynamic equilibrium with altitude).
So more of a ghg will mean slightly more thermal energy is within dynamic ‘storage’, for slightly longer, in the lower troposphere, as a ghg’s concentration is increased. That means a higher global lower-tropo temp will arise when a ghg become dynamically more concentrated. And water being overwhelmingly dominant is concentrated more in the lower 12,000 ft. And that’s where the higher minimums are occurring.
It only needs to take 1 % longer, on average, for photons to escape from a denser thicker layer of H2O, for temps to be held slightly higher for longer at night, and also during the day, on top of UHI local effect (day and or night), and even within the outback.
That all depends on concentration. A real trend toward an ‘equilibrium’ is a continuous process and as you rightly point out it has a rate, but not a set result. And a change in rate means a change in effective thermal dynamic storage in the lower troposphere, so warming and/or cooling should and would change with change in concentration with time. In terms of magnitude and significant human and weather effects, CO2 can almost be ignored, as it’s overwhelmingly the H2O which matters here.
Meanwhile H2O and CO2 are both massively net beneficial, as is added warmth in general (as long as you have a cheap reliable electron supply grid … and now we don’t, due to successive irresponsible twits in all govts).
10
[SNIPO. Nil contribution. – Jo]
20
Andy, you are definitely a physics free zone spouting then most appalling nonsense. RSS, STAR, and UAH datasets show warming if the troposphere at 0.14 degrees Celsius per decade since satellite observation began. This warming is confirmed by radiosonde (weather balloons).
26
Nothing to do with CO2. Solar warming
The ONLY warming has come from El Ninos.
And OLR has increased in line with tropospheric temperatures
No extra energy is being trapped.
Atmosphere maintains itself in vertical thermal equilibrium.. proven by measurement.
[SNIP personal waste of time insults – Jo]
51
I will repeat it one more time. The atmosphere is an integral part of the Earth system. It can transfer heat from one area to another but it cannot remove heat from the system. The Earth exists within a vacuum and the only way for heat to escape the planet is long wave radiation. In short it is the Earth’s radiative equilibrium that is germane to the average temperature of the system. Now if the Earth did not have trace greenhouse gasses the atmosphere would be transparent to radiation and the upwards radiative flux at the top of atmosphere would equal the downward solar flux. The Earth’s average temperature would be -15 degrees Celsius. Basically a snowball Earth.
The excitation of greenhouse gas molecules by IR radiation and its re-radiation in random directions, effectively radiative billiards, maintains an average 15 degree temperature for the Earth system. Increase the partial pressures of the greenhouse gasses and the amount of IR radiation that can get through to top of atmosphere to escape into space is reduced. Of course there are many variables that also influence the radiative equilibrium such as changes to the Earth’s albedo including clouds impacting reflection of visible energy and the CO2 effect is badly overstated in most models.
I see that once again, without any attempt to refute my comments with logical argument you blather on about my apparent lack of understanding of basic physics. I have a MSc although I will admit that having “retired” to the land some time ago and it is now simply a piece of paper in a drawer. But let’s just say I have a pretty good understanding of physics. I regret I cannot say the same for yourself.
35
LOL… So, STILL running away from the FACT that you are unable to produce any evidence for warming by atmospheric CO2
I have explained why.
You CHOOSE to remain ignorant. You refuse to learn beyond your limited understanding.
Your problem.
[SNIP Ad hom – Jo]
The -15C farce is also a furphy, because it is based on a non rotational surface without an atmosphere.
It should not be applied to the Earth’s surface, but to the centroid of the atmospheric density depth.. where it is actually about -15C
It is the atmospheric mass and density that allows the lower atmosphere near the surface to maintain a “nice ” temperature.
[SNIP personal insult – Jo]
22
“amount of IR radiation that can get through to top of atmosphere to escape into space is reduced. “
LOL.. then why has it INCREASED in line with atmospheric temperatures.
You have EVERYTHING mixed up because of your non-comprehension of how the atmosphere works.
Its quite funny really.
Still waiting for that empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2
Duck and weave, Brian. 😉
61
“I will repeat it one more time.”
Repeating WRONG, does not make it right !
[Repeating an insult does make it interesting – Jo]
51
Brian, one of the world’s leading experts in atmospheric physics who worked on the Star Wars program has pointed out that CO2 molecules cannot “trap” heat in the lower troposphere, as the time for re-radiation greatly exceeds the mean time that the CO2 molecule will be bombarded by the other abundant gas molecules. So the energy that was to be re-radiated is lost in these collisions.
80
@G#4
The Connellys proof comes directly from balloon measurement and shows that even if CO2 did actually re-emit, any warming is immediately countered by the over-riding control of thermal gradient.
That is what Brian seems to be incapable of grasping because he is stuck with out-moded understanding of how the atmosphere functions, and refuses to think/learn any further.
70
Brian, did you get this from Zoe?
“Now if the Earth did not have trace greenhouse gasses the atmosphere would be transparent to radiation and the upwards radiative flux at the top of atmosphere would equal the downward solar flux. The Earth’s average temperature would be -15 degrees Celsius. Basically a snowball Earth.”
Sometimes you just have to sit down and analyse the process properly.
KK
40
Brian wrote (February 17, 2020 at 8:42 am) “… but it [the atmosphere] cannot remove heat from the system.” If greenhouse gases in the atmosphere radiate energy and some of the radiated energy that originates from high-altitude greenhouse gases escapes to space, doesn’t that conflict with your statement? Furthermore, if convection currents move large amounts of water vapor (formed by evaporation which removes heat from the water) from low altitudes to high altitudes where condensation gives up heat, doesn’t some of that heat escape to space? If not, why not? Isn’t this another example of the atmosphere removing heat from the system?
40
Energy is also gained and retained for a time by collisions, it’s not a battery depeating, and then retained vibrations re-emited from such earlier collisions, so the NET dynamic effect is probably no change, and does not change the over all GHG argument either.
10
Reed Coray, the only thing that can remove heat from a system in a vacuum is radiation. Basically the Earth, land, sea and air is an integral system and convection is bounded to the troposphere. You are right in that while a proportion of the energy from the greenhouse gas molecules makes its way back to the surface the remainder will escape into space. With respect to water vapor there are two aspects. The infrared vibration and radiation process where it acts as a greenhouse gas and the latent heat associated with phase changes. Convection is bounded to the troposphere and there is an inversion to the stratosphere. In the stratosphere temperatures increase with altitude and the warm air above the cooler troposphere provides atmospheric stability and precludes mixing. The increased temperatures in the stratosphere is due to incoming ultraviolet radiation ozone cycle which is exothermic.
10
Lets look at the behaviour of our star going forward.
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/Stein-Vuk500.gif
10
[Snip. Stop with personal insults. Repeat repeat repeat? – Jo]
23
You really are a piece of work Andy. Contributors such as Graeme#4 above make reasoned comment although he misses the fact that transfer of vibratory or bending energy from a molecule to another through contact does not extinguish the energy, which well be either radiated or again transferred by collision. At troposphere pressures radiation rather than molecular contact is the most probable means of excitation release.
You on the other hand offer nothing other than your tired reference to the Connelly’s essay found in their old, rather dodgy website and journal. They base their refutation of 150 years of empirical science on the fact that the greenhouse effect does not influence the relative temperature gradient (lapse rate). Agreed completely. But their contention that therefore the greenhouse effect doesn’t exist is unmitigated rubbish. What the greenhouse effect does is make the lower atmosphere pretty much opaque to outgoing long-wavelength radiation and thus makes the lower atmosphere adiabatic. You see Andy, if the atmosphere was transparent to radiation it would not warm and you wouldn’t have convection.
35
STILL WAITING for your empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2
STOP regurgitating AGW anti-physics,and produce the evidence.
51
Oh dear, Brain thinks the atmosphere is warmed solely by radiation., rather than from the energy reaching the surface.
Physics.. start again , Brian
And please find that MISSING EVIDENCE of measured warming by atmospheric CO2
Stop faffing around, and produce it..
61
“the lower atmosphere pretty much opaque to outgoing long-wavelength radiation”
Which is why heat signatures can’t be read, right, Brain? 😉
Some tiny slivers in some frequency bands, maybe
…. but the overall OLR tracks with atmospheric temperature, so your contention is totally without any scientific basis.
and we are all still waiting for that empirical evidence.
61
None of your last comments had a reply tag. The atmosphere is warmed by IR energy radiated from the warmed surface. Can you understand that the only way energy can escape from the surface to the atmosphere is through radiation to molecules capable of absorbing it? Other than greenhouse gasses the atmosphere is transparent to radiation and would not warm whatsoever. No I guess you don’t even understand something that basic. You wanted empirical evidence. The evidence is the basic fact that the atmosphere does warm and convection is initiated. Incoming and outgoing flux measurements at top of atmosphere confirm the energy budget changes. Basically Andy you demonstrate a complete ignorance of physics in general and planetary science in particular and are unwilling to learn.
34
Still no evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2, hey Brian. 😉
Funny about that.
Your inane evidence free prattling shows that your mind is locked into erroneous non-physics.
You cannot ALLOW it into your skull that the EXACT linear relationship between temperature and molecular density means that the over-riding control of atmospheric temperature is the gravity based pressure/density gradient
Still waiting for your empirical evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2, Brian..
Time to show us all 😉
But its not going to happen is it..
Because, guess what…..
There can be no measurable effect of warming by atmospheric CO2.
51
[SNIP]
26
“Other than greenhouse gasses the atmosphere is transparent to radiation and would not warm whatsoever. “
So the oxygen, argon and nitrogen don’t warm up, but the CO2 does..
Is that what your anti-physics is telling us .
Very funny !!
And if you have a tank of pure oxygen, you can never heat it with radiation.
WOW, what a funny little fantasy world you live in.
https://notrickszone.com/2020/02/10/scientists-oxygen-nitrogen-radiatively-important-greenhouse-gases-with-ir-absorption-temps-similar-to-co2/
And yet the temperature and the molecular density remain in an exact linear relationship. 😉
Time to OPEN your mind and get over your AGW anti-physics mind block.
71
[SNIP]
11
““Other than greenhouse gasses the atmosphere is transparent to radiation and would not warm whatsoever. “
Hilarious that you think the absorption of a tiny spectrum of radiation, by a TINY proportion of the atmosphere is enough to warm the whole atmosphere.
More BIZARRE than hilarious ! 😉
I now realise you have forgotten more physics than your ever thought you knew, and its now just a jumbled incoherent mess.
41
Atmospheric pressure regulates the surface temperature on earth.
20
Brian, CO2 and H20 are both vibrating molecules, and water vapour is obviously more abundant so why does CO2 get all the headlines just because humans have added 3%?
50
“Sigh. Pearls before swine.”
Yes, I have cast my pearls before you.
Will you learn ?
11
Good question el gordo. Entrained water vapor is indeed a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 and one of its windows overlaps that of CO2. But by itself it is not effective. It has this tendancy to condense and without greenhouse gasses to raise the black body temperature it would freeze out as it did during the snowball Earth period. In the past the Earth has maintained a balance between carbon dioxide emitters and sinks and the thing to understand is that minor changes to the CO2 partial pressure occurred over tens to hundreds of of thousands of years. The current change of around 25% increase in ppm was in geological terms, instantaneous. Now with fossil fuels we are releasing the carbon stored over tens of millions of years and combining it with oxygen to form CO2. Now a small bit of warming can have a significant effect on a balanced system. For example warmer oceans release more co2 and setting up a cycle. Carbon sinks can absorb a percentage but we have effectively saturated our carbon sinks. What you are missing is that emissions in excess of the capacity of carbon sinks is cumulative.
30
“warmer oceans”
From solar effects.. CO2 cannot warm oceans.
There is no empirical evidence that human released CO2 has caused any of the highly beneficial warming since the LIA.
“but we have effectively saturated our carbon sinks”
Now that really is a nice little fantasy. !
“In the past the Earth has maintained a balance between carbon dioxide emitters and sinks”
And atmospheric CO2 levels were 10 to 20 time higher.
The planet has been at the very base level for plant life existence for hundreds of thousands of years.
That is a totally undesirable situation. !
41
“the black body temperature “
You think the Earth’s surface is anything like a black body? Really?
41
‘Carbon sinks can absorb a percentage but we have effectively saturated our carbon sinks.’
That is simply not true, this system is not so finally calibrated that the sinks can’t cope with extra residue. The CO2 molecule falls close to where its emitted, which explains why China and India are leading the charge when it comes to greening up. The fertilisation is value adding.
‘ … without greenhouse gasses to raise the black body temperature it would freeze out as it did during the snowball Earth period.’
A runaway albedo effect, it was a close run thing and presumably we were saved by volcanic eruptions?
10
As bobl pointed out above, it’s minuscule and decreases in efficiency as it rises the small amount it still can, so CO2 is anything but a problem. Water on the other hand is not so limited, except it also precipitates out, and average concentration can shrink during a cooling phase. Neither is a thermal danger.
31
The really big questions is , what makes someone who says they have an MSc, choose to “believe” an anti-science hypothesis, for which they can produce absolutely zero empirical evidence, over a fact that is proven by real live measurements of some 2 million separate balloon data points. ?
What sort of “science” is that?
40
It should also be noted that in a CO2 laser, when they increase the CO2 concentration, it INCREASES the transfer of radiative energy through the laser.
Same when CO2 is used between double glazed windows.
20
Scientists are suffering from global warming stress and have lost objectivity.
What we know for sure is that water vapour and clouds are the largest contributors to warming.
40
‘ … and average concentration can shrink during a cooling phase.’
Does the troposphere shrink when it has less water vapour?
00
Every Winter Gordo … you know that. 😉
20
Just read your latest comment Brian.
There’s a serious shortage of knowledge in the statements you make that involve thermodynamics.
Just the one obvious item about energy returning from high altitude to ground level.
Seriously?
00
The bottom line Brian is you have no observational evidence to support the CO2 supposition of global warming, and as far as I can see you have offered no credible counter to AndyG55 comments.
You may have an MSc (who knows or cares) but your debating skill is rather blunt. Just reciting the same old myths does not work for so many here, we want observational evidence not the same hackneyed suppositions, assumptions, and theories.
Basically “Where’s the beef?”
~~~~~~
Would you have any reply to the observations in these papers —
This paper https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01592922
shows CO2 impact <0.5°C when doubled (330 to 660 ppm).
And that 1°C impact from increasing CO2 by a factor of 7 (~2300 ppm).
Overall they show that 'The Manabe & Wetherland (1967) model' of (2XCO2=2°C) is flawed by having: "crude resolution", "total neglect" of key factors, and "unrealistic" adjustments.
~~~~~~
then there is this paper
https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=97917
The climate sensitivity to rising CO2 concentrations is just 0.0014°C/ppm.
Doubling CO2 from 350 to 700 ppm yields a warming of less than 0.5°C.
"There is nothing CO2 would add to the current heat balance in the atmosphere."
Basically doubling or even trebling CO2 levels from the current would cause insignificant temperature rise.
~~~~~~
On ocean warming —
"When the surface change is only a couple of 10ths of a degree"
From 1945-2010, the 0-20 m ocean warmed a couple 10ths of a degree (~0.3°C). From 1900-1945, the 0-20 m warmed ~1.2°C.
From 1984-2006, global SSTs rose 0.28°C. “Natural variability” dominates this warming.” is what they say!
From https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00148.1
10
Some science Brian …
In the paper, Kennedy and Hodzic,2019 summarize the lack of real-world, observational support for the claim CO2 molecules elicit planetary heating in the process of explicating their postion that water vapor is the gas that dominates the Earth’s greenhouse effect.
They point out that the “critical assumption” that CO2 molecules reduce outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) to warm the Earth’s surface “lacks empirical confirmation.”
A graphic of OLR variability (Figure 1) from the paper demonstrates that “none” of the variation can be attributed to CO2’s influence.
Kennedy and Hodzic sum up their skepticism about CO2’s greenhouse effect influence by saying —
1) “the effect of any increases in [CO2’s] concentration can only be theoretically inferred”;
2) other than by correlation or curve-fitting, there is no “direct verification possible for the greenhouse effect of CO2”; and
3) there is no realized “clear spectral signal available showing significantly reduced OLR from increasing CO2.”
In other words, the specific greenhouse effect warming properties of CO2 have not been validated scientifically.
30
Anthropogenic climate change isn’t supported by experimental evidence says Dr. Jyrki Kauppinen who was an expert reviewer for the IPPC’s climate report AR5, 2013.
In a comment to the IPCC overseers, Kauppinen strongly suggested the “experimental evidence for the very large sensitivity [to anthropogenic CO2 forcing] presented in the report” is missing (Kauppinen and Malmi, 2019 ).
In response, the IPCC overseers claimed experimental evidence could be found in the report’s Technical Summary.
But the Technical Summary merely contained references to computer models and non-validated assumptions. Kauppinen writes:
“We do not consider computational results as experimental evidence. Especially the results obtained by climate models are questionable because the results are conflicting with each other.”
Upon examination of satellite data and cloud cover changes, Dr. Kauppinen concluded the IPCC’s claims of high climate sensitivity to CO2 forcing (2 to 5°C) are about ten times too high, and “the models fail to derive the influences of low cloud cover fraction on the global temperature.”
Evidence for natural climate change supported by satellite observations
When low cloud cover data from satellite observations are considered, a very clear correlation emerges see figure2 of https://arxiv.org/pdf/1907.00165.pdf.
As low cloud cover decreases, more solar radiation can be absorbed by the oceans rather than reflected back to space. Thus, decadal-scale decreases in low cloud cover elicit warming. conversely when cloud cover increases, cooling ensues.
In this manner, Kauppien and Malmi (2019) find “low clouds practically control the global temperature,” which leaves “no room for the contribution of greenhouse gases i.e. anthropogenic forcing.”
In fact, Kauppinen and Malmi boldly conclude that the total warming contribution from anthropogenic CO2 emissions reached only 0.o1°C during the last 100 years, which means
“anthropogenic climate change does not exist in practice.”10
As low cloud cover decreases, more solar radiation can be absorbed by the oceans rather than reflected back to space. Thus, decadal-scale decreases in low cloud cover elicit warming. conversely when cloud cover increases, cooling ensues.
But if the lower-level cloud cover mechanism is the result of ultra-dry stratospheric air, infalling constantly to the lower troposphere, and displacing the H2O that’s normally present from +/- 45 deg of the equator, then OLR also increases and the atmosphere will have greater variability of Temps, humidity, winds and precipitation. Which over decades has cumulative effect. Polewards of +/- 45 deg of the equator, you get more ice, that lasts marginally longer in Summer.
i.e. not necessarily colder, but more variable (high humidity no longer damps the T range) plus more aggressive highs full of ultra-dry continuously infalling air during Winter, [or any other season] to increase local OLR and add extra bite to Winters via sunshine that delivers no warmth, and input to OLR which rapidly escapes at sunset leading to lower lows, merely accentuating the underlying existing winter seasonal trend … a more desert-style variability within even coastal tropics.
It is easy to invoke sustained lower % cloud cover at lower-altitude, but that implies sustained lower humidity in the lowermost troposphere as well, which implies much higher OLR, not just more warming of water. i.e. Increased T variability (and extremes) would be the result. Over decades it may NET to cooling and more sea ice on the planet for longer.
People had not expected the stratosphere to be sinkable, or to do so continuously, but it is doing it now, the resulting engorged jetstream in the Summer hemisphere is currently reaching ~400 km/h in the South Atlantic this week, which is 185 km/h faster than it should be at this time of year. And that’s one new trend and mechanism which is not imaginary.
10
Brian:
Can I intrude on this brawl and ask how you are so sure that heat from a warmed earth can only be transferred to the atmosphere by radiation? Surely conduction could heat atmospheric gas molecules directly.
Secondly, why kinetic interchange of energy can occur but if it is contained on “non greenhouse gases” how can it be radiated to space? It would certainly result in a warmer atmosphere, hence “greenhouse” effect (for want of a more accurate term).
