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The BOM announced it was the hottest ever day in Sydney today, then realized it had it wrong, but not before headlines spread across the country. For a million dollars a day you’d think the BOM would check their own “high quality” database. A scientific agency would take great care before announcing “historic all time records”for a city of five million people. A shameless PR agency might see that sort of mistake as an advantage.
It’s careless, piled on rank neglect
Even if the day had been “a record”, the temperatures are often artificially inflated due to site changes, thermometer changes, and the one-second-record effect thanks to the introduction of electronic thermometers, all of which are a product of careless BOM management and analysis. And even over and above that, past temperatures have been adjusted or homogenised downwards — often years after they are recorded — and by secret methods that the BOM will not disclose. I’ll have more information soon on changes at Sydney Observatory, that the BOM don’t make any allowance for.
Looks like another one second record?
The BOM announced the record after Penrith hit 47.1 at 1:55pm, the BOM tweet wrongly claimed it had “broken the […]
Australia may be the worlds largest exporter of coal, sending out 388 million tons in 2015, but China’s production of coal the same year was 3,747 million tons — nearly ten times as much, and nearly half of global coal production. But the Chinese coal boom is turning. David Archibald describes the geopolitical ramifications. For me, the next question is what stops China doing nukes? — Jo
PS: There is a rumor that Australia has only 4-5 days of fuel stocks today, and is especially low on aviation fuel. Anyone with info, please comment or email joanne AT this site.
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Here is what’s holding back China’s plans for world domination
Guest post By David Archibald
One of the reasons that China produces the world’s cheapest solar panels, for example, is because it has some of the world’s cheapest coal-fired power
There is no doubt that China wants to subjugate Asia, echoing Japan’s role during World War II. For those who think China’s economy might overtake the United States economy, and thus make China a more formidable adversary, this article aims to provide detail on China’s main constraint in that ambition: that its domestic coal production is near its peak […]
Strangely, the more free, clean, green energy we get the more household incomes fail to keep up with inflation. Who would have thought that using inefficient energy in an artificial government-picks-the-winner market could possibly reduce our living standards?
Of course, this is not all due to electricity efficiency and pricing. Bill Shock only affects things that need to heat, cool or move.
Bill Shock as Standard of Living Slumps
David Uren, The Australian
Australians have endured their longest period of falling living standards in more than a quarter of a century as growth in costs outstripped earnings for the fifth consecutive quarter, leaving households worse off than they were six years ago.
After allowing for inflation, taxes and interest costs, average household incomes dropped 1.6 per cent in the year to September, capping a sustained fall in living standards that has not been seen since the 1990-91 recession.
Economists say more than half the cost increases for households are being driven by electricity, rent, health, new housing and tobacco, while modest wage rises are being partially absorbed by workers being pushed into higher tax brackets.
Energy prices feed […]
” The Bomb Cyclone isn’t a winter hurricane — just a bad storm with good branding” — Vox
A “Bombcyclone” off the East Coast of the USA is verging on, or has broken a record for the fastest drops in pressure. It’s now at 965mb. It’s not a bomb, nor a cyclone, just a common winter storm. Though this one is a bad one which has already dumped snow on Florida– “most snow in three decades”. The hastag #BombCyclone is exploding.
Also known as a Blizzard, the National Weather Service forecasting winds as high as 70 miles per hour (113 km per hour), and more than 3,300 flights have been cancelled. — Reuters
BombCyclone, NE USA, Jan 4th.
Record breaking?
Rarely do you get to see such perfection w/ the structure of a winter storm. Running out of adjectives for this one. Our blizzard has dropped 54 mb’s in 24 hours, making it not only a “meteorological bomb,” but one of the fastest stengthening winter storms in modern history. — @WeatherOptics
Roy Spencer explains the Bomb term:
The term “bomb” was coined by meteorologist Fred Sanders in 1980 to refer to a non-tropical low […]
From Pierre Gosselin at No Tricks Zone:
Germany needs 80GW of electricity. It has 40GW of installed solar PV.
See the graph: The red line is what the country used, and the orange bumps are the solar contribution.
Clearly, solar power will take over the world.
…
In December, Germany got ten hours of sunlight. That’s not a daily figure, that’s the whole month. So in summer on a sunny day, solar PV can make half the electricity the nation needs for lunch. In winter, almost nothing. From fifty percent, to five percent.
