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Deadly: a quarter of all solar panels pose high or severe risk

Got Solar PV? Don’t let the kids play on the roof

Would you like a 240Volt shock with that?

In Australia, shonky fly-by-night installers are botching the wiring and not screwing the panels on properly. As many as a quarter of solar panels pose a high or severe “electrical safety” risk. Since there are two million households with solar panels, that’s half a million homes sitting under a live problem.

By mismanagement and delusional climate-changing schemes the government has entirely and artificially created the solar bubble. Hopefully people won’t die like they did in the Pink Batts Bubble. Back then, to stop droughts and storms and save the nation from the Global Financial Crisis, the government decided to rush out home insulation. The artificial bubble brought in poorly trained workers and four people died. Kevin Rudd (former PM) now says he wouldn’t have done it if he’d known the risks. But heck, way back in 2010 no one could have realized that artificial government industry bubbles wouldn’t mix well with 240 Volts. Sure.

Australia’s big advance seems to be to stop unnecessary deaths under roofs, and start doing them on top.

Warning of deaths over solar panel installations Simon […]

Midweek Unthreaded

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What the hell was he thinking?

Looking for a great Christmas present idea? I’ve been enjoying the new glorious full-colour book covering the work and “why’s” of a great Australian cartoonist. There is still time to buy it for a friend, or put it on your list. Cartoonists have leeway to say what no one else will, and of cartoonists, there are few like John Spooner.

John Spooner’s Guide to the 21st Century: What The Hell Was He Thinking

 

If a scholar in two hundred years time happened to be regarding the intricacies of Australian political life at the turn of the 21st Century, they would find few better guides…. than the cartoons of John Spooner. — Gordon Morrison

John Spooner’s last cartoon, 2016. The Age.

As well as being a collection of his work, a keepsake with over 250 images, Spooner explains what was going on in the editorial zone of one of Australia’s largest newspapers as it evolved over the last 40 years.

Spooner writes about how different things were in The Age in the 1970s. (It used to be a real newspaper once). He describes the gradual closing down of dissent from the party line. He worked […]

Trump trolls the UN

The UN collective junket for 25,000 people is over. In PR Bingo, all the winning phrases were launched. As usual, “it’s progress”, but “nowhere near enough”.

“Weary” climate negotiators “worked through the night”, in a “marathon” and “but the agreement fell well short…”

‘1,000 little steps’: Global climate talks end in progress but fail to address the galloping pace of climate change By Brady Dennis ,Griff Witte and Chris Mooney, The Washington Post

The agreement was non binding and has no chance of achieving the 1.5C or even the 2C goal, despite this, the crowd was happy:

“Approval of the agreement prompted a standing ovation from the delegates. “

People who think in group-formation will cheer any form of “Yes” — nevermind the numbers.

Trump is trolling the UN

The US is out of Paris (theoretically) but “in” the negotiations. It will take four years for the US to formally leave the Paris Agreement, but in the meantime, he’s technically at the table, unbridled, and free to kill sacred cows in public. The UN, no doubt, thought the four year cooling off period would work for them (with the help of 4 year US election cycles) but being […]

Christmas Carols for coal

Oh yes, sure. These are really going to catch on. The grippy totalitarian, gimme dat culture strikes again with hot lyrics like “We Wish You a Steady Climate”, “We all Yearn for Solar Panels”, and “Away in The Arctic”. They sound for all the world like they were written by a climate model. If we can’t outdo this, making them funnier and more in the spirit of Christmas, I’ll eat my keyboard.

Please do your best, the official PDF is here. (Carols against Coal backed up here.)

We wish you a Steady Climate

Tune: Trad English (We with you a merry Christmas) Lyrics: Petrina Barson

We wish you a steady climate, we wish you a steady climate, we wish you a steady climate and a happy new year.

Glad tidings we bring to you and your kin. We wish you a steady climate and a happy new year.

We just want ambitious targets, we just want ambitious targets, we just want ambitious targets so bring some out here. Glad …

We won’t go until we get some, we won’t go until […]

Climate change causes time travel? Humans turning clock back 50 million years

The Pliocene is coming to get you.

The shocking news is that the world cooled for 50 million years, then, just like that, two hundred years ago, humans stopped the cooling, and turned the global clock, or thermometer, whateveryoucallit, around. Now, unleash the disaster — by 2030 Earth is going to resemble the mid-Pliocene. So in just 11 years time, it will be like 3 million years ago. Apparently we are losing 250,000 years every year. Buy a solar panel now!

