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Bill Shorten wants us to give up cheap electricity because it’s bad for our health. History will show he’s the guy from the ’70s telling us to give up eggs for thirty years for no good reason at all.
Renewables are the margarine of electricity grids: artificial goods propped up by good intentions. They both fail at high temperatures and were Generally Recognised As Safe — when no one had done any studies. But trans-fats causes heart attacks, and artificial transitions cause poverty.
Eating vegetable oils with no cholesterol sounded good at the time. Just like “free wind” and “free solar” sounds like a free lunch, but turns out to make the whole system chaotically inefficient and horribly expensive. We pay less for fuel but more for capital, wages, infrastructure, stabilizers, and storage.
Free wind and solar are the fake diet foods of the 21st century.
This is Bill trying to explain why we don’t need to mention any numbers.
Andrew Burrell, The Australian
Having repeatedly dodged questions about the actual cost of Labor’s grand environmental plan, the Opposition Leader yesterday dismissed all the fuss, likening his emissions-reduction policy to stopping “chubby” people eating burgers.
“You know what, mate, you are a great athlete,” he said to the radio show’s morning host.
“But if you had a friend who was perhaps on the large side, the chubby side, and they had 10 Big Macs a day … there’s a cost to not eating the Big Macs. But in the long term it’s an investment isn’t it? ”
I predict he dumps this analogy like a radioactive potato.
Commenters at The Australian:
Bills analogy is pretty spot on.
If all Australians give up Big Macs – MacDonalds goes out of business
If all Australians adopt Bills policies – Australia goes out.of business
9.3 out of 10 based on 85 ratings
 Jo Nova, speaking, keynote. The 2019 Friedman conference is on, bigger than ever from May 23rd – 27th. I had a fabulous time last year. This year there is a big international combination with people from Brexit and the US teaparty as well. See the Speakers list. I’ll be updating the latest How To in Grid Destruction as the world watches The Crash Test Dummy Downunder!
To get a 10% discount off tickets use the code: NOVA2019
Tickets are available just for cocktail parties, gala balls and wine and wildlife tours too.
Thanks to those who do, as I get a commission from those sales. Student scholarship applicants can mention they were referred by me in the “Additional Comments” section, thanks.
Website | Facebook Page | Facebook Event | Twitter Page |
9.7 out of 10 based on 29 ratings
The Climate Council (the rebadged Climate Commission) has launched a 60 page cherry picked list of one-eyed, self serving conspiracies and half-truths subtly called CLIMATE CUTS, COVER-UPS AND CENSORSHIP.
The headlines:
“Federal government accused of ‘false’ climate claims” [Newscorp]
It doesn’t matter how much money Australian’s pour into the climate vat, it’s never enough
When is $5 billion a year a lack of anything?
The council released a new report this morning saying the government’s lack of action on climate change was a defining feature of its 10 years in power as it fights to extend its tenure at the May 18 election.
The Coalition Government hasn’t lacked action, it’s done far too much
Australians are adding more renewables per watt per person than any other nation. We now have targets that are possibly the severest in the world given that we are a small distant population in sparsely populated country with one of the largest per capita immigration intakes in the west. Making it worse, we are one of the only countries on Earth that looks like reaching our target. Our major export earner is coal, our major source of power is coal, and we are an industrial mining quarry far from most markets. The only continent that could justify a higher per capita emissions than Australians are the thousand permanent residents of Antarctica.
If the Climate Council were serious about reducing emissions they’d endorse the Coalition all the way — the Labor Party has grand ambitions, but they pick the most socialist, and thus least effective and most expensive ways to achieve anything. The Gillard Govt managed to spend $5,000 per ton of carbon saved. Tony Abbott’s plan cost just $14 per ton. Which begs the question, are the Climate Council concerned about carbon emissions or are they just an industry lobby group for the $25 billion Australian renewables sector?
Australias carbon emissions per capita are still falling
Australian total emissions are rising, but not as fast as our population is. The Climate Council could campaign to reduce immigration which would be a large simple step to reduce the national emissions.
Check the latest inventory of Australian emissions — per capita.
 Dept of Environment and Energy, 2018 Report. Censorship? Seriously?