Thirdly, my distant memory recalls that Planck thought that everything could radiate energy; this may well be the case with nitrogen and oxygen (see Andy’s link). Is this taken into account.
Fourthly, my understanding is that NASA measured the outgoing radiation at wavelengths specific to CO2 and found a decrease, which fits in with your thoughts (as i understand them) of extra CO2 causing more radiation in all directions and less going directly outwards. They also measured an increase in the same wavelengths downwelling from the sky, claimed as proof of warming. But they are only measuring a small portion of the I.R. spectrum, are they measuring the total radiation?
It seems to me that the old “IF the only tool you have is a hammer…” adage applies. How do we know that energy from radio and TV broadcasts is being counted? Could some (not so) distant alien monitoring the umpteen repeat of I Love Lucy or The Antiques Roadshow be ascribing that to calculating the Earth is getting cooler?
00
lol … now there’s a new spin on UHI. Radio comms and broadcast freq are much longer wave than IR and the windows and propagation modes differ.
00
Good pickup Graham. Meant to say through the atmosphere. Transfer of energy within the troposphere via convection is supported by conduction being direct contact between molecules at the surface and via collision between molecules in the atmosphere as raised by Graeme#4 above as well as the transfer of latent heat via water vapor. As I noted above, convection is bounded to the troposphere and there is an inversion to the stratosphere. In the stratosphere temperatures increase with altitude and the warm air above the cooler troposphere provides atmospheric stability and precludes mixing. The increased temperatures in the stratosphere is due to incoming ultraviolet radiation ozone cycle which is exothermic.
Transfer of absorbed heat out of the Earth system can only occur via infrared radiation and apart from frequency windows in greenhouse gasses the atmosphere is transparent to IR radiation. Rather than greenhouse gasses perhaps infrared active molecules is more accurate.
The spectrum from ultraviolet to infrared inclusive is measured to determine the energy budget. Within the Earth system energy can be circulated and give rise to atmospheric turbulence, cyclones etc but the actual heat balance is a function of the total solar energy in and the total energy out.
20
some science Brian …
In an experiment (Allmendinger, 2016), using pure (100%) CO2 in a container, compared the radiative absorption properties of CO2 to that of argon, helium, and air (nitrogen and oxygen).
Surprisingly, Dr. Allmendinger found that the capacity to absorb radiation (sunlight) was quite similar for CO2 and for argon, nitrogen, and oxygen. The latter 3 are non-greenhouse gases.
Nitrogen and oxygen together constitute 99% of the atmosphere. Argon’s atmospheric representation is 0.93% (9,300 ppm) and CO2 is 0.041% (410 ppm).
In the experiment, pure CO2 was used. And the limiting absorption temperature for pure CO2 molecules wasn’t significantly different than the far more atmospherically abundant non-radiative gases.
As Allmedinger summarizes, this means that “a significant effect of carbon-dioxide on the direct sunlight absorption can already be excluded.”
Also of note was back in 2010 …
In an elementary lab experiments that use pure (1,000,000 ppm) CO2 in one container and air (N2, O2) in another to demonstrate the CO2 container warms more than the air container are only illustrating that CO2 molecules are heavier than nitrogen and oxygen molecules.
Heavier CO2 molecules “reduce heat transfer by suppressing convective mixing with the ambient air” (Wagoner et al., 2010).
In other words, the CO2 molecules aren’t warming the container via their radiative properties, but due to the density differential for CO2 relative to N2 and O2.
40
Some more science …
Professor Nasif Nahle has mathematically assessed the rate at which heat is retained by CO2 molecules; his work was endorsed by the Faculty of Physics of the University of Nuevo Leon (Mexico).
Nahle found the “mean free path” for a quantum wave to pass through the atmosphere before colliding with a CO2 molecule is about 33 meters (Nahle, 2011a). Such a wide chasm between molecular collisions would appear to undermine a visualization of CO2 functioning like a blanket does.
Even more saliently, Nahle determined that the rate at which CO2 molecules can retain heat at the surface may only last about 0.0001 of a second (Nahle, 2011b).
If heat-loss is slowed down at a rate of 0.0001 of a second by CO2 molecules, the atmospheric CO2 concentration – whether it’s 300 ppm or 400 ppm – effectively doesn’t matter. The time lapse differential would be immaterial for either concentration.
Consequently, Nahle concludes “carbon dioxide has not an effect on climate changes or warming periods on the Earth”.
30
Because of locked minds, and a total refusal to accept measured scientific results, it will be a while before people are able to accept the fact that the work of the Connollys provides proof that there can be no measurable warming effect from atmospheric CO2.
The gravity based pressure gradient responds immediately to counter any such warming. It is the over-riding control.
Where does all the IR energy from bushfires go? Does it get trapped by all the CO2 released.
Of course it doesn’t. The whole idea is a furphy.
Old misunderstandings and partial learning just do not cut it, and people will eventually have to accept that the atmospheric temperature is controlled by the gravity based pressure/density gradient.
Some part of the AGW radiative prattle may be true, but those who think radiation is the only form of energy transfer, or actually controls energy transfers, (as Brian seems to to) have locked their minds in a closet.
They need to go outside and feel the breeze.
They need to look at huge thunderheads of clouds.
They need to watch a eagle soar on the thermals.
—-
We know that there is absolutely no measured evidence of warming by atmospheric CO2
(watching the manic dodging antic can be quite hilarious 😉 )
And the proven fact of vertical thermal equilibrium within the troposphere shows why that mythical warming will remain exactly what it is, a fairy-tale.
30
Yes indeed Andy,
They need to also go out when it is widely overcast but not raining, and wonder how and why those thousands are tons of water vapor are there.
Ask themselves what is the process that keeps these clouds aloft and moving, and why at the end of it all they might never form rain clouds but just dissipate leaving a clearer sky.
IMO once they’ve sorted all that they’ll know the energy balance of most clouds that waft around this planet. As it stands we don’t know because nobody is investigating and measuring how clouds function.
20
Also of note is a century of increasing solar activity as reported here
https://www.space.com/2942-sun-activity-increased-century-study-confirms.html
20
Indeed AndyG55,
Clouds utterly destroy climate models …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THg6vGGRpvA
Best laughs… hand held calculators match super-computer models… 12:28, climate model uncertainty (error bars)… 24:25
“Cloud error is 114 times larger than the variable they are trying to detect”
30
Tried unsucessfully to post this link on my Facebook page. Not allowed. Violates Community Standards. Aparrently chipstero7 at blogspot.com is blocked on Facebook. Clicking on the link here at joannenova.com.au works just fine so it is a Facebook thing.
40
I’m really into your blog. The moving Saturn, the cubes, the hidden references in pop culture. You should read the blog linked to my name and we can share.
20
I’ve read your blog and I’m wondering share what ?
10
Sadly so have I,
It may be of interest that Gee Aye(Huh?) has switched the link so that clicking his Gee Aye site now links to a site called;
https://timecube.2enp.com/
I do not know what that is about or whether it has any association with John Andrews.
Did you Robert derive anything from Gee Aye’s blog?
10
His old one I learned that ” might” and “could” are scientific proof of “will” and he likes to distract on blogs like this .
I also learned he is a narcissist and his favourite letter of the alphabet is X , apart from that actually including that nothing useful .
00
Dear Lord I just clicked his link and wow , I really mean wow that’s really far out there .
I see he has lost his love of “X” and traded for cubism .
00
obviously you guys need to read up about time cube. As should everyone. Share the enlightenment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube
10
Ok I’ll have a Squiz in the interest of fairness but do I need to wear an aluminium foil hat when I’m reading it ?
00
Ok so I did need the foil hat , I notice there is a similarity between the theory that CO2 causes climate change and his theory of cubism .
Neither is provable .
00
all the proof is there. It is all in the mind
00
On the Climate Sensitivity and Historical Warming Evolution in Recent Coupled Model Ensembles
Interesting Comment: “Somewhat surprisingly, CMIP6 models exhibit less historical warming than CMIP5 models; the evolution of the warming suggests, however, that several of the models apply too strong aerosol cooling resulting in too weak mid 20th Century warming compared to the instrumental record.”
https://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/acp-2019-1175/
H/T
Week in review – science edition
Posted on February 15, 2020
by Judith Curry
31
They show less warming than has happened, then lots coming. Pure junk.
40
Yes, as I have shown many times Historical all cause warming from the LIA to now shows only around 1.4 deg per doubling if you assume it was all due to CO2 and just 0.7 deg per doubling assuming 50% was CO2 induce (per IPCC) while the model forecasts of up to 6 deg per doubling in spite of the fact that the effect of CO2 is logarithmic and the energy input to CO2 is hard limited to about 9W/sqm.
The late and Great Bob Carter used to say, how can you justify a greater warming rate in the future than in the past when CO2 is logarithmic in effect.
30
A decade of variability on Jakobshavn Isbræ: ocean temperatures pace speed through influence on mélange rigidity
Interesting Comment: “The time series of elevation provides an unprecedented level of detail, which clearly shows a pattern of summer thinning partially offset by winter thickening in response to seasonal changes in flow speed over most of the record.
At least from autumn 2016 through spring 2019, winter thickening outpaced summer thinning, leading to net thickening and elevations approaching those observed in 2010”
https://www.the-cryosphere.net/14/211/2020/tc-14-211-2020.pdf
H/T
Week in review – science edition
Posted on February 15, 2020
by Judith Curry
31
But…but you don’t understand. Data can be faked. The climate alarmists do it all the time. Why not the climate deniers? No motivation.
The real data supports the climate deniers position and demonstrates the climate alarmist’s position to be nothing but hot air (pun intended).The climate deniers know the climate simulations are defective. The climate alarmists say the output of their simulations is data.
Consider: the climate models are models and not climate. As such, the cannot possibly reflect the full reality of climate. Only the actual climate can do that.
A model is not the thing modeled. If it performed exactly as the thing modeled, it would BE the thing modeled and not a model. The output from a model is not data. It is exactly and only the output from the model. It must be proven that the output from a model truly matches the thing it models. If not done, it is only a bunch of numbers with no significance.
171
As a note, the Denier label was an early attempt to link Sceptics with Holocaust denial in order to slime them. It’s pretty offensive to some. Best you choose another word couplet Proponent/Critic works nicely.
20
Why are you so afraid of the distortion of language perpetrated by the demented left (Climatastrologers)? If you let them control the language, they control what you can say and how you can say it. This leads to controlling what you can think. You are left with only the ideas they want you to have. This is how they control you by destroying your mind and your ability to use it in your behalf. Which is exactly why they distorted the language in the first place.
What is it that I am in fact denying? That a man cause climate catastrophe will happen if we continue to produce CO2. Our clinging to modern high energy technological civilization that so clearly sustains and advances our lives on earth also produces CO2. As with our bodies (carbon based life form), it is a by product of burning carbon based fuels. This human produce CO2 is presumed by them to be the most effective and important component of the atmosphere causing an ultimately fatal Global Warming and Climate Change. Which I also deny. In effect, they are saying you are causing the eminent catastrophic end of the earth BECAUSE you are alive and work to stay alive. This I also deny.
Their secret attack is on your mind. The terms Climate Denier, Global Warming, and Climate Change or any new term they create are not honest terms. They are package deals in which there may be a grain of truth but they are loaded with massive amounts of undefined, false to fact, irrelevant, and mutually contradictory details not connected with the central concept. As such, the are anti-concepts that destroy your ability to think, to come to valid conclusions, and to communicate coherently about them. Finally, they cause confusion, uncertainty, and hesitation to act in your and others best interests. In other words, they try to win by tying your mind into Gordian Knots without even beginning to address the issues they are pretending as their most important and urgent issue to address.
I refuse to give them that edge. Hence, I proudly take the label Climate Denier and identify clearly that I deny everything they stand for. I choose life and they choose death. They are welcome to their choice but I will fight for MY choice with everything I have. Including a rather effective mind capable of clear thought, communication, and well directed action.
70
Changing the language was ever the mark of the charlatan!
20
Nicely put, Lionell.
I am still waiting for the English language version of “Vladet’ umom”, to be published.
“Vladet’ umom” is a Russian book, “Owning the Mind”, which is all about the unary propaganda war, that we identify as “climate change”.
10
Cold Water on Hot Models
Interesting Comment: “News headlines have recently warned about “troubling” new warming projections from climate models that are “running red hot.” In reality, these only represent a small subset of the new models currently being developed — most of which are not running notably “hot.” And many of the “hot” models do a relatively poor job of reproducing past temperature changes, an important test of model skill.”
https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/cold-water-hot-models
H/T
Week in review – science edition
Posted on February 15, 2020
by Judith Curry
51
Actually about half of the CMIP6 models reporting so far are running too hot. This may well tear the modeling community in half, just as the Greta effect has torn the policy community in half. Radical models versus moderate models. Bring it on!
30
David, like your writing… On this note its really quite important for science that models that have ever been outside of the 3 sigma limits are eliminated from the CMIP set. There is no way that averaging with a known wrong output can ever make the average MORE accurate. Maybe you should write about that – this reason alone is enough to reject CMIP as a representative set.
10
Wake me up when you have found a couple of hot models, that I could afford.
10
Southern California Climate Change over 100,000 Years
Interesting Comment: “Southern California is one of only a few places outside the Mediterranean Basin to enjoy a Mediterranean-like climate. … But Southern California is warming faster than nearly anywhere else in the contiguous United States, and climate projections for the state forecast higher temperatures and increasingly erratic precipitation … Indeed, new research suggests this has happened before. (Glover et al). … The team examined a sediment core from Baldwin Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains, located in a region where the pine-dominated, Mediterranean woodland starts to give way to the sagebrush-dominated subtropical desert that prevails in the state’s interior. … The researchers found that over long timescales—of 10,000 years or more—summer insolation was a more important influence on the state of the lake than sea surface temperatures or carbon dioxide levels. ”
https://eos.org/research-spotlights/southern-california-climate-change-over-100000-years
H/T
Week in review – science edition
Posted on February 15, 2020
by Judith Curry
21
+A 5680-year tree-ring temperature record for southern South America
Highlights:
• We developed a 5682-year tree-ring temperature record for southern South America (SSA).
• Solar forcing persistently influences temperatures at multi-centennial timescales.
• Sea surface temperature is an important forcing at interannual to interdecadal scales.
• Recent warming is not exceptional in the context of the last five millennia in SSA.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379119306924
H/T
Week in review – science edition
Posted on February 15, 2020
by Judith Curry
21
https://energyvault.com/
What comes after pumped hydro? Bricks tower…
At least it is cheaper. For my very non physics savvy eyes, seems to be inefficient. But who am I…
40
“What comes after pumped hydro?”
I heard that they are also considering using excess ruinable energy to power an electric motor that drives a rail car up a hill, then when they need the energy, they let the car go back down the hill while driving a generator. I’m not how sure how efficient this process would be.
50
Ric,
Its already being done in the USA.
The ARES project..
https://www.seeker.com/earth/energy/rail-energy-storage-harnesses-the-power-of-gravity-all-the-livelong-day
00
According to an article published on December 13, 2019:
https://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/19794/Are-Gravitational-Batteries-the-Solution-to-Grid-Power-Storage.aspx
00
What happened to the conservation of energy? “Ye dunna get owt for nowt”.
00
So my steam plant teacher used to tell us. back in the day when Brisbane still had trams, A loaded tram going down Coorparoo hill would drive a loaded tram half way up using the energy from regenerative braking. IFF wind power alone was used to lift blocks onto the tower therefore negligible real value of losses ( I would guess, approaching 30%) and only sell power from regeneration, at a prescribed rate and predetermined time. There is never a free lunch, eventually, the tower would have to be offline to replace/rebuild itself completely.
50
Enoch:
I think your instincts are right, but we will never know until such a tower is rather more than a video.
I would guess that its efficiency would be around 60% (at best) in still air. When there are strong winds then I wouldn’t want to be nearby.
If anyone thinks that this is designed to collect government (taxpayers) subsidies, I am not going to disagree.
50
see RicDre comment at 8.5 below.
The article claims 85% efficiency and a possible cost of US$150 per MWh.
00
Those figures of 85% doing useful work, with 15% wastage, seem to be par for course, in the most optimum of scenarios.
10
Efficiency is irrelevant if you are trying to make solar work at night.
70
Except that the inefficiency (before postnormal science) should drive the decision to use dispatchable power instead of part time energy sources.
Grid scale Solar and Wind already have a carbon emission footprint greater than coal, inefficient storage like this @ around 40% loss plus 2 x transmission losses results in renewables being even worse emitters of CO2. There is absolutely no point to using renewables if they are filtered through a 50% loss funnel. Even rooftop solar becomes a Net emitter compared with coal in this scenario.
20
Here are some additional energy storage ideas being explored:
Are Gravitational Batteries the Solution to Grid Power Storage?
https://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/19794/Are-Gravitational-Batteries-the-Solution-to-Grid-Power-Storage.aspx
11
Definitely not!
I might work in the outer solar system, but not here on Earth.
10
On the Russia hoax, you can tell it was run by a lawyer. For Comey to order the FBI to spy on Americans, specifically on candidate Trump’s campaign team, he needed FISA Court permission to break the Fourth Amendment. So he needed a foreign plot threatening domestic security. The made up Steele dossier would do. Golden showers on Obama’s bed. So absurd it might pass and when Hillary was President, who would bother to check it? Comey himself insisted it was in a report, not just in the appendix.
Russia? It could have been any country. The court required corroboration to allow illegal domestic spying and there is the lie which will put them all in jail. The corroboration was from Steele himself leaking to the press, something the FBI knew and of which they officially disapproved, but they did not tell the court. In fact is that they lied on their multiple statements to the FISA court that it was confirmed. And obtained repeated permission to tap Trump’s phones, emails and use spies. The chain of people involved in all this goes back to Hillary Clinton herself.
The Ukraine hoax was quickly discovered the moment Pelosi agreed to impeach, as demanded by new candidate Steyer and the powerful Gang of Four. To impeach Pelosi and Schiff again needed an illegal foreign affair for which the President alone had responsibility. So the Vindman privileged leak of the phone call reported as hearsay by a CIA insider to Schiff and using the Whistleblower Act to protect their men inside. The actual words of the phone call were irrelevant! The irony is that Vindman and others were listening to a privileged call to protect the President from such an allegation. Vindman is a hero to the DNC. Sanders asked for a standing ovation.
Worse, Pelosi moved instantly to impeach Trump when he unexpectedly promised to release the exact text of the call the next morning! And Schiff denied meeting the whistleblower previously and incredibly made up his own impeachable conversation and read it to Congress. For good measure, the second impeachment charge was that Trump dared to fight the first manufactured charge.
So the FBI legally spied on Americans in violation of its charter and the Fourth Amendment. They spied on the entire Trump campaign on behalf of Fusion, Hillary Clinton and the DNC, all with the permission of the FISA court. Comey even wore a wire into his interview with the President while head of the FBI. It wasn’t just criminal, it was unconstitutional, acting just like the KGB in a Communist state. The use of Russia was simply a thin and known to be false excuse.
Next, deep state lawyers used the Whistleblower Act and a CIA operative, to manufacture the ground so impeach Trump, knowing it was false from the outset. Hearsay at best. They didn’t need the text and continued, knowing that Trump had done nothing wrong. Vindman could not be used directly because it would have been literal treason.
What we have here is Watergate, approved by the FISA court and treason protected by the Whistleblower Act and hearsay. Comey, Pelosi and Schiff, the FBI and CIA and the speaker of the House.
So will Comey and friends be charged with crimes, inducing the court to give them permission to spy on Americans in America? Will Pelosi and Schiff and Vindman and Ciaramella be charged with conspiracy and treason? The list of charges alone would be long. Will Hillary Clinton herself be charged? The chain of command is clear and she was going to be President and likely approved the Russia hoax.
Amazingly Russia and Ukraine were just countries of convenience, pulled out of the hat. No one had any evidence of anything and the rush to impeach means Pelosi and Schiff knew the call was not impeachable. Schiff lied to Congress.
