Weekend Unthreaded

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312 comments to Weekend Unthreaded

  • #

    Have been spending some time looking at this interesting cloud height vs atmospheric Voltage effect. This combined with the global electric circuit and the Carnegie curve being altered by cosmic radiation. Seems like a simpler cosmic ray cloud albedo mechanism than the cloud formation (Svensmark) stuff.
    https://youtu.be/iwilH8M_P7o

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  • #

    How cloud height can do it all is explained here.
    “As explained below, the high thin cirrus clouds tend to enhance the heating effect, and low thick stratocumulus clouds have the opposite effect, while deep convective clouds are neutral.”
    https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Clouds/

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    • #
      tom0mason

      Nice theory.
      When and where were the observations and measurement made and have they been verified?

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      The differentiation between cirrus and stratocumulus clouds, regarding the heating effect, seems counter intuitive to me, but I am not sure why. Oh, well. There goes my Sunday …

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      • #

        Well Rereke there may be other effects that are less counter intuitive if you are in the mood for research. I remember seeing the Russians experimenting with rainmaking. There was a picture I can not find right now of a truck mounted device that looked like a vary very large negative ion generator. With lots of pointy bits that could be aimed. While Svensmark was looking at the birth end of a clouds lifespan, atmospheric Voltage may alter the length of a clouds life by the formation of droplets. This directly changing global cloud albedo.

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        • #

          “They believe the effect may be due to the charging of small droplets in the cloud’s base, which encourages them to stick together.”
          http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/mar/06/atmospheric-electricity-affects-cloud-height

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          • #
            ROM

            Climate etc ; [ May 2015 ]

            Observational support for Lindzen’s iris hypothesis

            Basic mechanism of the iris hypothesis

            The basic mechanism of the iris hypothesis is described by text excerpted from the Mauritsen and Stevens paper:

            The tropical atmosphere consists of moist and cloudy regions associated with large-scale rising motion, convective storms and pronounced precipitation on the one hand, and dry and clear regions with subsiding motion on the other hand (Fig. 1). The atmospheric circulation maintains an approximate balance between radiative cooling, which occurs preferentially in the dry and clear regions, and latent heating from the condensation of water vapour in precipitating clouds.
            In the tropics, radiative cooling predominantly occurs in dry and clear subsiding parts of the atmosphere.
            The radiative cooling is balanced mainly by latent heat released in precipitating deep convective clouds (Fig. 1).

            Processes that may change the balance in favour of dry and clear regions in warmer climates have been proposed to constitute a possible negative feedback not represented by climate models. This potential feedback has been termed the iris effect, in analogy to the enlargement of the eye’s iris as its pupil contracts under the influence of more light.
            The controversial ‘iris hypothesis’ proposes that the fraction of the dry and clear regions could increase with warming and exert a negative feedback: a larger extent of the dry and clear regions would lead to a less cloudy upper troposphere and hence an increase in OLR.

            Such an effect could mitigate against climate change [by reducing climate sensitivity].
            But a drier upper troposphere would also allow more solar radiation to be absorbed by the Earth and atmosphere, rather than reflected back to space by the clouds, so that the net effect of reducing high clouds is not obvious.
            On balance, the effect is thought to be negative.
            The estimate of climate sensitivity with an iris effect, however, depends not only on the rate of reduction of high-level clouds, but also on the cloud optical properties of the most sensitive clouds. If the thinnest clouds are preferentially removed, the effect on outgoing longwave radiation is stronger than that on reflectivity, and the iris effect is stronger.
            On the other hand, if the reduction in cloud cover affects thicker clouds more strongly, the loss in reflectivity plays a more important role, and the iris effect is less pronounced.

            ————-
            The vociferous objections to the iris hypothesis arises not so much from the hypothesis per se, but rather its implications for climate sensitivity.
            In 2001, around the time of the IPCC TAR, there was a great deal of animosity towards any scientist or paper that argued for a low value of climate sensitivity (e.g. Pat Michaels’ 2002 paper).

            In Lindzen’s ppt, he states:

            This leads to a very important question: Namely, what will happen to the exponentially growing climate change community if the sensitivity of climate to global forcing is small?
            Could the wish to avoid this question be the reason why our ‘official’ estimates of climate sensitivity have not improved since the Charney Report of 1979?

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            • #
              tom0mason

              Also ROM,

              William Herschel
              noted the correlation of sunspots to grain prices.

              In 1801, Herschel reported his findings to the Royal Society and indicated five prolonged periods of few sunspots correlated with the price of wheat.[30] Herschel’s study was ridiculed by some of his contemporaries but did initiate further attempts to find a correlation. Later in the 19th century, William Stanley Jevons proposed the 11-year cycle with Herschel’s basic idea of a correlation between the low amount of sunspots and lower yields explaining recurring booms and slumps in the economy.[31] Herschel’s speculation on a connection between sunspots and regional climate, using the market price of wheat as a proxy, continues to be cited.

              Lindzen’s iris effect modulated by solar variation?

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        • #
          tom0mason

          @Siliggy
          June 11, 2017 at 12:20 pm

          Other effects would be the changing state of water from highly energetic H2O, to very mobile water vapor, to the bouncing around of micro and macro-particles, to small droplets of water, and back again as cloud’s essential movements and internal heat boils away through movement, radiation, and conduction to other damp bodies of air, and now maybe also through conversion to electrical energy within the cloud. All this energy exchanged and re-exchanged until the droplets are de-energied, succumbing to gravity’s pull. All this energy and matter squirming about to entropy’s tune, releasing energy via a myriad of interwoven methods.

          How simple those small clouds look until you try to find out how a few hundred tons of water stays up there.

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  • #

    A Scottish Government funded organisation Zero Waste Scotland has a campaign to reduce food waste. It says

    Saving food saves money and helps to slow down global warming and deforestation. Reducing the amount of food that ends up in the bin also means you can say goodbye to unnecessary packaging waste. If we all make a few small changes and start using up the food we buy, together we can make a big difference.

    Aside from a lack of link between emissions and temperatures, the alleged emissions from food waste in Scotland is around 0.0028% of the global total. The average Scottish family eliminating its food waste to zero would reduce global emissions by around 0.000000001%. The website claims that this could save money, but omits to mention that some aspects of food waste are good, such as providing plenty fresh fruit for the children, rather than cakes.
    Now imagine is a business making such a grossly misleading claims in the benefits, and hiding of potential harmful side-effects in promoting say, vitamins. They would be prosecuted. But this is not a business selling a product but environmentalist propaganda.
    Full story is here.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      It seems any excuse to push the extreme Gaia protection agenda ….

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      • #
        Watt

        This is not about packaging. They are reducing the size of bins by 42%. That’s to reduce landfill waste. You can have as many recycling bins as you like but no more than 70 litres of non -recyclable waste per week.
        The ashes from my open coal fire alone will more than fill a 70 litre sac.
        This is another assault on coal.
        While woodash can be recycled coal ash cant be.

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    • #
      sophocles

      Kevin quoted Zero Waste Scotland as saying:

      you can say goodbye to unnecessary packaging waste.

      In a nutshell, fresh is best.

      Buying fresh food reduces packaging to the bare minimum required to transport it hygenically. I won’t mention that such food is also more nourishing.

      Fancy and wasteful packaging tends to enclose the least desirable manufactured foodstuffs, and is designed to catch the shopper’s eye, more than anything else.

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      • #
        Greebo

        In a nutshell, fresh is best.

        Lol.

        Now, take a look at how the “fresh food people” package things like salad veg. All nicely washed and sealed in a keep it fresh plastic bag ready to serve. Washed in what? A chlorine mixture, I believe.

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        • #
          brill

          And they are doing it more and more.

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          Annie

          I don’t buy pre-packaged salads. They are disgusting, still need a proper wash and then you see the bad bits floating around….yuk! They also cause tummy upsets so we have had a total ban on them in our household for years.

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          Although they say fresh is best ZeroWasteScotland have some very dubious advice in an article HOW TO RESCUE A ROAST DINNER.
          This includes
          – Using out of date gravy granules
          – resuscitating limp vegetables
          – cutting bad bits off potatoes, but do not eat if they taste bitter.

          This is somethings that many people do, but not nearly to the extent of our grandparents. One reason for this change in attitude is that on average we are much richer than our grandparents. We can spend less time on decision-making and afford to be wasteful. Alternatively we can afford to experience higher quality of the food we eat, including freshness and variety. Planning and micro-managing can be a pleasure, but for most it is a chore that we can afford to miss.

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          • #
            Watt

            Many Scots may do this anyway but you can’t give it as official advice, encouraging those who don’t know what they’re doing to be going down with GI .

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          • #
            PeterPetrum

            I was born in Glasgow in 1940. I still rember war time food and the rationing for years afterwards. I can assure you that in our house nothing was wasted. “Bad bits cut off potatoes” – sure were. My wife was born two years later, also in Glasgow, but now we live (and have for 52 years) in bountiful Australia, but we still cut “bad bits” off potatoes (home grown in the season) and put left over food in the fridge for a “fry up” on a later day – “bubble and squeak” is my favourite, potatoes and cabbage mixed and fried with an egg on top. Waste not, want not, but it has nothing to do with changing the climate.

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              My mother was born in Wick a few years before. Both her parents made use of everything. With her mother it was food and clothing. Her father mending shoes and (for a living) repaired clocks. But that was a result of poverty and scarcity. Most people have unlearnt these skills, and are not inclined to practice the skills as they are time-consuming. People are generally lazier, but also consume their time in other ways. In particular, women tend to work rather than stay at home to prepare meals, and repair clothes. There is a section on repairing clothes are ZeroWasteScotland as well.
              In both food and clothing there is much greater choice. Sixty years ago eating pasta and rice at home was quite rare, hence an April Fool in 1957 about the spaghetti harvest in Italy was able to be played). The vast majority of take-aways were fish and chip shops. The range is now huge in both the home and for eating out. In clothing it is the same. We tend to have more clothes and buy new more often.

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            • #
              Annie

              Hear hear! Peter. We do the same. I detest food waste and we have very little. I well remember rationing and was a thin child. Off vegetation goes into the compost bin. Meat carcasses make stock and the first cooking of it gives meat chunks that go into a risotto-type meal.

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          • #
            tom0mason

            Kevin,

            ZeroWasteScotland is talking utter BS!
            What Scotland needs is a massive subsidy on the healthy native ethnic foods — Haggis, Deep-fried pizza and Fried Mars bars all washed down with Scotland’s Champaign of industrial brewing McEwan’s 60/- .

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        • #
          sophocles

          Greebo said:

          Now, take a look at how the “fresh food people” package things like salad veg. All nicely washed and sealed in a keep it fresh plastic bag ready to serve. Washed in what? A chlorine mixture, I believe.

          If you like pre-packaged salads, then that’s your choice, not mine. They’re washed with chlorinated water, a chlorine solution. It’s a sound way of keeping them `fresh’ for longer where `fresh’ as used in this sentence, means `looking green and unwilted.’ The leaves will still absorb some water and the chlorine prevents growth of nasty bacteria which can cause typhoid (Salmonella typhi) not to mention other bugs which cause nasty diarrhoeas (E. coli) and dysenteries (shigella, campylobacter). These are another good reason for not eating packaged food and paying close attention to expiry or ‘best before’ dates. Chlorine solutions are safe for human consumption.

          Those sort of weed mixtures are definitely not my choice. They may look green and unwilted but they never taste fresh. They taste as though they are at least a week old possibly more. And they’re boring. I like more variety. I can, and do, build a better and tastier salad from fresher vegetables. Just don’t forget to wash the leaves thoroughly. (This applies to the pre-packaged ones, too.)

          If you want truly fresh, then grow your own vegetables. Freshest is straight from your garden to your table same day and you can taste the difference. Growing them is easy, they don’t take much looking after and they don’t need daily exercise. When you talk to them, they don’t argue back. All they need is daily sunlight, suitable soil, some regular watering and maybe some anti-insect attention.

          What’s the problem with washing with a chlorine solution? Sounds like town-supply tap-water, which usually, but not always, uses chlorine to keep it free of the nasties mentioned above. The water keeps the foliage looking fresh and the chlorine keeps it sterile. But the leaves age chemically and you can taste it.

          Anyway, if you do eat them, you had better hope they’ve been thoroughly washed with a suitably strong chlorine solution, rather than just `nicely washed’ for your own good health and physical comfort. In NZ, a Hawkes Bay town (Havelock North) had a campylobacter outbreak early this year, carried in the town water supply. The water was not chlorinated. I don’t know why it wasn’t chlorinated. I’ll be unkind and consider it was all the wealthy greenies down there who have believed the Green Peace anti-chlorine myths and pressured the local council to not use it. Tough. Some ovine fecal material entered the aquifer. If the water had been chlorinated, they would never have noticed. As it was, a lot of people were made very ill.

          Chlorine is a good bacteria-cide and fungicide. Your stomach secretes hydrochloric acid (HCl where the Cl = Chlorine) which means lots of free chlorine ions in there. Our bodies need chlorine to help digest our food. We usually get it from salt (NaCl, sodium Chloride where Cl = Chlorine). That’s also a necessary part of our diet. This is why we use chlorine to keep water safe and because our bodies can use it. It’s a safe and readily digestable chemical.

          So good luck with your pre-packaged monotonous salads all nicely washed with a chlorine solution. Because there are humans involved, one day a bag or two of that salad will bite back.

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          • #
            sophocles

            I said above that chlorine is a safe and readily digestable chemical. This applies only to foods and solutions wherein the chlorine is `bound’ or `contained.’

            In its free state, chlorine is a yellowish green and deadly gas which immediately attacks the lungs should even the slightest amount be inhaled. Be very careful.

            Not too many years ago, it was discovered that mixing chlorine bleach with some granulated toilet cleaners resulted in a noxious cloud of green chlorine gas. I have tried it as an experiment in well ventilated conditions. I got more than I expected. As it is heavier than air, it is easy to contain it but even so, I don’t recommend trying it at all. Urban myth has it that it caught out some over-diligent cleaners, a few of them fatally.

            Always read the labels on your household cleaners, especially the safety precautions..
            And whatever you do, don’t mix them.

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            • #
              Bobl

              I almost passed out one day from mixing chlorine and ammonia cleaners. Not together but one after the other. I can verify it is not something anyone should do

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          • #
            Roy Hogue

            Surely you know that your water supply has some form of chlorine compound in it. It’s what makes the difference between a safe drinking water supply and cholera or other waterborne diseases epidemics.

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            • #
              Roy Hogue

              And you do not want cholera, not even today when you might survive because we know how to administer IV fluids to prevent dehydration which is the way cholera kills.

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            • #
              sophocles

              Auckland’s water supply is more than adequately chlorinated. It’s safe.

              Thanks for reminding me about cholera, Roy. I should have mentioned that one.

              Our water supply `company,’ for want of a better word, issued a warning that the water treatment plant was struggling under the load dumped on the catchment area by TC Donna back at the beginning of May. The warning was to pay attention in case they had to issue a `boil your water’ notice. I’ve lived in Auckland for sixty years and that’s first time we’ve ever had that. They managed, the treatment plant wasn’t inundated and we didn’t have to boil our dringking water.

              I don’t understand Havelock North (about 220km SE of Auckland) running their town supply untreated from an underground aquifer. That’s so eighteenth century and risky in a dense animal husbandry area. I consider they were asking for trouble. They got it. They were lucky it was `only’ campylobacter, which is unpleasant enough without it being cholera. Chlorinating the water supply should be automatic, it’s one of the two major public health measures, the other being sewerage removal and treatment.

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          • #
            Greebo

            Err, I grow my own, or buy from the local GG ( we still have on). I NEVER buy prepackaged. As to your chlorine rant, fair enough. Not sure where you live, but here the water here is pretty pure. It would all be down to concentration, don’t you think?

            My problem is the non-disclosure. Nowhere do they tell you what the process is.

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            • #
              sophocles

              I grow my own,

              Way to go (or way to grow 🙂 ).

              I grow my own sometimes. I stopped when my Garden Guard died. (Large German Shepherd). Must get another one, one day. They’re great companions. The veges don’t grow legs and walk when there’s a large one of those guarding them.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      I predict that the next big scare, at least in Scotland, will be the sky-rocketing increase in weight induced morbidity, due to overeating.

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        Scotland already has quite high levels of obesity, partly due to poor diet. This is the country that invented the battered Mars Bar. That is to coat it in batter and deep fry, like fish. You can also get deep-fried burgers, sausages and haggis.
        It is ironic that for many years there has been a 5-a-day campaign to get people to eat more, and a great variety of, fresh fruit and vegetables. Now the state-funded environmentalists are making life far more complicated by trying to eliminate food waste.

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        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          … state-funded environmentalists are making life far more complicated by trying to eliminate food waste.

          Ha the wee bonnie lassies no heard o’ compostin’ fram’ thay food waste? It helps mo’ food te grow.

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      Watt

      After their smack down on IndyRef2 in last week’s GE you can expect a lot more of this nonsense from the SNP while they remain in power.

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  • #
    Mark M

    These ancient humans were part of a large population that spread across Africa when the Sahara was green about 300,000 to 330,000 years ago.

    http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/world-s-oldest-homo-sapiens-fossils-found-morocco

    Comparison of Atmospheric Temperature with CO2
    Over The Last 400,000 Years

    http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html
    . . .
    I’m saddened our ancient humans didn’t call 1 of the 3 gasoline taxes “carbon tax” long time ago- we w’d have thwarted Global Warming!