You think I’m joking:

Humans may be reversing the climate clock, by 50 million years

Our future on Earth may also be our past.

In a study published Monday (Dec. 10, 2018) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers show that humans are reversing a long-term cooling trend tracing back at least 50 million years. And it’s taken just two centuries.

By 2030, Earth’s climate is expected to resemble that of the mid-Pliocene, going back more than 3 million years in geologic time.

How bad was the Pliocene?

In the Pliocene, North and South America joined tectonically, the climate was arid, land bridges allowed animals to spread across […]

Far Southern Ocean cools. Kiss Goodbye to polar amplication around Antarctica

A map of the sea surface zone that has cooled since 1979 — from 56S – 72S . It’s a pretty big area. Click to enlarge.

For years the IPCC have said that warming would be amplified at the poles. They warned us things would heat up twice as fast, which would melt sea ice. The oceans surface in turn would switch from being reflective white to a dark absorbing deep blue. Enormous amounts of energy would then flow into the ocean instead of being reflected back out to space. The more it warmed, the more it would warm — unleashing a devastating feedback loop.

As the Arctic warmed, the merchants of doom were keen to tell us how how right they were and this was evidence of man-made warming. But in the Antarctic exactly the opposite trend was taking place.

Mike Jonas has done what the IPCC should have been doing — investigating the trends in the Sea Surface Temperature in the polar latitudes with satellite records. In the latitude band from 56 to 72 degrees south the oceans have cooled, not warmed. The models don’t even have the sign of the trend correct. At the latitudes where […]

Winning: Huge UN Climate junket only attracts four leaders

2018, Poland: When it comes to national leaders, nobody turned up

The second week of the UNFCCC conferences was always the one where the politicians swarm. But this time the only leaders are the ones from tiny pacific atolls who come in hope of increasing their GDP, one grant at a time.

Ministers – but few leaders – arrive for crucial part of climate talks Nina Chestney, Agnieszka BarteczkoKATOWICE, Poland (Reuters) – Brexit turmoil and French riots have kept many government chiefs away from the final and crucial week of U.N. climate talks, with only four national leaders present on Tuesday.

Out of around 134 national representatives delivering speeches over the next two days, only four are heads of government: the president of Kiribati and the prime ministers of Samoa, the Cook Islands and Tuvalu – nations among the most vulnerable to climate change.

No Leonard Di Caprio either.

If there was real money and power going down here, or leaders thought voters loved climate action, they would be in Poland.

Looks like winning.

h/t Pat

PS: Good luck to Great Britain. In the long run, will it be a real hairdryer, or EU approved one?

PPS: Good […]

Santa says renewables “push down prices”. Sydney Morning Herald believes him.

It’s Santa’s happy hour in electricity land

Finally, No really, renewables are so cheap we can switch to them and change the global climate for free.

This is a new study by the kind of “independent” group that is totally dependent on Big Gov handouts. It compares Australian prices to other obscenely expensive countries and finds that “renewables push down prices”. Compared to what? Not compared to nations with cheap electricity. And not compared to most of the last thirty years in Australia before we added all the unreliable gear.

The tricky graphs clearly baffled Peter Hannam. If only he were a journalist, he could have asked some hard hitting questions and shown this study to be the concocted vaporous PR exercise that it was.

‘No trilemma’: Study finds increased renewables push down power prices

Peter Hannam, Sydney Morning Herald

Renewable energy drives down wholesale power prices well in excess of subsidy costs and a further expansion of wind and solar would likely push them lower still, a study of Australian and European markets shows.

If renewables actually reduced average prices, this would be a first. Around the world, the more intermittent generators you have, the […]

France: the streets belong to the Butchers and Bakers while the UN argues over a meanginless word

The timing is a disaster for the UN annual junket. The Yellow Vest protest has also spread to the UK now. Politicians must be tip toeing in Katowice, Poland. The Western leaders can hardly offer prime symbolic gifts for carbon action for fear of triggering similar protests at home.

As the protests grew week after week, the “crumbs” thrown to appease the crowd only made them more resolute. The people are realizing how much power they have. The normal veneer of civility holds that the police and laws keep the peace, but the truth is that if the people feel exploited and act together, any free nation can grind to halt in days.

In hours, French President Macron is set to speak to try to defuse the anger.