The FBI and CIA were clearly working directly for former Secretary of State Hillary and the Democrats against a Republican President, before and after the election. High crimes and misdemeanors by the Democratic National Party and possibly approved by the former Secretary of State herself and the current Speaker of the House. These are scandals so big they threaten the US itself. The silence from the FISA court is deafening. This bomb could explode at any time.
What if President Trump is reelected? Can ‘democratic socialist’ Bernie Sanders save Hillary and the DNC? Will they lock her up finally?
262
“Will they lock her up finally?”
If it’s in the script.
30
She looks like a high-quality scapegoat to me.
All sorted people – go back to sleep.
“we could hang for this”
🙂
40
Perhaps it will. However, according to an article in the Sunday Age (today) and reprinted from the Washington Post, AG Bill Barr has declared ” ..An AG would not listen to an (Presidential) order to investigate a political opponent”.
I am not sure what to make of that. Are political opponents immune from prosecution?
In any case I don’t suppose the indemnity extends to government agencies or employees. Surely the time has come to investigate the complaints seriously. In fact what has Bill Barr been doing for the past 12 months?
100
The judge in the FISA court must be under pressure. The FISA Act was always a concern because it enabled spying inside American on American citizens against the explicit ban by the Constitution but the lawmakers said it would be overseen fairly by an independent judge who would have to be convinced. That was the theory, trust the legal system. That the FBI lied repeatedly in writing to the judge is now a test of the court system. This is perjury to pervert the course of justice and even the Constitution, even to extend the power of the FBI to spy on American citizens at home.
If the FISA judge ignores what is now common knowledge and refuses to act on the documented fraud in secret FISA court, it utterly destroys the idea that the justice system is apolitical and can be trusted. The judge could be considered an accessory to a crime. Also the Act itself should be repealed as it is demonstrably not safe to trust the Fourth Amendment to the department of Justice. And the specific judge needs to be disciplined, even prosecuted if not removed. We are seeing courts around the world acting as activists bypassing and overruling Congress and Parliament, in the US, UK and Australia. There is separation of powers but once judges make political judgments as with Brexit and FISA, they have broken this.
Then when and not if the judge acts, the participants should be facing the same 7-9 years in jail recommended to Roger Stone who simply li*d, as Schiff and Comey did repeatedly. And a host of others inside the FBI, CIA and Justice Department and contractors like Fusion and Steel and the DNC and Clintons.
80
Great analysis.
20
To the contrary, apparently the entire FBI wanted Trump to win since they absolutely hated Hillary. Thus they defused the Russia issue and opened an investigation into Hillary’s email server just prior to the vote, handing Trump an easy victory. There is no instance of the GOP being turfed out after only one term, and given the strong US economy and low gas (gasoline) prices, Trump has an easy second term coming up in November. Won’t be any action til 2024 or even 2028 for the Dems. It will take an economic downturn and a decent Dem candidate most likely from a southern state for them to win the electoral college again.
Good news, various pundits suggest AOC is likely to be replaced in her district in the Bronx. As has been pointed out, AOC is a “T” short of a Taco.
10
Comey vacillated, caught between what was his job and his loyalty. This was his pattern of behaviour in all things and this vacillation did damage Clinton’s last few days but in the end he let her go.
I would not however consider that this gave Trump an easy victory. There was real risk in the bigger swinging states like Florida but in the end the big cities voted Democrat and the rest of America voted Trump, giving him a massive victory in electoral college seats, not the popular vote.
30
As for AOC, her action to stop the Amazon expansion in New York was likely resented by many. And the association with the Gang of four as extreme left women against America is unacceptable. It’s one thing to elect a volatile young woman to represent you. It’s another to hear that you are all racists.
30
Thanks for the summary.
20
Thank you TdeF.
I have been following this for eons, it would seem, but you summarize it very concisely.
20
Autonomous vehicles won’t be happening, artificial intelligence is a misnomer and electric vehicle sales set to boom. Some controversial thoughts on all of this and more at http://www.dinosaurdiary.com.au
40
Same sort of thing had been said about a lot of things in the past, such as we would never be able to fly. A lot turned out to be false. Autonomous driving though is a long way away. The computing power in such a small space as a car is not fast enough to make all the necessary split second decisions necessary for safe driving. There is simply far too much visual and other sensor information processing to be done even for a typical supercomputer to make decisions as fast as a human.
Depends on what you mean by intelligence. If one uses the standard definition I don’t see it impossible for a robot to acquire knowledge and skills to adapt to their surroundings, just as animals can and do. The problem though is I’ve yet to see a computer let alone a robot be designed to learn and adapt. Current examples are just adaptations of pre-programmed expert systems, which are not AI. So we have a long way to go before AI is a reality. Then there is the other definition some use that feelings, such as unconditional love are a necessary part, then AI becomes an oxymoron.
I agree but in time (a long time) they could become the main means of transportation. They need to solve a few issues first. One, charging time is far to long even with the so called “fast” charging. Two, distance is too limiting. Three, pretty much every current service station has to offer a yet to be developed super fast charging facility. Four, more base load power generation systems need to be deployed (nuclear or coal) to accommodate the extra large demand on electricity.
41
After 3 years of use and 56,000 kilometres ,my Mitsi PHEV has not had any of those issues. But that is a specific use as a farm hack, at which it has proved very capable , even on road tyres. it has never got stuck.
If it had come with two chargers , one for work place and one for home , it would have been even better.
My farm is 5 minutes from the city but I rarely go there.
45
So you can fully charge your car in about the same time as one can refill a tank in a petrol/diesel car? I don’t think so.
111
Not unless it has a useless range…
And this is the argument I have with EV lovers – try setting up a road train with electric and then get someone to install the huge charging stations needed in some really out of the back of beyond locations to make it all work…the answer is usually *crickets chirping*…..
Road trains have huge long distance tanks for a reason. Dust, heat, abuse….diesel is perfect for such conditions. EVs.,… no way.
And lets not forget the *main reason* EVs are touted in the first place is to “fix” the myth of climate change(tm).
91
@ OS. I said that range was not an issue , because of location ; the issue is economy, and on that , and servicing, it wins hands down.
37
Well for most people range is an issue at least some of the time.
80
@ Peter S.
Of course, so they should not consider EV.
Horses for courses would appear to be quite sensible .
I was merely pointing out that EVs continue to have their uses.
30
True farmerbraun, which brings us back to my original points. Unless they are all solved EVs are not going to be a realistic option for most people. Don’t get me wrong. I would love to use EVs instead of dirty and noisy cars of today but we are stuck with them for a long time. My dream is an EV powered by some power source that’s the size of a mobile phone that can be replaced with another one either pre-charged or off the shelf at a service station for about the price of a tank of petrol. Nothing is even close to that at the moment. Doesn’t mean it can’t ever happen.
10
EVs really are tied to locations with heavy infrastructure like population dense urban centres where noise and pollution and short hop travel are the norm.
Outside of that space, they they really do cease to be practical.
00
Economy, you gotta be kidding. You Pay at least $20000 extra for an EV, 100 kWh in Australia costs around $30 and gets you say around 300 km (about 10c per km), assuming around 20,000km per annum over 10 years (200,000 km) represents another 10c/km so a total cost for fuel and extra capex for the EV of 20c/km.
My diesel i30 gets 1000km on around $80 of fuel, or about 8c per km by comparison.
So no, EVs are not economical
20
Semi-trailer EV?
“An analyst with Jefferies Group expressed skepticism over some of Tesla’s claims because the company had not determined battery longevity; specifics about that aspect, and the replacement cost of the battery, are essential in order to calculate the long-term cost of ownership.
Some industry experts view heavy-duty freight as impractical for battery trucks due to cost and weight. A senior VP at Daseke Inc., a large trucking company, said that the limited range affected their likelihood of operating the Semi until the necessary infrastructure was in place. A Bloomberg L.P. report showed that given the battery technology available in November 2017, Tesla’s estimates for charging times, range per charge, and costs were not realistic, some suggesting that Tesla may be betting on increased battery density advances in the next couple of years to meet its stated goals.
A 2017 theoretical analysis of electric semi trucks was completed by researchers from the Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering in mid-2017, ostensibly in response to Musk’s description of Tesla’s work on a “a heavy duty, long-range semi truck” at a talk in April 2017, The analysis estimated that loads and ranges for an electric truck, given battery technologies known at that time, and published their work in June 2017. The analysis indicated that an electric semi might be feasible for short- or medium-range hauling, but would not be for long-range hauling, as the weight of the batteries required would take up too much of the weight allowed by law. One estimate for the battery weight, at 11,800 kg, was estimated to account for one third of the payload, and would increase the cost of the truck to about double that of an equivalent diesel.”
In Australia semi-trailers and twin trailer b-doubles, and even road trains with four trailers in the Outback, undertake very long distance transport operations. And with batteries would lose about one third of freight capacity?
80
No , I said that it wasn’t an issue for me because of the circumstances in which I use it. Fully charging is not necessary when it’s not fully empty anyway.
37
It works for you but it won’t work for most people.
60
Yesterday I drove from my Mid North Coast NSW property to Port Macquarie.
If using a Nissan Leaf EV, which is a very small car compared to my diesel 4WD, I would have needed two recharges to the recommended maximum to achieve good battery working life of 80 per cent. The diesel went there and back without refuelling waste of time and inconvenience and could return today and get back without refuelling.
110
Correct.Tthat’s what I said at the outset , and outlined the reasons why that was so..
50
No . It charges while I’m asleep , or any other time that I’m not driving it. There are single phase plugs all around the farm.
20
Your car has an on board petrol generator, try pure EV.
40
That would give me a lot more range and battery weight that I do not need.
30
“A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is a hybrid electric vehicle whose battery can be recharged by plugging it into an external source of electric power, as well as by its on-board engine and generator. Most PHEVs are passenger cars, but there are also PHEV versions of commercial vehicles and vans, utility trucks, buses, trains, motorcycles, scooters, and military vehicles.
Similarly to all-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids displace emissions from the car tailpipe to the generators powering the electricity grid. These generators may be renewable, or may have lower emission than an internal combustion engine. Charging the battery from the grid can cost less than using the on-board engine, helping to reduce operating cost.
Mass-produced plug-in hybrids were available to the public in China and the United States in 2010. By the end of 2017, there were over 40 models of series-production highway legal plug-in hybrids for retail sales. Plug-in hybrid cars are available mainly in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, and China. The top-selling models are the Mitsubishi Outlander P-HEV …..”
You did mention Mitsubishi PHEV.
10
I still reckon that Mitsubishi missed a trick in not bringing out a farm version. If I don’t get a free new one out of this , I’ll never sing its praises online again . . .
00
“on board petrol generator,” which also drives the transmission directly if you floor it. Then it’s quite quick with the ICE and the electric all pulling. And it’s also your regenerative braking dynamo.
00
What is a farm hack? Do you mean you just drive it around the farm? Like a golf cart?
40
Yes sir . On the farm ; into town and back; and anything else that I choose. But in the normal course of events I never use the ICE.
Which is why it’s a really good deal. A couple of dollars to fill up.
20
I’m sorry Farmerbraun but you are not exactly making sense. You describe the vehicle as a farm hack that rarely makes a 5 minute trip to the city. Now 56,000 kilometers in 3 years is low usage but still some 51 km a day. If you are just hacking around your property it has to be sizeable acreage which is unusual for being only 5 minutes from the city. Or do you mean small country town? Now being on the land I tend to use an ATV for small jobs like repairing fencing, moving cattle etc. Tractor with bucket/forks for feeding out and heavier jobs and a ute only when necessary. Can I assume you are a hobby farmer?
30
650 acres , dairy, beef, sheep and goats. Milking 365 days and processing all of it on farm.
yeah mate it’s just a hobby.
I’ll stop when the Lotto money runs out. 🙂
70
Wasn’t there a computer development recently, where a compute taught itself to play chess in 1/2 a day, and then went and beat the Big Blues etc, in 70% of games?
Also with electric cars I think things will change, as the younger generations arn’t rushing out to buy cars, partly due to the hassels in getting a licence. Probably suburbia effects that, but in the developed world, the automobile is not the ‘freedom machine’ that it was for the Boomers?
10
I have trouble beleiving raw compute power is a choke point for autonomous driving. The basic complexity, variability and chaotic nature of the environment makes it near impossible once you move from a fixed or relatively stable environment.
Still it seems to be what some people want so it may be delivered one campus, city, State etc at a time. It may be a good thing as my observations in my tourist infested area is that driving is beyond the mental capacity of a great many people.
11
The GPUs that currently exist can service autonomous driving image processing ok, in another few years it should be even more advanced….
00
We are still a long way to having an autonomous vehicle that can drive under all the conditions a human can handle, including rough terrain unknown. No doubt it will happen one day but now sorry it’s impossible at the moment without hauling a supercomputer or two.
10
Agreed, especially given that the modern CPU has multiple processors and autonomous driving is a multivariate problem. After all the car itself is generally run the same way with brakes, steering, engine, motors all being handled by multiple CPUs and pehnaps also on a real time system which supports multiple processes with different priorities. If there is a hard part of autonomous driving, it is dealing with the unpredictability of other drivers, not the task itself.
00
When was the last time that you flew in an autonomous aircraft?
10
2001?
10
We already have autonomous vehicles — we call them “lifts”. They come when we call them and take us to our selected destination.
I don’t find them particularly exciting.
41
I just can’t complete my degree in Climate Science – I keep failing Interpretive Dance.
272
You could try Synchronised Swimming … (upside down timed drowning)
or the new AP paper (Absurd
PredictionsPropagandaProjections) They don’t even have to come true.80
You need passion, angst and outrage. Copy Grumpy Greta.
72
St. Foot Stampy Sponge Greta Cranky Pants?
For sure…..
71
James the interpretive dance part was easy you just pretend to plug something in and switch it on then get angry and pirouette about six feet and repeat until everyone stands to their feet clapping .
50
Easy for you to say, Rob, but I still have to compete against the other Climate Science students for the participation award.
50
On fire today James
40
I’m here all week – don’t forget to try the shrimp.
10
But surely, doesn’t everyone get a prize?
10
That was the joke, GD, only in Climate Science is one expected to compete for something of no value.
20
It’s all about rhythm, brother. Meet the beat. Move in the grove.
10
Betelgeuse is playing around. At the start of this month, (or it was near the end of last month? – I forget which) there was a news item that Betelgeuse had suddenly gone dim. I’ve been outside every night since then to eyeball it.
Every time there is a comet or some night sky event that is interesting, Auckland turns on the cloudy skies. It works so reliably it can’t possibly be coincidence. Mutter mutter mutter. But, I got a good few cloudless nights last week and yes, it didn’t look as bright as I thought I was used to. Isn’t imagination a wonderfully scientific tool? 😀
I dragged my little 3-inch refractor out and, of course, that wasn’t any use at all. <big wide grin> so I haven’t taken my 8-inch reflector out. At a distance of 600 light years, Betelgeuse’s playing around just doesn’t register on such small optics. Yep: it’s that bright red blob. That one. Right there. I’m going to have to spend an evening at Auckland’s Observatory and see if I can have a few seconds on its Schmidt.
Betelgeuse is the big (it’s a monster of a star) red giant star in the constellation of Orion. Its the lower one on the bottom right here in the Southern Hemisphere. (We see everything upside down here Down Under!) It was a brilliant blue giant a few million or so years ago, and it’s in its pre-nova red giant phase. From what I’ve been reading out there, there is some guarded optimism that this sudden dimming may signal the initial collapse of the star’s outer shell as the prelude to its going (super)nova. Then again, it may be just having a bit of a snooze.
Whatever. It’s on my nightly check list at the moment. If/When it does go off, it’s going to be a super supernova and brighter than a full moon. Over the winter months, we will see it in full bright daylight. Yep, it’s gonna be a biggie when it does slip its anchor.
At c. 600 LYA (Light Years Away) it’s well past the 50LY extinction boundary and laminated tin foil hats won’t block it’s radiation, no matter how many laminations are used, so you can forget those. But it could affect the aurorae.
This century is looking to be rather interesting — a population panic over a Krisis which isn’t, (the so-called and imaginary Klimate Krisis), a magnetic field excursion — latest timetable for that is five or six decades with no temporal reliability. There are two things we can be sure of: it will be freezing K-K-KOLD for at least the duration (think Younger Dryas!) and our power grids will be KO’d. Totally. And now Betelgeuse may be about to bow out. Really really Interesting Times!
90
I forgot: Solar Cycle 26 will be going AWOL. That’s interesting too and only a decade away. It should be cold. (Same as the Maunder Minimum).
And Ben Davidson will be publishing the third edition of his text book, The Weatherman’s Guide to the Sun. Kate Davidson is about to `publish’ their third child: All the very best, Kate and Ben!
Yep, we’re living in Interesting Times alright.
40
Betelgeuse is looking a bit dim to my Mk1 aging eyeball, no telescope at home. Orion is my favourite constellation. It’s bad enough having to view him upside down DownUnder without having to cope with part of him dimming as well! 🙁
60
We’ll have to wait another week or two to see what Betelgeuse is doing.
Orion is probably one of the most recognizable constellations along with Scorpio.
Both are made up of short-lived (relatively) blue-white giant stars. Antares in Scorpio is also on the list of supernovae to be.
Crux is another constellation of short-lived blue-white giants. It has a beautiful star cluster associated with it which needs good quality optics to get the most from it: the Jewel Box. In a good telescope, it’s breathtaking. Neither of my ‘scopes can do it justice and the Mark 1 eyeball can barely see it — which is why I rely on the Hubble <grin>
I have a bit of a soft spot for the Pleiades (Subaru to the Japanese and Matariki to the Maori — I should make an effort and collect a few more names for that cluster :-D). The remaining blue giants excite the gas and dust detritus from past incinerations/explosions/supernovae so it has a rather attractive blue background.
100
Thanks,
I knew that the Subaru car badge was a representation of the Pleiades star cluster, but I did not know that the name actually means the star cluster (at least in one usage).
70
It is doing what any self respecting star cluster would do at this time of year … PARTY!
30
Ah well, we will not have to worry about missing anything. If the thing does go off,
10
Indeed … 😀
(hey! Who turned the darkness off?)
30
Sorry. I lent on the switch.
10
We might get half an hour’s advance warning neutrino burst.
30
As if that will hurt anything. It takes a planet to stop neutrinos.
00
If I recall correctly, even the planet can’t stop all of them. Neutrinos don’t interact much with ordinary matter, hence their name, but they do just enough to tell us something very big has happened.
It’s my guess the neutrino detectors scattered around the planet may be being closely monitored at the moment, perhaps more so than they might otherwise have been.
The Larger Magellanic Cloud supernova LMC 1987A was detected by it’s neutrino burst (pdf) and an analysis of the neutrino events is here.
10
Gee. Betelgeuse has sparked a mass of videos which I’ve been enjoying. Consensus for supernova is anytime from tomorrow to a long time away (10,000 plus years).
Darn.
The star is throwing out quite a bit of mass which is what has led to the `maybe’ speculation and the possible/probable cause of it’s dimming.
This video features the three most likely supernova candidates in the `near future’ … the Antares one looks really fascinating:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7i_vw3RrA8
And I’ve got yet another cloudy sky. (Curses and other Swear words).
10
No, no he didn’t …
“Twelve years ago, economist Ross Garnaut made a prophecy that has devastatingly come true.
In the 2008 Garnaut Climate Change Review … he predicted that without adequate action, the nation would face a more frequent and intense fire season by 2020.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-08/economic-bushfires-billions-ross-garnaut-climate-change/11848388
But, no mention about the cold front, rains and floods that follow?
Understanding fire weather
Science, BoM: “A change in wind direction can bring a period of dangerous bushfire activity, this is often seen as a trough or cold front – also known as a cool change.
In southern Australia, cold fronts are probably the most powerful influence on our fire weather.”
http://www.bom.gov.au/weather-services/fire-weather-centre/bushfire-weather/index.shtml
>> Any green grifter with an ouija board can predict bushfires in an Australian summer.