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      el gordo

      Its easy to see from those graphs that CO2 and temperatures are linked, with the rationale that a warm climate will liberate CO2 from the oceans and make the planet greener.

      The other thing worth discussing: “It’s a plausible argument that the face evolves first,” says paleoanthropologist Richard Klein of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, although researchers don’t know what selection pressures might drive this.’

      I nominate physical attraction and the mating game.

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  • #
    Mark M

    Another external influence on Earth’s climate is the variability in the amount of energy the Sun emits.
    The Sun’s total energy output varies on multiple cycles and is related to the number of sunspots, with slightly higher temperatures when there are more sunspots, and vice versa.

    https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-pre-industrial-climate-and-why-does-it-matter-78601

    Wait. What?

    At the same time, other reasonable explanations, most notably changes in the Sun, have been ruled out.

    http://www.nwf.org/wildlife/threats-to-wildlife/global-warming/global-warming-is-human-caused.aspx

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      el gordo

      ‘Our assessment is that this pre-industrial period was likely 0.55–0.80°C cooler than 1986-2005 and that 2015 was likely the first year in which global average temperature was more than 1°C above pre-industrial levels.’

      Hawkins et al

      ————

      It beggars belief, they didn’t mention that the sun was overly active at the end of the 20th century, which may account for the one degree increase in temps. Something happened around 1740, an anomaly requiring further study.

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      • #
        Graeme No.3

        I think they mean that we should control the output of the sun and at the same time stop volcanoes errupting. Sounds as practical as other plans they have.

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        • #
          sophocles

          Graeme No.3 said

          Sounds as practical as other plans they have.

          and as insanely expensive as the other plans. Perhaps even more so, which should bring it closer to the top of the list. It will only cost about $3 trillion to start the research …

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          • #
            ROM

            .
            “A young researcher approached his old professor and suggested that they should do some research on controlling the global climate and he gave a number of reasons for doing so.
            He also suggested that he had a few ideas.

            The Old Professor looked at him and said; “When you can demonstrate to me that you can control a volcano then come back and we will discuss controlling the global climate and weather.”

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      • #
        Glen Michel

        What else can be expected from poor scientists. Dregs such as those who infest that site are among those who debase the name of science.

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        Craig Thomas

        So what you’re saying then, El GOrdo, is that Svensmark was completely wrong?

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      tom0mason

      Sounds like they’re riding on the back of wattsupwiththat latest post

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    • #

      Thanks Another Ian,

      as John Robertson says in those comments there with a hint of sarcsm:

      Base Load?
      Never heard of it, sounds like work.

      Each week, month, year, we are assailed with diagrams, charts, pie charts, etcetera, all showing their alleged proof of the point they are trying to make.

      And yet, no one, anywhere has never shown the simple and innocuous Load Curve for actual power consumption, and asked the simplest of questions.

      Here’s one, (shown at this link) and this is for last Thursday, 8th June 2017. (and when the page opens, just press MW at the top right of the diagram.)

      The question.

      The person asking is pointing to the low point on that curve.

      Where’s all that come from then?

      That ….. is 18,000MW.

      It’s the lowest it gets, Summer or Winter, all year round, except for Christmas Day, when it’s down to around 15,000MW, you know, that day no one is at work, and still it’s 15,000MW.

      But that 18,000MW, it’s the low point. It’s always required, 24 hours of every day, and is required ….. ABSOLUTELY, just to keep Australia actually open.

      Where does that come from?

      Why it comes from Coal Fired power, and are you listening Mr Finkel, Mr Butler, Mr Shorten, Mr Turnbull, Mr. Frydenberg, Senator Di Natale, et al, et al, et al.

      ONLY coal fired power can supply that.

      Look at that Load Curve and just ask the d@mned question.

      Where does that 18,000MW come from?

      Then tell us again how renewables can reach 40, 50, 60% or more.

      Waiting, waiting, waiting.

      Just wait till someone does actually ask that question, someone answers correctly, and then see what happens.

      The humungous rush for the door to retirement, and hey, I was only doing what I was reliably informed.

      WILL SOMEONE PLEASE ASK THE D@MNED QUESTION, and do it real soon, real soon.

      And then explain it to the people.

      Tony.

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        Konrad

        And therein is the complete madness of the Finkel report.
        It denounces coal as uneconomic while refusing the accurately report that the only reason for this is Australian government regulation and taxation, which could be changed with the flick of a pen.

        Finkel suggests that gas-fired stations can provide grid inertia and frequency stability, while ignoring that new technology HELE supercritical coal plants burn just as clean and run cheaper. China, India, Japan, Germany and South Korea are all building these new technology coal plants and many will be using our coal.

        Yet the Finkel report recommends that we increase unreliable wind and solar despite the fact these technologies can never economically meet the “Generator Reliability Obligation” the report suggests. It is a sure bet that the “Generator Reliability Obligation” will be the first of the recommendations that the government chooses not to adopt.

        The Finkel report is a blatant attempt to prevent Australia acquiring the cheapest, most reliable and cleanest power plants available and thereby shore up the Turnbull family’s massive investment in Infigen Energy stock.

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      • #

        Here’s a simple exercise for you all, and I’m afraid you’ll need a pencil and paper and be able to add up, so I guess there go the Greens.

        Go to the site at this link, and it’s the AEMO site for actual power consumption, their data dashboard.

        When the site opens up, the first thing you see is the load curves for NSW, as indicated by the tabs at the top left there. The actual load curve for power consumption is the dotted and lighter line, and note how similar it is to the earlier load curve for the whole of Australia I pointed you to.

        Okay then, hover your mouse over the low point, middle of the page there, and the box shows you it was 4 to 4.30AM, and keep in mind that this is for overnight Saturday, the Sunday morning early, while nearly all of us were sound asleep, so it was not really even a major working day.

        Write down the total in MW that the little box says.

        Then, top left, click on the next State Qld, and do the same and write that down. Then do the same for Vic, SA and Tas.

        Now add up all the totals you have written down.

        Say, whaddya know, and who would have thunk it?

        18,000MW, at ….. FOUR AM on a Sunday morning.

        Tell me, don’t you just wonder, for a fleeting second, just where all that power actually does come from?

        Oh, and the total from renewables, well wind anyway, because the Sun isn’t shining at 4AM.

        Well that total for wind power was 500MW, so it was supplying 2.77% of what was ACTUALLY required.

        Show your friends, show your politicians. Show everybody, and just ask the question. Don’t tell the, just ask the question.

        Tony.

        Post Script – Hmm! This is a duplicate Comment. The first one just disappeared into the ether when I hit the Post Comment button. Just blink, gone.

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          Robber

          One thing that Dr Finkel has highlighted is that the wholesale price of electricity is related to the last price bid to meet demand. So wind might bid $10/MWhr to ensure it is fully utilized when available, coal $40, but then gas is needed to meet the peak demand so it bids $120. All suppliers get paid the $120 (plus the wind generators get an extra $80 via renewable energy certificate sales). So the high price of gas, because of shortages and large exports, is driving higher and higher electricity prices. But most States have banned the search for more gas – yet another stupid government policy.

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          Another Ian

          Tony Things heard at ABC Macca this morning

          An interview with a user of electricity who had chapter and verse on the rising price of electricity and diminishing employment.

          Then, just before 9 am another with someone with a green energy solution – I only heard a bit of the end of that so don’t have detail.

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          aussie pete

          Tony, I hate to give you homework but is there any way you can tell us how many windmills are now installed and presumably contributed to that 500MW.
          I can then extrapolate it into how many we need for the lunatic level of 50%. I know that won’t be very scientific but near enough to show the folks around the barbie next weekend what is actually being proposed in some quarters.

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            aussie pete,

            Just ballpark here.

            Current Nameplate for Wind – 4400MW (that’s around 2500 wind towers)

            Actual power delivered per year – 11.6 TWH

            Total Australian power generation – 240TWH

            So half of that is 120TWH

            Divide by that existing 11.6TWH and you get (around) 10.3 times the existing wind to make that 120TWH

            So, that’s the existing wind Nameplate of 4400MW multiplied by (just say) 10, so 44,000MW, or around another 15,000 wind towers. (because they would use 3MW nacelles these days, and not the current average of around 1.75MW from older design wind tower/nacelles)

            That 44,000MW of wind is, well take the largest already operating wind plant in Australia, and that means another 105 of those Macarthur sized wind plants.

            Can you just see how absolutely ridiculou$ this actually sounds.

            Even then there will be days when that total power delivery will be down around 5%, and what do you do then.

            The maths is one thing. Actually explaining it all makes people look at you with puzzled, and unbelieving looks on their faces.

            It’s a silly argument, because it will never happen.

            Tony.

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              aussie pete

              Thank you Tony (and Robber). I think you’re telling me that we need another 105 Macarthurs’ to get to 50%, but that’s at nameplate, given that they average about 30% of nameplate then it is actually another 315 Macarthurs’. At 550 hectares each that is another 173,000 hectare land grab.
              For my friends at the bar-b-que we are talking about a windfarm 2 kilometres wide stretching from Sydney to Melbourne. And even then we are still relying on the fickle wind in order to make a cup of tea.

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                aussie pete,

                no, the smaller total of that 105 Macarthur wind plants (an example only) is correct at around a hundred of them, because I based all projections on the actual power being generated and delivered.

                That Nameplate of 44,00MW will deliver half of the total power needed to cover the 50% renewables. (120TWH out of a total 240TWH of generated power)

                Tony.

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              • #
                aussie pete

                Thank you Tony,
                I do appreciate your efforts and patience. You have given me enough info such that I can construct a factual one-liner that demolishes the windmill warriors without losing too many friends along the way.
                I had a recent conversation with my very intelligent but completely uninvolved sister, wherein i discovered that she thought ‘carbon pollution’ mean’t soot and smog etc. So you see what we’re up against.
                I know both major Parties have ridiculous renewable targets, with one being twice as ridiculous as the other. I also know that it will never be done but what i’m concerned about is that it will never be done ‘after the next election is won on false pretences’.
                Thanks again for your help.

                10

            • #
              aussie pete

              I was dismayed to read a couple of days ago that 80% of people are in favour of renewables and am trying to develope a simple mental picture of what a 50% renewable target really looks like.
              We have to remember that most people don’t even know the difference between smoke and steam. I’m sorry but i’m still not clear. Is my 800km long x 2km wide example valid or not?
              Any sentence that includes something like 11.6TWH will have have most people reaching for the TV guide to see what time the footy starts.
              Tony, I have the utmost respect for you and your scholarship and if you find I am being tiresome then please ignore me.
              The sad fact, however, is that me and my mates at the barbie are going to decide these issues via the ballot box and I want to do my part to stop it, by talking in a language that even the dumbest of us can understand.

              20

              • #

                aussie pete,

                TWH is the shortest way of writing it down. It’s all about powers of ten, and terra (TWH) is ten to the 12th. The one below that is GWH,and the one below that is MWH, and the one below that is KWH, and that’s probably the one people see the most (and absolutely, totally and utterly ignore) as your power bill is expressed in KWH, so 11.6TW is 11,600,000,000KWH.

                Look at it this way, the average home consumes 20KWH per day , and to convert that to a yearly rate, multiply by 365.25, (the 0.25 for the leap year) so that’s 7305KWH per year or 7.305GWH, so 11.6TWH is the power that would be consumed by 1.588 Million average homes, and again that’s just one way of comparison, as all that original 11.6TWH is consumed by the three main areas of consumption, Industrial, Commercial and Residential, so that average homes thing is just for the sake of comparison.

                Can you see now why people prefer to think about electrical power as that stuff which comes out of the proverbial hole in the wall.

                It’s extremely difficult to explain effectively to the layman, and almost impossible for them to understand, and that’s why those proposers of renewable power can get away with saying what they do say, because even reduced to the suspect and questionable ways they do explain it, people won’t even understand that, let alone a journalist, because for them, any explanation has a vapour trail.

                There is no simple way to explain something that is just so complex.

                I try, and sometimes I think I actually succeed, but more often than not, even then, most people cannot understand.

                I also stay right away from any land comparison, because these things are never the same with respect to land allocation.

                And really, I don’t think there would be one person in Oz who bases who they vote for with respect to their renewable power policy, not even me, because they are basically all the same. It’s a good talking point for around the barbie, but that’s about all it is. My family know I’m right into that sort of thing, and even with them it goes over their heads. They just tune out. I don’t talk about unless I’m specifically asked to now.

                Probably the best way to explain it is to say that there are currently 45 wind plants spread across Australia with around 15,000 separate towers, and what they currently supply is around 5% of power, so even they can do the maths for that, as 50% renewables is a multiplier of 10 so that means a further 150,000 wind towers spread across 450 wind plants, so now you see why it will never be done. That way, you really don’t even need to explain Nameplate, actual power delivered in TWH or whatever, and Capacity Factor, other than to impress on them that they only operate for one third of the time. (closest to the actual 30%) See the point there.

                Tony.

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              • #

                Probably the best way to explain it is to say that there are currently 45 wind plants spread across Australia with around 15,000 separate towers, and what they currently supply is around 5% of power, so even they can do the maths for that, as 50% renewables is a multiplier of 10 so that means a further 150,000 wind towers spread across 450 wind plants, so now you see why it will never be done.

                Further to this, even when I do get asked by family about renewables, they just shake their heads when I say it will NEVER be done, and wonder how I can be so absolutely confident about that.

                See that we now have all that wind and it only supplies 5%, so a 50% target means a ramping up by a factor of ten.

                I quoted that the existing wind has 45 wind plants, so if they did it on that scale then they need 450 new plants, or taking it the biggest (Macarthur) then 105 of them.

                Note that nearly every target is by 2030, which is now only, well in reality, 11 years away. So using Macarthur, that’s at least nine or ten of them EVERY YEAR between now and then. They have a five year lead in before construction even begins, and even if every duck is lined up, they could only reduce that by a year, possibly two at a pinch, so most of them would need to be in planning by now, or even thought bubble stage.

                Nup! Not happening.

                Then, Macarthur has a (on a do it now basis) cost of around $2 Billion plus, so at ten of them a year, there’s an outlay of around $20 Billion …… EACH AND EVERY YEAR.

                Nup! Just will not happen.

                See now how a 50% renewables target is so far out of reach that it actually IS impossible.

                THAT’S why I can be so confident.

                Mention this at a barbecue and watch the jaws drop.

                They don’t even think I’m mistaking it any more. They KNOW that I’m serious, and also that I’m correct.

                Luckily, having been doing it now for more than nine years, I can rattle it all of easily, so I can see how difficult it is for a (concerned) layman trying to even touch first base, let alone hitting home plate.

                Use that factor of ten, and when they say that costs will only come down, be fully aware that they have only gone up.

                Tony.

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              rk

              Tony,
              There is no way those 15000 wind turbines would all stay there operating for any great length of time regardless of how little power they produce. You only have to drive through rural Australia to see the large number of Southern Cross windmills that have been destroyed by storms. When we again get summers with lines of high severe thunderstorms a lot of renewable energy will get damaged or destroyed. A NREL study by that US Government Colorado organization estimated gear box failures around the world were occurring around every five years across all makes and sizes. A 2 to 3 MW wind turbine gear box is reported to cost in excess of $600,000 to replace and German Insurance companies are requiring a replacement every five years.
              It is not possible to keep the blades of large wind turbines in balance after a period of time for many reasons, storm and hail damage being just some. Most people wouldn’t know, including our academics in the Bureau of Meteorology, that when a line of severe storms pass through, that are associated with frontal activity, the wind veers 180 degrees immediately in the other direction. Imagine what a sudden shift in a 50 knot gust or higher does to a wind turbine tower and blades with such a change in direction and the stress it would put on the gear box and bearings. Wind turbines unless operating in the right range are not going to be able to provide reactive power which is vital for voltage control and you can forget household solar roof panels providing any significant amount.

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                Another Ian

                RK

                I tripped over this at another site – a truck driver who was delivering a semi load of drums of Mobil 1 (synthetic oil) to a wind farm in Colorado (size not stated) every fortnight

                50

          • #
            Robber

            aussie pete, go to Aneroid website for a listing of every generator in AEMO’s coverage showing nameplate capacity for each and current generation for fossil, wind, solar and hydro..

            40

        • #
          Craig Thomas

          Hilarious.
          So when the motor car was invented, Tony compared the total distance travelled using horses against the total distance travelled by motor car and said, “See, motor cars represent only 0.001% of all miles travelled, therefore the motor car can’t possibly replace horses”.

          Another gem from TonyfromOz – will you donate this one to the Australian Museum’s fossil collection, too?

          01

          • #

            So, umm, Craig.

            Wind power currently supplies around 5% of Australia’s power needs on a sporadic and intermittent basis, averaging around 1,320MW on a daily basis.

            So then, tell me, with your infinite knowledge, might you explain to us how (and how soon) renewables will be able to supply an absolute 18,000MW on a dedicated 24 hour daily basis?

            Now that really would be ….. hilarious!

            Tony.

