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Announcing the advent of the disappeared scientific paper:
Three days later, however, the paper had vanished. And a few days after that, a completely different paper by different authors appeared at exactly the same page of the same volume (NYJM Volume 23, p 1641+) where mine had once been.
What topic is too hot to discuss? In this case, hotter than climate — variability of intelligence. Obviously, it is an irrelevant construct, so irrelevant it must be outlawed. This debate got so ugly, half the board members of the second journal threatened not just to resign but to harass their own journal til “it died”. It’s that bad.
These institutions are sitting ducks — staffed with nice busy people who avoid conflict and who are not equipped to handle the missiles coming. Empiricism and rational debate is being replaced with bullying and censorship. See his plea at the end. To fight back against the bullies, spread the word, buy Ted Hill’s book, or subscribe to Quillette.
Quillette: Academic Activists Send a Published Paper Down the Memory Hole
Ted Hill is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Georgia Tech. He has just published a memoir PUSHING LIMITS: From […]
If the IPCC are wrong, the BBC will be the last place to say so
Lets all bow to the IPCC — a modern God that shalt not be questioned. The Holy Sacred Climate Cow!
The IPCC is an unaudited and unaccountable foreign committee. Not only are no scientists paid to check its findings, now the publicly mandated BBC is making sure none of their journalists will check its findings either.
Carbonbrief has a copy of the BBC new internal guidance on how to report climate change.
In April, the UK regulator, Ofcom, found the BBC was guilty of not sufficiently challenging Lord Lawson, a skeptic. So in response the BBC now promises they will never sufficiently challenge the IPCC. That’s “false balance” for you.
The BBC issues a guidance to journalists
What’s the BBC’s position?
Man-made climate change exists: If the science proves it we should report it. The BBC accepts that the best science on the issue is the IPCC’s position, set out above. If only BBC baby-scientist-rulers knew what “proves” means in science. The IPCC can never be “proven” right, though it has been proven wrong, and many times. Be aware of ‘false balance’: As […]
No link between droughts and climate change in Australia
Ken Stewart finds that rainfall may have fallen in the last 30 years over Southern Australia but it has stayed remarkably constant in the long run.
Fig. 2: Cool season rainfall, Southern Australia, 1900-2017
Oops! Rainfall has in fact increased over southern Australia.
Stewart has also looked at the number of consecutive dry months across Australia. Looking at both 12 month periods and at 36 month periods it’s clear that we had more severe droughts more often from 1900-1970. The only exceptions are in SW WA (which is having a good year for rain this year) and small parts of Victoria and Tasmania.
Fig. 4: Number of consecutive months per calendar year of 12 months severe rain deficiency: Australia
Don’t forget to pop in at Kens Kingdom and say thanks for all the work he does.
Ken Stewart is not paid but can create these graphs. The Australian BoM gets a million dollars a day, and Ken used their definition of a drought, but there are no press releases about this from the BoM.
The ABC gets $3 million dollars a day. If […]
Old coal plants don’t have to die, they just need to be fixed
Vales Point, Power Station, NSW, Australia
The Vales Point Coal plant (Part B) was built in 1978. It was sold for $1 million in 2015 by the NSW government. It’s now making a bumper profit. If it gets a $750 million renovation it could keep running til 2049 when it will be 70 years old. Vales has a nameplate capacity of 1,320 MW.
On the other hand, we could follow South Australia and spend $650m and get a 150MW solar plant that only works half the time.*
When is an old coal plant on death’s door a better bet than the worlds largest solar plant? — Every hour of every day. Plus you get free fertilizer.