The consequent deadly rains that follow?
Now that is the inconvenient truth of Garnaut’s twisted apocalyptic lies.
Teacher Wang would be proud.
90
Garnaut’s prediction is being portrayed as correct, but did he define adequate action. Did he mean adequate action but cutting CO2 emissions or by reducing fuel loads
60
Reminds me of this:
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/flannery-denies-what-he-actually-said/news-story/8f9ac2ed71c5b01470299510ce0de7f2
“PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: We’re already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we’re going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation.
Now if we look at what appears to be ABC web page copy, as retrieved from archive.org today:
https://web.archive.org/web/20091016052301/https://www.abc.net.au/landline/content/2006/s1844398.htm
“Interview with Professor Tim Flannery
Reporter: Sally Sara
First Published: 11/02/2007
“SALLY SARA: Well, making good use of water is one of the subjects of this week’s interview. Professor Tim Flannery has warned climate change will impact on Australia to the point where Sydney can expect to receive 60 per cent less rainfall than it does at present. If that’s the case, what about the bush? What can Australian farmers expect as weather patterns alter? I spoke with Professor Tim Flannery about climate change, water and the intriguing subject of carbon trading. Professor Flannery, congratulations firstly on being named as Australian of the Year.
“PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: Thank you very much.
“SALLY SARA: What will it mean for Australian farmers if the predictions of climate change are correct and little is done to stop it? What will that mean for a farmer?
“PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: We’re already seeing the initial impacts and they include a decline in the winter rainfall zone across southern Australia, which is clearly an impact of climate change, but also a decrease in run-off. Although we’re getting say a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall in some areas of Australia, that’s translating to a 60 per cent decrease in the run-off into the dams and rivers. That’s because the soil is warmer because of global warming and the plants are under more stress and therefore using more moisture. So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we’re going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation.
40
You’d think that Sally would go back to Tim and ask him to update her on his current thinking, and why he was wrong before, wouldn’t you?
30
What a seer Mr Garnaut must be! Just imagine predicting that some time in the next 12 years there will be a major bushfire in Australia! its hard to understate how far sighted and courageous it is to make such prediction. I wish we had a facepalm icon.
40
Descriptive phraseology from Willis E.
“I swear, they’re getting so desperate that they are simply making things up out of the whole cloth. They hear a rumor, multiply it by “EMERGENCY”, add a soupçon of “IT’S WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT” and a heaping teaspoon of “EVERYONE PANIC!!”, and write it up as if it were fact, with bonus points for using a new alarmist term like “ocean heatwave”.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/14/the-voice-of-the-lobster/
90
Willis does put things well …
50
= Climate Chaos !
The new scare on the block from the Brainwashing Corporation
We fund each day !
Bugger !
20
A scratch on the surface about some of the latest on bacteria and virus’s/phages, how they communicate with each other and so on… Great interview.
“Microbes & More – Alejandro Reyes, Associate Professor, Microbiologist and MSc in Biological Scie…
5 views
•Feb 10, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4chq1CF8uI
00
Good news power prices to drop because of unreliables!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-15/power-bills-to-fall-aemo-political-stoush-over-coal-continues/11966652
If you repeat a lie often enough someone will believe it .
71
robert:
The relevant line there is down the page (and over the ABC heads)
“However, slumping futures prices are not beneficial for the development of renewables either. When prices come down, the incentive to invest is weaker and so you expect to see less clamour for new investment.”
One of the reasons is the lack of storage or other ways of disposing of the excess generation. Thus SA is ‘islanded’ and the wind farms are having their total output restricted. This leads to a scramble to get on the list and get those RET subsidies, hence even zero prices. This also explains why they are so keen to get another interconnector (to NSW), it has nothing to do with imports (as SA has managed to get by without them) but being able to shift excess elsewhere. Thus zero prices when the wind blows will be replaced by low prices, so more money for the wind farmers. They won’t pay for the interconnector, it’s the taxpayer.
80
Well that ones easy to dispell…just look at cost per unit on your power bill over the last 3 years.
People just need to publish photos of their power bill ( but black out their name and address on the bill first ) and publish on line.
That shut down the nonsense very quickly…..
60
There has been a small, temporary drop in power prices because the regulator has granted retailers a three year delay for the purchase of large scale generation certificates. Because the certificates are a legislated requirement they will have to be purchased at the end of the three years. An ephemeral price manipulation to keep the proles quiet.
10
There was an article in The Age this week (I think it was there or the ABC can’t find it now of course) about January being the hottest ever on record for Australia. With the comment about not an elino in sight. So a record positive IOD means nothing? Hasn’t tthe BOM reported that this IOD has had a significant impact on Australia’s weather, the heatwaves,the drought and the fires? So we get a record hot January and because there was no elnino it must have been because of climate change?
60
Aunty takes the view that the IOD was very positive because of global warming, in the same way they invented super El Nino because of AGW.
Its all nonsense of course, but at the same time their claims are not easy to refute. The Brisbane flood was caused by a very intense La Nina, it must be climate change making conditions worse.
70
It is now two weeks since the collapse of towers on the Heywood SA-Vic interconnector (650 MW capacity) threatened the shutdown of the Portland aluminium smelter and forced the closure of wind farms in the area of the SA-Vic border. Those wind farms – Macarthur, Portland, Lake Bonney, Canunda have a nameplate capacity of 1,000 MW. Must be catastrophic without them as well as the interconnector, right?
Wholesale electricity price per AEMO for February has averaged $65/MWhr in SA, and $45 in Vic, compared to $83 and $143 in Jan, and $73/$92 for 2019/20 YTD, and $110/$110 for 2018/19.
Maybe local markets are better?
Note standalone WA prices seem to average about $50/MWhr.
70
Why do the towers keep collapsing?
30
Very good question…..I find it hard to believe all of a sudden electrical infrastructure is collapsing so easily.
Maybe they need to phase out electricity…..its only contributing to prosperity, health and longevity after all.
The EV weenies can do without it, and revert back to walking everywhere in their paspaylum sandals….
70
Towers installed ~1983-1985
For the SEC of Victoria.
Steel towers rust
Losing structural integrity.
Especially if the maintenance is poor.
50
“Especially if the maintenance is poor.”….
If so, then presumably then all govt run infrastructure in Victoria from that era should then be under a cloud?
Tunnels, roads, power grid, water, sewerage….
30
Also, as I have mentioned previously, think of those many heavy high tension wires strung between each of these towers. It would only take one of them to be weakened enough to collapse and the wires themselves would drag down the adjacent tower or two, (one each side) and before long there are a few collapsed until the slack of the wires is taken up.
That’s also what happened in SouthAus a couple of years back.
Tony.
50
Did they establish a cause of the towers weakening?
20
My recollection is that the Labor Government of SA allowed feeder transmission lines from wind farms to the main grid to be constructed cheaply to save the business money.
30
Dennis:
Which failure?
The original one with the State blackout was probably due to the wind turbines stopping supply when the voltage changed rapidly. This was followed by failure of the transmission lines from the Mid-North, but these failed after heavy rain had saturated the ground and the concrete base on the tower foot pulled out of the soil. Then the domino effect with the next towers brought them down.
Labor (to coverup the turbine failure) frantically blamed the towers as they had been installed by the Liberal Govt. in the 50’s and early 60’s, so Labor (mostly) avoided the blame .
The current tower collapse is cause unknown with 6 towers falling over, probably as Tony says. The initial collapse might have been caused by wind load, but not by soggy soil not holding the footings.
00
Agreed Tony. The two failure modes are the concrete foundation blocks pulling out of the ground (as occurred in the SA transmission line failure which raises questions regarding design competence) and structural failure. The latter is the more common failure mode caused by gradual fatigue of the steel due to wind loading, in particular variable gusting. Transmission pylons vibrate with wind loading and if the frequency happens to resonate the pylon can fatigue quite rapidly, particularly if the wind direction is perpendicular to the supported power cables.
10
But what a fireworks show that would be.
10
The towers are usually heavily galvanised. I’d be very surprised if they rusted.
30
To be fair there are a lot still standing. Could it be that these experienced local weather , perhaps a tornado that exceeded their design strength?
10
I keep making the point that WA seems to found a way to obtain cheap, reliable power from gas. 40% of our power is derived from gas, and our domestic electricity cost is reasonable at 26c/unit. Why the heck can’t other states do the same? Surely they have plenty of their own gas.
00
Government made those gas companies save some for the domestic market. Note that means someone is getting less profit by being forced to sell at a cheaper price.
I beg to differ. Our electricity is vastly stupidly over priced compared to what it used to be, or what we could have if we had more coal and less RE.
50
Joanne,
perfectly said.
What people fail to realise in this matter that renewables are cheaper than the really expensive coal fired power plants is the actual age of all those coal fired power plants.
Long before renewable power plants of choice, (wind and solar) those same existing coal fired power plants generated all the same power they do now. Back then they did that for well under $30/MWH, even as recently as 2010/12 when renewables started to become more prevalent.
Nothing has changed. They do the same maintenance, they use the same amount of coal, nearly all of it owned by the plant’s operators, and in the case of nearly ALL the Queensland plants, that’s the State Government. They do upgrades to extend the life, and while (relatively) expensive, those Upgrades further extend the life of the plant, and add only a tiny amount ot the Unit cost for electricity, knowing that coal fired power generates HUMUNGOUS amounts of electricity, and will do that for long after those renewables have reached their use by dates, and if you generate huge amounts of electricity for a very long time, you can spread any costs a lot thinner than for renewables which generate very little over a short life span.
Nearly everything about them is the same as it was years ago, only now the original construction costs have been paid off, so they can generate their power for even less now they don’t have that original cost to pay back.
The only real difference is that Victoria has imposed an extra cost on royalties for the coal. The Government which did this knows for sure and certain that they absolutely CANNOT survive without that coal fired power, so they know that they have a captive source of money.
The only reason people perceive renewable power is cheap is because the original construction cost ….. ‘looks’ cheap because a wind plant only costs $1.2 Billion (Macarthur) as opposed to the $725,000 Billion (/sarc) of a totally useless (/sarc) HELE coal fired plant.
What they don’t tell you is that the Nameplate is a lot lower, and the actual generated power is only one third even of that Nameplate.
People are (totally) clueless when it comes to power generation, and will believe absolutely anything they are told.
Look at this image at this link, and this is for yesterday 16Jan2020.
The black line at the top is total power being generated and from that, power being consumed.
The green colour rolling along the bottom is the total power delivered from EVERY wind plant in the Country.
I haven’t cherry picked a day when wind generation was really low, because it is ALWAYS the same as this. That’s around 8% of all generated power. Note also that as actual conumption rises to its peak for the day, wind generation falls away, so it is at its highest when consumption is at the low point for most days, year round.
If that was printed on the front page of the Australian with a simple explanation, people would actually begin to see how little is delivered from their precious renewables ….. and then ask questions.
Imagine the cost of Every one of those wind plants in the Country, and then look again at the image.
And perhaps now you can see why wind power has ZERO effect on what coal fired power does on a daily basis. The only difference is that when wind is high, natural gas, and hydro are lower, and when wind is low, natural gas and hydro are higher. Coal fired power chugs along the same ….. EVERY day. The Load Curves for coal fired power are the same as they wee 10 to 12 years ago.
Tony.
20
Tony, the problem is that so many people in “authority” assert that we should move to “zero emissions” with no concept of the feasibility or cost. They suggest batteries, pumped hydro, a hydrogen economy, with no idea of the costs. Just to take the example of Macarthur windfarm, 420 MW nameplate, cost $900 million, average 130 MW delivered less transmission losses, that has been shutdown since the start of Feb. So it is being reliably backed up by two Mortlake gas stations, each of which can deliver a reliable 280 MW.
10
(I would have posted this on the later Midweek open Thread, but the site where I look at these things was down on that day, so I couldn’t get the images in time to work on them and then post them where you can view them here at Joanne’s site. I saw this earlier on the day it actually happened, but the Open Thread was a day later, when the Aneroid site was off line.)
I want to show you this sequence for a couple of reasons.
The first is just how quickly the grid reacts to a problem, and here this is the engineers and controllers at the AEMO. The second is how quickly coal fired power itself can react to a problem, even though the ‘meme’ is that coal fired power reacts slowly when it is needed the most, because what I show you here is the opposite.
To illustrate the problem, I have three images I have saved, and I’ll explain them as I go along. The images will be in a sequence, and the links to those image are as indicated.
The first image (at this link) shows a failure of a large coal fired Unit, and here this is Unit 2 at the huge Bayswater plant, and immediately under the graph you can see that the ticked box is BW02, Unit 2 at that Bayswater plant.
(Keep in mind here that the engineers at the plant know of the problem immediately, and are in contact with the AEMO at the time of the failure, and they are usually aware of the problem a few minutes before the problem occurs, and immediately contact the AEMO prior to shutdown.)
I have hovered the mouse over the point of failure and here that was at 1700 (5PM) and you can see on the image the time (along the bottom horizontal X Axis) and the total output power, 628.3MW. (at the left side vertical Y axis) This is the exact time of shutdown, and the plant rolled back to zero output in the next 5 minutes.
The second image (at this link) shows the large Hydro plant of Murray One and Two, and this is the plant of immediate response, as these hydro plants can scroll up immediately the water is released down the race, across the Francis Turbine, running up the generator immediately. If you look under the graph along the bottom line you can see that the ticked box is for the Murray Plant.
I have hovered the mouse again over the same time, 1700 (5PM) and you can see that the output is 417.8MW. (left side vertical axis) Over the next 10 minutes it scrolls up by 400MW, replacing most of the lost 628MW from that Unit at Bayswater. Then, as the usual evening peak starts to come in it stays there and rises again to cover the increase for that Peak.
The third image (at this link) is for ALL the other coal fired Units in the same state, New South Wales, and under the graph, you can see I have ticked all those other 15 coal fired Units, and that’s all of those remaining coal fired Units in NSW with BW02 now offline. Now, here, when you see this graph, look closely at the left side vertical axis and compare it with the other two images, because here, the scale is vastly different, so any (seemingly) small incremental move just looks small by comparison with scale, but is in fact relatively substantial in nature.
Remember I mentioned that the engineers at Bayswater were aware of the problem, and were notifying the AEMO that the Unit at Bayswater was going off line. So, here, the AEMO contacted all those other Plants and asked them to give some more output from their Units, so each one rolled up their output a little.
Here I have hovered the mouse over the contact time, 15 minutes prior to BW02 going off line, and you can see that time on the bottom axis, 1645 (4.45PM) at the base of that rise, and the output from those 15 Units at the left vertical axis, showing 6488MW. Over the next 15 to 20 minutes, those other 15 coal fired Units raised their output by a tick over 400MW. Add that to the extra 400MW from the hydro plant and there is the replacement for that lost 628MW from BW02, and a little extra to boot.
Now here, right back to the top of my comment, (a) how quickly the reaction was from the AEMO grid controllers, and (b) the reaction also from coal fired power when it is needed.
In fact, there is probably no one at all outside of those controllers at the AEMO who even knew anything like this happened. That loss of a huge amount of power was covered in virtually the same time as it actually went down.
That’s how well we are being ‘looked after’ by the people who run the grid, and ALL of any problems are handled this quickly. Hydro is the first point of call, and usually, Natural Gas fired Units are the second point, but here they actually did it with hydro and coal fired power.
Tony.
200
What you describe is the utility engineers, hydro plant engineers, thermal plant engineers, all executing a preplanned emergency response. They plan for these things, train for them, and have mostly already “been there and done that”.
They know what to do, how to do it, when to do it, because their plans are executable due to the dispatchable nature of the hydro and thermal plant generation.
It is a carefully orchestrated response to a known possibility with known elements and procedures. Like a heavily practiced Symphony. Preparation made it look seamless and ‘easy’. In fact, it is almost a miracle playing out.
There IS NO plan for a recovering into a chaotic grid. Chaos is difficult to plan for. Too many “unknown knowns, unknown unknowns, known unknowns, and known impossibilities” to solve the equations in real time.
Average people would be shell shocked at how close they came to a very bad day. They aren’t even aware of how the professionals (Engineers, Operators, and staff) saved the grid.
50
Exactly Lance.
Now, some might ask, well why didn’t this same thing happen when South Australia ‘went black’ on 28th September in 2016.
Okay then, similar sequence of images.
The image at this link shows all of SouthAus 18 Wind Plants (at that time) going off line. They are indicated by the ticked boxes under the graph.
The transmission towers ‘fell over’ in the high winds, and there was now no way for the power they were generating to get to the grid. So, now the Demand in South Australia was way higher than what power was actually available at the grid.
Here, note specifically how the output power had ramped up during the day, starting at 300MW and over a period of 11 hours, it built up to around 1200MW, actually having a good day. The first downturn shows Snowtown North and a couple of other wind plants failing. The remainder try hard to keep going, but as the demand is higher, they all fail at around 5.30PM.
Now, immediately go the image at this link, and this shows the fossil fuelled (natural gas) plants in SouthAus, and again, they are all the ticked boxes below the graph.
Now, because wind was having a good day, note how these plants had all started the day high, (when wind was low) up around 1100MW, when wind was low at 300MW, and how, as wind power rose during the day, those fossil plants dropped away to 300MW.
Now, note that first upward spike for these fossil plants as Snowtown North failed, and they tried to bring more on line to make up for that loss. They got 150MW or so out of them before the crash.
Then AT THE SAME TIME as the remaining wind plants all failed, then so did these on line gas fired plants, all going down together.
Again, overall Demand totally outstripped supply, and even with the added extra of the Interconnectors (both of them) there was still not enough supply to cover demand, so ….. EVERYTHING went down, all of them within seconds, well, actually parts of a second.
Okay you ask when referring what happened earlier in SouthAus to what happened last Wednesday when Bayswater went down, why couldn’t SouthAus handle it like this was handled in NSW.
It all happened in an instant, not just 628MW but ALL 1400MW of it. The grid controllers did not know where to look in the one second it all happened in.
Then, this is SouthAus, and it only makes up ….. SIX PERCENT (and a bit) of total power consumption, even with those Interconnectors, the ONLY link to the wider grid in Victoria.
All SouthAus had to call on was what it had itself, while in NSW where Bayswater went down, and almost one third of all Australian power consumption, the largest State, they had any number of almost 10000MW plus to call on at a moment’s notice.
Because wind was up and natural gas was way down, there was no leeway (in time) to get those gas plants running up to take the Load over. It all happened in an instant, there was no backup, and nowhere to call upon ….. again showing how power cannot be ‘sent’ across vast distances.
This, in SouthAus was due to the State being a small consumer at the edge of the grid, and a heavy reliance on wind power, and that came back to bite them.
Note also, what came back on line first, those gas fired plants to provide the ‘base’ and the reference for those wind plants.
Tony.
80
Perhaps out of the recent bushfires some sane government actions will emerge?
From two weeks ago in The Australian:
Bushfires: Queensland clears way for 20m firebreaks. “The government has also moved to ensure landholders are able to clear land for firebreaks and other fire management purposes without having permission from state and local agencies.”
If only the government in Victoriastan would take action – but notice how now the fires are out there is no news, despite the fact that those impacted are continuing to suffer?
70
Under communism, one of their pushes is to give local agencies govt-like powers, presumably as it makes it easier to cause problems and hamstring common sense.
The moniker of “think global , act local” is the source of a lot of the problems we have, with the UN being in effect given power over our parks and local greenies working to a globalist agenda….
Anything that removes state and local agencies unnecessary interference has to be a good thing.
40
Palachook is up for re-election soon
Fear is an excellent motivator
Fear of being kicked out !
🙂
50
Victoria has had “right to clear” legislation from around houses and boundaries since shortly after the 2009 fires.