Millions of dollars have been spent advertising an imaginary climate crisis and yet the Climate Council want us to believe they are censored? Their great “censorship timeline” is full of non-event fillers like the election of prime ministers. As if the election of Abbott and Turnbull somehow censors the climate petals. Things are so banal that bringing a lump of coal to parliament apparently rates as an act of censorship — as if it were some kind of kryptonite that expelled all the little solar and wind voices. They’re so desperate to think up excuses, they list the government offering $4m to fund the Bjorn Lomborg “consensus centre” as act of censorship. Did they forget that all our academic institutions ran like rats at the thought, terrified that some trolls would call them a climate denier? Who exactly is censored when even four million dollars is not enough to overcome that fear? The list is a parody.
The real censors are those who use namecalling and threats to sack, evict, blackball, terminate, punish, vilify and generally be intimidating to people, not to mention blowing up their kids (as a joke) or throwing a RICO investigation at them. If the Climate Council want to talk censorship, bring it on. Peter Ridd was sacked in part for writing the banal “for your amusement” to a colleague. Then he was ordered not to tell the world, or even his wife, how his university was silencing him. Skeptics are even subject to censorship of their censorship.
Wait for it:
The Federal Government has repeatedly released greenhouse gas emissions data when it is unlikely to draw significant attention, for instance, during football finals or at Christmas.
That would make it exactly like the revamped Emissions Trading Scheme that Australians voted against twice that was brought in quietly under the name “Safeguards Mechanism” by Malcolm Turnbull on the last sitting day before Christmas. Did the Climate Council protest that, or is deception fine if it’s “for the sake of the renewables industry?”.
10 out of 10 based on 52 ratings
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10 out of 10 based on 14 ratings
Imagine there was a $300 billion dollar industry that depended almost entirely on a pagan belief that cars cause storms, and coal caused floods. Imagine this industry produced nothing that consumers would voluntarily buy unless the government banned cheaper options. Now imagine how much money these investors might be willing to donate to lobby groups, Superpacs, and activists in koala suits. Purely hypothetically…
Global clean energy investment[1] totaled $332.1 billion in 2018, down 8% on 2017. Last year was the fifth in a row in which investment exceeded the $300 billion mark, according to authoritative figures from research company BloombergNEF (BNEF).
 Global investment in renewable energy, 2018 | Bloomberg. With 100% of their income at risk of evaporating if the voters pick the wrong person, or if public faith in the pagan religion starts to wane, these investors have a reason to create a PR campaign that called anyone who questioned the faith an idiot denier, funded by fossil fuels, out of touch, old, white and unfashionable.
Fossil Fuels, on the other hand, wouldn’t need to worry. They’ve tried the solar and wind research already. They know how uncompetitive they are and how people will be using coal and oil for decades to come.
Imagine if every time someone said “fossil fuel funded”, someone else said, “or a target of a $300 billion investment industry 100% dependent on government rules and a pagan belief?”
Keep reading →
9.2 out of 10 based on 80 ratings
World made 0.000001°C cooler, but house made 600°C hotter
Remember The Precautionary Principle: something about “no House-B”?
Melanie Sandford was sitting in bed on a rainy Sunday morning listening to a podcast about enlightenment when she heard a “huge bang”.
“A nanosecond later, there was an orange flash that ripped down past the bedroom door,” Ms Sandford said.
All signs point to the lithium ion battery of Ms Sandford’s beloved eZee Sprint e-bike as the culprit.
The firefighters arrived promptly – “I’m told it was four minutes but it felt like three hours” – but it was too late to save her home.
Another hidden battery cost?
GlowWorm Bicycles said eZee has recalled some faulty batteries, but lists these Handy safety tips for all e-bike batteries: Don’t charge them unsupervised, don’t overcharge, undercharge, charge near flammable things or charge overnight, and have a fire safety plan.
B A T T E R Y S A F E T Y
Keep reading →
8.9 out of 10 based on 100 ratings
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9.1 out of 10 based on 17 ratings
Is this the peak of Australia’s renewables bubble?
A Crash Test Dummy Update: Last year our renewables capacity grew 50%. We have more renewables per capita than any other country on Earth. Investors spent $25 billion in just one year, and that doesn’t include the cost of the rampant uptake of home solar PV or presumably, all the subsidies. Our 56 gigawatt grid now includes six gigawatts of unreliables. But Lordy, lo, look what’s coming in the next three years in the table after this graph … potentially another 30GW. How many billion will we burn on this pyre?