Imagine what kind of havoc this kind of energy flux can do. Not one piece of baseload capital equipment can be retired, despite the fact that half of it is randomly unprofitable depending on cloud cover. Solar PV eats away the low cost competitive advantage. Capital sits there unused, spinning on standby, while wages, interest, and other costs keep accruing. So hapless baseload suppliers charge more for the hours that they do run, making electricity more expensive.
They just need batteries with three months supply. It will be fine once Germany turns the state of Thuringia into a redox unit.
Read about it: Dark Days […]
It’s a shame Australia’s billion-dollar-ABC apparently can’t afford a Wall St Journal subscription. In long coverage of the Iranian unrest ABC prime time news tonight said the protesters “wanted the government to create jobs”. (Sounds like an Australian election) But The Wall St Journal, puts it differently. Farnaz Fassihi describes the slogans being chanted:
“We don’t want an Islamic Republic, we don’t want it, we don’t want it.”
“They are using Islam as an excuse to drive people crazy.
Breitbart:
Despite the threats of physical violence, women in the Islamic republic have used the opportunity to call out for more personal freedom and a relaxation of strict Islamic rule and sharia law:
In a different article Caroline Glick sees dismal coverage in the US too and speculates on a much bigger picture.
I’m just letting people know there is another side. Best wishes for the brave people seeking freedom.
There is an epic battle going on, with lives of workers and families at stake, and the only subheader the ABC can find is” ‘Trump should focus on America’.
8.8 out of 10 based on 108 ratings […]
Absolutely best possible reduction in global temperature because of the latest announcement of a Australian carbon mitigation surplus.
Other countries are failing to meet their targets, but we’re not only achieving them, we’re overdoing it. And this is despite our obvious handicaps: like that we have rapid population growth, are further from everywhere and anywhere* except for Antarctica, and we’re the largest coal exporter in the world.
The latest Australian Greenhouse emissions figures are out, and the Energy Minister is very excited:
Emissions are now the lowest on a per capita and GDP basis in 28 years, having fallen 34 per cent and 58 per cent respectively since 1990. Just as Australia beat its first Kyoto target by 128 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, we are on track to easily surpass our 2020 target.
The latest data indicates we will overachieve by 294 million tonnes, a 30 per cent improvement on the year prior. When one considers one million tonnes of carbon abatement is equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road for a year, this is substantial.
Substantial?- Don’t undersell this — that’s like taking 88 million cars off the road! Holy hat! That’s […]
There is a deep asymmetry in science. Don’t take it from me, take it from the former President of American Meteorological Society (AMS) and a current Director of the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Atmospheric Sciences Program. Marshall Sheppard would know, he has written over “80 peer reviewed papers” which gives him secret weather knowledge. It’s a kind of smarts that people who analyze MRI scans, design aerofoils or find minerals 3,000m underground can only aspire to.
He’s worried that people are mocking climate change, just because snap-frozen sharks are washing up on the beach, and it’s hitting minus 50C in Canada. In the last twenty years mankind has put out more than a third of all the CO2 homo sapiens has ever made since Homo Erectus lit their last fire. Despite that whole extra blanket on the planet, the last time it was this cold was, like 1917.
So to help train believers Marshall Sheppard has written a handy retort to skeptical cynics:
Step One: It’s only cold where you are:
Girls and boys, global weather is hills and valleys. You are in a valley, but the crest of the wave is coming (or something like that).
Near surface […]
New Years Eve 2017
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Wishing everyone here the best of health and happiness for the coming year.
Thanks for your help in making this possible!
Cheers to every independent soul who stands on their own two feet.
And cheers to those who can’t tonight, but would like to.
9.1 out of 10 based on 104 ratings
How much don’t we know?
Giant pairs of whirlpools travel across the ocean for months in a bizarre pair.
These large paired whirlpools, hundreds of kilometers across, travel eastward at something like 10-20cm per second. This is one pair crossing from Tasmania to NewZealand. This was there in our satellite data but “invisible” til recently. As David Evans says “I wonder what else we are observing but not seeing?”
The pair of whirlpools called Modon E travelling eastward from Tasmania to NZ.
The ocean becomes connected at two distant points as the Modon-E whirlpool pair travels from Tasmania to NZ in 2010-2011
In the mini-pool version, these rolling whirlpools are connected in a U shape under water.
Wow. PhysicsGirl shows how to make these by pushing a plate through the water, and adding food coloring. Switch on your science nerd, show the kids! (send me your photos :- ))
The two vortexes spin in opposite directions but are connected as a pair underwater. This was created by PhysicsGirl using a plate in a pool and two different food colorings.