30
Spot the difference …
Apocalyptic global warming:
Antarctic region sees record high temperature of 18.3C amid rising concern over melting ice sheets
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-08/antarctica-records-temperature-of-18.3c-the-hottest-ever/11946092
Weather:
INCREDIBLY RARE SNOWFALL BLANKETS BAGHDAD AND KARBALA, IRAQ
Residents of central and southern Iraq opened their curtains Tuesday morning (Feb. 11) to an incredibly rare scene — the first “settling” snowfall in over a century.
https://electroverse.net/incredibly-rare-snowfall-blankets-iraq/
60
Interesting graphs showing Antarctic temps over the past 20 years. Many sites seem to be cooling.
https://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Antarc-penin-and-orkney-3.png
According to the site which recorded the 18.3C, there was an 18.0C recorded there in 1979.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/gdcntmax.cgi?id=someone@somewhere&WMO=AYM00088963&STATION=BASE_ESPERANZA&extraargs=
20
‘Advance Australia is developing resource packs for classrooms which will tell students human-induced climate change is a lie.’ SMH
50
Good. Too bad the government isn’t doing it. It goes to show where they stand on the subject. They are on a unity ticket with the ALP+Greens, apart form the OTIS croup in the ALP and certain members of the LNP. Perhaps those exclusions should combine to form a new party (pretty please).
30
Ah yes, further to the story…
‘But the NSW and Victorian governments have already indicated the materials in question would very likely be banned in public schools as they “would not be deemed objective”.
50
Thanks el gordo,
I will follow the story. I donated some money to Advance Australia to support the school resource packs. If they get banned maybe they can be distributed outside the school.
20
That pretty much proves what we are up against. Both major parties are dead set on reducing our emissions by supporting renewables at the expense of coal and to the exclusion of nuclear. Anyone who votes for either party in effect is voting for a crash and burn scenario. They might not realise it but that’s EXACTLY what they are voting for.
70
Whoa …
‘Nationals Senator Matt Canavan has warned he would cross the floor and vote against the Liberals on key issues like climate and energy, calling a target of zero net emissions by 2050 being explored by the government “fantastical”. Oz
30
I’m sure there are members sin both parties that have similar sentiments but the problem is the leaders of the two major parties have a different view of things. Both are on the emissions reductions road and the only way for them to change direction is for them to hit a major pot hole, such as a voter backlash making clear they will not give majority rule to any party that continues on that road of ruin.
10
The PM is going to let the Royal Commission decide on the veracity of global warming. The word ‘unprecedented’ means a perpetuation of the big lie and the insurers gouge customers based on a false premise.
‘Insurer QBE has begun adjusting its catastrophe models to factor in the expected effects of climate change out to 2100 and warned climate posed a material risk to its business as it posted a 41 per cent lift in net profit for the year.’ Oz
00
When I was in the second grade (eons ago), I was taught that you can’t subtract a larger number from a smaller number. That explains (a) why I now need a shrink, and (b) why I never recover money I have lent to other people.
20
The debate as to whether we should sign up for 0% emissions by say 2050 is heating up in the political sphere on both sides. I find it both insane and a joke in a country where coal power is by far the most significant source of our power. There is no way we can reach 0% by 2050 unless we adopt nuclear as one of our main base load power sources to replace coal like the UK and many others have already done and have adopted or thinking of adopting 0% by 2050. We are such an embarrassment to the world. China, Japan and others who are building many more coal fired power stations must really think we have lost our minds.
60
Perhaps we need to get everyone to tell the pollies to live as 0% emissions then come back to us and tell how it went…
Oh sorry Mr Politican…youre too sick to travel as are your kids, no phone to call, no internet….?
Oh dear….
30
PeterS, “no way we can reach 0% by 2050 without nuclear”. Would be good if we could demonstrate the unrealistic nature of this proposal.
For example, using the AEMO grid:
Requirement is for 24 GW average electricity generation, peak 34 GW, minimum 18 GW.
Assume 50% solar, 50% wind, with 20% capacity factor for solar, 30% for wind.
To supply 12 GW from solar on average requires nameplate capacity of 60 GW.
So at midday peak, enormous surplus capacity will exist that must be stored using batteries and pumped hydro.
To supply 12 GW from wind on average requires nameplate capacity of 40 GW.
So on occasions, enormous surplus capacity will exist that must be stored using batteries and pumped hydro.
Next problem, how to control frequency.
However, CSIRO says Australia can get to 100 per cent renewable energy.
“When we do modelling where we increase the renewable penetration above around 40 per cent of the energy delivered (where South Australia is now) that starts to force out some of that existing dispatchable generation, and then we find that you need to add other technologies to support renewables,’ Paul Graham said (principal energy research scientist at CSIRO).
“When we have done modelling that goes to very high renewable penetration, getting close to or up to 100 per cent, we have done calculations of very, very high battery deployment to achieve that, and we are also using technologies like biogas, which is dispatchable, and dispatchable biomass.”
“So generally there appear to be engineering solutions for lots of different levels of renewable penetration. The only uncertainty is that we have not actually seen them deployed, but, in theory and in simulation and modelling, there do appear to be solutions going forward to achieve whatever is desirable.”
40
“we have done calculations of very, very high battery deployment to achieve that”
Yep….and as batteries fail and degrade over time, is that built into the models?
But the key question is this – why renewables?
CAGW is a huge lie, we know that. So are we re-engineering for grid unreliably, based on a lie?
90
Yes of course it’s all based on a lie and those who follow the path for emissions reduction regardless of the amount are liars or ignorant fools. Not yet 100% sure which applies to PM Morrison.
10
I think South Australia are best positioned to be the demonstration State to prove the viability of zero “emissions” We should fund the necessary projects and proceed at full speed so SA can shone as the light on the hill for the rest of Australia, if not the world!
10
Then you need to cater for up to 10 days of cloud, indeed even that isn’t enough, where I live west of Brisbane where sunny is the norm, I really didn’t see a good solar production day for 3 weeks (21 days) over the recent wet. To do that you need to add around 5x that capacity given by the capacity factor (annual average).
This is how standalone remote systems are designed, they have around 5 – 10 times the single day consumption of capacity and storage and still they usually have a auto-start petrol generator.
00
Oh look! Another “hot rocks” scheme!
https://www.wired.com/story/want-unlimited-clean-energy-just-drill-the-worlds-hottest-well/
As we know in Australia, such ideas are only good for scheme promoters.
20
No more stupid than using solar satellites to beam to Earth power using microwaves or laser beams.
20
No problem; just pump high pressure CO2 down and use the heated gas to drive a Drayton cycle turbine (55-57% efficiency).
Let’s see 4 miles of high pressure corrosion (and heat) resistant pipes….hmmm! I think the cost might be a bit high.
20
Tony Heller’s latest video debunking the lie that January 2020 was the hottest eeevvveeerrr. Australia mentioned.
https://youtu.be/j2vvgXFmVKw
60
Thanks; it’s very telling. How about we all send the link to PM Morrison to try and convince him to stop his mad push to reduce our emissions and get on the business of making this nation great again? Or are we destined to continue with the current economic suicide run?
30
Morrison is a Turnbull clone and puppet and an AGW True Believer. I think it’s impossible to change his mind.
50
Given his actions and words on the climate change issue I tend to agree with you. The other problem though is too many voters don’t give a dam or are still asleep.
40
Too many people have accepted the big lie, the MSM is at fault and Morrison is playing a long game.
Alternatively he could come out and say carbon dioxide doesn’t cause global warming, what do you think would happen then?
Donald employed Happer to educate him and he fully understands climate reality, but he continues to sit on his hands and say nothing. Happer quit and I blame the President’s zealot daughter.
Morrison cannot speak on the issue until he has evidence to the contrary, are you sure CO2 doesn’t cause global warming? The sensitivity issue is a nightmare for our side.
10
Never believe BoM weather or climate statistics
A CSIRO employee made the following remark:
///There has been, though, a “dramatic” increase in the number of days in Melbourne above 38 degrees in recent decades, Professor Karoly said. “The projection is for a further increase in all the climate models.”…///
I used the BoM’s own website to check that claim. Note that their data has already been adjusted to cool the past and warm the present to suit their political anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. I used this link to produce the data as follows.
http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/cvg/av
I did just a rough overview of the data as a first pass.
I chose Australia (rather than Melbourne), January, number of days equal to or greater than 40C. 40C was the closest option the website tools had to 38.
2015 was the base which was the latest year accessible on the website via their tools and I compared it to 30 year blocks of time since 1855.
Data as follows:
2015 0 days above or equal to 40
1855-2015 0.7
1861-1891 0.7
1871 – 1900 0.7
1881 – 1910 1.0
1891 – 1920 0.8
1901 – 1930 0.7
1911 – 1940 0.4
1921 – 1950 0.7
1931 – 1960 0.7
1941 – 1970 0.7
1951 – 1980 0.5
1961 – 1990 0.4
1971 – 2000 0.4
1981 – 2010 0.8
1991 – 2020 1.0
It doesn’t look like much of a dramatic increase whatsoever. The whole period 1855-2015 there are 0.7 Jan days above 40C, and it hasn’t significantly deviated very much from that in any 30 year block of time.
The worst that could be said is that for the last 30 years there is an increase of 0.3 days per year over 40C in January Australia wide but that’s also with the BoM’s data which has already been adjusted to suit political objectives. In any case such an increase (if real) is neither “dramatic” or concerning.
There appears to be no “dramatic” increase in the number of hot days over the measurement period.
Comments?
70
We’re Doomed that increase will end all life we need a carbon tax now to try and reduce this massive increase .
Thank you David it shows just how much the left tells half a story and inflates the other half by using scary words .
30
No !
Never believe the BOM whenever it talks about temperature.
That is the lesson from Ken Stewart’s examination of the BOM’s network of weather stations.
Ken’s latest post compares BOM stations that are close to each other
Keith IN SA with Munkora 2.5 ks away in a paddock
Curious & odd things emerge !
https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/2020/02/15/australias-wacky-weather-station-comparison-1-keith-sa/
30
David,
The only dramatic changes are those to be seen on the ABC, Fairfax and other like-minded charlatans.
10
I have heard Tony Heller will be coming to Australia soon but have no further details at this time.
Australia seems to be a special interest of his and is frequently mentioned in his videos.
Australia is also a good example in the sense that probably no other country is as deeply committed to the lie of anthropogenic global warming as Australia is.
50
I think he was talking of May this year.
As for Australia being No.1 in the AGW Hysteria stakes I would dispute that. Germany should surely be higher, what with their decision to get rid of coal and nuclear, and also their attempts to shut down their car industry – not that they think that could happen.
Then you have the UK with the decision to be “carbon neutral” by 2050 after they have stopped people using gas for heating and have shut down their coal, gas and nuclear generation.
O/T I notice that one of the operators of EV recharging stations in Germany increased the cost per MWh by 5 times, making EVs more expensive to run than IC vehicles.
https://electrek.co/2020/01/17/ionity-increases-electric-vehicle-charging-prices-500-percent-january-31/
My BMW i3 winter consumption is 20 kwh per 100km , so 16€ per 100km
“That is pure theft!! Meaning 50kw worth of charge would cost 40€?! More expensive than gasoline. Shameful!” said another.
By comparison, electric vehicle fast chargers in Australia cost between $A0.35-0.40/kWh, although a recent add-on $A0.25/minute rate by Evie Networks was also met in early January with concerns about fairness for owners of electric vehicles that charge at slower rates.
30
So Germany is committing slow economic suicide?
20
behind paywall:
15 Feb: UK Times: Roadside electric car chargers 9 times pricier than home
Electric car owners risk being ripped off by roadside chargers that cost up to nine times as much to power up vehicles as those on domestic driveways, The Times has learnt.
An investigation into public charging networks across the UK shows that motorists are required to pay an average of almost £10 for 100 miles worth of “fuel”. The study found that one operator, Ionity, charged as much as £23 for the power needed to travel 100 miles. This was nine times the comparable cost of charging a vehicle at home overnight — £2.67 — when the price of electricity is lowest. It was about double the cost of fuel for a similar-sized petrol or diesel car going the same distance…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/roadside-electric-car-chargers-9-times-pricier-than-home-h036bttlg
100
A convenince premium…..or “i’m stuck and have to pay it” premium?
I guess being organized pays dividends…..
40
Just watching Sky’s outsiders program and they had Harry Miller (no relation to the Aussie) who was charged with an offence after tweeting he was ” born a mammal but identifies as a fish” , he made this comment after a number of other people were talking about the transgender issue .
Actually had police turn up at his home and workplace , he fought the cops in court and seen his charge sheet , which at the bottom said he was charged with the offence of a non crime – crime .
Eventually he had his day in court and surprisingly the judge spat it with the cops .
What is the UK coming to these days .
Over 200 people in the U.K. Have been charged with or accused of a non crime – crime .
110
Thought crime is alive in the UK. We are not that far behind.
50
Maybe if he had tweeted he was “born a male mammal but identifies as a female fish” he would have fared better.
60
I’m quite surprised the lame stream media actually published this. Well done, for once.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/techandscience/mini-ice-age-warnings-for-next-30-years-with-50c-temperatures-in-coldest-areas/ar-BBZBqDf?li=AAF3IbP
10
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I’ll get excited when the MSM apologise for telling us so many lies about climate change and retract all of them.
30
Its the same old story rehashed and exaggerated to catastrophic proportions, the increasing CO2 should help ameliorate the agricultural problem of shorter growing seasons and harsher winters. Adaptation is the key word, both on earth and elsewhere.
‘Despite the harsh conditions on the surface of Venus, the atmospheric pressure and temperature at about 50 km to 65 km above the surface of the planet is nearly the same as that of the Earth, making its upper atmosphere the most Earth-like area in the Solar System, even more so than the surface of Mars.
‘Due to the similarity in pressure and temperature and the fact that breathable air (21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen) is a lifting gas on Venus in the same way that helium is a lifting gas on Earth, the upper atmosphere has been proposed as a location for both exploration and colonization.’ wiki
00
ABC RN broadcast this episode of CBC’s “Spark” last nite (the program regularly obsesses over CAGW).
a more appropriate headline would be “A celebration of Winter” or “In Defense of Winter” as the audio is titled.
no hint of CAGW or changes in winter patterns.
tips for how to enjoy -20C or -40C temps, etc:
25 Jan: CBC Spark: Nora Young: How urban design can help make winters less miserable
AUDIO: Listen to the full episode 54:00 Ep 462: In Defense of Winter
An important part of winter design is introducing an element of play into one’s daily routine, according to the Melbourne School of Design professor Michele Acuto. “You might see people taking up different things, skiing around the city.”…
If you’re a winter hater, as Stanford University psychologist Kari Leibowitz says she used to be, she recommends finding something to look forward to in the snowy dark months.
In 2015, Leibowitz moved to the northern Norwegian city of Tromsø to figure out how residents stay happy during the polar night in the winter. “In Tromsø, I was exposed to this very different kind of mindset that saw winter as a time full of opportunities,” she said…
“People talked about opportunities for recreation like skiing or snowshoeing, being outside in the snow. People also talked about opportunities for things they could do inside,” Leibowitz said. “They talked a lot about it being a very special reflective, contemplative, cozy time of year.”…
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/how-urban-design-can-help-make-winters-less-miserable-1.5437437
last nite on ABC Overnights with Rod Quinn. guest Jake Cordell, Moscow Times (irrelevant, online-only, anti-Putin rag, owned by Dutch charity/foundation, Stichting 2 Oktober, backed by Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs).
paraphrasing short segment of his long interview with Cordell:
1h24m13s to 1h27m14s: Quinn brings up Russia/”climate change”.
Quinn: Moscow not having their bitter winter this year.
Cordell: Russia had its warmest ever year last year. average temp in Moscow was above zero this January for first time ever. not as dramatic as what we’ve seen in Australia. Putin a climate sceptic. says cause not clear. anti-renewable energy. criticises wind turbines.
now that this really hot, well not really hot, but this unseasonably warm weather has come to Russia – and with young people in Russia and around the world being concerned about the planet – there will be more public disatisfaction with the regime.
Quinn gets uppity: I love it when these leaders say they are not quite sure what causes climate change, but they don’t look into what it might be… there’s no-one looking into what it might be other than that
AUDIO: 15 Feb: AUDIO: ABC Overnights with Rod Quinn
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/overnights/overnights/11948286
Moscow Times has been trying to propagandise Russian youth for years:
15 Aug 2012: Moscow Times: Children Lead in Corporate Social Responsibility
By Lena Smirnova
MESHERA, VLADIMIR REGION – But the children at this camp are here for more than just the usual summer fun. Their daily routines also include scientific expeditions through swamps, using solar panels to power kitchen refrigerators and making sure that garbage finds its way to the proper recycling container.
Another noticeable feature in the camp is that all the snacks have the Kraft Foods logo on them…
Kraft Foods has helped to fund the ecology camp at Meshera for the past two years as part of its corporate social responsibility, or CSR, program…
“The general attitude about the environment is, ‘Let the oligarchs save it. It’s the responsibility of the government. There is enough nature to last for our lifetime,'” said Yekaterina Babina, fundraising and marketing director at the World Wildlife Fund in Russia…
WWF also has a long list of international corporate supporters, including Yves Rocher and Coca-Cola…
Russian companies in WWF’s Corporate club include financial outfits like Alfa Bank and Troika Dialog, and even Aeroexpress, the privately owned company that runs rail services to Moscow’s airports…
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2012/08/15/children-lead-in-corporate-social-responsibility-a17050
LinkedIn: Jake Cordell, UK
Moscow Times, Business & Economics Reporter, Aug 2019 – Present
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jake-cordell-41a06277
pity Rod Quinn didn’t give ABC listeners some background before his lengthy chat with this guy.
10
some fun:
15 Feb: RussiaBeyond: How do Russians dress when it’s -50°C outside? (PHOTOS)
Residents of Russia’s coldest regions share tips on what to wear to keep yourself warm and fashionable during the winter…
https://www.rbth.com/lifestyle/331695-russia-winter-dress-minus50
VIDEO: 15 Feb: SputnikNews: Russian ‘Lord of the Cold’ Freezes Himself Into a Heart of Ice for 13 Minutes on Valentine’s Day
He dedicated the stunt to his wife, Irina, with whom he has six children.
Rezanov, a former soldier, calls himself “the Lord of the Cold” and claims to hold 12 world records in cold weather survival…
In March, he plans to dip himself for an hour into liquid nitrogen vapour, which has a temperature of below -130°C.
https://sputniknews.com/russia/202002151078320540-russian-lord-of-the-cold-freezes-himself-into-a-heart-of-ice-for-13-minutes-on-valentines-day/
Ottawa Is Officially The Coldest Capital City In The World Right Now
Narcity – 14 Feb 2020
10
In the 80s i had a Canadian ex pat boss from Calgary. One cold and wet winter morning we were arriving grizzling about the morning weather. He just gave us a “pfffft, at least if you go outside in the wrong clothes you dont die” …. yeah well there is that i guess
10
many clues to who, how, why, when & how much $ involved now:
https://aumladder.blogspot.com/2020/02/recycled-plastic-inside-story.html
00
includes climate…watch all:
VIDEO: 7m: 13 Feb: Fox News: Laura Ingraham: Bloomberg’s ‘coziness’ with China should disqualify him
By Victor Garcia
https://www.foxnews.com/media/laura-ingraham-on-michael-bloombergs-china-relationship
14 Feb: Breitbart: Expert: China Has ‘Global Chokehold’ on Medicine, Can Shut Down Our Pharmacies, Hospitals in Months
by Robert Kraychik
China could effectively shut down America’s healthcare system within months given the one-party state’s “global chokehold” on the manufacturing of medicines and medical supplies, explained Rosemary Gibson, author of China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine (LINK).
Gibson, senior adviser at the Hastings Center, offered her remarks on Thursday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host Ed Martin…
Mansour noted how the coronavirus outbreak in China has exposed America’s dangerous dependence on Chinese production of pharmaceutical and medical supplies, including an estimated 97 percent of all antibiotics and 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients needed for domestic drug production…
AUDIO: 33m14s…READ ALL
https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2020/02/14/expert-china-has-global-chokehold-on-medicine-can-shut-down-our-pharmacies-hospitals-in-months/
20
15 Feb: NY Post: Bloomberg could kill America’s car culture if elected president
by Steve Cuozzo
Will he install bike lanes on Interstate highways?