In the graph below, note how dependent investors are on government rules and largess. Kevin Rudd started at the end of 2007. Abbott won in mid 2013. Turnbull took over in mid 2016. Investors came and went, not with demand, but with politics.
The headline: “Renewable energy investment looks to be going from boom to bust as prices collapse”
by Stephen Letts, ABC News
 Figure 1: RHS Renewables investment (the dotted line). LHS Energy generation by Wind and Solar (columns).
Uh-oh. Look at what’s coming:
How big is the oversupply that’s on the way? Check out the ominous table hidden at the bottom of the ABC story.
Extra committed and contracted renewables by 2020-21 across NEM (MWh)
|
2018 |
2020/21 |
2021 vs 2018 |
| Hydro |
16,704 |
15,000 |
-1,704 |
| Rooftop solar |
8,148 |
13,419 |
5,271 |
| Solar farm |
2,122 |
14,486 |
12,364 |
| Wind farm |
14,164 |
28,869 |
14,705 |
| Net total extra supply |
|
|
30,636 |
Source: Green Energy Markets
But the bust is on the horizon the ABC warns:
Apparently investors have noticed a problem coming.
- Long-term power purchasing agreements for large scale renewable generators have fallen 30pc in the past 5 years
- AEMO has slashed the prices paid to many more remote renewable generators
- A wave of new projects, equivalent to two Hazelwood plants, will start in the next two years leading to a large oversupply imbalance
Would you like propaganda with that?
Now with the first hints that our latest wild bubble might bust, the ABC is not warning us about rushing in too fast, too soon, instead they’re running a soft ad campaign to prop up this pointless industry longer. Author Stephen Letts interviews only Green industry hacks and phrases it all as a “problem” to be solved. It’s almost like he works for the industry?
Having burst out of an investment black hole at warp speed, the renewable energy sector’s massive building boom looks likely to hit an uncompromising wall.
The reckoning is likely to be sooner rather later, as a nasty confluence of factors keeps mounting up.
To ABC staff, this is a “a nasty confluence of factors”. To skeptics it’s a dose of reality.
The AEMO may have cruelly “slashed prices” but it’s just as true to say they’ve been overpaying remote generators for electricity that was being lost in long transmission lines.
As for new projects being “equivalent to two Hazelwoods” — hello DisneyWatts! 4,000MW of random, asynchronous, unreliable generation is not remotely equivalent to 16 centralized turbines honed through decades of engineering efficiency to run at 90% capacity non stop for 50 years. On any given day the unreliables may only be producing 100MW, not 4,000. We need a 98% back up. What do you call the spare car you can only rely on to drive at 2% of the speed limit? Useless.
Holy Cash Cow, this is so unfair!
Coal is still cheap
This might be the only time the ABC have admitted how cheap coal power is — in the middle of a story about why renewables need more help.
Clearly a problem for utility-scale renewable growth at these prices is that old, debt-free coal-fired plants operate profitably at $40/MWh.
What a problem eh? Cheap, debt free, competition that works when we need it!
They [coal plants] also keep churning away when the wind stops blowing and the sun stops shining, a trait retailers are prepared to pay for.
As they say in the industry — “thermal plants burn fossil fuels, renewables burn cash” …
(Poor baby renewables!)
The answer naturally is to shut coal down. So the ABC interviews a Green Industry spokesperson who offers the obvious solution:
“We can have lower power prices, but for them to be sustained we need a policy framework in place that allows us to steadily build replacement capacity in advance of coal plants retiring.”
— Green Energy’s Tristan Edis
Translated: my industry wants guaranteed money from the government and rules that get rid of competition.
Yes, don’t we all?
Notice he dangles the classic sales line “We can have lower power prices”. Sure. We could legislate to make electricity 10c per kilowatt hour. But the money’s got to come from somewhere or the lights go off. Is that through tax? Connection fees? Energy Levy payments to Tesla?
If the ABC served the other half of the nation they’d interview an electrical engineer or two, or maybe a dumb blogger who’d tell them the answer was to let the free market work and get the government out of the way.