Twin giant ocean whirlpools travel for months winding their way across oceans
Peter Dockrill reports on an interview […]
Businesses are closing, customers are cutting back spending, company bosses are all suddenly spot trading experts in the energy market, or planning to become their own electricity supplier. Meanwhile scouts from the US have arrived to poach companies who want cheaper energy (and tax cuts).
Happy New Year Australia. These are all headlines and stories in The Australian from yesterday and today.
Cut power bills or lose more jobs: ACCC chief’s warning on energy costs
Glenda Korporaal writes:
Australia’s competition regulator, Rod Sims, who has been tasked with finding ways to cut power bills, has warned that high energy costs will force more plant closures and job losses as prices continue to increase.
“Energy affordability is Australia’s largest economic challenge,” the chief executive of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission told The Weekend Australian.
“We have already seen jobs lost, investment reduced, plant closures (because of high energy prices). Unfortunately, we are going to see quite a bit more.”
Some businesses will be OK – like those that are not involved with fertilizer, paper, glass, steel, bricks, telecommunications or refrigeration:
He said the biggest pressure would be on manufacturing companies […]
UPDATE: Record breaking snow falling in upstate New York. Pennsylvania.
The airport in Erie, Pennsylvania, has had a whopping 65.1 inches of snow from this lake effect event — the highest snowfall total from any event on record in Erie. (Heavy lake effect snow is produced by cold Arctic air moving over relatively mild water temperatures in the Great Lakes.) — World News, ABC (US) News
40,000 people in Cleveland lost power overnight.
New York City may have coldest New Year’s Eve since 1960s… — ABC News
Great Lakes, via NOAA
In freak conditions, Canadians (and many people in the US too) are getting a chance to enjoy record cold for the last time before climate change makes winters unbearably mild.
Extreme cold in Toronto smashes 57-year-old temperature record
Temperatures observed at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport bottomed out at -22 C [-7.7F] this morning. The previous record for this date was set in 1960, when it hit -18.9 C. [-2F]
Tristan Hopper does some first class bragging about the cold: Mars and the North Pole are warmer than Winnipeg: A guide to how damned cold it is
Vancouver […]
To cut smog and PM 2.5 pollution the Chinese government banned coal fired heating in 28 cities in Northern China and ordered them to convert to gas. But things aren’t going too well:
Public anger boiled over after China Youth Daily published video images of children at a primary school in Hebei province’s Quyang county who were forced to sit outside in the winter sun because their classrooms were too cold.
The Ministry of Education demanded “immediate” action to provide heating after students at another primary school showed signs of frostbite, the official English-language China Daily said.
It seemed like such a good idea at the time:
A joint government and municipal action plan for the 28 cities was released as far back as last March, calling for Beijing, Tianjin, Langfang and Baoding to ban small coal- fired furnaces by the end of October, among a host of other measures for the region.
“Areas in these cities will be declared completely ‘coal free,’” the official Xinhua news agency reported on March 31.
Communism fails for the 300th time:
Despite efforts to shift the blame, responsibility for the poor policy coordination […]
Cypto currencies are killing the world and saving it at the same time
It’s the battle of the cryptos. Bitcoin is set to destroy the global climate due to exponential electricity consumption. Mining for bitcoins consumes the same electricity as 159 countries (probably more now), and by 2020, the world. I suspect we’ll be saved by reality — transactions now take hours and cost $20, $40, $50 (depends on the day) — making bitcoin not useful for buying a beer. But Michael Kile has found a competing cypto which will save the world — bound to relieve climate believers of their normal cash while offering them gold-hopey-hyper-cubits which may evaporate at a moments notice. Don’t mock it, in people with the right brain, these may briefly increase oxytocin and reduce cortisol.
So say hello to the saviour ClimateCoin. It wants to be an “exponential environmental organisation…” (because linear ones are achieving so much, and the square of zero could do so much more right?) They are not even pretending to produce anything real. Their mission is to “create a symbol for the common man to be able to participate in the struggle against climate change…” No uncommon people need apply. […]
Welcome to a clean green Australia where we gave up coal to move to diesel.
Back to the future. Diesel’s prototype engine circa 1892.
Channel Ten news tonight discusses the sudden surge in demand for diesel generators
Homes and businesses are so afraid of blackouts in Australia that some retailers are selling four times as many generators as normal. Mygenerator.com.au reports a 425% increase year on year. The strongest growth has been in South Australia, Victoria and western Sydney.
According to Channel Ten, Energy companies across Australia have sent letters to their customers to warn customers to be prepared in case there is a blackout. But one company says it’s just a precaution they are required to do every year. (Does anyone ever remember getting a letter like that?)