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      • #
        lemiere jacques

        tony, politicians except a few dummies know that… and Green peace protest against oil, using oil…
        I don’t understand demonization of fossil fuel, because everybaody know that we are not going to get rid of it…

        so..what are people doing..they say WE should stop using fossil fuel…and they carry on using it..

        They know!!!! They are playing a game of power, saying things people want to hear.. and before crashing in reality at the end, there is good money to make, because people agree to pay for their fossil sins.

        10

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    Another Ian

    For air show fans


    don morris replied to comment from Jeff K | June 10, 2017 2:25 PM | Reply

    The Snowbirds must be the only aerobatic team on the planet flying planes that are older than the Pilots.

    I heard somewhere that they were going to replace the ancient Tutors with a newer BAE trainer,T-55 Hawk but that hasn’t occurred yet and probably never will under a Liberal government.

    http://www.rcaf-arc.forces.gc.ca/en/aircraft-current/ct-155.page

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/06/reader-tips-3862.html#comment-1108588

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  • #
    James Bradley

    … and then just like that James Comey testifies and Donald Trump is no longer news… anywhere.

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      toorightmate

      Oh Bummer’s mate, James Croney.

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      nc

      With Comey testimony fake news outlets sure had to eat humble pie. I forced myself to watch ABC and WIN news the night before Comey testimony and they where just short of writing Trump’s obituary. Next couple of days, well no news here, let’s move on.

      Hey here is news for the fake news media, you also got sucked into CAGW bs also.

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      Yonniestone

      Powerline http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/06/the-week-in-pictures-comey-chameleon-edition.php, he didn’t shoot himself in the foot he blew it clean off!

      10

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      Rod Stuart

      Or has Sean Hannity has christened him………J. Edgar Comey.

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      • #
        Egor the One

        I heard Hannity say that . A ripper and accurate description of Comey,the disgruntled ….

        … ‘J. Edgar Comey’, the sacked version !

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      redress

      Their ABC has still not given in…..still the man to hate on their air waves.

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      philthegeek

      Donald Trump is no longer news… anywhere.

      Seriously, what rock are you hiding under? DLD is NOT front page news along the lines of “the dweeb has embarrassed the species with his tweets” for a day or so and he is “no longer in the news”?? I’d say he has been a little put in the shade by the Tory disaster that was the UK election but dont worry. Attention seeking children like Donald wont tolerate that for long so he’ll be back.

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        sophocles

        so he’ll be back

        … only when there are no other disasters to entertain the journos. 🙂

        TeeMay’s wee problem is going to give them a whole couple of weeks of engagement: will she, won’t she
        Choose one:
        -resign?
        -be sacked?
        -continue?

        That is their question. It’s such fun for the journos. It’s the anticipation of it all.
        Yes, journalism is a blood sport, and some politicians are their game.

        Comey is other entertainment: which foot was it? The right? the left? both of them?

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        • #
          philthegeek

          Starting to look like her deal with the DUP…well..isn’t? WhoTF knows what will happen in the UK if that falls over. May would have to resign but who would stand to replace her and inherit the mess??

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            Greebo

            Boris is possibly the only choice. He should have stood after Cameron resigned.

            30

            • #
              el gordo

              I agree, he would be the people’s choice.

              10

            • #
              philthegeek

              Its not so much tory leadership at the moment…as whether they can do a deal to form a Govt. Leader irrelevant if they cant do that.

              And then Mr Corbyn gets a go?? 🙂

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              philthegeek

              Boris is possibly the only choice.

              Not so sure about that. He has already run away when called on once. My impression is that he thinks the Brexit thing is just too hard.

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      Ross

      Poor old Jimmy Comey has a lot of time reserved for Court appearances over the next year or so ( given how some of these cases drag out)
      First off the rank is the Montgomery case ( the whistle blower) in which Comey is party to the case. The judge has already been appointed.
      I’d suggest he may be tried for the same reason General Petraeus was convicted — Petraeus released information to is writer girlfriend. Comey admitted in testimony that he gave his memo / records of conversations with Trump to a law Professor friend to leak to the NYT. Not a lot of difference in these cases in my view.
      He has clearly violated his FBI employment contract on these information issues. Who knows what the DOJ found when the cleared his office before he got back from California ( where was when he found out he was fired)

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        Sceptical Sam

        Comey admitted in testimony that he gave his memo / records of conversations with Trump to a law Professor friend to leak to the NYT. Not a lot of difference in these cases in my view.

        Not that simple apparently, Ross.

        “Comey’s admission — that he gave a memo documenting a conversation with Trump to a friend to be leaked to the press — is also legal. Was the information classified or secret as a matter of a federal law? Absolutely not. Did he reveal a matter of public interest? Yes. Did Comey have a right to expose these facts anonymously? Yes.”

        https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/06/08/were-james-comeys-leaks-lawful/?utm_term=.1fa87fc30802

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          Ross

          Sorry SS but I take the WPost’s views on anything to do with Government issues with a truck load of salt. There were lawyers on Fox the other night basically laughing their heads off over Comey’s lack of knowledge of the law in this area. But even if he is able to worm his way out of it using the “not classified” tact then he can and should be done on breach of employment contract rules and rules for Government employee rules on handling of information. They are absolutely clear.

          20

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            philthegeek

            Ross, you have to note a couple of things. Comey was not trying to bury Trump, but his testimony was set to publicly help set up the special prosecutor. Also, EVERY member of the committee that i saw went out of their way in their opening statements to establish Comey as credible and trustworthy.

            That’s probably because they knew that Trump would go the blunt instrument for response like he has.

            Trump is in all kinds of bother, not so much over the Russia links allegations, but now over an apparent attempt to cover up…something?? 🙂

            Its the hamfisted cover up that is just as illegal and damaging and gets them every time.

            There were lawyers on Fox

            Seriously?? Fox??? Lol!!

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            philthegeek

            he can and should be done on breach of employment contract rules and rules for Government employee rules on handling of information.

            Not so much. A case can be made that knowing what he believed he knew, he had an obligation to blow the whistle. To not do so could implicate him in covering up matters. Rules about employment conditions and non-classified information dont “trump” the public interest, national security, or matters of crime and corruption like obstruction of justice.

            Be interesting to see if Trump now tries to close down the special prosecutor somehow. In the news he is certainly flailing around trying to discredit Comey, but the overall effect makes Trump look desperate and dishonest. Maybe he has some tapes to release?? 🙂

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          James

          Can you find a better source to quote than the Washington Compost. They are extremely biased never Trumpers. Here is another opinion:

          http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/06/10/watch-legal-expert-claims-comeys-memo-leak-was-a-federal-crime/

          Given the problems with leaks, I think they might be a little motivated to make an example of Comey.

          20

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            Sceptical Sam

            Thanks James. The answer to your question is: no I can’t. Can you?

            However, the point I was making (or at least trying to make) was that as in all things political there is at least one alternative view. Accordingly, to help the discussion and broaden our perspective I thought it useful to outline what that view might be.

            Whether either view comes to anything we’ll just have to wait and see.

            Eventually, President Trump will have to deal with the H Clinton emails and Loretta Lynch’s involvement. But that’s another story for another time.

            20

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    David Maddison

    When we next get a stupid piece of legislation that your political “representative” voted for and you wonder how it happened, remember that they most likely did not read or understand what they were voting for, and didn’t care.

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    • #
      Greebo

      Unfortunately, they don’t understand the term “representative”, and don’t care.

      40

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      … they most likely did not read or understand what they were voting for,,,

      That is probably because they were being whipped.

      Every party should have a good whipping, from time to time. It keep the members in line.

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    Yonniestone

    Batman is dead! from Variety Adam West, TV’s ‘Batman,’ Dies at 88, there goes another part of my childhood.

    30

    • #
      Graeme No.3

      You can still wear the costume in public. When people question your sanity and want to restrain you, tell them you are fighting Climate Change. That should make them back off.
      After all we have people wandering around in polar bear costumes and the media regard that as a sign of sincerity.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      All the good guys are checking out, to be replaced by modern icons who are mostly degenerates.

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      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        I think it all comes down to the use of alternating current.

        The power company generates it. And then all your “modern icons” come along and degenerate it.

        10

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    philthegeek

    When people question your sanity and want to restrain you, tell them you are fighting Climate Change.

    All the while wearing your undies on the outside.

    Should definitely make them back off……and possibly call for help from nice men with nets…… 🙂

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      sophocles

      I hope you’re not referring to those `nice men in white coats’ who march through the streets to support science. You know: the ones who don’t do any science.

      70

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        philthegeek

        Only the ones with steely eyes and nets coming to get you…..I think you call them Entomologists in polite company?? 🙂

        41

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          Yonniestone

          You can take my undies when you pry them from my cold dead lower torso!

          31

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            ROM

            Re the lack of undies on the “cold dead lower torso”

            Were you the guy who modelled for Michelangelo’s “David“?

            David

            10

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              Yonniestone

              Err Umm…. not going to tackle that one ROM….. 🙂

              10

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                philthegeek

                not going to tackle that one ROM

                Very droll….considering Michelangelo’s David is not exactly an example of ample tackle. 🙂

                20

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                Yonniestone

                Hey even Florence had its cold days, and much to the horror of most men is anatomically correct….give or take the quality of the marbles used….

                20

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  • #
    Ruairi

    ‘The science’ as the warmists call it now,
    Is milked for funding like a great cash cow.

    Would costly carbon credits help curtail,
    The tonnes of CO2 we all exhale?

    The warmists strive to ban oil, coal and gas,
    They know will form a worldwide underclass.

    While some professors feign no warming doubt,
    The warmist scare will slowly fizzle out.

    To aid the warmists for ‘the science’ fight,
    They label climate skeptics as far-right.

    In hybrid cars, electric motors flip,
    To other fuels for a longer trip.

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      Rereke Whakaaro

      Ruairi,

      Let me be the first to congratulate you. That is superb.

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    • #
      Richard Ilfeld

      Wonderful. The lyricist needs a composer. Songs can be very persuasive, without
      being obviously so, given a catchy tune.

      20

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    pat

    following is an extract from “No Is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics” by Naomi Klein, published by Allen Lane (£12.99) on 13 June. it is unreadable, so i’m not even bothering with the link:

    10 Jun: Guardian: Naomi Klein: Now let’s fight back against the politics of fear
    Political shocks, security shocks, climate shocks – however unstable the world seems now, things could get a lot worse. But we can unite for a better future
    Trump’s cabinet of billionaires and multimillionaires tells us a great deal about the administration’s underlying goals…

    Top Dem Donor Calls On Lawmakers To Take Up Trump Impeachment
    HuffPost – ‎20 hours ago‎
    One of the Democratic Party’s top donors is urging lawmakers to begin impeachment proceedings for President Donald Trump. Tom Steyer, the wealthy environmentalist turned super PAC funder, has penned a letter laying out the case that Trump…

    Top Democrat donor pushes for Trump impeachment
    The Hill – ‎10 hours ago‎
    Steyer, whose superPAC NextGen Climate Action poured about $100 million into the 2016 election, penned a letter…

    2015: WashingtonFreeBeacon: Lachlan Markay: Tom Steyer’s Deep Ties to Oregon Corruption Scandal
    Top advisers to billionaire Dem donor helped run group accused of illicit payments to Oregon’s first lady
    The controversy centers on Gov. John Kitzhaber’s fiancée, Cylvia Hayes. She was paid $118,000 by the Clean Economy Development Center (CEDC) to advocate for environmentalist policies in Oregon…READ ALL
    http://freebeacon.com/issues/tom-steyers-deep-ties-to-oregon-corruption-scandal/

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      Graeme No.3

      If ever we need proof that the Democrats are delusional this is it. It requires a majority of the lower House to impeach the President and a two thirds majority in the Senate to dismiss him from office. With the Republicans having a majority in both Houses is that lkely?

      In any case it has to be proven that he has committed an indictable offence before impeachment proceedings start, not just upset some member of the media or the public.

      30

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        James

        When did a party ever have a two thirds majority in the upper house? When was the last time the Senate overrode a presidential Veto (which requires 2/3rds majority. That was in Clinton’s time I think.

        10

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      Another Ian

      Pat

      Do you keep an eye on

      https://theconservativetreehouse.com/ ?

      20

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Naomi Klein appears to have totally lost it. Look at her list of “shocks”. Political shocks (Her preferred Democratic candidate failed to win), Security shocks (The Director of the FBI has been stood down for maleficence), Climate shocks (The climate has not rebelled over Trump being elected to the Presidency), Political shocks (Major donor to the Democratic party want to impeach Donald Trump for winning the election). Say what?

      Personally, I am investing in popcorn futures. This is the farce that will keep on giving.

      30

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        Analitik

        The most ironic thing is that what Naomi Klein preaches is PRECISELY “The Politics of Fear”. She is a farce.

        30

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        RAH

        Unfortunately your right! They will only get nuttier and more separated from reality. They have nothing else! No new ideas, no good candidates, no universally recognized accomplishments, and their best candidate they thought was a shoe in was rejected. So all they can do is try and make people think that the guy in charge is so bad that he is inferior to what ever bag of excrement they end up running against him. I do believe that they are digging the hole they’re in deeper every news cycle. They think that they are going to win the HR in the midterms and then impeach Trump using that majority.

        20

      • #
        sophocles

        Popcorn.
        Thanks for the reminder. I need to top it up. Topped up the beer just before TeeMay’s election but the popcorn has taken a hammering.

        10

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    toorightmate

    SE Qld is defying the BoM’s prediction of a dry warm winter.
    Will we have to pay an additional tax because we are colder and wetter than the “climate” models say we should be?

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    I’ve received what I regard as push-polls from Australian Conservatives. A product of junk education, a push-poll is politely called a “survey” and it offers the chance to tick one opinion from a list of suggestions. As well as industrializing opinion for easy processing and consumption, push-polling has built the careers of a number of “starcademics”.

    In a push-poll, some offered opinions are there as dummies which nobody is likely to tick, others are framed in slob language so that they can be interpreted a number of ways, some are perfectly clear, some are not inconsistent with other offered opinions though you are only allowed the one box to tick.

    Presumably corporate/academic types will process the responses to the AC’s surveys into some sort of consensus or report so that the party will know what buttons to push or be able to present “findings” to the wider public. So disappointing, particularly after Cory took his long New York/UN sabbatical in the company of a Labor sheila.

    Regardless of the appeal of so many of AC’s statements and opinions, I don’t like pushing buttons or getting my buttons pushed. Just “right-wing” won’t do. I like my conservatives thoughtful, distrustful, realistic, skeptical, thrifty and individual by deep instinct. That’s everything a push-poll isn’t.

    Mind you, this could just be me hating on all things corporate (as I do). We certainly need Australian Conservatives. Maybe I’ve been too sharp with them.

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    • #
      Geoffrey Williams

      I agree with your sentiment mosomoso, for me the most important thing is climate change and all the rubbish that goes with it. I know exactly where where I stand and I do not want my views manipulated nor compromised by any party.
      GeoffW

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        Geoffrey, a big part of being a skeptic is insisting on clear terms before initiating any discussion. It hardly surprises that an activist/manipulator would use hopelessly blurry terms like “global warming” and “climate change”. The first job of a skeptic is to insist that people name exactly what their concerns are.

        I can’t discuss “climate change” any more than I can discuss “oxygen breathing”: there is seldom any breathing without oxygen and there is NEVER climate without constant change, fast and slow, major and minor, lineal and cyclical. I’ve heard it argued that “climate change” has taken on a defined official meaning (as well as its handy emotional charge). Maybe the Macquarie Dictionary has helped out, as it does in politically chic cases. But the English language still belongs to English speaking peoples and nobody can hijack it.

        So when people on either side of the opinion fence ask a question like “Do you believe in climate change?” I can only assume ignorance or trickery. The excuse that simple answers are needed for the sake of software or uniformity merely shows that something went dreadfully wrong with education around 1965.

        20

        • #
          Rod Stuart

          cli·mate (klī′mĭt)
          n.
          1. The meteorological conditions, including temperature, precipitation, and wind, that characteristically prevail in a particular region.
          2. A region of the earth having particular meteorological conditions: lives in a cold climate.
          3. A prevailing condition or set of attitudes in human affairs: a climate of unrest.

          In the sciences, a metric of some sort is necessary to determine “change”.

          Classification systems such as Koppen-Geiger and Trewartha are suitable for measuring a change, over a period no less than thirty years. Compare changes in these classifications over the past century. Some regions of a specific classification have expanded and some have contracted. The differences are far from astounding, and indeed quite subtle.

          The Earth does not have a specific “climate” any more than it has a “language” or a “currency”.

          How would one go about determining parameters such as precipitation of wind for the entire planet? Even the oft quoted “annual global temperature” is mathematically and thermodynamically impossible to determine.

          When someone mentions “climate change” they have no more idea of what they are talking about that someone discussing the variety of fairies at the bottom of their garden.

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          Sceptical Sam

          So when people on either side of the opinion fence ask a question like “Do you believe in climate change?” I can only assume ignorance or trickery.

          “Do you believe in climate change?”

          I know it’s late and this thread will soon be superseded. However, there is another option mosomoso.

          And that is it’s a “code word”; a means of identifying fellow useful idiots.