The article also somberly discussed fantasy figures like costs of $55 per MW hour. As readers here know, they are not worth analyzing because they are wholly cherry picked delusions based on bids from generators that don’t have to pay for their wildly long transmission lines, their back up, their unreliable product, or the inefficiency burden they dump on the whole system, or the houses they burn down. And in Australia, they get the RET subsidy, and often low cost loans, as well as access to a 1 billion dollar free advertising agency called the ABC too.
The only numbers that count — the number of states with lots of solar and wind and cheap electricity. That’s Zero.
h/t Peter Fitzroy and Dave B.
9.6 out of 10 based on 93 ratings
Behold, the Victorian Govt are proving yet again that Soviet-style electricity management can crush lives, hopes and wallets. The free market is never as cruel and destructive as one run on “good intentions” or the desire to win virtue-signaling fashion parades.
The invisible hand of the market was replaced with Daniel Andrews whimsy. This might work if he was smarter than the collective brains of 5 million people. Apparently Andrews assumes serfs people don’t understand the true value of solar panels and the benefits of creating jobs in China, so he has mandated glorious subsidies in the hope of getting nice weather one day, and the desperate punters took them up in droves. The industry boomed. But now they’ve temporarily halted the free gifts, orders have disappeared as the free market returns to accurately valuing solar installations. So the workers are being sacked. The rebates will come back again in July, so business-owners somehow need to get a different income stream for two months, survive the turmoil, and then the golden gravy will run again.
As per usual ABC policy, no free market voices were harmed, interviewed or asked to provide comment:
An award-winning Victorian solar company has laid off just over half of its staff after the Victorian Government placed a temporary freeze on a solar panel rebate program.
The $1.3 billion solar homes package started last August and has been so popular that the rebates for this financial year have been fully subscribed.
Since the freeze on new applications came into effect, the work for solar installation companies like Sky Energy Systems of Melbourne has dried up.
The business’s directors, Sam Kent and Ross Howard, said they had no choice but to cut staff when customers started cancelling their orders.
Twenty-five people have been told to finish up work on Friday and another 15 staff could go in two weeks’ time.
Live by government handouts, die by government handouts. Oh the pain:
“Having no sales is like having no oxygen. You can’t breathe. There’s no business so it’s devastating,” Mr Kent said.
What’s a company that “follows a rebate” — another labor voter
As long as businesses are allowed to earn a living entirely dependent on government largess they are a form of “public servant”, a wing of big government with all the entitlement that doesn’t deserve and none of the obligations:
No sales, no business
A petition has been launched on the change.org website calling on the Victorian Government to reconsider the temporary rebate halt.
“Because consumers know that the rebate will return on July 1, they will be holding off making a purchase,” the petition said.
“For these small businesses to survive 15 weeks without sales is unlikely.”
Mr Kent said many other solar companies are based interstate, and use subcontractors in Victoria.
“They’ll disappear interstate until the rebates comeback. They are companies that are basically rebate-based so they follow the rebates,” Mr Kent said.
Making money in Australia increasingly means being a better lobbyist for government masters, not being a better producer of things Australians need or want.
h/t Dave B
9.8 out of 10 based on 90 ratings
A major new “nail in coffin” study shows the more renewables we force onto the market the more expensive electricity gets.
Everyday someone tells us renewables are cheap, but these estimates come from flawed “LCOE” method (at best) supposedly the lifetime cost, but without many indirect costs. Granted, it’s hard to figure out what the bill for renewable energy is. But what really matters to every man and his dog, is the cost effect on the whole system, not a cherry-slice comparison of a few sunny-windy hours a day which doesn’t take into account the effect that renewable energy has on the rest of the 24/7 electricity grid.
Greenstone, McDowell and Nath have analysed all 29 states in the US where there are laws demanding a certain percentage of energy be renewable. On average a 4% increase in renewables led to a price rise of 17% and the impost was wildly high compared to any remotely sensible cost-benefit analysis. Renewables are the car insurance bill that costs 3 times as much as your car. Any serious environmentalist would hate renewables.
Michael Shellenberger, Forbes
The cost to consumers has been staggeringly high: “All in all, seven years after passage, consumers in the 29 states had paid $125.2 billion more for electricity than they would have in the absence of the policy,” they write.