Once, the renewables industry just wanted “certainty” for business (as in certainty of taxpayer funded subsidies). Now “certainty” means a diesel generator.
h/t Dave B
9.8 out of 10 based on 66 ratings
This is what winning looks like.
The NY Times reports on Droves of Scientists Leaving EPA
WASHINGTON — More than 700 people have left the Environmental Protection Agency since President Trump took office, a wave of departures that puts the administration nearly a quarter of the way toward its goal of shrinking the agency to levels last seen during the Reagan administration.
This is 700 of 15,000 employees. The cuts started under Obama (“blame” Republicans) and is just the start:
The cuts deepen a downward trend at the agency that began under the Obama administration in response to Republican-led budget constraints that left the agency with about 15,000 employees at the end of his term.
…the administration is well on its way to achieving its goal of cutting 3,200 positions from the E.P.A., about 20 percent of the agency’s work force.
After skeptical scientists have been sacked, exiled and subject to RICO threats, NOW they worry about “silencing” scientists?
Many also said they saw the departures as part of a more worrisome trend of muting government scientists, cutting research budgets and making it more difficult for academic scientists […]
NEW POSTS ARE APPEARING BELOW
Oops, please. The bank balance is trending to zero, and I must pay attention. Can you can spare the equivalent of a beer, a steak, or a month of bandwidth ($100) for 2018? I, we, will be ever so grateful.
We can do this thanks to philanthropists like you. It’s a testament to the fantastic readers here that nine years, 2,863 posts and 450,000 comments later, this blog is still going and somehow a family of five just gets by. Long live the internet! Details on how to help below:
8.7 out of 10 based on 63 ratings […]
The fear is palpable
How much fun can you have living in a global experiment? In Australia, peak summer is about to hit in a post-Hazelwood-electricity-grid. There’s a suite of committee reports as summer ramps up. Everyday there’s another Grid story in the press, and a major effort going on to avoid a meltdown. Minister Josh Frydenberg announced today that “we’ve done everything possible to prevent mass blackouts”. Or as he calls it, a repeat of the South Australian Horror Show. Politicians are so afraid of another SA-style-system-black that they are throwing money: The “Snowy Hydro Battery” will be another $2 billion. Whatever. It’s other people’s money.
This is what they are afraid of:
The red bars mean “Reserve Shortfall”. The dark blue matter is “Generation”. The graph covers two years (sorry about the quality) so the two red bursts are summer 2018 and summer 2019.
SA Medium Term Forecast, Outlook, AEMO, Nov 16th 2017, South Australia.
Oddly we are headed for a critical time, but this’s the most recent graph I can find — thanks to Wattclarity — from November 16th, 2017. (Here’s an earlier version from March 2017. and from Dec 2016). Perhaps there is a newer […]
Green Utopia
We’re trying to control the weather by limiting a universal molecule intrinsic to life on Earth. What could possibly go wrong? Loopholes, for starters. Only this isn’t a loophole — it’s an obvious outcome of “carbon neutrality”. The only thing that could have stopped wood from replacing coal is if the tidal-windy-solar idea had been competitive, reliable and batteries were really cheap. Or, if we all went nuclear.
So carbon neutral means conserving black coal deposits underground and mowing down thousands of square kilometers of forests. Don’t think Greenpeace saw that coming. Carbon Loophole: Why is wood burning counted as green energy?
Fred Pearce, Yale, e360
The forests of North Carolina, Louisiana, and Mississippi — as well as those in Europe — are being destroyed to sustain a European fantasy about renewable energy…
Wood burning is booming from Britain to Romania. Much of the timber is sourced locally…
But Drax’s giant wood-burning boilers are fueled almost entirely by 6.5 million tons of wood pellets shipped annually across the Atlantic.
Drax Power, UK emits 23 million tons of “good” neutral carbon which used to be trees:
About 23 million tons […]
It only takes a moment and it does help. It’s easy to be cynical. But in the world of psychology and politics, petitions prove there really are a lot of people who feel the same way. Sometimes these are the only numbers a politician will pay attention to (though we may wish it were otherwise). — Jo
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Sign the Petition Demand Affordable Energy Now
Government renewable mandates and future targets are driving up cost astronomically on Australian families and businesses. Australia energy cost are the highest in the world. Now the government wants more restrictions due to the Paris Climate Accord. It’s time to cut energy prices and get Australia out of the Paris Climate Accord! We need more free market solutions to our energy and remove government mandates to energy!
Sign the petition below to demand affordable energy solutions now!
About the ATA
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