          10

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    pat

    for Naomi:

    9 Jun: Nasdaq: Coal Industry Outlook – June 2017
    It is a well-documented fact that the U.S. Coal industry has been challenged by stringent environmental regulations for the last few years. Former President Obama’s introduction of Clean Power Plan made things worse for the coal industry…
    However, the condition of the coal industry has started to change for the better after the election of the new President…
    Moreover, Trump has also walked out of the Paris Climate Agreement..

    …demand for coal is rising again due to helpful legislation and hike in natural gas prices . Revival of demand from China is also going to have a positive impact on overall demand for coal as source of energy.
    In the fourth quarter of 2016, we saw Arch Coal Inc . (ARCH) successfully completing its financial restructuring and resuming trade on the exchange. Following the same path, we saw Peabody Energy (BTU) successfully completing its financial restructuring and trading again from Apr 2017.

    As per a recent release from EIA, U.S. coal production touched its lowest point since 1978 in 2016. However, EIA expects that given the gradual revival in demand and export of coal, U.S. coal production to improve by 4.7% and 1.5% year over year in 2017 and 2018, respectively. EIA expects an increase in U.S. coal exports to contribute to a 5% rise in coal production in 2017. The likely growth in coal-fired electricity generation should lead to an additional 1% increase in coal production in 2018…

    Coal and its various byproducts also find use in the industrial sector, underscoring its manifold advantages…
    In addition, the coal industry has returned much higher than the S&P 500 Index in the 12-month period. Shares of the industry have witnessed an increase of 39.2% compared with the S&P 500 Index’s gain of 15.2% in the same period…
    The positive developments, thanks to supportive legislations and revival of global prices will boost the performance of the coal stock at least in near future if not over a longer period of time.

    Bottom Line
    Coal stocks are suffering and some presume they won’t survive in the long run. Loads of negative factors are weighing down coal stocks, but do these companies have the resources to fight back successfully? We know for a fact that coal reserves at the current pace of production and consumption will last longer than all other fossil fuel resources. Further, coal is still far cheaper than other fuel sources.

    We still believe that coal’s cost advantage and worldwide availability make it more commonly accepted source of power generation…
    http://www.nasdaq.com/article/coal-industry-outlook-june-2017-cm801516

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  • #
    David Maddison

    Does Australia have the worst energy policy in the world? Is there a worse one?

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    • #
      toorightmate

      YES and NO.

      80

    • #
      ROM

      .
      David Maddison @ # 18

      “Does Australia have the worst energy policy in the world? Is there a worse one?”

      Nope!
      We probably hold down position “No 3” although Canada in some of its Provinces is doing its best to dislodge us from that No 3 position,
      ————————-
      No. 1 = Germany and Merkel’s fanatical belief in “Energiewende”, the transition to renewable energy using wind and solar.

      The End of the Energiewende?

      The prominent German economist Heiner Flassbeck has challenged fundamental assumptions of the Energiewende at his blog site makroskop.eu. According to Flassbeck, the former Director of Macroeconomics and Development at the UNCTAD in Geneva and a former State Secretary of Finance, a recent period of extremely low solar and wind power generation shows that Germany will never be able to rely on renewable energy, regardless of how much new capacity will be built.

      Stable high-pressure winter weather has resulted in a confrontation. An Energiewende that relies mainly on wind and solar energy will not work in the long run. One cannot forgo nuclear power, eliminate fossil fuels, and tell people that electricity supplies will remain secure all the same.

      We have attempted unsuccessfully to find Energiewende advocates willing to explain that inconsistency. Their silence is not easy to fathom. But maybe the events themselves have made the outcome inevitable.

      With nuclear power no longer available, a capacity of at least 50 gigawatts is required by other means, despite an enormously expanded network of wind turbines and solar systems

      This winter could go down in history as the event that proved the German energy transition to be unsubstantiated and incapable of becoming a success story. Electricity from wind and solar generation has been catastrophically low for several weeks. December brought new declines. A persistent winter high-pressure system with dense fog throughout Central Europe has been sufficient to unmask the fairy tale of a successful energy transition, even for me as a lay person.

      ———–

      No. 2 goes to the British and their Climate Change act.

      Via GWPF;

      REPORT REVEALS £300 BILLION COST OF BRITAIN’S CLIMATE CHANGE ACT

      Date: 11/12/16 Global Warming Policy Foundation

      London, 11 December: A new report published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals the extraordinary £319 billion cost of Britain’s Climate Change Act.

      The report, which is based entirely on official figures, exposes the mischievous attempts by ministers to try and disguise the true cost to households.

      “Britain has been gulled by false assurances that decarbonising our economy would be costless into signing up to a stupendous bill of over £300 billion up to 2030,” said Peter Lilley MP, the study’s author and one of the few Members of Parliament who voted against the Act back in 2008.

      “Hardly anyone in Westminster is aware of this even though it is more than double the cost of HS2, Heathrow and Hinckley put together. Yet so far it has not reduced our ‘carbon footprint’ as we have outsourced our carbon emissions to developing countries such as China. Described by the PM’s special adviser as ‘an act of self harm’, our climate change policies are harming our standard of living, our jobs and our industry.”

      The report details the huge burden on every household, explaining how numerous devices have been used to hide the real price of decarbonisation, which is rising at a rapid rate.

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      • #
        ROM

        Next step for Germany and a lesson and example then the FWitted politicians s in Canberra , Melbourne, Adelaide, Hobart, Sydney and Brisbane should take on.

        Germany To Abandon $1.1 Trillion Wind Power Program By 2019

        Germany plans to stop building new wind farms by 2019, gradually turning away from its $1.1 trillion wind power program, according to a Thursday report in Berliner Zeitung.

        The government plans to cap the total amount of wind energy at 40 to 45 percent of national capacity, according to the report. By 2019, this policy would cause a massive reduction of 6,000 megawatts of wind power capacity compared to the end of 2015’s capacity.

        “The domestic market for many [wind turbine] manufacturers collapses completely,” Julia Verlinden, a spokesperson for the German Green Party, told Berliner Zeitung. “With their plan, the federal government is killing the wind companies.” Verlinden goes on to blame the political influence of “old, fossil fuel power plants.”

        Germany’s government, however, has been very supportive of wind power.

        The government estimates that it will spend over $1.1 trillion financially supporting wind power, even though building wind turbines hasn’t achieved the government’s goal of actually reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

        Germany created lucrative subsidies and tax benefits for wind power in 2011 after it decided to abandon nuclear power entirely by 2022 following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan. German utilities are already suing the government for $21 billion over the nuclear shutdown plan.

        Electricity from new wind power is nearly four times as expensive as electricity from existing nuclear power plants, according to analysis from the Institute for Energy Research. The rising cost of subsidies is passed onto ordinary rate-payers, which has triggered complaints that poor households are subsidizing the affluent.

        Nuclear power made up 29.5 percent of Germany’s energy in 2000 — in 2015, the share dropped down to 17 percent.

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        • #
          clipe

          The government plans to cap the total amount of wind energy at 40 to 45 percent of national capacity, according to the report. By 2019, this policy would cause a massive reduction of 6,000 1,800 megawatts of intermittent wind power capacity output compared to the end of 2015’s capacity.

          10

        • #
          Geoffrey Williams

          Surprised that Germany is still using somuch nuclear. . .
          GeoffW

          10

      • #
        toorightmate

        ROM,
        Canada and Germany do not have the magnificent thermal coal deposits that Australia has.
        Therefore, we are the craziest.

        61

        • #
          Rereke Whakaaro

          I could agree with that.

          30

        • #
          Will Janoschka

          “Canada and Germany do not have the magnificent thermal coal deposits that Australia has. Therefore, we are the craziest.”

          True, but Canada is but a few km north of US Wyoming where almost all anthracite, pure buried (C) is located. Just how much good stuff is in CA? Australia can survive. Canada must truly dominate!

          30

          • #
            ROM

            Canada with its Alberta Province tar sands oil resource currently, and that “currently” is important with respect to the rise of the frakking technology as it spreads globally, rates just behind the Saudi’s in recoverable and extractable oil reserves.

            Venezuela’s Orinoco Valley heavy oil reservoirs which need steam injection to get the oil fluid enough to flow up the drill pipes and which oil is full of nasty chemicals, probably runs either second or third to the Saudi’s in the global extractable oil reserves.

            The Brits have collossal deposits of shale which so far are claimed to have huge amounts of recoverable oil and gas, a few of those shale deposits are hundreds of metres thick compared to the American ten or twenty metre thick stacked shale seams they are frakking.

            The Brits are just beginning to drill land frak their deposits of shale over the next few weeks and months after the government ran the greens and other anti-civilisation weepies into the ground with legislation which gave the locals a piece of the financial action from any frakking taxes and etc.

            The real sleeper is the Russians with their collossal Siberian Bazenhov shale deposit where their main producing oil wells and oil fields are located and which they are just beginning to frak now.

            The Russkies estimate they may have between 180 to 320 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Bazenhov shale deposits.
            And thats just for starters.

            Other western oil reservoir experts are estimating that the Bazenhov shale contains as much as two trillion barrels of oil. a lot of which will be accessible in the decades ahead.

            The world used its first trillion barrels a half a dozen years ago since the first modern oil wells were drilled at Baku in Azerbaijan in 1847.

            The first historically recorded oil wells were dug at Baku back in the 10 century.

            The Saudi’s estimate they have 268 billion barrels of oil in their reserves but there are a lot of questions on this number as their reserve estimate numbers never change much from year to year.

            Argentina also has huge potential oil and gas containing shale deposits as does Australia in the NW and in Queensland.

            And all thats without doing hardly any exploration in Africa or southern and central Asia.

            [ One barrel of oil = 158.987 [ 159 ] litres ]

            20

            • #

              Ho hum!

              Peak oil eh! Where are those proclaimers of that now eh?

              It seems that the renewables bubble may just be about to burst, not because of their uselessness, (which as a by product of all this gas and oil extraction will soon become obvious and reportable) but by those two great banes of greenies everywhere, oil and gas.

              And it’s all based on, d@mn, who would have thought, money. The immense money to be made from drilling and fracturing.

              I just hope dear old Oz doesn’t fall behind here, and that rational heads will prevail.

              As a greenie might be heard to say ….. “what just happened then?”

              Tony.

              20

              • #
                RAH

                Peak Oil? When you hear that term grab your wallet because someone is trying to get into it! A little bit of history about that:

                Here is President Jimmy Carter in an April, 1977 Special address to the citizens telling us that we’re running out of oil and it is a crisis only exceeded by oil:
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tPePpMxJaA

                You think Carter was the first to make that claim? Fact is they started on that before anyone here was born. Here is a bullet point abridged history:

                • 1857 — Romania produces 2,000 barrels of oil, marking the beginning of the modern oil industry.

                • 1859, Aug. 25 — Edwin L. Drake strikes oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania

                • 1862 — First commercial oil production in Canada, also 1863 in Russia.

                • 1862 — Most widely used lamp fuel (camphene) taxed in US at aprox. $1 a gallon; kerosene taxed at 10 cent per gallon.(Kovarik, 1997)

                • 1863 — John D. Rockefeller starts the Excelsior Refinery in Cleveland, Ohio.

                • 1879 — US Geological Survey formed in part because of fear of oil shortages.

                • 1882 — Institute of Mining Engineers estimates 95 million barrels of oil remain.With 25 million barrels per year output, “Some day the cheque will come back indorsed no funds, and we are approaching that day very fast,” Samuel Wrigley says. (Pratt, p. 124).

                • 1901 — Spindletop gusher in Texas floods US oil market.

                • 1906 — Fears of an oil shortage are confirmed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Representatives of the Detroit Board of Commerce attended hearings in Washington and told a Senate hearing that car manufacturers worried “not so much [about] cost as … supply.”

                • 1919, Scientific American notes that the auto industry could no longer ignore the fact that only 20 years worth of U.S. oil was left. “The burden falls upon the engine. It must adapt itself to less volatile fuel, and it must be made to burn the fuel with less waste…. Automotive engineers must turn their thoughts away from questions of speed and weight… and comfort and endurance, to avert what … will turn out to be a calamity, seriously disorganizing an indispensable system of transportation.”

                • 1920 — David White, chief geologist of USGS, estimates total oil remaining in the US at 6.7 billion barrels. “In making this estimate, which included both proved reserves and resources still remaining to be discovered, White conceded that it might well be in error by as much as 25 percent.” (Pratt, p. 125. Emphasis added).

                • 1925 — US Commerce Dept. says that while U.S. oil production doubled between 1914 and 1921, it did not kept pace with fuel demand as the number of cars increased.

                • 1928 — US analyst Ludwell Denny in his book “We Fight for Oil” noted the domestic oil shortage and says international diplomacy had failed to secure any reliable foreign sources of oil for the United States. Fear of oil shortages would become the most important factor in international relations, even so great as to force the U.S. into war with Great Britain to secure access to oil in the Persian Gulf region, Denny said.

                • 1926 — Federal Oil Conservation Board estimates 4.5 billion barrels remain.

                • 1930 — Some 25 million American cars are on the road, up from 3 million in 1918.

                • 1932 — Federal Oil Conservation Board estimates 10 billion barrels of oil remain.

                • 1944 — Petroleum Administrator for War estimates 20 billion barrels of oil remain.

                • 1950 — American Petroleum Institute says world oil reserves are at 100 billion barrels. (See Jean Laherre, Forecast of oil and gas supply)

                • 1956 — M.King Hubbard predicts peak in US oil production by 1970.

                • 1966 – 1977 — 19 billion barrels added to US reserves, most of which was from fields discovered before 1966. (As M.A. Adelman notes: “These fields were no gift of nature. They were a growth of knowledge, paid for by heavy investment.”)

                • 1973 — Oil price spike; supply restrictions due to Middle Eastern politics.

                • 1978 — Petroleos de Venezuela announces estimated unconventional oil reserve figure for Orinoco heavy oil belt at between three and four trillion barrels. (More recent public estimates are in the one trillion range).

                • 1979 — Oil price spike; supply restrictions due to Middle Eastern politics.

                • 1980 — Remaining proven oil reserves put at 648 billion barrels

                • 1993 — Remaining proven oil reserves put at 999 billion barrels

                • 2000 — Remaining proven oil reserves put at 1016 billion barrels.

                • 2005 — Oil price spike; supply restrictions and heavy new demand

                • 2008 — Oil price spike; supply restrictions and heavy new demand, global economies collapse when oil reaches over $140 USD/bbl.

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              • #
                RAH

                darn it! Haven’t had my coffee yet. Should have read: Here is President Jimmy Carter in an April, 1977 Special address to the citizens telling us that we’re running out of oil and it is a crisis only exceeded by WAR:

                10

              • #
                Graeme No.3

                RAH:
                The first claim that oil would run out soon that I found was in 1862, but that was apparently a copy of an even earlier prediction.

                10

          • #
            toorightmate

            Will,
            The good stuff in CA is in the Rockies – expensive and interferes with tourism and greenies.

            10

    • #
      tom0mason

      David Maddison,

      The official response takes the form of —

      In as far as we can see, taking one thing with another in terms of the average of the majority of known situations by and large, then in the final analysis it is probably true to say, that at the end of the day, in the specifics of these general terms, you would probably find that, in the longer view of the holistic nature of the grand scheme of things, there probably isn’t very much in it one way or the other, and far as one can resolve some of the minor disparities at this stage, then you may have a point.

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      • #
        sophocles

        Sir Humphrey.
        Gotta be.

        20

        • #
          tom0mason

          “In conclusion this matter may be considered at the termination stage of a satisfactory endpoint, however time must be allocated for an evaluation to be made as to whether or not there should be thought given to the various implications, based on the balance of probabilities and possibilities, to arrive at a reasonable decision based on long-term considerations rather than rush prematurely into precipitate, and quite possibly ill-conceived action, which might well have unforeseen repercussions. ”

          Sir H.
          OBE, MBE, etc.

          20

    • #
      Geoffrey Williams

      Great question Dave – interesting to see the answers . . .
      GeoffW

      20

  • #
    AndrewWA

    If one believed the zealots of Climate Scientology on the Renew Economy website it could be a lot worse.

    30

  • #
    Dave

    1/2 Million $ Electric Car

    Richard Hammond escaped from the fiery crash of the

    RIMAC Willard EV Sports”

    which burst into a Lithium flame box.

    The fastest EV car ever built, and a price tag only available to the rich Greenies around the world, and a CO2 footprint bigger than 5 London buses?

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    • #
      David Maddison

      This is what happens when you try to extract hydrocarbon fuel performance out of electrochemical cells.

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    • #
      Graeme No.3

      Willard crashes in flames. Sure it wasn’t a Malcolm?

      80

      • #
        ROM

        O Willard!
        O Malcom !
        Where art thou?!

        Tesla needs your forum jousting skills
        Your fantastic ability to “tilt at windmills” come what may!
        —————-
        Via The GWPF;

        DENMARK ENDS GREEN INCENTIVES, ELECTRIC CAR SALES COLLAPSE;

        The electric car has dropped out of favor in the country that pioneered renewable energy.
        Once considered one of the world-leaders in the take-up of electric vehicles, Denmark’s sales of electric vehicles have slumped dramatically in the first quarter of 2017 as the government scales back EV incentives.

        Sales in Denmark of Electrically Chargeable Vehicles (ECV), which include plug-in hybrids, plunged 60.5 percent in the first quarter of the year, compared with the first three months of 2016, according to latest data from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA).
        That contrasts with an increase of nearly 80 percent in neighboring Sweden and an average rise of 30 percent in the European Union.