Greenstone et al analyze the RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standards) in the US. This is like the RET in Australia and the Renewables Obligation in the UK. Like any market destroying rule, it ensures the system finds a more expensive way to supply electricity.
The low estimates ignore the cost of building and running a gas station that just sits around a a spare wheel, randomly earning no money some of the time. They ignore the vast land area wasted and the long transmission lines. One study by Edison Electric in 2011 estimated that 65% of all planned transmission lines in the US were primarily going to be built for renewables. In the US that’s another $26 billion cost tossed on the invisible renewables BBQ.*
Greenstone et al look at retail prices state by state in the US as these RPS requirements came into action and followed them for the next 7 years.
They found three things: A 4% increase in renewables led to a price rise of 17% and the impost was wildly high compared to any remotely sensible cost-benefit analysis
1. Electricity prices rise after the RPS rules come in. After 7 years the prices are 11% higher, and after 12 years they are 17% higher.
2. The addition of renewables does reduce the “carbon intensity” of the system. But the cost is exorbitant. Across the 29 states and after 7 years it costs somewhere from $130 – $460 per ton of CO2 “saved”. In Obama’s reign the social cost of carbon was wildly overestimated at around $50 per ton, so the intermittent energy generators are orders of magnitude more expensive than doing nothing. Compare that to the Australian Dutch auction process called Direct Action (by Tony Abbott) which reduced carbon for under $14 a ton. The relentless push to use wind and solar to save the world looks like a late-night infomercial for the renewables industry. Even if the IPCC were right, and if there was a global carbon market to reduce CO2, no one would want to use renewable energy to do it. It’s too expensive.
3. That many of the states already had renewables (I’m guessing hydro) so the targets were already partly met. So the net increases in renewables were smaller than the gross target suggests. These targets were very small, averaging around 2% extra renewables after 7 years and 4% by 12 years.
Clearly, it doesn’t take many intermittent renewables to wreck the grid.
 Renewable total and net requirements per state, USA. Plus the Australian RET target (red). | Click to enlarge. To put this in perspective, the RET target in Australia in 2020 will be 23.5% of Australia’s electricity generation.
That would be the gross figure, not the net gain.
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9.5 out of 10 based on 65 ratings
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8.6 out of 10 based on 23 ratings
More fake news: Miners are only switching to solar because they can’t get access to cheap coal fired power.
A better headline would be: Renewable targets make electricity so expensive miners are forced to switch to renewables.
The money quote:
Emily Alford is a principal consultant at Oakley Greenwood … [she] told The Weekend Australian that solar generation cost about $200 a megawatt hour five years ago, and had dropped to about $70-$80 now.
Compare that to 53 year old Hazelwood coal power which was selling electricity for $30/MWh in it’s last month of operation. When brown coal stations set the price in Victoria they were winning bids at prices like $13/MWh.The cheapest electricity in the world comes from 30 year old brown coal plants.
The $70-$80 estimate is artificially low. Unreliable power makes the other baseload generators more expensive, adding $30/MWh to gas generators for example. Because the back up generators have to be there, not earning money while solar feeds in, they have to charge more to recoup those costs in a shorter working period. Doh. So add that cost to solar, not the gas.
Compare the real costs and weep:
I’ll repost those graphs from a year ago from the AER report on the closure of Hazelwood:. These are the price setting winning bids by different fuel types. It’s a better way to understand the real cost differences.
The following graphs show the percentage of time power stations located in various regions of the NEM were involved in setting the 5 minute dispatch price in Victoria (vertical bars) and the average price of the offered capacity which was involved in setting that price. –– Appendix C, AER, 2018
Brown coal:
Bayswater coal plant used to be able to win bids at $40/MWh (or it used to have to bid that low to win). Thanks to the RET (Renewable Energy Target) destroying some of the cheapest power, that’s not happening any more. Costs are up and competition is down.
One gas plant. Not cheap to start. Not cheap to finish.
As I keep saying: Solar power reduces fuel costs, but makes capital, staff, maintenance, and land costs more expensive.
Solar looks “cheap” when compared to expensive alternatives. Nobody mention coal:
Ms Alford says an initial push to justify installation of renewable energy generation on the grounds of pure carbon abatement, as part of the miner’s social licence to operate, has been overtaken by the cost benefits of adding solar or wind generation to the mix.
