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From the headlines you might think Australia is going to stop giving free money to Renewables shareholders from 2020: Australia abandons plan to cut carbon emissionsScientists say this move amounts to walking away from the Paris Climate agreement. — Adam Morton, Nature, Sept 2018, vol 561, page 293 Australian energy policy vacuum beyond 2020 officially confirmed An energy policy vacuum in Australia beyond 2020 is now looking inevitable, with the baseload-focused reliability guarantee the sole remaining piece of the shelved National Energy Guarantee the Coalition government is hanging onto. –PV Magazine Australia My reading is that this is wild exaggerated spin (and that Nature used to be a science journal). Remember that Kevin Rudd signed away $7 billion dollars in a flick just before he left Parliament. He extended the RET subsidies to keep drawing from your electricity bills til 2030: Electricity customers face an extra burden of between $3.8 billion and $7.5bn in “windfall” subsidies for renewable power generators in the next decade because of the stroke of a pen in the last months of Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership. Against advice from consultants, energy companies and the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Rudd government in 2010 extended the phasing out of the renewable subsidies for existing operators from 2020 to 2030. The 10-year extension beyond the contracted 2020 phase-out under the Howard government is estimated to cost households and businesses up to an extra $7.5bn. — Dennis Shanahan, The Australian Only last week, the Environment Minister was talking up Direct Action auctions for carbon reduction. Knowing that, then read between the lines of Angus Taylors speech last week: Addressing the parliament on Tuesday, Energy Minister Angus Taylor confirmed the Morrison government will not be replacing the Renewable Energy Target (RET) “with anything“ when it expires in 2020. “The truth of the matter is the renewable energy target is going to wind down from 2020, it reaches its peak in 2020, and we won’t be replacing that with anything,“ said Taylor answering an MP’s Adam Bandt’s question. What he did not say was that there were no subsidies after 2020 or that Australia would axe the RET, or walk away from the Paris agreement. Clearly, in Greenspeak $7,500,000,000 is the same thing as “a policy vacuum.” My reading is that there will not be even more freeloading gravy-train riders destroying the grid than there already is. Methinks Angus Taylor is trying to whip up false hope to satisfy the sensible deplorables but the collectivist folk are spinning his spin back to fire up their own team. The truth lies seven billion dollars to the left of center. The Australian Government shows no intention of giving up on the Paris Agreement.The trade minister, Simon Birmingham, has claimed Australia will honour its Paris climate agreement commitments but failed to name a mechanism for emissions reduction in government policy. A more accurate question is Will we or wont we meet that target? A better question — Why Bother? As for Nature, the same magazine that would never interview a skeptic who was a physicist because they are not a “climate expert” is happy to quote a climate scientist’s opinion on economic policy. John Church is a specialist in sea level research, but he’s the goto man for Nature on the National Energy Guarantee and a political analyst on the passage of laws on that through parliament. When is an expert not an expert — when they stand between a scientist and a bucket of money. September 25th, 2018 | Tags: Australian Politics, Subsidies | Category: Global Warming |  Print This Post | | Either Katla in Iceland is about to blow or it isn’t. It is a subglacial volcano giving off five to ten times more CO2 than vulcanologists expected. This has some experts spooked, though others are saying it’s not that unusual. UPDATE: The lead researcher herself adds that her work does not suggest an eruption is imminent, nor that it would be like the theEyjafjallajokull eruption in any case. h/t Pat for the new take. Apparently The Sunday Times has been exaggerating… “Ilyinskaya tweeted that she has previously told the Sunday Times that “the severity of Eyjafjallajökull air traffic disruption was very unusual and unlikely to happen if Katla erupts, and still, they quote me as saying exactly the opposite!” Katla volcano set to erupt, Patrick Knox, The Sun Katla Volcano, Iceland, 1918 Icelandic and British volcanologists have detected Katla— Icelandic for “kettle” or “boiler” — is emitting carbon dioxide on a huge scale which suggests magma chambers are filling up fast. According to the Sunday Times, the scientists believe it could be an indicator that an eruption could be brewing which would overshadow the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in 2010. The emissions are in the order of 12 to 24 kilotons a day which means 4 to 8 megatons a year. That’s the same output as an extra 1 – 2 million cars on the road each year. ————————————————- UPDATE #2 from TonyfromOz This volcano is equivalent to 50 new coal plants! A new UltraSuperCritical coal fired power plant (a HELE plant) with two 1200MW units (so, a Nameplate of 2400MW) will emit around 12 million tonnes of CO2 each year, so taking that upper limit for Volcanic CO2 emissions of 600 Million tonnes per year, then the volcanic emissions alone equal around FIFTY of those plants each year. Shutting down one coal fired power plant is akin to a f@rt in a cyclone. _______________________________