        The figures suggest clean-energy vehicles still aren’t attractive enough to compete without some form of subsidy.

        Denmark, a global leader in wind power whose own attempt at an electric car in the early 1980s famously flopped, used to be enthralled with them.
        Its bicycle-loving people bought 5,298 of them in 2015, more than double the amount sold that year in Italy, which has a population more than 10 times the size of Denmark’s.

        However, it turns out that those phenomenal sales figures had as much to do with convenience as with environmental concerns: electric car dealers were for a long time spared the jaw-dropping import tax of 180 percent that Denmark applies on vehicles fueled by a traditional combustion engine.

        50

      • #
        Rereke Whakaaro

        Well, I told Malcolm it was all smoke and mirrors. But would he listen to me? Nooo!

        70

        • #
          Sceptical Sam

          So! If he doesn’t listen to you Rereke, to whom does he listen?

          20

          • #
            Rereke Whakaaro

            He listens, at night, as he lies in his bed, to all of the voices, that live in his head.

            40

            • #
              Yonniestone

              Father, father, who is that a-whispering?
              Who is it who whispers in the wood?
              You say it is the breeze
              As it sighs among the trees,
              But there’s some one who whispers in the wood.

              Father, father, who is that a-murmuring?
              Who is it who murmurs in the night?
              You say it is the roar
              Of the wave upon the shore,
              But there’s some one who murmurs in the night.

              Father, father, who is that who laughs at us?
              Who is it who chuckles in the glen?
              Oh, father, let us go,
              For the light is burning low,
              And there’s somebody laughing in the glen.

              Father, father, tell me what you’re waiting for,
              Tell me why your eyes are on the door.
              It is dark and it is late,
              But you sit so still and straight,
              Ever staring, ever smiling, at the door.

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        • #
          AndyG55

          I hope Malcolm’s Tesla 3 goes well from point A to halfway to point B. 😉

          If of course he ever get’s it.

          I have a feeling Tesla and Musky, might just get Trumped, and the subsidies disappear. 🙂

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    pat

    read all:

    10 Jun: NoTricksZone: P. Gosselin: Global Climate Policy Meets Its D-Day?…SPIEGEL: “CLIMATE ALLIANCE IS CRUMBLING”!
    If we can believe Spiegel, it looks like the German political-climate blitz, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, aimed at isolating and humiliating the United States, particularly President Donald Trump, appears to have run aground.
    The Paris Climate Accord may be having its D-Day…READ ON
    http://notrickszone.com/2017/06/10/global-climate-policy-meets-its-d-day-spiegel-climate-alliance-is-crumbling/#sthash.tYh9WGox.SXVex32n.dpbs

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    pat

    love the headline:

    10 Jun: Townhal: Ken Blackwell: Last Mango in Paris
    (Ken Blackwell is a former Domestic Policy Advisor to the Trump Presidential Transition Team. He is a member of the Policy Board of the American Civil Rights Union)
    https://townhall.com/columnists/kenblackwell/2017/06/10/untitled-n2338892

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  • #
    clipe

    Such a project could do a lot to raise awareness of threats to the reef from climate change (depending on the outcome of the research!)

    […]

    If this is viable it could be another means of keeping me employed if someone wants to act as PI and develop it with me, or could be turned into a PhD project, or both - there is potentially a lot of work here.

    http://di2.nu/foia/foia2011/mail/0445.txt

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    • #
      toorightmate

      These clowns are on to something – pigs bum.
      The reef has been dying for hundreds of thousands of years. It has also been regenerating for hundreds of thousands of years.
      If you really want nature to run its course, why not let the Crown of Thorns starfish destroy the reef?
      The “dying reef” is just as pathetic as CO2 being the climate “control knob”. Both are just furphies to keep otherwise jobless scientists in a job (they sure as sh*t couldn’t get a job in the real world).

      140

      • #
        clipe

        “depending on the outcome of the research!”

        “outcome” Already baked-in.

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        • #
          Graeme No.3

          clipe:

          Come off it. Who wants to pay money for you or any other bloke to swan around the tropical reef accompanied by nubile girls in brief bikinis?
          Try the government – they have lots of (borrowed) money to waste.

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    • #
      Mark M

      ETERNAL LIFE AND DEATH OF OUR RARE ROAST REEF

      Tim Blair takes a quick 48-year stroll through the Great Barrier Reef’s wonderful history of endangerment, destruction and doom.

      http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/eternal-life-and-death-of-our-rare-roast-reef/news-story/4631e7f45c1602afaa46bbe2b6f4e365

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  • #
    pat

    dinn, rob –

    I posted the Spiegel article at NoTricksZone – comment #21 – and it is essential reading. probably deserves a thread of its own.

    the Trudeau revelations are not surprising…except to gullible CAGW believers, who still see him and Obama as climate saviours:

    1 Jun: Calgary Herald Editorial: Pipelines create jobs
    The shift in British Columbia politics has made expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline more acrimonious, but it’s encouraging to hear our prime minister and premier strongly making the case for the project proceeding…
    NDP Leader John Horgan and Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver, who appear poised to form government together, have vowed to “immediately employ every tool available to the new government to stop the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.”
    Thankfully, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is unequivocal in his support of the expansion…

    “The decision we took on the Trans Mountain pipeline was based on facts and evidence on what is in the best interests of Canadians and indeed, all of Canada,” Trudeau said Tuesday in Rome, where he was travelling.
    Trudeau’s plain-spoken confirmation of the $7.4-billion pipeline is commendable. Premier Rachel Notley was similarly pointed in her remarks, insisting it makes little difference which party forms government in B.C. because such infrastructure is a federal responsibility.
    “The decision has been taken,” she said…

    The existing pipeline has been operating with a spotless safety record since the 1950s. Increasing the pipeline’s capacity is expected to create the equivalent of 15,000 jobs per year during construction, followed by the equivalent of a further 37,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs per year, according to the company.

    Kinder Morgan cites a Conference Board of Canada report that found $46.7 billion in government revenue will be generated during construction and over the initial 20 years of expanded operations, helping to support services such as health care and education.

    ***“Quite honestly, the province of B.C. can’t grow solely on the basis of escalating housing prices in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland,” said Notley. “They need stronger economic growth, and the reality is that in Interior B.C. they need the jobs that this pipeline will provide.”…
    http://calgaryherald.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-pipelines-create-jobs

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    • #
      TdeF

      Brilliant, honest, forthright and extremely qualified plain English demolition of the whole Climate caper from the founder of the Weather Channel himself. However he could have done better with the 97% of scientists agree statement.

      No one ever quotes a reference for this 97%/ If you are prepared to accept human breath causes devastating climate and without question, clearly you can also prepared to believe the 97% without question. Personally I am surprised it is not 100%. After all, if you are making it up, why not go for 100%? Why would 97% even be credible?

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      • #
        Watt

        ” After all, if you are making it up, why not go for 100%? Why would 97% even be credible? ”

        97% was chosen to leave room for an increasing consensus.

        over time, we would gradually process the 6000 neutral papers, converting many of them to endorsement papers – and make regular announcements like “hey the consensus just went from 99.75% to 99.8%,

        50

      • #
        Yonniestone

        It all started 2008 Doran & Zimmerman survey, University of Illinois in Chicago,

        In 2008 Margaret Zimmerman asked two questions of 10,257 Earth Scientists at academic and government institutions. 3146 of them responded. That survey was the original basis for the famous “97% consensus” claim.

        For the calculation of the degree of consensus among experts in the Doran/Zimmerman article, all but 79 of the respondents were excluded. They wrote:

        “In our survey, the most specialized and knowledgeable respondents (with regard to climate change) are those who listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change (79 individuals in total). Of these specialists, 96.2% (76 of 79) answered “risen” to question 1 and 97.4% (75 of 77) answered yes to question 2.”

        Even though the 97% figure is touted by world leaders as proof of CAGW the warmists still cliamed cherry picking by sceptics when it was rightly taken apart.

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        • #
          TdeF

          Thanks. However how many non scientist journalists who quote this figure have any idea or even care who made it up or how?

          The response is “how do you know, who told you, do you really believe that?”

          Really, when was the last time 97% of people agreed on anything?

          If it was meant to present as an immutable foundation law of nature, it should be 100% and opinions would not be sought.

          In this interview, 100% of scientists did not believe it, so it is an absurd, even insulting statement.

          60

          • #
            TdeF

            In 2008 Margaret Zimmerman asked two questions of 10,257 Earth Scientists at academic and government institutions.
            Only 3146 of them responded.

            After the results were in, 79 were selected as having published more than 50% of their recent papers on Climate.

            So 75 answered yes to both questions out of the original 10,257 the author thought should be asked.

            Zimmerman could give a master class on cherry picking.

            75 out of 10,257 is not 97%. It is less than 1%.

            60

            • #
              TdeF

              I cannot find out more about Margaret Zimmerman. This was an Earth Sciences masters.
              Tim Flannery obtained a Bachelor’s degree in English from the new La Trobe University as he could not get into a science course, then managed a masters in Earth Sciences at Monash and a PhD from the zoology department at UNSW. extinct and unique kangaroos or wombats. No chance of contradiction there. Science apparently.

              Is Ms. Zimmerman a scientist like Flannery? The arbitrary nature of her selection criteria indicates that the result was the one she set out to prove where fashionable opinion is fact.

              40

              • #
                Rod Stuart

                A more complete story about Maggie Kendall Zimmerman.

                30

              • #
                TdeF

                Thanks Rod. “97 percent of climate scientists agree” that global temperatures have risen and that humans are a significant contributing factor.”

                This was the two question survey.

                The first question is hardly a question. Temperatures go up and down. They have gone up in the second half of the 20th century. So?

                The second question begs the meaning of ‘significant’, something which is not stated. Is that 2% or 8% or 99%?

                So even with the extreme cherry picking to get the subset they wanted, eliminating 99% of all those questioned but speaking on their behalf, there is no agreement for runaway, tipping point, catastrophic or even large warming, or that it would continue or not go down or anything else. Or even CO2 driven warming.

                However as the whole thing is so utterly unscientific, I really wanted to know about Maggie Kendall Zimmerman’s undergraduate degree. This area of Earth Sciences is the same one in which English graduate Flannery obtained a Science Masters with no tertiary science skills. Now that wombat people and psychologists are not just graduates but real ‘scientists’ and even put themselves about real but ignorant meteorologists, we are getting science by consensus. Popular science. Science fiction.

                Zimmerman and Duran actually eliminated meteorologists as not being real climate scientists. Hard to believe. The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Society, presumably as a way into the UN parties. Now meteorologists opinions are not welcome, not being real climate scientists like Gore(Nobel Peace Prize) or Flannery(Australian of the year) or Garnaut(AC, Companion of Australia).

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  • #
    BobC

    Today in the Sydney Telegraph Tim Blair has a brief history of dying GBR –
    http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/eternal-life-and-death-of-our-rare-roast-reef/news-story/4631e7f45c1602afaa46bbe2b6f4e365

    Now I have a clipping from the Melbourne AGE of 19-11-93.
    Coral study finds cycle of growth.
    Dr David Barnes at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville dated coral going back to 1478 and found a 30 year cycle in growth rates. The recent slowing of coral is not due to tourism or coastal development.
    [Transposed from newspaper columns]
    By TANIA EWING, science and technology reporter
    A Queensland scientist has discovered that coral growth fluctuates naturally about every 30
    years and that the recent slowing of coral growth in the Great Barrier Reef is not due to the
    intrusion of tourists and increased coastal development.
    A principal research scientist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville,
    Dr David Barnes, analysed samples of coral dating back to 1478 from various parts of the reef.
    The researchers found that the slowing of growth rates seen in 30-year-old coral density rings is a regular occurrence.
    “What we are saying is that, yes, corals did slow their growth about 30 years ago around the
    time that development started to increase on the coast,” he said.
    “But what we also see is a similar decline in growth every 30 or so years – and this is over many centuries. As yet we don’t know what causes this reduction in growth, but we do know it is a natural phenomenon.” Botanists can look at the cross-section of a tree branch or trunk and determine what the climate was like many centuries ago. Cut a branch and there will be rings of differing widths, correlating to periods of growth. In a warm, moist, summer there will be significant growth and wide bands and narrow bands mean a dry growth season.
    In the same way marine biologists can learn about past sea temperatures by studying the rings in coral.
    Coral growth is accelerated in the warmer waters of summer.
    “The skeletons of corals are deposited more densely in the warmer waters of summer and, if you cut a slice through coral and x-ray it, you can see these beautiful bands, like tree rings,” Dr Barnes said.
    These coral bands were discovered 20 years ago, but it is only recently that scientists have been able to learn much about climate history from the patterns formed by the bands, according to Dr Barnes.
    Coral grows by extending the limestone scaffolding at the edges of its skeleton — with
    most corals growing only a centimetre a year. But the animal that makes the coral, the coral
    polyp, lives only in the outer five to 10 millimetres of the coral.
    Dr Barnes, working with a senior research scientist at AIMS, Dr Janice Lough, found that density bands are formed within the living tissue but not at the outermost edge, as had been previously believed. “Until we worked out that the density bands were not the outer edges we had terrible trouble getting information about past climates from ancient corals — basically we were looking at, and dating, the wrong things,” Dr Barnes said.
    The researchers are about to publish in an international journal the results of their study of the relationships between the density of coral bands and past growth spurts.
    Unlike trees, which stop growing in winter, coral growth slows only in the colder months.

    I’ve been unsuccessful at finding the actual paper. CAN ANYONE HELP pls.

    Could it have taken 3 years to get published?
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.1996.tb00068.x/full
    Coral skeletons: storage and recovery of environmental information
    Authors
    • DJ Barnes & JM Lough

    • First published: December 1996Full publication history
    • DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.1996.tb00068.xView/save citation
    • Cited by: 27 articlesRefresh citation countCiting literature
    Dr D.J. Barnes, fax +61/077–725852, e-mail [email protected]
    Abstract
    Understanding the nature and causes of past global change is a key to understanding what may happen in the future. The discovery, nearly 25 years ago, of annual density bands in skeletons of long-lived, massive corals promised high-resolution proxy climate records for tropical oceans. The tropics are regions of major importance to the global climate system and they are poorly represented by high-resolution proxy climate records such as tree rings, ice cores and historical documents.
    In this review we examine the principles and procedures underlying routine recovery and interpretation of information from proxy environmental recorders. We summarize an extensive literature which indicates that coral skeletons are excellent archives for considerable and diverse environmental information. We show that this potential has not been fully realized, largely because corals seemed to yield inconsistent, sometimes conflicting, information. We discuss ways in which much of this confusion is resolved by new understanding of coral skeletal growth mechanisms. We also examine several records which indicate that corals can meet requirements for reconstruction of useful, reliable environmental information.
    • First published: December 1996Full publication history
    • DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2486.1996.tb00068.xView/save citation
    • Cited by: 27 articlesRefresh citation countCiting literature

    Can anybody get the full article ? ? ?

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  • #
    Mark M

    After failing miserably with their 2016 monsoon prediction, Doomsday Global Warming ‘scientists’ recycle their Indian hot weather scam …

    Above average monsoon rains forecast for India
    Relief for many as the India Meteorological Department predicts the 2016 season rains will be heavier than usual.

    http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/average-monsoon-rains-forecast-india-160413110429278.html

    Monsoon 2016 ends with 3% less than normal rains

    http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/monsoon-2016-ends-with-3-less-than-normal-rains-116093001302_1.html
    ~ ~ ~
    In India, Slight Rise in Temperatures Is Tied to Heat Wave Deaths

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/world/asia/india-heat-deaths-climate.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

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      el gordo

      It has to be extreme wet or hot to support the meme.

      Monsoon failure is a sign of global cooling, but that is not happening.

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      Monsoons have always been unpredictable, even to the aged shaman who was better than average in predicting the future from the number of mosquitoes flying around.

      Most people never recognised their unpredictability, until we got computers, that now show exactly how unpredictable the climate actually is, in relation to the climate models, which have no utility whatsoever.

      Talk about scoring an own goal.

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  • #
    Rocky

    https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/10/indirect-effects-of-the-sun-of-earths-climate/

    Real Science on the Sun and Weather.
    [It takes time for comments to get published – have a little patience] Fly

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    pat

    Mark M –
    here’s AP pushing the fake India study:

    8 Jun: AP: Katy Daigle: India’s rising temperatures are already deadly, study shows
    India is now two and a half times more likely to experience a deadly heat wave than a half century ago, and all it took was an increase in the average temperature of just 0.5 degrees Celsius (less than 1 degree Fahrenheit), a new study shows…

    “It’s getting hotter, and of course more heat waves are going to kill more people,” said climatologist Omid Mazdiyasni of the University of California, Irvine, who led an international team of scientists in analyzing a half century of data from the Indian Meteorological Department on temperature, heat waves and heat-related mortality…ETC
    https://apnews.com/cd86d634c5e54902b5fbe4a1404c6beb

    more AP propaganda:

    10 Jun: AP: Trump wages battle against regulations, not climate change
    By JOHN FLESHER and MICHAEL BIESECKER
    While President Donald Trump’s beliefs about global warming remain something of a mystery, his actions make one thing clear: He doesn’t consider it a problem for the federal government to solve…
    Trump is waging war against efforts to curb U.S. dependence on fossil fuels…

    “This is a repudiation of 45 years of steady improvement in the enforcement and rigor of laws to protect the environment in the U.S.,” said William K. Reilly, who led the EPA under President George H.W. Bush and is chairman emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund…

    Trump is hardly the first president accused of favoring businesses over the environment. His belief in easing the regulatory burden on them is firmly in the Republican mainstream.
    What sets him apart is his zealousness and public dismissiveness of the scientific evidence showing the Earth is warming and man-made carbon emissions are largely to blame.
    “This is more extreme than any previous Republican president – this is their old set of sentiments on steroids,” said David Doniger, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “There’s no orderly, reasonable inquiry into whether something makes sense and should be left in place.”…

    Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who led the administration’s EPA transition team, said Trump and key advisers don’t necessarily reject climate science but don’t believe the threat “should be placed in the list of the top 50 things we should be worried about.”