“We’ve got to a stage now with renewables where the commercial benefit outweighs any social licence consideration. Renewable generation is becoming a commercial no-brainer from a cost and economic point of view,” Ms Alford said. “If you’re burning diesel you’re burning cash, and on the east coast if you’re burning gas you’re burning cash.”
Solar power is only a “no brainer” economic choice because the electricity market has been brainlessly wrecked by the Renewable Energy Target and a host of other subsidies.
All journalists need to be reminded of the invisible elephant in the room. As long as they are not comparing a generator to brown coal, they aren’t looking at all the options.
9.6 out of 10 based on 66 ratings
Is this the tipping point for David Attenborough’s reputation?
Will anyone see David Attenborough the same way again after the Netflix debacle that is “Climate Change: The Facts”?
The Attenborough subspecies may present itself as an impartial scientist but under scrutiny this is revealed to be a chameleon-like illusion that hides the real intent, which appears to be to garner prizes, funds, fame and better dinner invitations. Evolutionarily, Attenborough may be seeking to increase his own status (and resources for kin) at the expense of taxpayers, donors and hapless walruses.
 David Attenborough, homo propagandis, wears the guise of environmental scientist while spruiking pagan fears, cherry picked evidence and lying by omission. The facts turn out to be half-truths that fit the pattern of exploiting primal fears to create deep psychological spin. He says “we don’t know” but then shows the opposite — associating every kind of bad weather, fire, and storm with man-made emissions even though data shows that these were worse in the past or are caused by other factors. In probably his lowest career point, rumours are spreading that not only did thriving polar bears cause the falling walrus episode rather than coal power stations, but his crew may have killed walruses unwittingly by being there. Paul Homewood argues the team itself scared the walruses by flying drones near the herd and spooking them, or blocking their exit path. Attenborough’s team deny this, but the “trust me” answer doesn’t sit well with past behavior. They didn’t mention the presence of polar bears in the documentary, nor past walrus-on-the-rocks deaths, they blamed it all (improbably) on a lack of sea ice — as if walruses climb high cliffs to escape the open sea, and they won’t say when and where it was filmed. In short, there’s no trust left in the Attenborough-trust-bucket.
Let’s pause for one minute’s silence to mark the death of a once great reputation.
For the record: Fires were worse, are falling, are caused by fuel loads, not temperatures, biofuels kill people and destroy forests. Storms have been ghastly forever, and don’t correlate with CO2. The Great Barrier Reef survived thousands of years of warmer weather, reseeds itself, have genes to cope with CO2 and warmth. Most of the reef wasn’t bleached, and it recovers fast, is adaptable, and fish cope with daily pH swings that are larger than anything humans might cause.
h/t the GWPF who have been so important in revealing this sociological phenomena. And The Australian.
[World Tribune] There was an incident in Russia in 2017 where polar bears were reported to have spooked a herd of walruses, causing them to fall off a cliff to their deaths. Crockford believes this is the event that was filmed by the documentary crew.
“The film crew have steadfastly refused to reveal precisely where and when they filmed the walrus deaths shown in this film in relation to the walrus deaths initiated by polar bears reported by The Siberian Times in the fall of 2017,” Crockford said.
David Rose, The Daily Mail, UK
The film’s message was so bleak it could have been made by Extinction Rebellion, the eco-anarchist protest group which has brought Central London to a standstill.
Watching it did fill me with horror, but not at the threat from global warming. It was at the way Sir David and the BBC presented a picture of the near future which was so much more frightening than is justified.
…it is a grotesque travesty of the truth to claim that ‘nothing’ has been done: for example, since 1990, UK emissions have fallen by 43 per cent, according to the Government’s Committee on Climate Change. Not only that, Government statistics say 56 per cent of our electricity came from low carbon sources in 2018, our last coal-fired power station will close in six years and the Government has pledged to ‘decarbonise’ electricity by 2030.
Above all, the Climate Change Act requires Britain to reduce its 1990 carbon emissions by no less than 80 per cent by the year 2050…
Rose explains how (among other propaganda) the documentary claims that Orangutans were being evicted from forests by land clearing to make soap and biscuits. Attenborough somehow forgets to mention that Borneo’s forests are also being razed to make palm oil as a biofuel for cars. What’s killing orangutans is not climate change but the climate change industry.