Profits to keep Vales Point coal-fired power station going for another 20 years
John Stensholt and Perry Williams, The Australian
The Vales Point power station near Lake Macquarie, which supplies about 4 per cent of power for the national grid, could receive a $750m injection to ensure it runs until 2049, making it the nation’s last standing coal station, with the country’s other facilities due to […]
Australia now has 200 years of frackable gas to add to the 300 years of coal
And yet we are still buying Chinese solar panels. The big question is how much of our our gas and coal can we use before nuclear energy makes them irrelevant? h/t GWPF
In April the Northern Territory lifted its ban on fracking. The Beetaloo basin may have a whopper 50 to 100 trillion cubic feet of gas, and it appears to be a “stacked play” in layers (like Texas). To put that in perspective, the largest gas project in Australia in the Bass Strait has produced 8 trillion cubic feet so far with another 7 trillion to go. Shale turned the USA from an energy dependent state to the worlds largest fossil fuel producer.
Geoscience Australia estimates the NT has about 257,000 petajoules of shale gas
[Australian Associated Press]
The Northern Territory holds enough natural gas to supply Australia for 200 years-plus and is comparable to the shale resources that have revolutionised the US energy sector, Resources and Northern Australia Minister Matt Canavan says.
Senator Canavan described Beetaloo, located southeast of Katherine, as “a world class shale […]
Green genius: Pay $1400 a year to not stop any storms
Finally some veteran engineers checked the Labor Party 50% renewable plan and the AEMO “65% scenarios”. Unlike others, their study that did not involve magical assumptions that the cost of renewables would dramatically fall. Instead they used “actual costs” and found the price of electricity will rise “84%” and cheap coal power will be forced out of business (just like what we also found here). The engineers include Barry Murphy, former managing director and chairman of Caltex. Robert Barr, an electrical engineer and academic at University of Wollongong. If only Kevin Rudd had asked them in 2007.
Engineers warn of bill shock under green energy surge
Adam Creighton, Economics Editor, The Australian
Electricity bills will soar and gas and coal-fired power stations will close if the share of wind and solar generation increases dramatically, engineers have warned after analysing the nation’s energy supply.
It found bills were likely to soar 84 per cent, or about $1400 a year, for the typical household, if wind and solar power supplied 55 per cent of the national electricity market.
A quarter of Australian rooftops have solar, […]
The world still runs on coal and oil
After 20 years of subsidies, intermittent renewables account for just 3.6% of total energy generation. That’s the tiny purple sliver in the graph. Global power means not just electricity, but also fuel used in transport. And this is where wind and solar power are respectively old and slow, or modern but useless.
Someday solar powered planes might make their first round world trip in 48 hours but at the moment they need 16 months. There’s a a bit of hitch in the global energy transition.
Hello fossil wonder fuels:
Global Primary Energy, Graph, 1965-2018
Intermittent renewables are pretty useless everywhere:
Global Primary Energy, Graph, 1965-2018
Solar energy might have “made waves” and increased by an astounding 100GW last year, but it’s still irrelevant:
Oil remains the world’s dominant fuel, making up just over a third of all energy consumed. In 2017 oil’s market share declined slightly, following two years of growth. Coal’s market share fell to 27.6%, the lowest level since 2004. Natural gas accounted for a record 23.4% of global primary energy consumption, while renewable power hit a new high of 3.6%.
— Spencer […]
Once upon a time we could afford heating.
Volunteer knitters in high demand as soaring power prices leave people cold
A national army of knitters is in desperate need of more volunteers to help them meet the growing demand for winter woollies.
Victoria returns to the Victorian era
Knitters can not keep up with demand
“Some people say it has been a colder winter — I actually don’t think so,” Ms Rogers said. I think it’s been milder than what we’ve had, it’s just the need that’s so much greater unfortunately.
“Even if people have got heating, they can’t afford to run it, so they need the warm clothes or the blankets.”
Can you knit to keep a poor Victorian warm?
UPDATE from Beowulf:
I hear Audrey Zibelman, boss of AEMO, is a dab hand with a set of needles. Here’s her favourite pattern ladies: plain one, pearl one, skip 10, repeat.
It makes a jumper full of holes that must be plugged with other materials, but it saves heaps on the cost of wool and we don’t need to breed any more sheep to make our jumpers. […]
Who needs interviews when you know all the answers?
Greg Jericho, of The Guardian, can explain why the government is in “denial” and spends 15 odd paragraphs doing psychoanalysis of himself.