    Frustrated climate researchers say the opposite is true. They point to record-setting high temperatures, melting glaciers, rising sea levels and increasingly violent storms – trends that models suggest will only worsen.
    But attacks on such findings from climate change doubters have taken their toll. Public trust in mainstream science and other institutions has eroded, and lines between fact and ideology have blurred, said David Victor, a Brookings Institution specialist on energy security and climate…

    The president has made reversing the decades-long decline in coal mining the central tenet of his environmental policy, blaming federal regulations for job losses…
    Many economists say technology and cheap natural gas are the biggest causes of the coal industry’s slump. But Trump’s focus on regulations remains popular in coal country.

    “We support the direction the administration is going,” said Betsy Monseau, CEO of the American Coal Council. “It’s very important to us over the longer term to preserve a path for coal and coal utilization in this country.”
    http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_TRUMPS_CLIMATE_WAR?SITE=MYPSP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-06-10-20-09-05

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    pat

    10 Jun: Dawn Mag: AFP: Solar power price slump casts shadow on India’s green future
    However, the effect of the falling cost of solar modules, cheaper financing, aggressive competition and a surplus power supply in some states has been to unleash chaos, with companies and state governments clamouring for suppliers to match the new, low prices.
    “Prices have come down too much, too soon and that doesn’t bode well for the overall health of the sector,” said Vinay Rustagi, managing director of renewable energy consultancy Bridge to India.

    SOLAR ‘CURSE’: “In the past 17 months, tariffs are down nearly 50 percent and this is leading to buyer’s remorse for projects already built and under development,” he added.
    “There’s a reasonable chance that these projects will face some trouble in the future.”…

    The government has set an ambitious target of harvesting 100,000 megawatts of solar power by 2022 — but has installed just 12,500 MW so far.
    Of India’s 329,000 MW of installed capacity, 67 percent comes from coal and gas. The rest is a combination of nuclear and renewables including, hydro, wind and solar…

    Critics also question if the new contract winners can provide low price electricity and remain viable…

    Sumant Sinha chief executive of ReNew Power, one of the largest Indian renewable power companies and a losing bidder in the latest auctions, predicted a “winners curse.” “Extremely low tariffs don’t help anyone. Ultimately people have to raise debt financing, banks have to be brought on board, all of that looks very dicey at these levels,” Sinha said.
    https://www.dawn.com/news/1338716/solar-power-price-slump-casts-shadow-on-indias-green-future

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    pat

    presumably this is the NASA study mentioned early in this comments. being picked up by MSM. so the models were wrong!

    10 Jun: Daily Mail: Earth could soon be much rainier than scientists previously expected, NASA study warns
    As our planet continues to warm, rainfall in tropical regions will increase
    Global climate models may underestimate the amount of rainfall in these regions
    They underestimate observations of decreases in high clouds over the tropics
    These tropical clouds trap heat in the atmosphere, but fewer of these clouds would lead to the atmosphere cooling – condensing the water vapor into rain
    By Cecile Borkhataria

    The study found that global climate models may underestimate the amount of rain that will fall in these regions, because they underestimate decreases in high clouds over the tropics seen in recent NASA observations…
    But how can fewer clouds lead to more rainfall?
    Rainfall isn’t just related to the clouds that are available to make rain – but also to the Earth’s ‘energy budget’ – incoming energy from the sun compared to outgoing heat energy…
    The research, led by Dr Hui Su of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, also found that the increased tropical rainfall would warm the air up again to balance the cooling from the high clouds shrinking.

    Rainfall warming up the air also sounds counter-intuitive, as people are used to rain cooling the air around them.
    However, several miles up in the atmosphere, a different process occurs…
    The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, says the decrease in high tropical cloud cover is one result of a planet-wide shift in large scale-scale air flows occurring as Earth’s temperature warms…

    Dr Su, colleagues at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and researcher at four universities compared climate data from the past few decades with 23 climate model simulations of the same time period…
    Dr Su’s team found that most of the climate models they tested underestimate the rate at which rainfall would increase for each degree of surface warming that has occurred in recent decades…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4589792/Earth-soon-rainier-previously-expected.html

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    pat

    warning about the writer below:

    About Benoit Mayer: he is also a Research Associate at McGill University’s Hans & Tamar Oppenheimer Chair in Public International Law, a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), an Associate Member at the National University of Singapore’s Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law, and a Research Fellow at the Earth System Governance project…
    His publications include three books and more than 60 journal articles and book chapters on the ***international governance of climate change.
    https://benoitmayer.com/

    ***Benoit is a bit contradictory. other countries are committed to climate action but few have done anything at all, & none enough to fix the climate!

    11 Jun: SouthChinaMorningPost: What has Hong Kong done to tackle climate change? Next to nothing
    Benoit Mayer says the city’s failure to fully join the battle against climate change, with excuses such as a lack of space or the cost of clean energy, displays a lack of sincere commitment to sustainable development
    (Benoit Mayer is assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law)

    President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement was unfortunate. A developed economy has a lot to gain from investing in clean energy…
    ***Fortunately, other countries remain steadily committed to climate action…

    But what about Hong Kong? Does its small size exonerate the city from any action at all? This line of reasoning has been the greatest impediment to climate action anywhere in the past quarter of a century, as every government thought its efforts would only have a negligible effect.
    ***Few countries did anything at all, and none enough to avoid the risk of a climate crisis…

    Hong Kong joined the C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group in 2007. But it has since failed to complete any of the four phases of the initiative…
    In September 2010, the Environment Bureau held a public consultation on an objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020. Yet, as of 2014, emissions had increased by 9 per cent…

    The government justifies its lack of climate ambition by mentioning the cost of investing in clean energy. This argument is as illegitimate and misguided in Hong Kong as it is in the United States…
    Nor is lack of space a good excuse. Wind turbines can be built offshore. Solar panels can float on reservoirs. And as Hong Kong already imports water and nuclear energy from Guangdong, why could it not import renewable energy?…
    http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2097606/what-has-hong-kong-done-tackle-climate-change-next-nothing

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    pat

    as Hetherington seems to be the only journo in the world ever to show an interest in carbon credit scams, he deserves a comment here:

    10 Jun: DailyMail: High Court action to wind up storage pod investment scheme plugged by ex-Top Gear presenter (Quentin Wilson) with claims of 85% return
    By Tony Hetherington for The Mail on Sunday and Lee Boyce for Thisismoney.co.uk
    A whole string of salesmen for Store First were already in the files of Mail on Sunday over their involvement in land, wine and ***carbon credit investment scams…

    The case against his company will be heard in the High Court in Manchester on August 1.
    The Serious Fraud Office is investigating a number of pension schemes that invested in storage pods…
    It has not named any individual storage firms, but investigators believe there are more than a thousand victims and sums involved total more than £120million.
    This is Money has contacted Store First for comment but had no reply…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/investing/article-4577600/Action-storage-investment-plugged-Quentin-Willson.html

    7 Jun: DailyMail: (SCROLL DOWN) High Court winding-up case looms for Store First
    TONY HETHERINGTON investigates
    I warned in 2013 that alarm bells were ringing…
    A whole string of salesmen for Store First were already in my files over their involvement in land, wine and ***carbon credit investment scams…
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/experts/article-4569122/I-charged-99-club-didn-t-know-joined.html

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  • #
    Bob

    The whole basis of the Finkel report is that it is necessary to have lower emissions. That makes it flawed from the start.

    In the “Introduction”, Finkel says, “Australia has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape our electricity system for the future. A wave of technological change is sweeping across us. The key driver – innovation – cannot be reversed.”

    Sorry, but the “key driver” is bad policies that should be reversed!

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    • #
      TdeF

      Yes, the argument that

      1. Mankind can increase CO2 levels regardless of the equilibrium which created and maintained them in the first place.
      2. Increased CO2 levels are a bad thing when they are a known good thing, one of the three requirements for photosynthesis.
      3. CO2 levels are heating the air, when that is not true and without assistance from evaporation cannot be true.

      So electronic engineer Finkel decides on this basis, that CO2 is ‘pollution’ that minimizing it is possible, practical, affordable and worthwhile.

      Who needs a chief Scientist then if he belives all this without question?
      You may as well make an expert in giant dead wombats our chief climate commissioner.

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    Bob

    We’ve had Nissan saying electric vehicles need subsidies.

    Now BMW are complaining that customers are not buying enough of their hybrids, and it’s the government’s fault.

    “Here in Australia we have the customer – we have proven that – and we have the industrialisation. All that is missing is the legislation that is critical to the uptake of LEVs (low emission vehicles),” he said.

    “Legislation that will assist with the purchase of these vehicles through duty and tariff reductions and financial and non-financial incentives, incentives that will put these low emission vehicles within the reach of more Australians.”

    http://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/bmw-slams-government-over-inaction-for-electric-cars-20170608-gwnh18.html

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    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      OK, So the utility of the product, is not sufficient to match the price of the product, so nobody is purchasing the product.

      That sounds to me, like the reality of market forces that everybody in business has to contend with.

      I provide a service to my clients, and I damn well make sure that a) I give them better service than my competitors, and b) charge them slightly less that my competitors would for the same service.

      It sounds to me that Nissan and BMW have gotten the whole thing base over apex.

      Incentives given to one group, are monies taken from another group. That may be legal, but it sure ain’t moral.

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    pat

    a comment is in moderation, with Daily Mail links that refer to carbon scamsters involved in a new scam:

    to be fair, Reuters is at least mentioning Spiegel Merkel’s climate alliance is crumbling piece, though without a link to the source, and little detail.
    and so far, no MSM is carrying the Reuters’ piece.
    Freudian slip if she actually said ***”WE want”, rather than “they want”:

    10 Jun: Reuters: Merkel mustering G20 support on climate ahead of July summit: sources
    By Andreas Rinke and Andrea Shalal | MEXICO CITY/BERLIN
    Merkel told an audience in Argentina on Friday that as host of the G20, she would have to be up front about differences if all 20 highly industrialized countries failed to see eye to eye on climate and other issues, as the final communique requires unanimous consent.
    “There will be issues where not everyone gets what ***we want,” Merkel said, a clear nod to Trump’s move to pull out of the 2015 Paris accord to combat climate change days after refusing to endorse it at summits in Europe…

    “Germany is looking for allies on issues that are important to us,” Merkel said after a meeting with Argentine President Mauricio Macri.
    German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday that her staff have drawn up a 13-page paper for the July G20 summit that includes specific references to the 2015 Paris agreement – setting up a potential showdown with Trump.

    ****Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has suggested striking out the references to enable Trump to sign the communique, the magazine reported…

    Indeed, she told students in Buenos Aires that it was vital to maintain dialogue even with those who hold different views.
    “Because if I talk with someone, I can no longer simply say he is stupid,” she said…(THEREBY SAYING HE IS STUPID?)

    Complicating the issue further for Merkel, however, her foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel of junior coalition partners the Social Democrats, wants as many G20 countries as possible to underscore their continued support for the Paris deal at the July summit.
    “The G20 cannot result in a silent unity against the climate agreement,” he told the magazine…

    A recent poll by Infratest dimap showed that only 21 percent of German voters viewed the United States as a reliable partner, a drop of eight percentage points from April that put it on the same level as Russia and far below China on 36 percent.
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-g20-climatechange-idUSKBN1910O9

    who can compete with Germany’s new best friend, China? lol.

    how about another multi-billion dollar UN fund that can be “continually restocked”?

    10 Jun: Reuters: Andrea Shalal: Germany calls for 10 billion euro permanent U.N. crisis fund
    German Development Minister Gerd Mueller, citing hunger crises in eastern Africa, said the United Nations should create a permanent 10 billion euro (8.78 billion pounds) crisis fund, with contributions to be based on a country’s financial strength…
    Creating a fund that would be continually restocked would make it easier to respond to recurring humanitarian crises, he said…

    Five countries – Ivory Coast, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia – have already signed up for enhanced partnership agreements with G20 countries under a new “Compact with Africa” programme.
    It focuses on finding private investors in areas such as ***energy production, agriculture and tourism…
    http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-g20-africa-idUKKBN1910NG

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      OriginalSteve

      Is it just me, or are the worlds leaders trying to co-operatively demolish the worlds economy completely through the green agenda?

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      tom0mason

      Trump understands that the ‘Paris Agenda’ is an attempt to regress the USA’s and Western Nations’ worldwide power, political power, technical power, financial power, through this self inflicted foolish agreement, backed-up with propaganda and diplomatic pressure to conform to the will of the UN.

      For Americans it attempts to wrap restrictions around the US Declaration of Independence’s well known precepts of its citizens having ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ in an agreement which at its heart is a lie, the lie of CO2 causing atmospheric warming and so ability to change the climate.

      This wrapping is the soft pliable start, this Paris Agenda, and kind of plaster to cover the financial, political and scientific cracks. However later it will harden as statues and global declarations lock nations into anti-industrial, anti-commerce, anti-liberty casings of laws and treaties.
      Western nations will become immobilized by a kind of legal Plaster of Paris. that will set the bones of government against it citizens.

      20

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    el gordo

    Jennifer Marohasy’s new book with the Clive James story.

    http://jennifermarohasy.com/2017/06/climate-change-facts-2017/

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    • #
      Bob

      Given the car was all electric, with no fuel onboard, it will be interesting to see the results of an investigation as to why the car caught on fire, at all, and so quickly.

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    Annie

    We’ve just been looking up the site of the proposed offshore wind ‘farm’ in East Gippsland. Looking at the map, is this wretched proposed ‘farm’ going to be visible from Wilson’s Prom? Ye gods! What about the effect on marine life? All supposedly to replace the power produced by Hazelwood? Are they all entirely batty?

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    • #
      David Maddison

      It will be an environmental disaster, including its visibility from the Prom, infrasound at the Prom, and the usual issues of vibrations and infrasound propagating through the sea affecting marine life, including whales. It will also produce expensive, diffuse, randomly generated and essentially unusable power. And unlike coal and gas power stations, it will not enhance plant growth with CO2 thus contributing nothing to the growth of food.

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      David Maddison

      I’m sick of the “Greens” destroying the very environments they claim they are protecting, they are environmental vandals of the most extreme kind. Normal people believe in protecting the environment, unlike Greens.

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    David Maddison

    I’m sick of environment and civilisation destroying windmills. When will the madness and environmental destruction stop?

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    • #
      ROM

      Saturday’s “Australian” opinion writers of both persuasions re climate and renewable energy or not, mostly “not” these days in the “Australian”, regularly used the term “insanity” when referring to the Finkel report and Australia’s energy policy or rather the complete lack of any sane attempt at creating an energy policy of any type at any level.

      We had a pretty sane energy policy Australia wide until about 25 years ago, and that was to provide absolutely reliable power to everybody possible at the cheapest price.

      That policy ran from before WW2 until the outright and utter insane stupidity of the scientific rent seeking global warming / climate change cultists took over the running of their own political insane asylum that we now seem to have operating as our supposed governments in all of our states and in Canberra.

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        OriginalSteve

        Speaking of insanity – an interesting odyssey into PC land of the younger….

        Had a birthday bash on the weekend I went to, and took the opportunity to catch up with my nieces who are in year 12 and 1st year uni.

        The topic came around to PC, and sensing an opportunity, I jumped in with a few well aimed questions.

        The bottom line is kids their age are absolutely ( and I mean clearly ) *terrified* of saying the wrong thing lest some leftist ratbag bail them up and pound them mentally into the ground. The commie pinkos have them so scared of saying anything wrong, they really are completely mentally and verbally hamstrung. Their comment was that in Melbourne, it was a satellite Soviet and you cant say *anything* “wrong” lest you be publically vilified and sued out of existance. I guess Victoria is our version of the left-wing green utopia of California, so if it disappears under its own green and brown weight, so long….we wont cry….

        I explained to them slowly and carefully that it is Marxism/Communism, and if you control the language you control thought and actions.

        You could see the penny drop….

        I then explained why they need to fight back, using what ever was legally and morally permissible to even the score and take back control of language and to make a point of not being shoved around.

        You could see it took them back, someone *actually* suggesting they mount a counter-offensive and drive PC into the sea…..such is the ferocity and anger with which the Left has prosecuted the PC agenda.