Ross Clark, The Spectator
What I won’t let go is this growing practice … of trying to link every adverse weather event to climate change. In this, Attenborough’s documentary was a masterclass.
If you are going to present a film called Climate Change: the Facts the very least you should be doing is, well, presenting the facts. Well here they are, in two of the areas which made up such a hefty part of the film: wildfires and hurricanes. Are wildfires increasing?
Michael Mann says wildfires are tripling. Clark points out the US EPA data says “not”:
…the US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) [data] shows no upwards trend in the number of wildfires in the US over the past 30 years. Take another way of measuring wildfires – the acreage burned, in figure two of this data – and there is an upwards trend since the 1980s.
It is little wonder that terrified kids are skipping school to protest against climate change. Never mind climate change denial, a worse problem is the constant exaggeration of the subject.
Read more at both The Daily Mail and The Spectator.
Image MikeDixson
9.6 out of 10 based on 127 ratings
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8.7 out of 10 based on 26 ratings
Remember when climate modelers told us fossil fuels cause longer snow seasons?
No neither do I.
 Albany, snowboarding, earliest snow, WA, 2019. | ABC Facebook It is the earliest recorded snow event in a calendar year in the state’s history. Statistically, we can tell how anomalous this is by the behaviour of the local wildlife – seen snowboarding in shorts on the driveway in Albany. (Even going across the road). It’s possible this is the longest snowboard ride in the state’s history too. Though technically it is hail-boarding.
See snowboarding in Albany Western Australia
For foreign readers, WA (Western Aust) doesn’t have a snow season. Last regular snow was probably circa 20,000BC.
The ABC reports:
BOM forecaster Matt Boterhoven said snow was an extremely rare occurrence in April.
“It’s exceptional. We’ve only recorded once, in the last 100 years, snow as early as this on top of the Stirling Ranges,” he said.
“It’s related to a very strong cold air mass moving over the south-west of the state, so when conditions get below freezing and there’s precipitation, snow can form on top of Stirling Ranges.”
Mr Boterhoven predicted further snow flurries were possible into Saturday morning — something which came to pass overnight.
ABC on facebook
We all know this is weather not climate. We also know that if this was the earliest heatwave of the season it would be “proof of climate change” on the ABC.
Bluff Knoll, where the snow is, is a five hour drive from Perth. In WA snow is so rare we have “snow chasers”. Reportedly “dozens” of people are headed there to see the snow. Dozens!
9.4 out of 10 based on 85 ratings
Chocolate is produced from the beans that grow on cocoa trees. These plants can only grow in a fairly narrow range of conditions, which makes them vulnerable to changes in the environment.
Unfortunately, climate change is threatening some of these key growing regions. According to the IPCC, rising temperatures and a relative reduction in rainfall could make areas like West Africa less suitable for cocoa production in the future. Changes to the climate are also pushing cocoa-growing regions to higher altitudes in some parts of the world, which can make some crops unsustainable.
We can see just how hard cocoa crops have been hit by record heat and 500 billion tons of carbon.
Since 1989 humans have put out more than 50% of all anthropogenic CO2 emissions since homo sapiens went sapien. There is an undeniable trend here.
Happy Easter to everyone.
h/t Dave B
9.6 out of 10 based on 61 ratings
Yet another big win against carbon taxes: Abbott, Trump, Ford and now Kenney
 Provinces of Canada. The first pledge was to get rid of the carbon tax. The victory was a scorching 63 to 24 seats, or 55% to 32%.
Alberta is a conservative province of Canada with 4 million people. It’s wealthy from oil, gas and agriculture. (It’s not that different to Queensland and WA.). Jason Kenney is on a mission to get the province back from environmental zealots: fergoodnesssake, he even vowed to set up a ‘War Room’ against energy activists.
The greens were the main target and the people said “Yes”.
Conservatives win big victory in Alberta, Canada
The right-leaning United Conservative Party (UCP) has taken power in the oil-rich Canadian province of Alberta, routing the left-leaning NDP.