Has he met a skeptic? Not likely.
This government is not even pretending to act on climate change any more
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly I have a degree of sympathy for members of the public who are climate change deniers. I have this sympathy because I was once one of them. …doing my level best to deny it was happening. Because it scared the bejeezus out of me.
… so I understand why people choose to believe those who say climate change is not the issue, that the issue is power prices and thus we need to fire up the coal furnaces.
Denial is a very easy way out of guilt that your lifestyle is leaving your children and grandchildren an awful legacy. Denial is a good way to throw away concerns that you might have to actually wear a cost – either through lifestyle changes or monetary loss.
It is a scary thing to hear talk of the impacts […]
After thirty years of Green-Blob disaster porn, there are casualties.
Climate change [propaganda] takes a toll on our minds
Psychologist Susie Burke tells the story of a woman who came to her for counselling after having her first child. Not because she was suffering from post-natal depression, but because she was “struggling with the enormity of what she had done.” She felt she had brought her child into a “world she knew was going to be a lot harsher and a lot less safe,” Burke told DW.
“She came to me when she was overwhelmed by this distress; questioning whether she had done the right thing. The fear she had for his future was really huge.”
Look out for the new hotline (Can someone find this number?)
Burke is an Australian psychologist and academic who specializes in eco-psychology. She treats people suffering mental illness as a result of climate change, and also recently set up a free hotline called the “Climate Change Psychological Support Network,” where Australians can call a qualified psychologist to talk through their feelings about environmental change.
Look out for the handbook:
‘The Climate Change Empowerment Handbook’ is a handy […]
Wow. Australia may dump the RET — the renewable energy target — and stop trying to use our national grid to make global weather nicer for our great grandchildren? This would be legendary.
“Lowering prices will be more important than lowering emissions”
Don’t break out the Moët yet. Note two caveats.
1. The Daily Telegraph “understands” this to be true. Not definitively announced. Not passed through cabinet. Is this just testing the water to see how hot it is?
2. Australia will still try to meet our pointless Paris agreement some other way. Sure.
Will those big complex winner-picking, market fiddling schemes go?
Daily Telegraph
RENEWABLE energy subsidies and emission-reduction targets will be replaced with a focus on lowering electricity prices under the Morrison government.
New Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the federal energy policy has been “a mess” and says the fact prices have soared while blackouts persist means something has “gone terribly wrong”
The complex schemes Mr Taylor refers to are understood to be the Large-scale Renewable Energy Target (LRET), which subsidises the development of renewable energy.
The Daily Telegraph understands emission-reduction […]
The alarmist case is so strong they will Not Discuss It.
Right now, the world is going to hell and expert scientists need to convince the doubting masses that they face a dire threat. They have rock solid evidence. Do they:
Patiently answer questions with graphs and data. or Shout “fire” and ask for 89 trillion dollars, then tar those who disagree as pedophile-nazi-loving-idiots, throw a tanty and refuse to answer questions.
Obviously, expert scientists make mistakes.
Michael Bastasch | The Daily Caller
Climate Alarmists refuse to debate skeptics: “We are no longer willing to lend our credibility to debates over whether or not climate change is real. It is real. We need to act now or the consequences will be catastrophic,” reads the letter signed by 60 self-described “campaigners.”
Beware — balanced articles can kill people, cause floods! Run, Run…
From the letter:
In the interests of “balance”, the media often feels the need to include those who outright deny the reality of human-triggered climate change.
Balance implies equal weight. But this then creates a false equivalence between an overwhelming scientific consensus and a lobby, heavily funded by vested interests, that exists simply […]
Good news. Children who don’t know what snow is can now ski in summer.
Heavy Summer Snowfall in European Alps – Austria, Italy, Germany & Switzerland Receive Up To 40cm
Matt Wiseman, Mountainwatch
Heavy snow fell above 1500 metres across the European Alps this weekend with a number of destinations reporting over 40cm of the fluffy white stuff.