Maybe you scoff. Of course our former mayor and his transportation sidekick Janette Sadik-Khan couldn’t possibly inflict their cycling mania from sea to shining sea. But back when Bloomberg took office in 2002, the idea that the Big Apple might one day be crisscrossed with space-hogging bike lanes seemed ridiculous. Today, the city has 1,260 traffic-snarling miles of them.
They’re a barrel of fun for cycling enthusiasts, a tiny minority of New Yorkers who still whine there aren’t enough of them…
But the numbers tell a different story. While advocates boast that 86,000 people pedal their way to work every day in town — a 50 percent jump over 10 years ago — they ignore that roughly 3.6 million of us commute to work by other means, according to the US Census.
Meanwhile, all those new bike lanes took stuff away from everyone else — including roads previously used for cars and trucks, and thousands of parking spaces…
According to his official presidential campaign statement, Bloomberg wants to “electrify all new cars by 2035,” as part of his impossible dream of ridding the world of internal-combustion engines. His agenda also includes a competitive grant program to create car-free zones in certain cities and towns…
Sadik-Khan, formerly Bloomberg’s bike-lane mastermind, is now his senior advisor on transportation policy, and she recently told Curbed.com that his transportation goal is about “getting people out of cars.” Not just getting people to drive less, but “investing in the network that makes alternatives to driving possible.”
Hmm, what kind of network could that be? Bloomberg “has a vision and a goal to connect America differently,” in a way that’s “safer, cleaner and greener,” Sadik-Khan told NY1’s Pat Kiernan last week. We all know that means a lot more than “at least one new high-speed rail corridor by 2025.”…
Bloomberg was a great mayor on many fronts…
But Mayor Mike went off the rails with bike lanes — especially when you consider he’s a professed environmentalist who owns three jet planes and two helicopters, including a six-seat AgustaWestland chopper that he pilots himself…
https://nypost.com/2020/02/15/bloomberg-could-kill-americas-car-culture-if-elected-president/
10
EVs shut down freedom of movement as you are tied to the electrity grid…or if cars become automomous, if youve been a bad boy your credit card will be blocked from buying power to charge your car.
Either way, EVs are a very control freak thing, which us why socialists back climate change(tm) as it locks peopke down tightly in a control grid.
I say they can take the EV nonsense and put it in a long drop latrine….
00
A work colleague loves his new Tesla. Nice guy but ive explainedbto him why i wony buy one. Anyway, he lovescs bargain, so when he found out that if he let the insurance company have all his driving telemetry it would save him big money. Excellent…have an insurance company watching you 24×7….no thanks…you gotta be kidding, right?
I asked him does he value his money or his freedom, at which point he got agitated as he lened my question to impinging on his right to save money ( yeah yeah i know….)
Anyway, I said to him that i value freedom over having an insurer watching my every moment, and he siad in yesrs to come thiscwoukd bd notmal.
I said “well i will stop driving as I value freedom over economic fascism” and thats where we left it…..
I was floored someone would throw away his freedom for a few bucks…scary stuff. Hes about 35.
40
I would suggest he is throwing away his privacy , freedom is your extrapolation.
10
14 Feb: Breitbart: Rule of Law: Mike Bloomberg Funded ‘Special’ Prosecutors on Climate Change
by Joel B. Pollak
As the Competitive Enterprise Institute noted (LINK) in a 2018 report, Bloomberg created a “scheme” to pay attorneys who were placed in the offices of state attorneys general, and whose role was to pursue environmental violations — as well as the political opponents of left-wing climate change policies…READ ON
https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2020/02/14/rule-of-law-mike-bloomberg-funded-special-prosecutors-on-climate-change/
20
Seems as though some folk have difficulty with the idea that EVs have their uses.
But not one cogent argument was advanced in rebuttal of that proposition.
I would have got less red thumbs if I’d said that I was an organic farmer LOL.
20
Your comments were understood perhaps mistakenly to implie you were against fossil fuel powered vehicles. As you said later EVs have their uses, which is true but my point was they are not even remotely at the stage of being practical for general use by the majority of people. Perhaps my comments were taken out of context as well. I would love to use EVs instead of dirty and noisy cars of today but we are stuck with them for a long time. My dream is an EV powered by some power source that’s the size of a mobile phone that can be replaced with another one either pre-charged or off the shelf at a service station for about the price of a tank of petrol. Nothing is even close to that at the moment. Doesn’t mean it can’t ever happen.
20
There appears to be a misunderstanding, the claim was “Mitsi PHEB” but when I mentioned on board generator that was denied?
00
” that was denied?”
No , I just said that in my circumstance that it was used as a battery electric most of the time.
On cold mornings (<10deg C.)the petrol engine runs for a few minutes to warm up to operating temp., even if it is not needed.
00
” you were against fossil fuel powered vehicles.”
with at least seven diesel powered tractors .
And four stand-by diesel generators.
Yeah right.
10
I think most here would happily agree they have there uses.
Golf carts and forklifts and seniors scooters have been around for some time. I could see myself buying a small shopping trolley EV if the range (getting there) and price (a joke) ever make sense for me in a regional setting.
The idea of paying through the nose up front and then thinking I am saving money through reduced full costs on a low mileage car just doesnt make any sense in my situation.
30
Nissan Leaf EV around $55,000 retail, an equivalent ICEV under $20,000 retail so $35,000 premium for EV.
That’s a lot of servicing and petrol money.
30
I prefer the reliability and comfort of our diesel Volvo, as in driving four of us tall people down to Melbourne yesterday. I can’t see that, financially, for us as older pensioners living in the sticks (literally in this funeral pyre country) highly expensive EV can ever be a possibility.
Anyway, I don’t much like the thought of the EV being an unputoutable bonfire in an accident.
30
Advance Australia is now producing a kit to be distributed to schools and school age children, to counter to the information taught in the mainstream syllabus
Good news
42
‘However, the state’s policy on Sustainable Teaching and Learning Resources says resources used in public schools must not “offend students and the wider community due to their obscene, highly offensive or overly controversial nature”.
Explaining that the world is not coming to an end (because of a harmless trace gas) would be offensive and obscene, but hardly controversial.
40
… and while you’re there. Am I correct in thinking a Modoki El Nino is forming because the warm pool has chilled?
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp_anomaly/orthographic=-202.11,-9.42,1060/loc=148.730,-5.406
10
It would be nice if it was to occur – what are the odds?
31
If we can predict a Modoki this far out and understand the mechanisms involved, it might be a breakthrough.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/
Note they are also saying the positive IOD contributed to the dry conditions prior to the bushfire season.
00
15 Feb: CBC: Electric vehicle group pushes for better charging rules in condo buildings
EV owners say they are being overcharged at plugin stations
by Meera Bains
Some strata councils ask drivers to pay based on the amount of time the car is plugged in, as required under federal government rules. But drivers say that leads to overbilling compared to fees based on the amount of electricity used…
Hindson says the discrepancy means time-based billing can cost drivers 10 times as much.
“Depending on the car you have, you could end up paying over a dollar a kilowatt hour, which is several times the cost of electricity — which is around nine or 10 cents a kilowatt [hour],” Hindson said…
Brian Bradley, a strata council president in Vancouver, has run into the same problem after a charging station was installed in his building…
“The majority of EVs on the road today have 3.3-kilowatt-hour onboard chargers,” explained Bradley. “That means that they will, every time, pay double for the electricity they receive at a Level 2 charging station than someone with a newer EV with a 6.6-kilowatt-hour onboard charger.”…
Some public charging stations are still free.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/electric-vehicle-group-pushes-for-better-charging-rules-in-condo-buildings-1.5462156
30
Sounds like profiteering and/or exposure of the real cost of charging EVs at commercial charging points.
20
The power at EV charging stations should be free.
It is being supplied by the fairies.
30
It would sting a bit paying a high price up front and then again to charge. Still for most its about the virtue or the feels, remember no price is too high to save the planet.
30
Christiana & Tom Rivett-Carnac are co-founders of GLOBAL OPTIMISM!!!
15 Feb: Guardian: Christiana Figueres on the climate emergency: ‘This is the decade and we are the generation’
The leader of the 2015 Paris accord talks about her new book, The Future We Choose, and why it’s crunch time for humanity
by Damian Carrington
Christiana Figueres is a founder of the Global Optimism group… The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac is published by Manilla Press (£12.99)…Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac will be in conversation at a Guardian Live event at the Royal Geographical Society, London SW7, on Tuesday 3 March, 7pm.
FIGUERES: This is the decade in which, contrary to everything humanity has experienced before, we have everything in our power. We have the capital, the technology, the policies. And we have the scientific knowledge to understand that we have to half our emissions by 2030…
But we can only choose it this decade. Our parents did not have this choice, because they didn’t have the capital, technologies and understanding. And for our children, it will be too late. So this is the decade and we are the generation…
The very concept of being a consumer already points us in the direction of consuming irresponsibly. We have to be able at some point, particularly in developed countries, to get to the point where we say “enough is enough”. Before you make a purchase, or an investment, or any kind of decision that impacts on the planet and on other people, the question should be: “Do I really need this and is this actually conducive to furthering the quality of life on this planet?”…
People reducing their emissions – by flying less, eating less meat and using clean energy, for example – is important…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/15/christiana-figueres-climate-emergency-this-is-the-decade-the-future-we-choose
16 Feb: Guardian/Observer: ‘The only uncertainty is how long we’ll last’: a worst case scenario for the climate in 2050
By Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac
(This is an edited extract from The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac)
It is 2050. Beyond the emissions reductions registered in 2015, no further efforts were made to control emissions. We are heading for a world that will be more than 3C warmer by 2100…
The first thing that hits you is the air. In many places around the world, the air is hot, heavy and, depending on the day, clogged with particulate pollution. Your eyes often water. Your cough never seems to disappear…
We don’t know how hospitable the arid regions of Australia, South Africa and the western United States will be by 2100. No one knows what the future holds for their children and grandchildren: tipping point after tipping point is being reached, casting doubt on the form of future civilisation. Some say that humans will be cast to the winds again, gathering in small tribes, hunkered down and living on whatever patch of land might sustain them…
You try not to think about the 2 billion people who live in the hottest parts of the world, where, for upwards of 45 days per year, temperatures skyrocket to 60C (140F), a point at which the human body cannot be outside for longer than about six hours because it loses the ability to cool itself down…
Food production swings wildly from month to month, season to season, depending on where you live. More people are starving than ever before…
The demise of the human species is being discussed more and more. For many, the only uncertainty is how long we’ll last, how many more generations will see the light of day. Suicides are the most obvious manifestation of the prevailing despair, but there are other indications: a sense of bottomless loss, unbearable guilt and fierce resentment at previous generations who didn’t do what was necessary to ward off this unstoppable calamity.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/15/worst-case-scenario-2050-climate-crisis-future-we-choose-christiana-figueres-tom-rivett-carnac
THAT IS GLOBAL OPTIMISM???
this pair never stop flying. Davos Switzerland, UK; then they’ll be at UNSW & WOMADelaide in March etc. Tom’s Twitter page is full of his travels. he has a history:
LinkedIn: Tom Rivett-Carnac, Founding Partner at Global Optimism UK 2017-present
Fellow, Steyer-Taylor Centre, Stanford University, Jan 2018 – Present
Senior Advisor to the Vice Chair, Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCOM) (MICHAEL BLOOMBERG) Nov 2016 – Jan 2020·
Senior Advisor to Climate Envoy, World Bank Group Jan 2017 – Feb 2019·
Senior Advisor to the Executive Secretary, UNFCCC Jun 2014 – May 2016
Advisor, Climate and Energy Track, Clinton Global Initiative Sep 2012 – Jan 2015·
Account Manager, CarbonSense Dec 2004 – Oct 2006·
Buddhist Monk, Wat Nong Pah Pong and Wat Nanachat Dec 2001 – Sep 2004·
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/tomcarnac
10
14 Feb: Oregonian: BLM to fund 11,000 miles of fuel breaks in West to help fight wildfires
By Piper McDaniel
The Bureau of Land Management announced plans Friday to fund 11,000 miles of strategic fuel breaks in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada and Utah in an effort to help control wildfires.
The fuel breaks are intended to prop up fire mitigation efforts and help protect firefighters, communities and natural resources. According to the BLM, wildfires are becoming bigger and more frequent across the Great Basin states. Between 2009 and 2018, more than 13.5 million acres of BLM land burned in the project area.
“Recovering from the devastating effects of wildfires can take decades in the rugged, high-desert climate of the Great Basin. These tools will help firefighters contain fires when they break out,” said acting Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management Casey Hammond in a news release. “That’s why creating fuel breaks is incredibly important to the entire basin, the people who live in these communities, and our wildland firefighters.”
Fuel breaks are intended to break up fire fuels by creating breaks in vegetation that slow a blaze’s progress. By implementing them strategically, they help firefighters control the spread of fire, and can protect homes and resources.
Some scientists debate the effectiveness of fuel breaks in mitigating wildfires, raising questions about whether these efforts are worth funding.
But the BLM reports that assessments of more than 1,200 fuel breaks found that 78% of them helped control wildfire and 84% helped change fire behavior. According to the news release, “The BLM has extensively documented that fuel breaks, and other types of fuel treatments, are effective.”…
According to the news release:
· Fuel breaks can be implemented through “manual, chemical and mechanical treatments, including prescribed fire, seeding, and targeted grazing.”
· Fuel breaks work will happen on roads and rights-of-way on BLM lands.
The public can comment on the plan for the next 30 days, after which the BLM will make final decisions
https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/02/blm-to-fund-11000-miles-of-fuel-breaks-in-west-to-help-fight-wildfires.html
30
The Clean Energy Regulator has now approved enough capacity to guarantee that the Large-scale Renewable Energy Target of 33,000 gigawatt hours of additional renewable energy will be met in 2020. LGC forward prices for 2020 and 2021 are at $34.75 and $15.60 respectively.
When will we see an end to these subsidies?
The Clean Energy Regulator makes it hard to find the status of the small scale renewable energy targets and costs.
30
The original SRES had a notional annual target of 4TWh. I think the target was dropped in the 2015 RET review. It was quite clear then that it would be easily met and, given the generation was “deemed” rather than measured, it was not particularly useful. Mid 2019, the installed rooftop capacity was 9GW. At worst, that produces at least 10TWh annually; way above the early target. In fact rooftop has become a “problem” in SA and QLD as it is eating into the output from the grid scale intermittents. With recent loss of the big battery that is Victoria, the rooftops in SA threaten grid stability so the output of grid scale intermittents has been curtailed to enable enough gas plant to keep operating to maintain stability.
Two of ElectraNets synchronous condensers are planned to be operational mid year and two more by the end of the year. These should improve grid stability in SA without the need to run gas plant. Probably too late in the current circumstances as the SA-Vic interconnected should be back up by end of Feb.
The spot price for the certificates can be found on this link:
https://www.demandmanager.com.au/certificate-prices/
STCs currently cost $37.90 per deemed MWh. Note that the deeming period, originally 15 years, has been reducing since 2015. The RET expires in 2030 so the deeming period has dropped progressively from 2015; now down to 10 years.
20
The low forward prices are an exercise in smoke and mirrors because the energy regulator has permitted a 3 year delay in the legislated requirement to purchase LSGC at the end of which time the default number have to be acquired. The penalty for failure of retailers to purchase the required number of certificates is a non tax deductible fine equivalent to some $87 per MWh, which is why certificates previously traded close to that price. Now retailers have dropped prices a tad and are buying some Certificates at reduced prices as generators release some to to maintain a cash flow to protect their already obscene profits. But when the regulator’s holiday finishes and retailers have to procure the legislated certificates watch the price zoom to over $80 over MWh and customer charges increase to cover the cost.
10
With reportedly 11,000 new residents a month moving to both Sydney and Melbourne each, utilities like AGL are going to have to address electricity supply issues sooner rather than later. Especially once Liddell and one of the Loy Yang plants are retired.
30
Note how front-of-shop experts report on delicate topics, and how the media can normalise, dramatise or maximise at will. Even a huge event can be neutered across the spectrum, from Murdoch to Guardian.
The 2016 “Thunderstorm Asthma” was responsible for ten deaths. The ABC, commenting on the “rare” event, ran some comparisons.
The 1983 Birmingham event caused 26 recorded asthma attacks. Huh? In the U.S. 3,651 people died in 2014 from asthma attacks overall. Huh?
See how they do it? They give you comparable figures from elsewhere which are in no way a match for comparison purposes. In Melbourne, ten died and at least 8500 people were treated in the one short period. They frame the numbers so that the extreme nature of the Melbourne event is muffled. 26 attacks are supposed to bury ten actual deaths. A death toll of 3,651 out of 330 million is supposed to bury 8500 treatments in one day in one place.
I don’t know why the massive and freakish Melbourne event went under the rug. We should still be talking about it. I don’t know why other events go big.
I do know that we should all be careful of handing more of our privacy and freedoms over to the “benefactors” who are behind these unending distortions and manipulations.
And I’ll leave it at that.
50
Not sure ehat you are expecting to happen. The VicEmergency app warns endlessly (it seem at times) about thunderstorm and their are special alerts when the conditions are right for the asthma varient.
00
There were endless warnings recently about thunderstorms well away from our stated ‘watch’ area and we didn’t get any storms and only 0.4mm of rain! I jump out of my skin when one of the warnings arrives and then am annoyed by it’s not relating to us. I’ll uninstall it again and go back to regular checking directly.
10
I’m saying the event was normalised, given a name, a very silly Wiki page and unconvincing Nobel-winner to explain it almost on the day. There was no “asthma variant” till it was created retrospectively. An event, real or media-generated, was somehow engineered days later in early December (they forgot about the pollen yarn for the NH?) in Kuwait. While one needs to be suspicious of any saturation reportage (think silicon dummies in Christchurch), the Melbourne deaths and medical treatment numbers are real, as far as I can tell. And, in fact, the reportage which should have been saturation was suspiciously threadbare considering what happened.
Note that I’m not talking here about thunderstorm warnings, asthma days, pollen etc. I’m talking about something very distinct which was quickly merged with those commonplace things. And I’m really talking about the power of the media and how even the most skeptical people will let things slide by if the weight of the media says to let it slide. The same media can make something small into something big too, needless to say: that’s called the news.
It’s not just the climate beat-up that should attract our skepticism. And there are beat-downs as well as beat-ups.
20
It’s been nearly a week and I’ve seen no mentions of Juice Media’s latest Honest Government Ad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BmbvTvFQ3g
I can’t be stuffed analysing all of it, so go for it.
The statement that really stood out as the most absurd (amongst some strong competition) was that the fossil fuel companies drilling in Australia were the main cause of the 2019 bushfires. Amazing how Chevron forces you to buy their product, China and India ceased to exist, and 4% is greater than 50%, huh?
I looked for some link to where Juice got their sciencey-sounding research but could not see any sources listed. But they endorse Friends of the Earth, so I guess they got that going for them, which is nice.
I should thank FoE for alerting me to the fact that earlier this week the federal government decided to place a nuclear waste storage site at Kimba on SA’s Eyre Peninsula. Less than 100km from the coast! That’s just reckless… as the best place in the world to store nuclear waste is central Australia, near Woomera and Olympic Dam by the looks of it. Is the Liberal government trying to sabotage nuclear power in Australia or what? Hey, maybe Juice are correct about ScoMo and Big Fossil?
10
I’ve heard yet another stupid comment on Sky News. The comment was made that the new HELE coal plants are less reliable than current coal fired plants in operation because they break down more often thus delivering power less often. If that’s the case then we should block any new renewables given they are far less available even when compared to the worst of any HELE plant in the world. It never ceases to amaze me how so many dumb people get to be interviewed anywhere.
30
PeterS:
I don’t know where to put this (no suggestions please). I know you are frustrated by ScoMo (or if you prefer SloMo) but remember that it isn’t up to him to approve power stations, that is a State prerogative and he has to get Dopey Dan and Palacechook to agree as a start.