…Kenney defeated center-left incumbent Rachel Notley, 55, whose New Democratic Party snapped four decades of conservative rule in 2015. His UCP won 63 seats in the provincial legislature, against 24 for Notley’s NDP,
He’s vowed to get stalled pipelines built, scrap the province’s carbon tax, and create a “war room” to hit back at anti-oil-sands campaigners. He also pledged to cut corporate taxes and balance the province’s books in his first term.
— Kevin Orland, Bloomberg
The Rachel Notley New Democratic government was a one term wonder in Alberta:
The United Conservative Party’s win will mark a sharp turn in the province’s environmental policy. The NDP introduced a number of stringent climate measures in 2015 that included the province’s first ever economy-wide carbon tax. Kenney has promised to repeal that tax as one of his first policy moves after taking power.
After it’s gone, Trudeau will force a federal one on Alberta, and Kenney will oppose that in court:
Keep reading →
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In a nutshell, if the Labor Party wins (and that’s looking likely) Australia will pay $25b, maybe $35b to foreigners for paper certificates that claim to have reduced a tiny amount of beneficial gas. This is hard earned money leaving the country so that our foreign minister and PM can sit at better tables at UN Gala Dinners. The paper certificates have a long history of fraud, are often based on good intentions of Chinese or Russian businessman saying they will put out more CO2 but can stop if we pay up. It’s so stupid sometimes people even create pollution just to get paid to clean it up. They’re unauditable, worthless, and based on scientificy assertions that are also unaudited and worthless. It’s a double layered scam.
Welcome to pagan Australia, obedient fool serf for namecalling rulers of Europe, giant banks, and multinational corporations.
This is mature policy debate in the lucky country.
Richard Ferguson, The Australian
Bill Shorten has angrily dismissed claims his carbon reduction policy could cost business $25 billion as “nonsense” and labelled Scott Morrison a “climate-denying cave dweller.”
But wait — why’s that number wrong?
“The $25 billion figure is a lie. It’s using… You can make any number work for you if you pump in the assumptions you want to.”
Exactly Mr Shorten. Just like climate models. You can make any number you want. Assume humidity rises 10km up then ignore 28 million weather balloons that say the opposite. Go Bill, Go.
Economic models = climate models = useless.
Mr Scare Campaign tells people not to run scare campaigns
Today’s comic relief: Mr Shorten says we’re all going to die from floods and droughts but warns that Scott Morrison is running a scare campaign:
Sir Mediscare hath spoken.
9.4 out of 10 based on 91 ratings
In a flash of insight, or possibly rank capitulation, Facebook has announced last week that it will “fight misinformation” with censorship. Seems Facebook thinks Facebook-users are too stupid to figure out the misinformation themselves. Besides, fighting misinformation with the truth is especially hard if the misinformation is true:
Barbara Ortutay and Rachel Lerman, The Australian
Facebook says it is rolling out a wide range of updates aimed at combating the spread of false and harmful information on the social media site – stepping up the company’s fight against misinformation and hate speech as it faces growing outside pressure.
And it’s not even transparent censorship but the the most weaselly hidden kind:
The updates will limit the visibility of links…
How does Facebook define misinformation? Wait til you hear this: Groupthink = truth?
…limit the visibility of links found to be significantly more prominent on Facebook than across the web as a whole, suggesting they may be clickbait or misleading.
So that pretty much rules out Facebook spreading the word of whistleblowers, rebels, new theories, suppressed ideas, oppressed people and anything controversial, interesting or not completely predictable. Facebook seems to want to transform itself into a mumsie discussion board of old news and approved memes with all the thrill of an in-flight safety lecture.
Thus Facebook will become a mirror of the permitted, official, authorized web. Expect their ratings to adjust accordingly.
Facebook’s VP of integrity (?) points out that ‘striking a balance between protecting people’s privacy and public safety is “something societies have been grappling for centuries.”’ But that’s the point. It took centuries but we worked out the worst kind of lies are the ones told by the rulers, and the only antidote to those is free speech.
In an information war the deepest pockets are in the Treasury’s pants.
If authorities say evil people cause storms and kill children, and mobs start to bay for their blood the answer is not censorship but broadcasting the other point of view. And may the best man win…
Facebook’s solution is some kind of automated groupthink algorithm (like that won’t be gamed) and teams of tens of thousands of moderators with “at least 80 hours training” who are paid “above industry standard”.
The story was published on April 7 in The Australian.
h/t Bowman with more to come
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