        I’d encourage people to talk to kids at Uni and young adults sop they have at least a comparison to draw on – if these kids accept that all the hear ( which is the usual left wing drivel from indoctrination centres…er…schools….and higher indoctin…er….universities…) and what they hear is the equivalent of the local State mandated Political Commissar vomiting up Soviet brainwashing, well what hope do they have?

        There is nothing as dangerous to the odious PC crowd as well informed, well reasoned young adults – who know that PC is and how repugnant it is in a democracy. But it means someone has to present tot hem how a democracy *actually* works so they have a comparison to draw on.

        Also important is how to avoid the much abused and loved Leftist censorship tools of choice – the “bigot” and “rascist” labels – learn how to present an argument without the lefties being able to use either of those labels and you are home and hosed.

        Rather OT but I wanted to comment about this so people might be able to use it.

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    pat

    Brexit still means Brexit:

    11 Jun: Guido Fawkes: (Labour Shadow Chancellor John) McDonnell: we have to leave single market
    John McDonnell makes clear Labour will take Britain out of the single market as remaining in would not honour the referendum result. He is of course correct. Important message for those Remainers who are trying to use the election to overturn the referendum result, despite 580+ MPs (OUT OF 650) being elected on pro-Brexit manifestos…
    https://order-order.com/2017/06/11/mcdonnell-leave-single-market/

    11 Jun: Guido Fawkes: Labour repeatedly tried to do deals with the DUP
    Labour have boarded the outrage bus over the Tories doing a deal with the “bigots and terrorist-sympathisers” in the DUP. They have some nerve…

    In 2010 Labour tried to do a deal with the DUP. Gordon Brown wrote a letter to the DUP leader trying to buy his support. The then Northern Ireland Secretary Shawn Woodward worked on an “economic package” to secure DUP support. This morning Alastair Campbell said a deal with the DUP could undermine the peace process. On May 7, 2010, Campbell sat in a meeting where a Labour-DUP deal was proposed. Glorious hypocrisy from Bad Al…

    Ed Miliband last night blasted the Tory-DUP deal as a “coalition of chaos”. Yvette Cooper this morning says it is “troubling“. Owen Jones says: “If Labour had ever done a deal with the DUP I would have been out there protesting it”. According to the DUP’s Ian Paisley Jr, Miliband’s Labour also tried to do a deal with the DUP in 2015…
    TWEET
    Don’t buy the rank hypocrisy of Labour’s faux outrage this morning…
    https://order-order.com/2017/06/11/labour-repeatedly-tried-to-do-deals-with-the-dup/

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    pat

    primarily about Surf Life Saving NSW, and lengthy, but worth noting:

    10 Jun: Australian: Red flags: There’s trouble behind the scenes of Surf Life Saving Australia. What do we know about how our charities are run?
    Worthy charities such as Oxfam and the ­Wilderness Society are also under the spotlight for outsourcing their fundraising to companies that underpay workers. In October the Fair Work Ombudsman announced an inquiry into such practices that will focus on 15 randomly selected charities. A consumer backlash against intrusive fundraising from charity street spruikers and telephone call centres has led to a spike in complaints to regulatory agencies…

    Professor Sandra van der Laan of the University of Sydney Business School says these issues are symptomatic of a tax-exempt industry that has grown too big for regulators to keep up with. Van der Laan is an accountant with a longstanding interest in charities, but even she was surprised two years ago by the revelation that there are more than 50,000 charities in Australia with combined revenue of more than $100 billion. Those figures came from the ­Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC), a federal regulatory body set up by the Gillard Labor ­government that maintains the only accurate ­register of organisations in the sector…
    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/weekend-australian-magazine/red-flags-surf-life-saving-australia/news-story/a1d0c8e910802264253b5009c5072dad

    FROM THE COMMENTS:
    EXCERPTS Joe:
    “Worthy charities such as Oxfam and the ­Wilderness Society “. There is nothing remotely worthy about either of these two charities…
    For environmental activist charities, their top 20 donors and their collective donations should be disclosed like public companies are required to disclose their top 20 shareholders. Environmental activist charities are often the recipients of taxpayer funded grants yet are instrumental in deterring tax paying industry and jobs…

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    pat

    11 Jun: Courier Mail: Rowan Dean: Opinion: Prime Ministers Theresa May and Malcolm Turnbull bot paid price for leading from the left
    Back in April, my heart sank when I learned that “strategic guru” Mark Textor, who had run the woeful Turnbull campaign, had been employed to run May’s campaign. Wasn’t it Albert Einstein who said that doing exactly the same thing twice but expecting a different outcome is the definition­ of insanity?

    Indeed, without wishing to brag, I was the first commentator to point out the likelihood of May coming a cropper in this election.

    Writing a satirical column back in April, I imagined how the Textor strategy which had backfired so spectacularly in the Turnbull campaign would do likewise for May. These were my key points…READ ON
    http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/opinion-prime-ministers-theresa-may-and-malcolm-turnbull-both-paid-price-for-leading-from-left/news-story/c8e353edba82943686a78f2a52eaa2f6

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    Will Janoschka

    From a different anti-CAGW-site
    SebastianH 6. June 2017 at 10:39 PM

    “Point 1) Default BS about the atmosphere not being the same as a glass greenhouse. Really? Attacking the word “greenhouse” and then concluding that CO2 actually cools the surface? So without CO2 it would be cooler? Good one.”

    Read again! Atmospheric CO2 above 180ppmv must help radiate more EMR to space as tropopause level CO2 and H20 is at a higher temperature due to continual convection of sensible heat from surface to higher altitudes!

    “Point 2) Attacking the blanket explanation … by confusing the lower troposphere with the whole atmosphere. There is no convection, etc towards space … that’s an internal thing.”

    Atmospheric convection only can transfer sensible heat and latent heat the from the higher temperature surface outward toward space where such is transfered in a manner more efficative, (having an intended or expected effect), via EMR exit flux, than can possibly be done from Earth’s surface!

    “Point 3) They don’t understand how radiative energy transfers work. There is no violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, heat always flows in one direction, radiation doesn’t. It seems like those “chemists” think that somehow a radiating body “knows” that it is radiating towards a warmer object and consciously halts radiation in that direction? If that would work we could use it as faster than light communication. Perfect!”

    This clearly demonstrates that you have “no concept” of how thermal electromagnetic radiative flux, at any frequency, may be generated, the limits of such generation, and how the extremely low level of surface EMR flux can possibly influence that exiting to space! Try Maxwell’s 22 equations, for understanding.
    This is tiring!

    “Point 5) The -18 °C figure is not correct, but it’s not wrong either. We know from the Moon what average temperature a body without an atmosphere has at our distance from the Sun. It is far lower than what can be calculated with the SB-law, because the Moon rotates slowly. So obviously the correct average temperature without and atmosphere (or without GHGs) depends on more factors, but the -18 °C is at least a temperature in the right direction, it would probably be colder.”

    If your fake black-body radiation is limited to (Ta^4-Tb^4), always proportional to the maximum difference in aggregate radiance of two surfaces (including zero difference); how do you propose that some average temperature of one of the surfaces have any possible meaning to the integral (energy), over time of such exit flux?

    “The only thing unreal is the paper of theirs. The sentence with the violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics should have been enough for any reviewer to reject that paper.”

    You are the fool that violates the Clausius 2LTD, ‘stuff don spontaneously go in a direction of higher potential’!!!

    SebastianH 7. June 2017 at 2:26 PM |

    “Or phrased differently one more time: do you think that our Sun is not emitting radiation towards other stars in the Universe that might be hotter than our Sun?”

    WOW! The generation of spontaneous thermal EMR flux at any frequency has never been observed\demonstrated in the direction of higher opposing ‘radiance’ at that frequency. Not ever, not even once! CAGW nonsense!

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      Will Janoschka

      “The generation of spontaneous thermal EMR flux at any frequency has never been observed\demonstrated in the direction of higher opposing ‘radiance’ at that frequency. Not ever, not even once! CAGW nonsense!?”

      OK red thumber! Where is your singular observed\demonstrated EMR flux emission at any frequency (whether spontaneously or powered) in the direction of higher opposing ‘radiance’ (field strength) at that frequency?

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    Richard Ilfeld

    BROKE, & therefore broken.
    There are doomsayers around saying the next crash will be caused by the financial failure of governments,
    triggering the dominos.
    Dunno.

    Banking folks, who trusted a tech bubble, a housing bubble, and a credit card debt bubble, may still be too smart to trust governments.
    I don’t know that banks and other hold lots of municipal debt, or that a failure to pay full measure to a distributed group of beneficiaries
    is likely to have the effect of “breaking the buck” on a money market fund.

    But we do have a lot of failures prnding.

    For me the tipping point is population change.

    When a jurisdiction, already spending more than it takes in, starts to lose population due to high taxes and reduced services,
    I can only see a stall, followed by a spin, followed by a crash.

    In the US, we have one territory, 4-7 states, and a number of cities that are having difficulty meeting their current obligations,
    and have no real poptential of fulfilling their unfiunded future obligations.

    Those who leave early can potentially selltheir property and enterprises that are geography bound, and get out whole.

    The propensity of progressives to restrict growth through regulation actually makes the flight problem worse;
    if you restrict housing(the dominant middle class asset) enough, you make middle class flight easier.

    Someone will take the hit. Taxpayers? Pensioners? Bondholders? All of the above?

    There will be wailing about a state constitutional requirement to pay pensions, yet silence of the serial violation of the balanced
    budget clause in the same constitution.

    Most of the affected jurisdictions have seriously advanced their sell-by dates with “clean energy” spending.

    Unlike much traditional spending; roads, bridges, mass transit, parks, schools which may offer some benefit and attarction in the real world,
    energy spending, which trade psychic gains for higher energy costs, make an already staggered local economy worse.

    Coping with failure may become the new spectator sport. ANd failure to manage traditional energy resources properly is as damaging as green energy …
    well, not quite as the stuff is still there to be used by better management, which can rebuild damaged production but can’t manage more wind or sunshine.

    Lets watch the parade:

    Venezuala, and Brazil.
    Chicago, and Illinois.
    Connecticut.
    Peurto Rico.
    California and many of its cities.

    and many more.

    There is nothing that political critters like less than apportioning misery, yet that is what a very many of them
    are faced with. Wrapping oneself in green robes for saving us a century out isn’t a good substitute for cutting checks,
    which is why the Germans, among others, are building coal plants.

    The bills have been run up; for the next couple of decades the main political question across nations is “who will pay”.

    Good politicans (good at what they do, as opposed to any sense of morality) can feel the winds of change. When idle and decrepti windmills are juxaposed next
    to bounced government checks on the evening news, one won’t want to be a green politician. The lifeline of economical, reliable energy, which can help
    the eternal can-kicking by improving an economy enough the justify the issuance of new debt, will be irrsistable.

    The twilight of the greens is upon us. Someone has to carry the blame for social failures. They are next in line. First, the subsidies fade. Next, the bonds fail.
    finally, we take it personally. Paris was likely a tipping point.

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      Will Janoschka

      “The twilight of the greens is upon us. Someone has to carry the blame for social failures. They are next in line. First, the subsidies fade. Next, the bonds fail.
      finally, we take it personally. Paris was likely a tipping point.”

      Indeed, I agree! The rest is also interesting. I hab title to 67 remote acres in central Arkansas USA mostly timber, barns, farm implements, and a fortune in arrays of mechanical but electrically powered junk, my choice! Can you give your best thoughts on “Sell out now and go elsewhere, but where?” or “surround self with invited pleasant\peasant new folk, with high skill and high personal integrity”? Such are easy to train for accurate shooting! Thank you!! -will-

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        Richard Ilfeld

        My wife & I are rural — New mexico & ky. Florida now. The mountains are high, the rivers are wide, the capital is far away, and we can grow a lot of our own food. Barring total collapse, the countryside endures while the cities suffer. Worse comes, a kerosene lantern & a coleman stuff suffice for a while where we are, & the well won’t run dry. Thought is, the US has more bench strength than most, and a lot of compentant state goverments. Resources are very disbursed. We have had cities fail before, but, not having a nation centered in one or two urban areas, do OK. Rural Arkansas is pretty attractive.
        This is not survivalist, just ducking the conflagration when there is tumult. The US will have enough stuff, but some of our cities may not have enough civilization under pressure. Detroit, Watts, etc.
        One person’s opinion

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          Will Janoschka

          “This is not survivalist, just ducking the conflagration when there is tumult. The US will have enough stuff, but some of our cities may not have enough civilization under pressure. Detroit, Watts, etc. One person’s opinion”

          Thank you! From Fl what is the best compass direction your herd migrate?
          From river valley AR, please, what is best direction to migrate? My best guess is to stay, dig deep and hunker down!
          All the best!-will-

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          Will Janoschka

          ROM June 12, 2017 at 10:47 am

          “Canada with its Alberta Province tar sands oil resource currently, and that “currently” is important with respect to the rise of the frakking technology as it spreads globally, rates just behind the Saudi’s in recoverable and extractable oil reserves.”

          Indeed; but all this petro-stuff need be reserved as wonderful lubricants, and plastics, there is no alternate!
          For Fuel; (electrical ‘power’) and metal oxide reduction to useful metal+CO2 gas, only reserves of anthracite (C) can provide. At some way later time perhaps, nuclear power may replace that need for electrical power generation. However, Metal oxide reduction to metal, cannot be done without anthracite (C).
          Oh whoa are we! ‘Tis time to seriously think\tink! I am personally tired of this earthling gross lack of individual responsibility.

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            ROM

            We just keep burning coal and oil and gas.

            Long before they run out of those hydrocarbons in maybe a century or more of time, mankind will be tapping into the methane hydrates found in the deep ocean littorals of most ocean facing nations as well as in the permafrost right across the most northern latitudes of the Eurasian and Canadian land masses.

            The methane hydrates are estimated to contain as much energy as all the world’s Hydrocarbon and Coal deposits combined.

            And when it comes to Coal, this is just one example of what is out there and can be and if needed will be mined by Artificial Intelligence controlled robotic mining machines operating under water and under the huge pressures below the North Sea.

            Huge coal deposits discovered in North Sea

            Scientists have discovered large coal deposits under the North Sea that could power Britain for hundreds of years.

            “We think there are between three trillion and 23 trillion tonnes of coal buried under the North Sea,” explained Dermot Roddy, former professor of energy at Newcastle University.

            “This is thousands of times greater than all the oil and gas we have taken out so far, which totals around six billion tonnes. If we could extract just a few per cent of that coal it would be enough to power the UK for decades or centuries.”

            However much of this coal and hydrocarbons will not be needed or required as mankind eventually harnesses Fusion power and energy for all his future needs for as long as he exists on this planet.

            The following and current Fusion energy projects and research and development come from the World Nuclear Association; ;

            ITER
            JET
            KSTAR
            K-DEMO tokamak
            EAST
            TFTR
            ALCATOR
            Large Helical Device-stellerator
            Wendelstein 7X stellerator
            HELIAC 1 stellerator
            National Ignition Facility- laser
            Laser Megajoule
            PETAL and HiPER lasers
            Z-machine.
            .

            Other fusion projects from private enterprise;

            Lockheed CFR
            POLYWELL
            General Fusion
            Tokamak Energy
            .
            plus;

            Cold fusion
            Low energy nuclear reaction [ LENR ]

            ———-

            Somewhere, sometime, somebody somewhere is going to crack a fusion system that consistently returns more energy from the fusion reactions compared to the energy input needed to get those fusion reactions going.

            And when that happens as it surely will then mankind’s energy problems and energy shortages, like the global food supply today, any energy shortages anywhere will only be the result of the stupidity of mankind in his constant warring amongst his own species.

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            • #

              Isn’t it ironic that despite years and years of this so called move away from coal oil and gas, that mining and drilling for them all has ramped up, almost exponentially, and they are now finding new and better ways to actually get all that stuff out of the ground.

              In much the same manner as how we are told of the need for a move to renewables, there are more and greater advances in electrical power generation equipment to actually consume coal, and gas.

              Surely, somewhere in all of that, those greenies must realise that there is a clue, but no, their absolute tunnel vision has blinded them to what is actually happening.

              And pandering politicians just give in to those greenies.

              You seriously have to wonder how they are going to backtrack from all of that, and how some politicians are going to wipe out not just themselves, but their Party as well. An awful lot of people are going to be seriously embarrassed.

              Tony.

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                Graeme No.3

                Tony:
                The biggest trajedy is that the politicians treated the whole thing as a political problem. All they were concerned with was blunting the appeal of the Greens and accepted everything the Greens said as true, namely
                That rising CO2 was causing rising temperatures
                That X % of renewables would cut emissions by X% and
                That there was no other way to cut emissions.

                Had they queried any of those assumptions and checked up on them we might have had some sensible solution, esp. if it had involved your work showing that new HELE plants would have cut CO2 emissions by 22-23%, and left us with cheaper and certainly a more reliable electricity supply than we will be left with.

                The quickest way to stuff something up is to get politicians making decisions.

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      Will Janoschka

      john June 12, 2017 at 2:40 am

      “Missing washer causes turbine collapse.”

      I did dat in past. Blame (point finger at) others! Escape with your life!

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      David Maddison

      the power grid was not affected by the failure.

      No surprise there. They’re useless anyway so why would the grid be affected?