Even if he is a secret warmist (which I think isn’t obvious) you can be sure that the backroom staff would be monitoring the press for the public reactions.
If I may skite a bit I posted this 2 hours ago on The Australian.
“Everyone seems to be getting things backward.
The first requisite is surely some proof that CO2 causes enough warming for us to try and do something. Certainly CO2 could THEORETICALLY cause some warming, but somewhere between 0.07 to 0.40℃ when we reach 800p.p.m.
After all the temperature of the Earth has been fairly stable for the last 450 million years with the major problems being Ice Ages. These have occurred late Ordivician at 3,000 p.p.m. CO2, late Carboniferous at 350 p.p.m., (cooling) end Jurassic at 2,700 p.p.m. and the Pleistocene (current) at 450 p.p.m. roughly every 120-140 million years or about half the time the sun takes to go around the galaxy.
Things got warm (not hot) in the Cambrian at 7,000 p.p.m. but that was associated with a huge surge in life, not an extinction. The dinosaurs ran around in CO2 levels of 1600 to 2700 p.p.m. and survived for over 150 million years.
And claims that CO2 “traps” heat are nonsense and this was disproved by John Tyndall back around 1862.”
It got 80 like ticks in 2 hours (or less) with no-one disputing. I have never got such a strong reaction. Others have had similar acceptance. As this goes on, you can be sure that some of the nervous nellies on the back bench will be edging for more action.
80
Again you are missing my point. He’s officially in favour of reducing emissions. That drives the technology we must deploy for generating power. It’s pretty simple. You follow?
10
Okay then, here’s a comment about commenting!
My first comment was at number 19.
I knew there would be an open Thread for the weekend, so I composed my longish comment last night, so it would be ready, as I knew the actual writing of the text would take a while. The images I had already done and they were ready at my ‘home site’.
I was up at 7AM my time here in Queensland, prior to my usual morning walk every morning.
I saw the Open Thread, opened up my site, copied and pasted the text, and then set up the three links to the images, previewed and proof read, checked that the images opened, and then Posted it.
At Post time of 7.31AM, it was (total number of) comment number 24, even though my comment was Number 19, as there were already some responses to earlier comments.
So now, my time here is 4.30PM, and there are now 180 comments.
So that averages out to a new comment every 3.46 minutes.
And that’s just at this Open Thread.
There have been a number of comments at the other Threads as well, so just guessing here, I suppose there would be a comment every two minutes at Joanne’s site.
Not only is this the best blog in the Country, it would also be the most visited as well. I might add that even on a Worldwide basis, bloggers could only dream about a popularity rate that this blog of Joanne’s has.
More power to you Joanne. You’re doing it exactly right.
Tony.
140
What a pity that Scott Morrison and the Liberals don’t read it.
This is a tragedy for Australia.
60
Russell Crowe has just destroyed the Fire Fight Concert at ANZ stadium with a video message.
paraphrasing & shortening:
bushfires caused by CAGW, use of fossil fuels, move quickly to RE. everything he says can be backed up by our brightest scientific minds. we paid for their education. time to listen to them.
90
switched off the concert, went to Sky Australia, CAGW as usual on Sharri, with Trent Zimmerman, net zero emissions.
switched to Sky UK, Press Review, some journo guy on second storm in Yorkshire. clear this is not normal. clear what’s behind it. we keep living in an extreme event. no point denying. other guest agrees. she’s named as Adrienne Buller, climate activist, other names in the many news pieces she features in:
Adrienne Buller, senior research fellow at think tank Common Wealth, Adrienne Buller, co-director of Labour for a Green New Deal, Adrienne Buller, an analyst at InfluenceMap
checked around – CNN is showing “Going Green” – investors describe what their light bulb moment was.
MSM is a joke.
80
Go to… http://joannenova.com.au/2020/02/weekend-unthreaded-298/#comment-2276674
to see just how much of a farce, comments like that from Russell Crowe really are.
10
Methinks this site is getting too caught up in irrelevant details. Like listening to a bunch of lawyers arguing about words. If I believe in the tooth fairy, it’s not up to you to disprove it – IT’S UP TO ME TO PROVE IT. Similarly, those advocating man-made global warming need to prove it scientifically. Arguing with people about the detail of their fairytales seems a bit pointless and futile to me. Just saying …
30
Paul Murray/Sky was just mentioning something about journalists declaring a climate emergency. this is all I could find in a quick search:
Climate Emergency Declaration: Journalists declare a climate and biodiversity emergency
Movement Declaration: Rising temperatures, drought and heat waves, rising sea levels with immense implications for humans around the world, and more than one million species at risk of extinction, many within decades. The United Nations has described the climate and biodiversity crisis as a climate emergency and stresses the urgency for increasing action on curbing emissions. Based on comprehensive science the UN Secretary-General António Guterres has described human-induced climate change as the greatest challenge of our time. We believe journalists and media play an important role in addressing this challenge.
Petition by Climate Emergency Declaraton Mobilisation, Geelong Australia
Target: national journalist unions and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)…READ ON
To:national journalist unions and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ)…
6 Signatures Collected
Only 19 more until our goal of 25
https://climateemergencydeclaration.org/journalists/
15 Feb: Guardian: Climate summit calls for urgent action after Australia’s fire-hit summer
Forceful declaration calls for governments to set short-term zero emissions target to avoid catastrophic warming
by Ben Doherty
The megafires of Australia’s summer “are a harbinger of life and death on a hotter Earth”, a climate summit has said in a forceful declaration for urgent and dramatic climate action.
The Climate Emergency Summit, held in Melbourne this week and of which Guardian Australia was a partner, released a declaration saying the warming world was a clear threat to Australian society and civilisation.
“The climate is already dangerous – in Australia and the Antarctic, in Asia and the Pacific – right around the world. The Earth is unacceptably too hot now,” the declaration said.
“If the climate warms 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the Great Barrier Reef will likely be lost, sea levels could rise metres and massive global carbon stores such as the Amazon and Greenland, will hit tipping points, releasing millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.”
Signatories to the declaration included Ian Dunlop, Carmen Lawrence, John Hewson, Tim Costello and Kerryn Phelps…READ ON
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/15/climate-summit-calls-for-urgent-action-after-australias-fire-hit-summer
20
ClimateEmergencyDeclaration: Climate emergency reporting requires persistence
Posted on 12 February 2020
The two journalists Morten Steiniche and Mik Aidt have initiated a petition, where journalists as individuals are encouraged to sign ‘Journalists declare a climate and biodiversity emergency’
https://climateemergencydeclaration.org/a-journalist-declares/
LinkedIn: Mik Aidt, Radio host, journalist, communicator
Geelong, Victoria, Australia
Experience:
Trainer
Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) Australia
Aug 2017 – Present
Founder
Centre for Climate Safety
2013 – Present
Executive Producer
Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) Australia
2015 – 2016
Volunteer Experience:
Coordinator
SGPS solar fundraiser, Act on Climate Festival, etc
Jan 2015 – Present
Projects:
The Sustainable Hour on 94.7 The Pulse
Sep 2013 – Present
https://au.linkedin.com/in/mikaidt
check the articles in the following, including the Michael Mann one excerpted:
Mik Aidt
Australia: First national Climate Emergency Summit
Posted on 13 December 2019
The American climate scientist Dr Michael E. Mann, rock star Peter Garrett and The Guardian Australia’s editor Lenore Taylor are among the 100 presenters who will be speaking at the 2020 National Climate Emergency Summit in Melbourne, Australia…etc
https://climateemergencydeclaration.org/author/mik/
20
LinkedIn: Morten Steiniche
PR. Campaign Journalism. Activism. Denmark
I am a specialist in activating and impacting edited media with PR and campaign journalism. I help companies, NGO’s and activist organisations to frame messages in an editorial context.
Current projects also include (spring 2020):
*Supervision of a TV documentary on Extinction Rebellion by Danmarks Radio.
*The making of a documentary on spiritual activism with Norwegian film director and producer Rune Schytte from Baldur Film.
Until 2013 I worked with communication, management and entrepreneurship primarily in the music industry…
Features Writer
Dagbladet Information and other
2015 – present
Depth and interpretation of subjects such as climate change, climate despair, spiritual activism and personal development…
Activism and Op-Ed Writing
The climate justice movement
nov. 2015 – present
PR and communication campaign strategies for the climate justice movement (Extinction Rebellion and more) (2019-2020)
Initiator of stress relieving workshops for activists and NGO delegates at COP 21 in Paris (2015). Founder of Care4Activists.org (courses and seminars on stress and burnout in activism) (2016-2020). Organizer of climate grief circles for activists in Copenhagen (2019-2020).
Latest Op-Ed:
’20 climate coverage recommendations for the media’…ETC
https://dk.linkedin.com/in/mortensteiniche
10
no time to check if the Guardian summit is totally connected to Mik Aidt and Morten Steiniche, but Aidt is among the great & mighty listed below:
not a lot of DIVERSITY! LOL. MIK AIDT spoke:
ClimateEmergencySummit.org: 14-15 FEBRUARY 2020 MELBOURNE: Speakers
2 DAYS/ 100 SPEAKERS
includes Michael Mann, Rebecca Huntley, Kerry O’Brien, Lenore Taylor (Guardian), Tim Costello, Ross Garnaut, Zali Steggall, Greg Mullins, Clover Moore, Adam Bandt, Costa Georgiadis (ABC), ***MIK AIDT etc
see PROGRAM and PARTNERS (WHICH INCLUDES RMIT/ABC FACT CHECK – LOL)
https://www.climateemergencysummit.org/speakers/
10
Adam Bandt has announced he is going to travel the country lecturing miners on what they can and can’t mine , he is also going to push for “green steel” , whatever the heck that is .
Last time a greenie did a tour to the mines it didn’t go down so well .
70
the climate grooming of children is truly shocking:
13 Feb: Guardian: ‘I’ve lost friends’: the young climate strikers forced to go it alone
Activism can be lonely in rural areas, but social media lets lone children’s voices be amplified
by Jessica Murray
In a remote village in north Norfolk, nine-year-old Amelia Bradbury has been standing alone outside her school gates every Friday for months. Like hundreds of thousands of young people across the world, she is following Greta Thunberg’s lead and campaigning for action on the climate crisis – but, far from any of the big city demonstrations, she’s having to go it alone…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/13/young-climate-strikers-go-it-alone
equaly shocking:
AUDIO: 2m34s: 15 Feb: ABC AM: Kids’ mental health in focus amid fires, floods and epidemics
By Rhett Burnie
It’s not just the coronavirus that’s been dominating headlines: there’s also been the bushfire crisis and recent storms.
In a world where information is available at your fingertips, it’s no wonder some children are feeling worried.
So how do we allay their fears, without sweeping the issues under the rug?
Featured:
Xavier Smith, Adelaide school student
Elicia White, mother
Kirrilie Smout, childhood psychologist
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/adelaide/programs/am/kids-mental-health-in-focus-amid-fires,-floods-and-epidemics/11968672
13 Feb: Guardian Letters: Voters can help bring an end to climate anxiety
Readers discuss the psychological impact of the climate crisis and suggest ways to tackle it
As a parent of two children, aged nine and 12, I read with deep concern, though not surprise, your article on the rise of climate anxiety among young people (Take action to reduce anxiety, psychologists advise, 10 February)…
The legacy that Trump, Morrison, Bolsonaro, Johnson and their ilk are leaving our kids is a loss of hope. And when people lose hope, they often give up…
David Summers, Bristol
Readers may be interested to know that the Climate Psychology Alliance has for the last 10 years been providing support, conducting research and running workshops on all aspects of the climate crisis and our emotional responses…
Rosemary Randall, Cambridge
One way of managing the trauma associated with awareness of the scale of the climate crisis is to follow the Extinction Rebellion model of forming affinity groups and creating a regenerative culture…
Daniel Scharf, Drayton, Oxfordshire
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/voters-can-help-bring-an-end-to-climate-anxiety
20
‘We Will Whack It’ – Boris Govt Takes On BBC with Plan to Scrap TV Licence
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/16/we-will-whack-it-boris-govt-tackles-bbc-plan-scrap-tv-licence/
30
Fantastic! Hope that Boris follows through on this. Both the USA and Canada have community media funded by subscription, and there is no reason why we can’t also do this.
20
Comedy Classic
‘ … the blind are entitled to 50 per cent off …’
00
Interesting perspective of this year’s bushfires
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/02/16/bjorn-lomborg-fighting-australias-fire-myths/#more-43547
40
‘By the end of the century, if we do not stop climate change, higher temperatures and an increase in aridity will likely mean …’
Bjorn is a lukewarm idjit.
50
Yep, its a pity when an otherwise good commonsense article wanders off into the fantasy-land of “climate change™”
30
Lomborg, like Curry, is there to deliver the same climate alarm message as the IPCC and the rest of climatariat. He merely poses as the moderate and skeptic-friendly middle of the debate. We wouldn’t read stuff like EG quotes if Lomborg didn’t draw us in with other stuff to appeal to our common sense. I’m pretty sure there are spooks who train them how to do the double game, and how to actually lead the opposition to the very IPCC they are in fact boosting.
Beware of skep-friendly lukewarmers like Lomborg and Curry who manage to keep enormous profiles. There’s a sharp little IPCC pill in every offered spoonful of appetising skepticism.
10
Have you noticed that WA, who regularly burns 8-10% of their eucalypt forests, doesn’t have as many disastrous bushfires? Even burning 8-10% may not reduce fuel loads to satisfactory levels. And Victoria, who only burnt 1.3% last year, doesn’t stand a chance of managing their fuel loads.
60
Yep. WA learned a lesson after 1961, and it’s very much to their credit.
10
There’s a T shirt here Jo
https://www.flickr.com/photos/149157242@N05/49515406936/in/dateposted-public/
30
He may be a lukewarmer EG, but he makes a lot of sense on the economics front.
20
Meant to be a response to EG’s 53…
10
Yes but Lomborg continues the big lie to support his own economic agenda. He is milking the ‘sensitivity’ issue for all its worth.
10
more evidence XR is, basically, an arm of the BBC.
15 Feb: BBC: Using Australian coal in Port Talbot ‘needs to stop’
Environmental campaigners have said it is “complete lunacy” that coal imported from Australia is being used by Tata’s Port Talbot steelworks.
The site burns hundreds of thousands of tonnes of coal every month.
Extinction Rebellion said it was “madness” to ship coal from one side of the world to the other, particularly in the wake of the Australian bushfires.
Tata said it was committed to finding alternatives to coal and hoped to be carbon free by 2050…
An Extinction Rebellion spokesman said: “We cannot continue burning coal full stop.
“We cannot be shipping it from one side of the world to the other. That is absolute madness. That needs to stop.”…
Friends of the Earth Cymru director, Haf Elgar, said: ”We’re facing climate breakdown, and the tragic bushfires in Australia are a clear signal that we must keep fossil fuels in the ground…
Despite the bushfire crisis, attributed by many to climate change, the Australian Government has remained committed to its fossil fuel industry.
The continent is one of the largest coal producers on the planet…
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-51407137
who cares what these people think?
20
***ABC giving a shout-out to the National Climate Emergency Summit:
AUDIO: 4m40s: 14 Feb: ABC PM: Lord Mayors of Sydney, Melbourne to ramp up climate action
By Linda Mottram
The Lord Mayors of Australia’s two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, are planning to ramp up climate change action, prompted by the summer bushfire crisis.
They had already declared a climate and biodiversity emergency. Now they say they hope to fast-track targets on emissions, waste and water use, as well as looking at the commercial opportunities of a transformed economy.
Cities globally account for 70 per cent of carbon emissions, ***and today, Melbourne is hosting a two-day National Climate Emergency Summit.
Featured:
Sally Capp, Lord Mayor of Melbourne
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/pm/lord-mayors-of-sydney,-melbourne-to-ramp-up-climate-action/11967562
Councillor Cathy Oke says 2,000 at Town Hall for the Climate Emergency Summit:
TWEET: City of Mebourne
.@LordMayorMelb Sally Capp and Councillor @cathyoke are at the National Climate Emergency Summit today. On Tuesday Council will vote on a range of bold climate actions, including reaching our zero emissions target by 2040. #climatechange #ClimateEmergency #NCESummit2020
VIDEO 1m22s
https://twitter.com/cityofmelbourne/status/1228099366562365441
00
VIDEO: approx 11m: 10 Feb: Sky News: ABC has ‘shifted’ from ‘fire to flood alarmism’
Sky News host Chris Kenny says the ABC and Paul Barry have shifted the “climate emergency narrative” from fires to floods, all while “manipulating the facts” and using the taxpayers’ money to run their “climate hysteria lines”.
Mr Kenny said Media Watch host Paul Barry “seems uninterested in the facts” and instead continues to “attack” those who utilise “historical records” and information relating to fires and flooding in the nation.
“Barry manipulates facts and misrepresents other media in obvious efforts to push his own political agenda and demonise his media rivals.
“Yet the ABC management and its board either endorse this or do nothing to stop it. Instead, they “turn up in Canberra and ask for more taxpayers’ money”.
https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6131196165001
Kenny shows the following ABC tweet:
TWEET: Sophie McNeill, ABC Reporter @4corners Ex-Middle East corro @abcnews ‘We Can’t Say We Didn’t Know’ out this March.
Honestly it feels like this summer on the east coast of #Australia has been a warning to the world of what lies ahead. Soaring temperatures, drought, massive unprecedented bushfires, freak damaging storms and now beach erosion #ClimateChange #ClimateEmergency
9(10) Feb 2020
19 replies, quite a few mocking.
https://twitter.com/Sophiemcneill/status/1226668998802067456
reminder:
reminder:
Updated 14 Feb: ABC: Can legal action force governments and businesses to respond to climate change?
By Jacqueline Peel
Australia’s devastating summer bushfires, and now flooding rains, fit with scientific predictions for how climate change might affect the weather…
Can the courts provide a solution?…
00
Michael Mann re-TWEETS Jo Chandler, with this reply:
Mann: The privilege was mine Jo–thanks for doing such a wonderful job moderating the panel!
I mean manel
TWEET: Jo Chandler, Journalist; Author; Editor; Educator. @Unimelb Centre for Advancing Journalism. Science enthusiast; alarmed warmist;
What a privilege to moderate this & other sessions at the #NCESummit2020 hearing first-hand from superstar scientists like @MichaelEMann Charlie Veron, David Lindenmayer and so many more. Confronting & communicating hard truths #oceans #ClimateEmergency
15 Feb 2020
https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/1228867185633710080
Michael E. Mann Retweeted
TWEET: Dr Yves Rees, Historian, writer, podcaster, activist | Research Fellow @latrobe
1/ Some of my fave quotes about the #ClimateEmergency from #NCESummit2020 @djspratt: “This is not a scientific or technical issue; it’s a social & plotical one.” @MichaelEMann: “There is urgency but also agency. There is still time to act…We can still turn this ship around.”
15 Feb 2020
https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann
a bit of stuff on his twitter page about whether Mann was prevented, or withdrew, from speaking at the Fire Fight Australia concert.
at one point Mann Tweets: Invited. Then disinvited. Watch this space for further details…
plus Ian Dunlop: Mann gets in “climate deniers” towards the end. not listening to all, so don’t know if that was the only instance.
TWEET: Marie McInerney, Freelance journalist/editor, including @CroakeyNews
#NCESummit2020 presser with @pgarrett @MichaelEMann
POOR VIDEO: 19m02s
13(14) Feb 2020
https://twitter.com/mariemcinerney/status/1228085478882045952
00
11 Feb: ABC: Are the days of a carefree Australian summer numbered?
By Australia Wide’s Sinéad Mangan and Alex Hyman
Summer in Australia is something we all yearn for. The national identity is built around it…
Narooma High School parent Frances Matters said she was looking forward to summer ending.
“We have had so many road closures, so many times we’ve been cut off from civilisation, there’s no communication, no power,” she said.