While it is still summer in Europe, temperatures dropped over 15 degrees and dipped into the negatives in less than 24hrs
European heatwave comes to an abrupt end
Debbie White, Mail Online
There’s been a dramatic plunge in temperature across parts of Europe where searing heat has suddenly given way to heavy snowfall of up to 40cm – despite it still being summer.
About 25cm of snow was dumped on Germany‘s highest peak, the Zugspitze, where temperatures reached a decidedly chilly 19.4F (-7C) yesterday.
Even Italy gets snow and a minus 8 C freeze
A ski resort in northern Italy was coated with 10cm of snow on Sunday as temperatures plunged to -8C.
Snow is also falling on Calgary and Alberta too.
Locals are a bit surprised:
August 29th, 2018 | Tags: Cooling & cold snaps, Europe, Snow | Category: Global Warming |  Print This Post | |
Last Saturday at 1pm both Queensland and South Australia were cut off from the national grid. In Sydney 45,000 homes lost power for a couple of hours. Shops had to close. Trains were stopped. Passengers were stranded. Traffic signals were not working on major roads. Chaos. Industrial users shut down in a mass of 725MW of load shedding.
Apparently this was due to lightning.
Once upon a time, Australian states were self sufficient, now interconnectors allow us to share problems:
Two states “Islanded” simultaneously
Two vital interstate power interconnectors blew without warning at the weekend, causing blackouts and critical industrial incidents and isolating two states from the national electricity grid, in a dramatic reminder to Scott Morrison just days into his prime ministership of the nation’s energy policy paralysis.
Queensland and South Australia were exporting power across the interconnectors when they were simultaneously tripped on Saturday, forcing power to be cut to big industrial users and retail customers in NSW and Victoria.
The nation’s biggest single-site power user, the Tomago aluminium smelter in the NSW Hunter Valley, lost power without warning, halting two pot lines for up to an hour. Alcoa’s Portland smelter in […]
Gotta love a long unbroken proxy.
Scientists looked at 44 pines sites across the Scottish Highlands and used their tree rings to create a continuous temperature series for the last 810 years. Showing admirable restraint, they did not paste on adjusted thermometer records to create a hockey stick effect. Instead we can see that Scottish summers were just as warm in the 1300s, the 1280s and around 1500 as well.
The rate of warming is not unprecedented. The temperature is not unusual. But thermometers don’t tell the same story as the tree rings in the last 50 years. They both can’t be right. Either the tree rings are always unreliable thermometers or the thermometers are placed near ice cream trucks and adjusted up-the-kazoo?
Thanks to CO2Science:
Rydval et al. extended “the previously published Scottish dendroclimatic record (Hughes et al., 1984) by nearly 500 years,” in order to create an 810-year-long proxy over the period AD 1200-2010. The reconstruction was derived from a network of 44 Scots pine (Pinus Sylvestris) sites across the Scottish Highlands from both living and subfossil samples that correlated well with summer (July-August) temperatures.
In placing the most recent warming of the instrumental […]
In Victoria, 40C used to be known as “A Hot Day”, but now thanks to climate change it’s called an “extreme condition” (wasn’t it meant to become a common event?) Nevermind.
The AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) has pretty much warned us the Victorian electrical grid can no longer cope with “a hot day”.
[The AEMO] predicts a one-in-three chance of load shedding under extreme conditions this summer unless additional action is taken.
“Specifically, temperatures of 40C or more in Victoria could be the catalyst for extreme, one-in-10-year electricity demand conditions.
“Particularly when these temperatures are experienced towards the end of the day when business demand is still relatively high, residential demand is increasing, and rooftop PV’s contribution is declining.”
So since solar PV is useless in this situation, the Victorian government is spending one billion dollars installing Solar PV. One billion dollars of generation that is guaranteed not to work when we need it.
Will the new PM, Scott Morrison, be able to solve this problem? Thousands of engineers can.
Once upon a time even the brainless inanimate free market did.
h/t Dave B, Pat
PS: Still travelling.