Ilyinskaya et al, Geophysical Resarch Letters We discovered that Katla volcano in Iceland is a globally important source of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) in spite of being previously assumed to be a minor gas emitter. Volcanoes are a key natural source of atmospheric CO2 but estimates of the total global amount of CO2 that volcanoes emit are based on only a small number of active volcanoes. Very few volcanoes which are covered by glacial ice have been measured for gas emissions, probably because they tend to be difficult to access and often do not have obvious degassing vents. Through high‐precision airborne measurements and atmospheric dispersion modelling, we show that Katla, a highly hazardous subglacial volcano which last erupted 100 years ago, is one of the largest volcanic sources of CO2 on Earth, releasing up to 5% of total global volcanic emissions. This is significant in a context of a growing awareness that natural CO2 sources have to be more accurately quantified in climate assessments and we recommend urgent investigations of other subglacial volcanoes world‐wide. This is just one volcano of thousandsKatla is one of the largest volcanic sources of CO2 on the planet, contributing up to 4% of global emissions from non‐erupting volcanoes. I wondered how much CO2 volcanoes give off in the big scheme (doesn’t everyone?). But total estimates of emissions of CO2 from volcanoes vary a lot: The United States Geological Survey (USGS), estimates 200 million tons, the British Geological Survey estimates volcanoes emit 300 million tonnes CO2and Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology estimates 600 million tons. For perspective, if those numbers are remotely correct, then that’s about the same as Australia’s total emissions per annum (which means “not much”.) Total human emissions globally are around 10 Gigatons per annum.
Take it with a grain of basaltNo one really knows how much CO2 is coming off each volcano, or even how many volcanoes there are, or if the gas is sneaking out in fields and valleys round the back: Volcanic CO2 levels are staggering Robin Wylie, Livescience, Oct 2017 In 1992, it was thought that volcanic degassing released something like 100 million tons of CO2 each year. Around the turn of the millennium, this figure was getting closer to 200. The most recent estimate, released this February, comes from a team led by Mike Burton, of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology – and it’s just shy of 600 million tons. It caps a staggering trend: A six-fold increase in just two decades. The silent, silvery plumes which are currently winding their way skyward above the 150 or so active volcanoes on our planet also carry with them the bulk of its carbon dioxide. Their coughing fits might catch the eye — but in between tantrums, the steady breathing of volcanoes quietly sheds upwards of a quarter of a billion tons of CO2every year. We think. Scientists’ best estimates, however, are based on an assumption. It might surprise you to learn that, well into the new century, of the 150 smokers I mentioned, almost 80 percent are still as mysterious, in terms of the quantity of CO2 they emit, as they were a generation ago: We’ve only actually measured 33. Then there is invisible CO2 and no one has any ideaWhen volcanoes outgas CO2 they usually give off steam which helps everyone spot that something is going on, but what if colorless and odorless CO2 is just oozing quietly through whole valleys and hillsides. Robin Wylie again: Without the water, though, it’s a different story. The new poster-child of planetary degassing is diffuse CO2 — invisible emanations which can occur across vast areas surrounding the main vents of a volcano, rising through the bulk of the mountains. … we have very little idea of how much it might contribute… What we don’t know about volcanoes? — Hilliers in 2007 estimated about 40,000 underwater volcanoes.Despite volcanoes being a lot bigger than spotted quolls, we still can’t even count them. People are constantly discovering new volcanoes, like a 3,000m one off Indonesia that no one realized was there til 2010. It turns out the second largest volcano in the solar system is apparently not on Io, but 1,000 miles east of Japan. It’s the size of the British Isles, but who knew? A few months ago a team found 91 new volcanoes under Antarctica. …we know more about the moon than the bottom of the Mariana, and it’s only 11km “away”. Climate scientists must be hoping for a decent eruption. When the Earth doesn’t warm as predicted one good volcano could provide great cover for failing models. Look for the Blame the Volcano Game, coming to your public broadcaster soon. With the imminent explosion, as Mother Earth fights back at Tim Blairs blog where rhhardin says — Look for MAGMA hat sales.