Craig Rucker from CFACT took time off from the UN climate folly and walked the streets with the Gilets Jaunes. This is so interesting because he is not the usual journalist observer, and he is there, not opining from afar. He says the people have taken over the streets, but the movement is being smeared as violent, though the rioting is due to radical leftists not the core protesters of the movement. […]

Dr Shearman diagnoses men who walked on moon, Nobel Prize winners, as “Delusional”

Feel the hate

Climate deniers are the delusional lizard-brain unworthy people who can’t see what preschoolers can. They threaten human survival. So sayth Dr David Shearman, founder of Doctors for the Environment Australia, a place where the scientific method and good manners go to die.

This is an Opinion piece the 3 million dollars a day ABC thought was “useful”.

Dr Shearman from Adelaide has the rare genius ability to diagnose hundreds of thousands of people with a mental disorder without even meeting them. Better than a telepathic MRI machine. Indeed he’s so smart, he can predict the climate, and with 100% certainty, so I say — cancel the satellites, who needs em? Why bother to measure upper tropospheric moisture when you could “just ask Dave”?

I apologize forthwith to the rest of the planet: all that money you have wasted installing temperature sensors, launching radiosondes and argo buoys. All along, Australia had David Shearman, SuperGod. He’s probably cured cancer. I can’t wait for him to tell us.

Today Dr David Shearman has diagnosed, and publicly, the mental state of Buzz Aldrin, Charles Duke and Harrison Schmitt, 3 of the 4 men alive who have walked on the moon. […]

The vast social and political earthquake that started in France — first mass uprising against eco-elitism

The leaderless Yellow Vest — #GiletJaunes protest against living costs is escalating in France and spreading around the world to Belgium, The Netherlands, Serbia, even Basra and Bagdad in Iraq. A Yellow Vest protest is planned for Saturday in Vancouver. The workers are fed-up with being ignored and milked for causes they don’t support, fed up with being shamed for driving cars or for voicing their concerns. On twitter both the left and right sides of politics are trying to claim ownership (though most of the left are silent, recognizing that this is driven from the provincial and rural population and aims right at their sacred cows). Oil refineries are being blockaded. Ambulance workers and firefighters have joined in. Students have aslo started to protest about education changes — blocking over 100 high schools. So far four people have been killed and 133 people injured. Shops and hotels have lost 20% or more of their revenue. They’re flipping over Porsches. Macron’s popularity is down to 23%. The protesters are now starting to cite other issues like the UN migration pact which they don’t want Macron to sign.

Even after the violence and damage over 70% of people surveyed in France […]

Now even Green IEA warns Australia of the threat of “avalanche” of renewables

Even heads of green institutes are telling Australians not to go too green too fast

The IEA is the kind of organization that runs global summits selling carbon capture. That’s a process so fantastically inefficient it wastes 40% of the electricity a coal plant makes while it stuffs a useful fertilizer in a hole in the ground. With that context, I note that even the IEA is warning Australia not to get too carried away in its Speeding Green Transition. Presumably Faith Birol, IEA head, is worried The Renewable Crash Test Dummies might actually crash.

First, the other news today of how fast we are adding unreliable infrastructure:

About 3400MW of solar, more than the capacity of Victoria’s twin Loy Yang coal-fired plants, is expected to be installed this year in Australia with a further 4300MW next year, according to the Clean Energy Regulator.

— Perry Williams, The Australian

To put that in perspective, our total grid is 56,000MW. We only had 4,000MW or so of unreliable power in December last year and were already struggling. Now we have 6,000MW and look like adding another 3,400MW of solar — in the next year. And […]

Paul Krugman sticks pins into the Climate Denier VooDoo Doll

Excuse #101: Denying Climate Change is an Evil Depraved Sin so we don’t need to bother coming up with reasons anymore

Why is Krugman sticking pins into Denier Dolls? It makes him feel better.

He said it himself — if people disagree about climate change in good faith, it means climate believers need to be more persuasive. But if they are just evil, there’s nothing you can do. This is the end-days desperation. And after thirty years of propaganda, there’s nothing left in their communication toolbox. The awful truth is that in the muted, lopsided debate, they had all the money and institutions but they still lost.

When you can’t convince people with polite discussion all that’s left is to agree with your opponents or demonize them. So that’s what Krugman does. Change the goal-posts — he’s saying these evil people are not even worth talking to.