“It’s a constant on-edge feeling. I’ve never wanted summer to end, actually, but I think it’ll be just nice to get through to winter or get some rain.”
And her sentiments are backed up by some of Australia’s leading climate scientists
Nerilie Abram is among hundreds of scientists gathering in Fremantle, Western Australia, for the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Conference.
“This summer has really changed Australia; it’s shown us what climate change actually looks like,” Professor Abram said.
“Often when we talk about climate change, it is something that will happen in the future, something that happens to other people.
“But what we have seen this summer is that this is something that is here and now, and it does affect our way of life.
“I’m somebody who has grown up loving summer and this summer has not been fun.”…
Sophie Lewis lives in Canberra. On New Year’s Eve she flew to Hobart to give her toddler daughter’s lungs a break from the choking smoke that blanketed the capital.
Dr Sophie Lewis, is a globally recognised climate expert, International Panel on Climate Change lead author and ACT scientist of the year.
“We were very lucky that we weren’t directly impacted by fires; we didn’t have to protect property or our family or our pets,” Dr Lewis said.
“But we made the choice, because of the hazards in Canberra, the smoke and the heat, that we’d split up our family and I’d travel to find clean air for my daughter.”…
Greg Holland is a world-leading expert in tropical cyclones and severe weather and chair of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder Colorado.
Dr Holland said this bushfire season would cause people to reconsider where they lived, particularly those living in tree change and sea change parts of Australia…
Dr Holland said research had found climate change had moved tropical cyclones about 100 kilometres poleward.
In Australia, this means the current cyclone zone extends down to Fraser island.
He said if that moved another 100 kilometres, that would extend the cyclone zone to Brisbane.
“These are the sorts of things that are getting attention,” he said.
“They’re getting attention from the ***insurance industry for obvious reasons, the attention of local government, and the attention of the groups that actually set the building codes.
“This could be a real game changer — a category 4 to 5 cyclone coming into Brisbane as they build now would not be good news.”…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-11/is-this-the-end-of-the-carefree-australian-summer/11951982
***13 Feb: ABC: Insurance premiums rising after long summer of bushfires, storms and floods
By business reporter Rachel Pupazzoni
The Insurance Council of Australia said the September bushfires were the first of six catastrophic weather events to hit Australia’s east coast in the past five months.
“This is known as disaster season for a very good reason and this certainly has been one of those angry summers that Australia experiences,” the Insurance Council of Australia’s Campbell Fuller told The Business.
The ICA has declared six catastrophes in five months CHART…
JP Morgan insurance analyst Siddharth Parameswaran agreed insurers had already priced in a catastrophic summer.
“The industry had already allowed for a huge increase in their natural perils budgets leading into this,” he explained…
Suncorp CEO Steve Johnston used his results briefing to call on the Federal Government to develop better policies to protect people against natural disasters…
“The irony is you can get a subsidy to put a solar panel on your roof, but you can’t get a subsidy to batten that roof down to protect it against a category-four or five cyclone.”…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-13/insurance-premiums-pressured-by-bushfires-storms-and-floods/11958410
00
TWEET: Prof. Matthew Nisbet, Professor of Communication, Public Policy & Urban Affairs @Northeastern
1) This is an important piece from @RogerPielkeJr detailing how @skepticscience joined with @MichaelEMann & other activists in a pressure campaign to limit who has the authority to speak publicly about climate science & policy #envcomm #scicomm
LINK Forbes
13 Feb 2020
Prof. Matthew Nisbet
2) For more on the origins of this pressure campaign, see @keithkloor’s deeply reported piece @ISSUESinST LINK…ETC
replies:
Michael E. Mann 15 Feb 2020
Joe: Nisbet traffics in soft denialism. Don’t fall for it.
Stephan Lewandowsky
Indeed, most unfortunate. Giving intellectual licence to fossil-fuel funded denial in the name of ‘nuance’ or some misunderstood ‘constructivism’ is, sadly, common but that doesn’t make it any more acceptable.
15 Feb 2020
John Cook
1/3 No, it’s a deeply misleading piece misrepresenting a simple situation: @skepticscience’s role is to refute misinformation with peer-reviewed science. Misinformers complaining about this are trying to dodge responsibility for their misinformation…
LINK Skeptical Science
15 Feb 2020
John Cook
2/3 I document the damaging impact of misinformation on society in my chapter in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science: polarization, reduced support for climate action, reduced climate literacy, and more…
15 Feb 2020
John Cook
3/3 Further, as I write in a recent chapter, failing to effectively address misinformation leaves the public vulnerable to harmful misinformation. A large body of empirical research tells us we ignore the issue of misinformation at our own peril
Randolph DoGooder
John, I think that your group is every bit as guilty of spreading misinformation as are skeptics. Not only that, but the mean spiritedness and anger your group displays when attempting to silence dissent is both stunning and revealing.
John W S Carpenter
I have to agree. The name “Center for Climate Change Communication” is a sure tell of what John Cook is really about. He and his organization are about politics and not science. The insertion of politics into what should be a purely scientific endevour is the real problem here.
https://twitter.com/STWorg/status/1228840950333464577
9 Feb: Forbes: How Academic ‘Blacklists’ Impede Serious Work On Climate Science
by Roger Pielke
A climate advocacy group called Skeptical Science hosts a list of academics that it has labeled “climate misinformers.” The list includes 17 academics and is intended as a blacklist. We know of this intent because one of the principals of Skeptical Science, a blogger named Dana Nuccitelli, said so last Friday, writing of one academic on their list, “if you look at the statements we cataloged and debunked on her [Skeptical Science] page, it should make her unhirable in academia.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2020/02/09/a-climate-blacklist-that-works-it-should-make-her-unhirable-in-academia/#446d5cb76368
Summer 2017: Issues: The Science Police
By Keith Kloor
(Keith Kloor is a freelance journalist and an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University)
On highly charged issues, such as climate change and endangered species, peer review literature and public discourse are aggressively patrolled by self-appointed sheriffs in the scientific community…READ ON
https://issues.org/the-science-police/
10
better quality video; same poor quality talk:
VIDEO: 12m24s: 14 Feb: news.com.au: Full presser: Climate Change Summit in Melbourne with Peter Garrett, Ian Dunlop, Michael Mann
Full press conference: Peter Garrett, Ian Dunlop, Michael Mann speak to the media ahead of attending the Climate Emergency Summit in the Melbourne
https://www.news.com.au/national/full-presser-climate-change-summit-in-melbourne-with-peter-garrett-ian-dunlop-michael-mann/video/81569efc99cdfa2bf3aec3b197068d9c
00
VIDEO: 5m37s: 17 Feb: news.com.au: Sky/Front Page: There is an ‘implicit political subsidy’ on renewable energy
Managing Director of Thought Broker Parnell Palme McGuinness says Victoria is having its own “little green new deal” as Victorians face a $1.7 billion hit to their power bills due to an ambitious new Andrews government green scheme.
The Herald Sun is reporting the installation of new power-saving appliances to be installed in up to one million homes and businesses as part of the “aggressive expansion” of the Victorian Energy Upgrades program could see a $1.7 billion cost to energy consumers over five years.
Ms McGuinness told Sky News host Gemma Tognini there exists great “political risk” around different forms of energy “other than [for] renewables”. “There is a kind of implicit political subsidy on renewables”.
https://www.news.com.au/national/there-is-an-implicit-political-subsidy-on-renewable-energy/video/495ceae3892e98975d64d1a8e621b936
behind paywall:
Power-saving appliances will be installed as part of an …
Herald Sun – 9 hours ago
Energy users face a $1.7 billion hit on their bills over five years to supercharge an Andrews Government green scheme… The aggressive expansion of the Victorian Energy Upgrades, which has previously focused on replacing old light bulbs with LEDs, is designed to slash energy use and greenhouse gases..
00
The Greenshirts are in power.
10
TWEET: Clover Moore, Sydney Lord Mayor – 1h ago
Re-appointment of the CEO
Our recent awards for sustainability
Solidarity with people in Wuhan
Religious Discrimination Bill
Climate Emergency response
Watch along here: WEBCAST
https://twitter.com/CloverMoore/status/1229286934477803520
10
Thanks pat: I will avoid her Pretentiousness.
00
am not listening:
AUDIO: 25m55s: 16 Feb: ABC Science Friction: Wildfires with wild numbers: fact checking a catastrophe
Reporter/producer/presenter: Joel Werner
Presenter/producer: Natasha Mitchell
12.6 million hectares burnt, 431 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted, over one billion animals killed.
But where do these numbers come from, and are they for real?
Sum of All Parts host, science journalist Joel Werner, joins Natasha on Science Friction to fact check the fire season.
Guests:
Inspector Ben Shepherd
NSW Rural Fire Service
Dr Mark Parrington
Senior scientist, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Professor Chris Dickman
School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney
https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sciencefriction/16.1-fact-checking-the-fire-season/11962758
ClimateEmergencySummit: Program: HOW TO REVERSE GLOBAL WARMING
PART TWO: DRAWDOWN AND THE COOLING CONUNDRUM
Moderated by ***Natasha Mitchell – ABC Radio National presenter
Our climate is already dangerously hot…What would the race to rollout negative emissions at national level look like for a below zero Australia?…
Unearthing the potential for biological systems to deliver the drawdown at scale and speed to achieve safe climate conditions.
Joe Herbertson – Director of The Crucible Group & Conjoint Professor, University of Newcastle
Kate Dooley – Research Fellow and Lecturer at Melbourne University
Peter MaCreadie – Director of Deakin’s Blue Carbon Lab
Tony Rinaudo – Natural Resources Management Specialist, World Vision
https://www.climateemergencysummit.org/how-to-reverse-global-warming-part-two-event-profile/
15 Feb: WUWT: The Rise and Fall of Central England Temperatures; Part 3 2000-2019
Guest post by Tony Brown
This is the third examination of Central England Temperatures (CET) in a series that commenced in 2015 and which has charted the recent decline in temperatures from their highest values. The two previous articles in this series are referenced here…READ ON
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/15/the-rise-and-fall-of-central-england-temperatures-part-3-2000-2019/
00
I decided to make an experimental gif animation loop, to more directly compare OLR (Out-going Long-Wave Radiation) verses the location of the in-falling ultra-low relative-humidity air (sunken stratosphere within the lower-troposphere), between 3 k ft to 24 k ft.
https://i.ibb.co/m6nbj95/OLR-verses-Ultra-Low-Relative-Humidity-Air-3k-ft-to-24-k-ft.gif
I’ve used that altitude range as it’s where the vast bulk of water vapor exists within the atmosphere. So if water vapor is a green-house-gas (ghg) then OLR will rise wherever the ultra-dry air (in pink) has intruded into the lower half of the troposphere displayed, and displaced the water vapor that is normally present.
As you can see even at this early stage there’s a clear correspondence between the pink and higher OLR flux contours.
Notes about this loop:
1. The OLR is the total daily flux measured from space.
2. The relative humidity is from the observations in the 3 hours prior to midnight last night (at about 23:59 hrs on the 16th Feb 2020 ECMWF)
3. But this Daily OLR data shown is from the entire 24 hr period on the 15th of Feb 2020 (the day prior), but the pattern remains broadly correct even over 24 hours.
It changes locations little because the sinking stratospheric air also has a structure, by which I mean it prefers to sink into the troposphere in certain locations only. As a result the otherwise fluid jetstream has developed a surprisingly predictable structure to it since early January 2020 (as I’ve previously described). It’s the standing structures, produced by the locations of the in-falling stratosphere, which has produced relatively immobile equatorial-jets, which have remained roughly in the same locations for about 5 weeks now. Who would have expected that?! And this emergent structure to the resulting jetstream flow is so unexpected, but makes perfect sense once you realize the sinking stratospheric air column above is not moving around much. It’s just downwelling opportunistically and creating its own highs to sink lower through.
Thus a mobile Jetstream keeps re-creating the same jet pattern within the same basic locations. It’s quite a stunning insight to what is normally an ever-changing fluid flow, they has not obvious structure And with this in mind it become clearer how a giant red-spot can be sustained in Jupiter’s wild atmosphere for more than 400 years. Vertically in-falling air can create longer term standing structures within a chaotic circulating atmosphere.
Our understanding of how a jetstream can and will behave during a cooling period, induced by stratospheric sinking is going to have to significantly change and adjust to the observed structural realities them sinking air creates.
4. The pink shown here depicts air between 0.0 % RH (brightest pink) to 6.2% RH (pink turns to orange).
5. The two image projections are slightly different (varying area distortions with latitude) so the land-masses don’t align exactly.
However, even within this first loop animation it’s clear that where the relative humidity falls below ~6% the OLR shoots up sharply, thus confirming that water vapor is a strong GHG.
The same relationship can be shown when ultra-low RH is compared to low-level cloud cover (i.e. there’s very little cloud cover present), and when such ultra-low-RH-induced lower level low cloud cover % is then compared to the OLR flux on that day in the same region.
During this coming month I’ll make a series of animations (hopefully global and regional) using RH observations, OLR observations, and global cloud satellite imagery, animated together to illustrate the implied water vapor as GHG relationship, beyond reasonable disputation.
That will establish a clear rationale and testable basis for a cooling mechanism due to globally enhanced OLR, induced by increasing levels of stratospheric air sinking down quickly and continuously into the lower troposphere (which process may have a linkage back to solar activity level).
This correspondence between high OLR and ultra-low RH confirms that water vapor is a GHG, and the DWLWR most certainly exists, and is a major, if not the major influence on the multi-decade scale weather cycles of this planet. Orbital geometry with respect to the sun, being the primary influence on actual global climate changes (i.e. sea-level rises and falls on the scale of tens of meters).
20
Another more dynamic animation which shows the source and destination of stratospheric air movement, as it sinks, and the locations it sinks into.
Ultra dry air between 0.0% and 6.2% RH from 2,500 ft to 45,000 ft – Feb 17th, 2020:
https://i.ibb.co/BKQW6jM/Ultra-Dry-Air-2-5k-ft-to-45k-ft-Feb-17th-2020.gif
20
How former stratosphere gets near to surface level 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 (with 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 this stratospheric sinking process, and will contribute almost nothing to it.
10
17 Feb: BBC: Met Office forecasters set for ‘billion pound’ supercomputer
By David Shukman
Ever wondered why your village was suddenly flooded by a thunderstorm the weather forecasters hadn’t mentioned?
Or why they failed to warn you about the dense fog shrouding your home in the morning?
The fact is that predicting the “big picture” of future conditions has got a lot better – Storm Dennis was spotted six days before it arrived.
But getting local forecasts right – street by street and hour by hour – is still a massive challenge.
And that might now change as the Met Office secures the help of a supercomputer project costing £1.2bn.
Already the Met Office is pulling in more than 200 billion observations from satellites, weather stations and buoys out in the ocean every single day, and that’s set to increase.
And working out if a summer downpour will flood your home or one down the road requires more and more processing power…
It’ll be the biggest investment in the 170-year history of the organisation and will dwarf the £97m bill for the current supercomputer…
And will it help with climate change?
That’s the aim, with the digitally-simulated atmosphere also run far into the future to explore the effects of a hotter world.
The effects of the rise of 1C over the past 150 years are still not fully understood, let alone those of bigger increases to come…
Won’t the new supercomputer itself add to carbon emissions?
Like any huge IT installation, it’ll certainly need a massive supply of electricity.
That’s why the Met Office is inviting the potential providers to come up with low-carbon options.
And that’s led to a radical idea. The last 14 Met Office computers have all been housed in the UK – and the new one might not.
Around half of the processing work – the research devoted to climate change – could be located in countries blessed with easy sources of clean energy.
Iceland with its geothermal sources and Norway with its hydropower are both possibilities…READ ON
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51504002
00
17 Feb: Reuters: UK to invest $1.6 billion in weather and climate supercomputer
by Nina Chestney
It will enable better forecasting for airports so they can plan for potential disruption and provide more detailed information for the energy sector so it can prevent potential energy blackouts and surges…
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-weather-computer/uk-to-invest-1-6-billion-in-weather-and-climate-supercomputer-idUSKBN20B00U
17 Feb: BusinessGreen: Climate supercomputer: UK invests £1.2bn in ‘state-of-the-art’ forecasting system
by Michael Holder
Government claims supercomputer will reap multi-billion pound economic benefits by offering better climate and weather forecasting…
The new supercomputer is set to operate for a 10 year period, replacing the Met Office’s current systems when they reach the end of their planned lifetime in late 2022…
Met Office chief executive Professor Penny Endersby said the £1.2bn investment would help provide “the information needed to build a more resilient world in a changing climate and help support the transition to a low carbon economy across the UK”…
https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4010815/climate-supercomputer-uk-invests-gbp-2bn-art-forecasting
00
both behind paywalls:
16 Feb: UK Independent: The climate summit’s success depends on Boris Johnson doing the last thing he ever wanted to – forgetting about Brexit
by Joss Garman, UK programme director of the European Climate Foundation (which funds Carbon Brief)
“Without European leadership, failure would be all but guaranteed, yet right now Brussels is not on track either to have agreed a new more ambitious 2030 climate target or a new longer-term net-zero target to match Britain’s, which it could carry into the EU-China summit in Leipzig in September.”…
15 Feb: UK Telegraph: EDF poised to submit planning application for £20bn nuclear power plant
By Robin Pagnamenta
EDF is poised to submit a formal planning application to build a new £16bn nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk within weeks.
The French state-controlled electricity giant is putting the final touches to the paperwork required for a so-called Development Consent Order for the new station, Sizewell C,
from Britain’s Planning Inspectorate, the final stage in the planning process.
If approved, the new station, on the coast between Ipswich and Lowestoft, would include two new EPR reactors – making it an identical twin of another plant under construction at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Sizewell C, which is also backed by CGN, a Chinese government-controlled company, would generate 7pc of UK electricity, enough for 6m UK homes….
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/02/15/edf-poised-submit-planning-application-20bn-nuclear-power-plant/
00
behind paywall:
15 Feb: UK Times: The link between climate change and Britain’s winter storms
by Simon Lee, meteorologist, Reading University
Part of the answer lies in the jet stream, the powerful westerly wind blowing about six miles above us which, driven by that steep temperature gradient, has accelerated and got bigger. That energy feeds into our storms.
On their own, Ciara and Dennis are not symptomatic of climate change or a global weather crisis. What climate change does is to alter the likelihood of such events. Computer models of the impact of climate change predict an increase in winter rainfall for the UK, along with warmer atmospheric temperatures and changes to the tracks followed by storms across the north Atlantic. This year may not be a sign of things to come, but we will probably see more severe winter flooding in future…
That is going to continue and the best guess is that the world could be — in a worst-case scenario — 4C-6C warmer by 2100. That may not sound much – but multiplied by the area of the planet it means that the atmosphere will hold an enormous amount more energy…
If our weather is exciting now, it may soon be overwhelming…
open access:
15 Feb: NYT: The End of Australia as We Know It
What many of us have witnessed this fire season feels alive and monstrous. With climate change forcing a relaxed country to stumble toward new ways of work, leisure and life, will politics follow?
by Damien Cave
SYDNEY, Australia — In a country where there has always been more space than people, where the land and wildlife are cherished like a Picasso, nature is closing in. Fueled by climate change and the world’s refusal to address it, the fires that have burned across Australia are not just destroying lives, or turning forests as large as nations into ashen moonscapes.
They are also forcing Australians to imagine an entirely new way of life…
“I am standing here a traveler from a new reality, a burning Australia,” Lynette Wallworth, an Australian filmmaker, told a crowd of international executives and politicians in Davos, Switzerland, last month. “What was feared and what was warned is no longer in our future, a topic for debate — it is here.”
“We have seen,” she added, “the unfolding wings of climate change.”…
And in a land usually associated with relaxed optimism, anxiety and trauma have taken hold…
“If there’s not a major shift that comes out of this, we’re doomed,” said Robyn Eckersley, a political scientist at the University of Melbourne who has written extensively about environmental policy around the world. “It does change everything — or it should.”…ON AND ON
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/world/australia/fires-climate-change.html
00