9.5 out of 10 based on 93 ratings
UPDATE: Scott Morrison won 45 to Dutton 40.
Hours from now the Liberal Party members will decide whether Peter Dutton, Scott Morrison or Julie Bishop will be PM. Dutton is aligned with Tony Abbott, but Morrison seemingly and Bishop definitely, with Turnbull. I doubt Bishop has a chance. Morrison has not pinned his colors to the mast on climate change but the ABC is pushing for him according to Andrew Bolt — so we know who threatens the most sacred cows. Go Dutton.
Likewise, Fairfax are telling readers not to vote for Dutton: “In sunny Kooyong, Liberals find the thought of PM Dutton ‘appalling’“. So they managed to find a few people who don’t like him and turn that into a story.
Malcolm Turnbull is, as usual, being statesmanlike, thinking only of the Party:
Malcolm Turnbull promises a scorched earth for his Liberal enemies
He’s promised to resign and force a byelection in his seat. Tossing bombs as he leaves. On the plus side: no more Malcolm in Australian politics. Not unless the member for Goldman Sachs joins the Labor Party.
Will the new leader of the Liberals take the easy and obvious winning path of Abbott, Trump Dean, […]
Abbott is an incredibly powerful man. From the backbench he’s creating disunity, stopping legislation, ruining careers, and bringing down Prime Ministers, all just for the fun of it.
This has nothing to do with the 54% of Australians who are skeptics.
Turnbull has lost control of government. He cannot get legislation through the lower house. But hey, if only Abbott wasn’t there, Australians would be happy to buy expensive electricity. It would take a ‘miracle’ to save Malcolm Turnbull
Peter Hartcher, The Sydney Morning Herald
“Turnbull thinks people will fall on their knees and say hallelujah!
Turnbull’s supporters are angry and frustrated at Abbott. But among many in the conservative faction of the Liberal Party, there is glee. Turnbull has been humiliated. And, to the conservatives’ great satisfaction, he has been humiliated over what they consider his pet fetish – climate change and carbon emissions.
“Turnbull is obsessed with this issue,” says a leading conservative MP. He thinks it’s a “‘greatest moral challenge of our time’ type of initiative”, a reference to the Kevin Rudd description of climate change. It was a challenge that Rudd failed because of an internal insurrection and now Turnbull […]
Good news for people who like political drama. Turnbull lives on, as does the lack of unity, purpose and meaning of The Australian Liberals.
Malcolm Turnbull wins partyroom ballot against Peter Dutton 48-35
The Australian
Malcolm Turnbull has won a leadership ballot against Peter Dutton in the Liberal partyroom by 48 votes to 35 and Peter Dutton has resigned to the back bench.
Dennis Shanahan:
Malcolm Turnbull’s victory in the leadership ballot has solved little for the Liberal Party.
It has also shortened the odds of an election before Christmas and confirmed the rebellion against the Prime Minister is far wider than just a few malcontents.
9.9 out of 10 based on 58 ratings
Turnbull braces for leadership challenge
Simon Benson, Geoff Chambers, The Australian
Malcolm Turnbull has lost the confidence of half of his Liberal Party cabinet colleagues as the Prime Minister’s backers admit they are bracing for a leadership challenge from Home Affairs Minister and leading Queensland conservative Peter Dutton.
As the leadership crisis engulfs the government, sources close to the Prime Minister were yesterday briefing that they were expecting a leadership challenge as early as today. Liberal MPs last night claimed that Mr Turnbull had begun calling colleagues to shore up support.
Mr Dutton’s camp believed that it could get to the required 43 votes to roll Mr Turnbull…
Peter Dutton may be ineligible to sit in Parliament. His lawyers say clearly no. Other lawyers say “Maybe”.
Anne Twomey, The Conversation
Section 44(v) says that any person who “has any direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any agreement with the Public Service of the Commonwealth” is disqualified from sitting as a member of parliament.
Dutton, as recorded in the parliamentary register of interests, is the beneficiary of a discretionary family trust. This trust, through its trustee, apparently owns two childcare centres […]
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