Humans are incredibly good at rationalizing stupid things. Pace Paul Krugman, who wrote this in the NY times last week. This week, the Sydney Morning Herald became the copy-paste late repeater of junk analysis and naked smear by a failed economist. Bravo.

Denying climate change is evil Climate denial is rooted in […]

Rampant solar, wind growth: Australia increases unreliable energy by 50% in 2018. Wow.

The Crash Test Dummy accelerates. Australia is steaming ahead in the forced transition to unreliable energy

A lot of the reason for the growth in renewables is the Renewable Energy Target (the RET). Renewables must supply 16% of our electricity in 2018, and even more in 2019.

Strap yourself in. Buried in the AEMO summer readiness plan was the news that our intermittent renewables capacity is forecast to increase by fully 50% this year. All the renewables we had accrued in the two decade “transition” til December last year, we’ve added half again. We are already pushing the bounds of stability and setting price records, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. We are escalating the rate of change.

In toto, we have 56GW of generation of all sorts in the national grid on the east coast. The wind and solar component increased from 4GW at the end of 2017 to over 6GW by the end of 2018. But it doesn’t take much intermittent power to change the way the whole grid works.

Things are so fragile that a few weeks ago, when 240MW of reliable supply was suddenly not available for this summer, the AEMO had to issue a […]

Pied Piper 2018: Australian students skip school for mass protest

By David Evans

The BBC in Sydney reports:

Thousands of Australian school students have urged greater action on climate change in protests across the country.

The students skipped school on Friday to highlight what they say are inadequate climate policies by the Australian government.

On Monday, Australian PM Scott Morrison rebuked their plans for “activism” during school hours and insisted his government was tackling climate change. …

The idea started with Milou Albrect and Harriet O’Shea Carre, both 14, in the state of Victoria. … Milou said: “We want our government to acknowledge publicly that climate change is a crisis. Stop digging coal, stop making new coal mines, switch to renewable energy.” …

Jean Hinchcliffe, 14, saw the idea to protest grow in Victoria and decided to start one in her home city, Sydney. … “Everyone, all young people, we can see that climate change is a real issue and we’re completely sick of politicians’ inaction.

Like with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, what would change their minds? How can we convince them they have been misled?

When eventually the carbon dioxide theory is proved to be quite wrong, what will this generation think? Will they […]

Jo talks destruction at the GWPF

Having as much fun as possible with the Australian Grid story. Josh, the trooper, was there last night busy unleashing his pen!

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: We’re All Going To Die From Climate Change

By David Evans

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an up and coming young politician in the Democratic Party in the United States:

On June 26, 2018, Ocasio-Cortez won the Democratic primary in New York’s 14th congressional district covering parts of the Bronx and Queens in New York City, defeating the incumbent Congressman, Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley, in what was described as the biggest upset victory in the 2018 midterm election primaries. Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

When she takes office on January 3, 2019, at 29, Ocasio-Cortez will be the youngest woman to serve in Congress in the history of the United States.

Many say she is the progressive future of the USA — socialist, young, brown, female, outspoken, but not overly bright.

Nicknamed “occasional-cortex” by some for her comments on economics, she is influential and receives a lot of attention. From a recent article on her climate change pronouncements:

Newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is doubling down on her first week’s agenda in Congress, calling on her colleagues in the House of Representatives to pass a “Green New Deal” because “people are going to die” from climate change.

Ocasio-Cortez cited a report released […]

Update On Joanne’s Tour

By David Evans

Joanne’s talk at the European Institute for Climate and Energy’s (German acronym EIKE) 12th International Climate and Energy Conference in Munich was well-received, she reports. It was live streamed, but I cannot find it on YouTube yet. (If anyone finds it, or something else interesting at the conference, email me and I’ll post it.) Here’s a description beforehand of the conference in English.

She met with lots of the organizers and speakers, and — paraphrasing — reports that they are aware of us and like us here in Australia, but kind of forget about us, though they are always impressed when they notice us.

Apparently the German audience was very interested to hear that Australia is making a contest of it with Germany, into who can plunge fastest and furthest into climate economic-suicide. There seems to be some notion that the Germans are doing it partly out of a sense of guilt from WWII, incredibly enough — surely it’s past time to dispel that sense? Also out of a sense of duty, they say. Our excuse? Just general virtue signaling and feeling wealthy on the part of our opinion-forming elites I suppose, coupled with a complete […]

EIKE climate and energy conference. Live

Watch it live. 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nodcXr1erTc

The 12th EIKE Climate and Energy Conference

Program

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