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    john

    Possible wind turbine related forest fire.

    http://m.republicanherald.com/news/professor-conducts-brush-fire-survey-in-schuylkill-1.2203419

    On May 18, a brush fire burned 284 acres of woodland in Mahanoy Township near Locust Ridge Wind Farm, Novitsky said. That week, Saladyga was in the county researching fires.

    “It was a big 280-acre fire on Locust Ridge right under the wind turbines in the exact spot where I sampled the day previous. That would have been just to the west of Brandonville Road near 339,” Saladyga said Tuesday.

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    doubtingdave

    For some years now I have deliberately posted on this site little thought bombs or verbal hand grenades , in order to stimulate discussion , some of you may have noticed , but not all , the majority on this blog are sceptics that hold a conservative political view , but not me , neither am I from the left , I dislike ideology in all its shapes and forms , it does not matter to me if your ideological belief system is religious or political , its all about how a select few leaders create a system that allows a few elites to control the many , whats interesting to me is how in this modern age of social media , groups from opposing ideologies are grouping together to fight against the system despite their differences , for example conservatives and socialists coming together on JO’S blog because they see that global warming is part of an attempt to create a new feudal system controlled by a new world elite , or , and this fascinates me , Bernie Sanders Supporters from the altleft getting together with Trump so called altright supporters to drain the Washington swamp , in the UK election this week we had record numbers of young people voting , it might be as some of you conservative voters would argue , that they have been ” astroturfed ” but if that’s true or not , is it not great to see the young get motivated by politics rather than the bread and circuses of soap operas , pop music and sports that they usually get obsessed by in order to produce the next generation of sheeple , all the best

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      Will Janoschka

      for example conservatives and socialists coming together on JO’S blog because they see that global warming is part of an attempt to create a new feudal system controlled by a new world elite , or , and this fascinates me , Bernie Sanders Supporters from the altleft getting together with Trump so called altright supporters to drain the Washington swamp , in the UK election this week we had record numbers of young people voting , it might be as some of you conservative voters would argue , that they have been ” astroturfed ” but if that’s true or not , is it not great to see the young get motivated by politics rather than the bread and circuses of soap operas , pop music and sports that they usually get obsessed by in order to produce the next generation of sheeple , all the best”

      Perhaps a chance! Do not discount the young, much more sassing parents (learning with whacks), but more intelligence (from their parents) than your ‘new world elite’, with no skill, can possibly believe. The first 3 months are crucial! They carefully watch. Lotsa hugs, warm tit, smiling faces, dry diapers. In that time Earthlings learn 96% of what they ever learn! They also understand, not gonna be so easy later!
      All the best!-will-

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      Curious George

      Dave, here are some full stops, feel free to disperse them through your text ………………..

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        Will Janoschka

        ……………….. Danka

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        • #

          the most difficult 60 or so pages I ever read you get so used to punctuation that when it isn’t there it becomes difficult to comprehend enjoyable though a very good read

          Ulysses – James Joyce.

          Tony.

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            toorightmate

            Never before in the history of the English language have prepositions been so lonely.

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      Yonniestone

      Dave are you referring to the original ideas of Anarchism?, many hard line republicans/conservatives hold some of these ideals in line to a very open democracy, I think while freedom is paramount even they realise the immense liberty given to the many will foster tyranny in the form of Marxist or other ideologies which seeks to destroy what is present to preserve its existence.

      With the current model of the Republic laws are in place to override any foreign ideologies that attempt to usurp the sovereign rights of the people even though those ideologies are allowed to be expressed though freedom of speech, which is why any freedom of expression should never be restricted as the people educated in their laws and using self reasoning will reject or cease any ideologies that threaten their Nation.

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        Will Janoschka

        “Dave are you referring to the original ideas of Anarchism?, many hard line republicans/conservatives hold some of these ideals in line to a very open democracy, I think while freedom is paramount even they realise the immense liberty given to the many will foster tyranny in the form of Marxist or other ideologies which seeks to destroy what is present to preserve its existence.”

        Indeed. Democracy is but slavery to the insane numerical majority!

        “With the current model of the Republic laws are in place to override any foreign ideologies that attempt to usurp the sovereign rights of the people even though those ideologies are allowed to be expressed though freedom of speech, which is why any freedom of expression should never be restricted as the people educated in their laws and using self reasoning will reject or cease any ideologies that threaten their Nation.”

        Most difficult to understand! What about the always present insane numerical majority! Can such non educated, ever reject or cease any ideologies that threaten their Nation?

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          Yonniestone

          Will even the uneducated can smell BS when its presented as an alternative, name me another system that works while gifting the insane majority freedoms that others only dream of?

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          Will Janoschka

          Can such non educated, ever reject or cease any ideologies that threaten their Nation? Yes or no? Please explain your reasoning!

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            Yonniestone

            The non educated(?) know they are better off than the majority of the world firstly by the large amount of people trying to enter their country legally or illegally to escape the failed states they come from, secondly by the information given by new immigrants on the systems they so desired to leave, I don’t see many Americans hiding in trucks to enter the free utopia of Iran, at least the ones we never hear about. 😉

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      Dennis

      Take away taxpayer via government subsidies for wind and solar systems and they too will soon collapse as business ventures.

      Socialism is all about picking winners and losers.

      Capitalism allows markets to decide.

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    Dennis

    When the renewable energy madness passes as present day politicians leave office they know they will be forgotten but will have achieved what they wanted to achieve.

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    clipe

    Regina, Saskatchewan.

    4:00 PM CST Sunday 11 June 2017

    Average high 22.8°C

    Average low 9.1°C

    Highest temperature (1884-2013) 36.7°C 1918

    Lowest temperature (1884-2013) -1.7°C 1969

    http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/sk-32_metric_e.html

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    David Maddison

    How is this all going to end?

    Given that there’ll be no political sanity because politicians and their sycophants are too stupid to understand how do you expect Australia’s energy crisis will progress?

    We are already seeing industry shut down because of high electricity prices.

    There is already energy poverty.

    We are the world’s largest coal exporter but have some of the world’s most expensive electricity.

    The Government wants to keep adding insane amounts of expensive, randomly generated windmill power.

    As Tony says, this can never provide the power we need.

    How’s the system ultimately going to collapse?

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      Yonniestone

      Searching Australian Constitution- Emergency Powers, Emergency Powers of Governments in Australia by Geoffrey Caine, and The Australian system of Government , interesting is The Governor-General’s reserve powers,

      ‘In some matters the Constitution gives the Governor-General powers to act independently. These include the power to dissolve the House of Representatives and, in certain situations, both Houses (see Infosheet No. 18 ‘Double dissolution’). However, in other than exceptional circumstances, the Governor-General will follow the advice of a Prime Minister who retains the confidence of the House.
      The powers that the Governor-General has to act without advice are referred to as ‘prerogative’ or ‘reserve’ powers and are not clearly defined in the Constitution. Constitutional experts do not agree on their precise extent or on the nature of the exceptional circumstances in which they may be exercised’.

      Our biggest problem IMO has been the breakdown of The Separation of Powers as this gives footholds for corruption in all forms to take hold by those that do not have the Nations best interest foremost.

      The last line is a current example that’s been sadly forgotten by the people it protects,
      “The Constitution cannot be changed by an Act of Parliament alone—a referendum of the people is necessary.”

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      Dennis

      David, the politicians pushing this madness are not as stupid as some might suspect, they know what they are doing and, obviously, they care more about their political friends internationally than they do about their constituents here.

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        Yonniestone

        In a just society politicians that benefited greatly by destroying those they swore to serve would be cast from our shores in a leaky esky.

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    Rod Stuart

    And now for something very DISTURBING if factual.

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      Dennis

      ALA intrigues me, where are they now, they appeared ready for the 2016 election and then disappeared again.

      The Australian Newspaper referred to them as part of “the secretive Q-Society’ from Victoria, the name apparently based on the Melbourne suburb of Kew.

      Why did they form Australian Liberty Alliance as a separate entity?

      I am not excusing the allegation, if factual, but the ALA is intriguing.

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      David Maddison

      Rod, the article you linked to is, in fact, correct.

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    el gordo

    The Trump Effect

    ‘One of the founders of Germany’s modern environmental movement and a former renewable energies executive has publicly announced that President Donald Trump’s rejection of the Paris Accord is the right thing to do.’

    – See more at: http://notrickszone.com/#sthash.XL7IKSJ7.dpuf

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      Dennis

      Isn’t it very clear that Australian politicians, too many of them at least, care nothing about the Australian economy and cost of living, and are prepared to redistribute the wealth to third world countries … ignoring that if that succeeded we would be very poor and the third world would be a little better off, maybe, possibly, depending on how many sticky fingers get into the pie.

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        el gordo

        We have been giving aid to third world counties for a long time, we ease our conscience and curry political favour at the same time.

        But now we need to smash the Green Climate Fund, because of the flawed science, then the Paris Accord will collapse. The professor puts in a good word for Curry.

        ‘He cites Prof. Judith Curry. She wrote earlier this year (2017) that the IPCC climate models are not suitable to explain the causes of the 20th century warming or to forecast regional and global climate changes over decades, let alone a hundred years, and that they are not adequate for acting as a base for policymaking. Curry adds:

        ‘There’s growing evidence that the climate models are running too warm.”

        ‘Prof. Vahrenholt concludes his piece by advising EPA chief Scott Pruit to heed Curry’s recommendations.’

        – See more at: http://notrickszone.com/2017/06/11/trump-correct-to-reject-founder-of-german-environmental-movement-calls-paris-accord-a-bad-deal/#sthash.AYxMK0hA.dpuf

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    David Maddison

    Someone on Their ABC radio was saying how Fink’s recommendations allowed market forces to operate and allowed any technology to be used.

    Clearly that is not true because with Renewable Energy Certificates where coal power stations are forced to subsidise their renewable “competitors” market forces cannot operate.

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    Ironic Lank

    It’s ironic that the US government have announced they will fund research to extract rare earth elements (REE) from fly ash coal deposits.

    http://www.abplive.in/india-news/us-announces-usd-6-9-million-for-research-on-rare-earth-elements-537706?&rs_type=pistats&rs_origin=trending&rs_medium=537694&rs_index=story_1

    REE are a major component of many new “carbon free” energy infrastructure and REE supply may depend on coal to meet future demand!

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    David Maddison

    Offshore windmills are killing whales.

    Whose going to save the whales?

    https://stopthesethings.com/2017/06/09/how-green-is-wind-power-offshore-wind-farms-killing-whales/amp/

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    Dennis

    The Australian

    3:09PMRACHEL BAXENDALE
    The Finkel Review won’t go anywhere unless the PM can rein in Tony Abbott and conservative MPs, Labor says.

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      el gordo

      ‘Everyone’s said give this full and fair consideration before a kneejerk response, and Tony Abbott, Craig Kelly, Eric Abetz, a growing list of very senior Liberals seem designed to undermine this process before it begins.

      “Malcolm Turnbull simply has to bring them into line,” Mr Butler said.

      ——

      Fat chance of that, with the Trump Effect sitting in the wings the Lib renegades should embarrass the PM on every occasion.

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      Rod Stuart

      I sent several emails this morning to Craig Kelly and Tony Abbott anticipating a huge debate tomorrow in the Party Room.
      My advice to them is to hammer away at the fact that the whole basis for this nonsense is fabricated fairy tales. I have communicated in the same with Eric Abetz many times, and especially just recently.
      i.e. I hope I provided some moral support as well as some arguments they can use. Not that it wouldn’t be anything they don’t already know.
      I think it’s important for them to know that we aren’t all a bunch of useless Greens.
      You never know. I sent President Trump a letter the day he announced extracting the USA from the Paris Excrement. It was fairly lengthy and basically pointed out that I very much appreciate his efforts, and attempt to explain the benefits of his program to others.
      Lo and behold, yesterday I got a nice letter from Donald J. Trump. It wasn’t just a form letter because it specifically mentioned points that I had raised.
      I am not gullible enough to think that he has time to write letters to Australia, but someone in the Whitehouse obviously had to.

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      TdeF

      Sorry, missed this. I was also amazed that Labor demand their PM control his men.

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    David Maddison

    Economist and “climate change expert” Prof. Ross Garnaut got a Queen’s Birthday honour.

    “The University of Melbourne professor has been appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) for his service to the community in the areas of energy efficiency and climate change policy.”

    https://au.news.yahoo.com/sa/a/35892760/nod-to-garnaut-energy-climate-change-work/

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      TdeF

      Another economist climate change expert. No actual science credentials but he has a Doctor of Science (in economics). That does make him a scientist, doesn’t it?

      “Comrade Ambassador: Whitlam’s Beijing Envoy”, his desciption by Melbourne University. With Whitlam’s economic wisdom and no idea at all on science. He even portrayed himself as Galileo against the establishment, when he was the establishment. At least the University/ABC/left establishment.

      It is only surprising that Malcolm chose Finkel when Garnaut would have loved the job. After all a Dead Kangaroo/Wombat zoologist can be Gillard’s Chief Climate Commissioner. However being Chairman of Zen Energy and selling solar systems and wind systems might be a bit of a conflict these days. So by all means give the man another award for being part of the Climate Council.

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    TdeF

    Just in..
    “The Finkel Review won’t go anywhere unless the PM can rein in Tony Abbott and conservative MPs, Labor says”

    Malcolm Turnbull will have failed his Labor and Green supporters if he doesn’t stop the devilish deniers. It shows you which side Malcolm is on. Too bad for him those people who like him do not vote for him. He is the most popular coalition leader in history, with the opposition.

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    Another Ian

    Euan Means on Finkel

    “Chief scientist Alan Finkel has caused created controversy by recommending that individual wind and solar farms be responsible for providing “dispatchable” generation – a “generator reliability obligation” rather than looking at system-wide solutions.”

    More at

    http://euanmearns.com/blowout-week-180/

    Via

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2017/06/blowout-180.html#comments

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    Repel space Damocles swords

    After the April USA solar-induced blackouts, a Nobel nominated proposal for Earth shield vs all space threats (as NASA and ESA also accept now*), as f. Dean of the NASA-ESA Int. Space Univ. Dr Pelton plans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi5lCCjVTBw

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    el gordo

    SAM has been slightly positive, but is now forecast to become slightly negative.

    http://www.farmonlineweather.com.au/news/sam-leaves-much-of-australia-high-and-dry/526480

    Blocking Highs set to continue.

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    Rod Stuart

    A lawyer, who had a wife and 12 children needed to move because his rental agreement was terminated by the owner who wanted to reoccupy the home.
    But he was having a lot of difficulty finding a new house.
    When he said, he had 12 children no one would rent a home to him because they felt that the children would destroy the house.
    He couldn’t say he had no children because he couldn’t lie.
    We all know lawyers cannot and do not lie.

    So, he sent his wife for a walk to the cemetery with their other 11 children and took the remaining one with him to see rental homes with the real estate agent.
    He loved one of the homes and the price was right — the agent asked:
    “How many children do you have?
    He answered: “Twelve.”
    The agent asked, “Where are the others?”
    The lawyer, with his best courtroom sad look answered
    “They’re in the cemetery with their mother.”
    MORAL: It’s not necessary to lie, one only has to choose the right words…
    and don’t forget, most politicians are unfortunately lawyers.

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    Mathew

    I have some queries regarding this The Conversation Article. I’m hoping some of the experts posting here can offer some advice. See link below.

    The chart in this article shows amounts of C02 in the atmosphere during the past 800,000 years. I know CO2 was higher in earlier times, but I would still like to focus on this period.

    According to Ian Plimer in his book Heaven and Earth, he mentions how a single volcano releases more C02 in a single day than what humans have released over 250 years. NOTE: This is not quoted from Plimer’s book as I don’t have access to it, but rather a quote from his ABC editorial.

    Here is the exact quote. “Over the past 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic cough can do this in a day.”

    Over an 800,000 year period, there would have been many major volcanic eruptions. Surely the C02 variability over 800,000 years would be larger than 180ppm – 300ppm with substantive volcanic activity, compared to the chart showing a spike from human activity over the past 100 years.

    Plimer’s quote above does not seem to reconcile withe the CO2 chart over 800k years. What am I missing? Please advise.

    Link to CO2 chart.

    Link to Plimer’s comments.

    Rewgards

    [I fixed your link problem and approved this.] AZ

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    Mark

    http://www.businessinsider.com/atlassian-mike-cannon-brookes-impostor-syndrome-2017-6?IR=T

    Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes revealed he has felt like an impostor for 15 years.

    The most recent moment of insecurity came in March when a Tesla executive said in Melbourne that the company’s batteries could solve South Australia’s energy problems in 100 days. On a whim, Cannon-Brookes tweeted Tesla founder Elon Musk to ask if this was true.

    That conversation between global tech giants famously triggered a national conversation about renewable energy and ended with Musk guaranteeing a solution for South Australia in 100 days or the installation would be free.

    The Atlassian co-founder then found himself in the middle of a media storm about a topic – batteries – that he had no expertise in.

    “I remember thinking to myself ‘Shit, I kind of started something here and I can’t really get out. If I abandon the situation, I’m going to sort of set back renewables in Australia and just look like a complete idiot.”

    But Cannon-Brookes didn’t let the situation panic him — he spent the next week talking to experts including scientists and politicians to bring himself up to speed.

    “I even managed to pull off a passing impression, let’s say, of an energy expert on ABC Lateline.”

    Who’d a thunk it.

    00