Magma chambers now filling up fast,
Means Katla could any day blast, What volcanoes can spew, Mixed with much CO2, In volumes exceedingly vast. –Ruairi
September 25th, 2018 | Tags: CO2 emissions, Volcano | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | … It’s Projection — the ABC fantasize about Murdoch and Stokes because the ABC wants that power themselves
While the ABC has no conservative commentators, as in zero, some other media outlets allow both sides of politics to speak — which clearly threatens the ABC bubble. Therefore it serves the ABC entirely to delegitimize the competition and to paint them as mindless corporate sock puppets. The whole fake news conspiracy theory is bizarre beyond analysis. Rupert Murdoch supposedly picked PM’s by demanding his national masthead paper run no editorials calling for Turnbull’s demise, and silence no commentator that defended him. Meanwhile the ABC runs editorials disguised as news every night at 7pm. One time ABC management effectively called Tony Abbott “the most destructive politician of his generation.” ACMA eventually censured them. The ABC called it a “slap”. The fake journalist-cum-opinionator, Andrew Probyn, continues his job. Smart voices that support Abbott or Dutton go unheard. There is no accountability inside the ABC bubble. Foreigners wonder how a rich country with more resources per capita, no land borders, and brilliant weather can screw things up in Oscar Winning Style. Look no further than the billion dollar gift with no strings attached for a neo-marxist collective to masquerade as the nation’s most trusted news source. All the other news providers have to compete for audience and advertisers. They can’t afford to ignore half the nation — R.I.P. Fairfax. The ABC audience lives in a bubble on a deserted islandChris Kenny, The Australian Imagine if you had been stranded on an island for the past few years with nothing to watch, listen to or read from but Australia’s public broadcaster. You would be under the false apprehension that our navy tortured asylum-seekers who were then raped on Nauru. You would think the people-smuggling trade was impossible to stop and that if boats were turned back there would be a conflict with Indonesia. You would think climate change was the greatest threat to the country, region and the world, and that it was already making our lives worse; on the bright side you would have faith that a carbon tax, emissions trading scheme or national energy guarantee would put an end to droughts, floods and bushfires while saving the Great Barrier Reef. You might be under the impression that our dams were dry and $12 billion of desalination plants were supplying us with water. For a moment, you would have believed that the Donald Trump “nightmare” ended on the day he lost the election… There is no reforming the ABC. It takes a billion dollars but costs the nation countless billions more as it hides the failure of the most stupid and expensive policies. The media IS the problem.
September 22nd, 2018 | Tags: ABC, Media bias | Category: FakeNews, Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | This Week In 1926Hurricanes aren’t what they used to be. Tony Heller at RealClimateScience found a photo of what happened when “an actual category four hurricane hit Miami” — as opposed to an almost Cat 6 that became an almost Cat-Nothing.  What Category Four destruction can look like. At one point Florence was “Becoming The Strongest Storm to Ever Make Landfall North of Florida” and the “costliest ever to hit The US.” Soon children won’t know what real storms are. Hundreds of Hungry Children walk amid City RuinsImagine if this happened in 2018. The outrage, the scandal. Impeach Trump Now. On the other side of the world on Sept 20th 1926, The Melbourne Herald reported:  Click to enlarge Thankfully we have and do things better now. The people of Miami didn’t have satellites or TV or helicopters or mobile phones, or perhaps any phones. Apocalypse 1926“Hundreds of children separated from their families and hungry, their health endangered by the scarcity of water and the lack of sanitary facilities, are wandering among the ruins of Miami City today. The tornado which wrecked the place at the week-end, twisting concrete steel buildings on their bases, smashing the city to smithereens, caused the worst disaster America has known since the San Francisco earthquake. All towns in the south eastern coastal belt of Florida have been more or less smashed. No definite estimate of the dead can be made, but the toll is somewhere between 600 and 1500, and there are thousands of injured. How many are buried beneath the ruins is not known. In Miami alone there are 30,000 homeless, and the loss of property amounts to £20,000,000. The disaster has been aggravated by a hurricane which today struck Pensacola, at the head of the Gulf of Mexico. The wind blew at 100 miles an hour. The place is isolated. BOATS WASHED INTO PARK Most of the wooden structures of the city had been unroofed or had collapsed. Practically every piece of plate-glass in thc city was broken. The death toll in 2018 due to Florence has sadly reached 42. Deaths in 1926 in Florida and the Caribbean were estimated as somewhere from 372 — 539 + and about 43,000 people were left homeless. This is not to dismiss the heartache of the current struggles, but exploiting the victims to sell fake insurance doesn’t help anyone. If the 1926 Hurricane hit now, the cost might be $200 billionThe toll for the storm in the United States was $100 million ($1.38 billion 2018 USD). It is estimated that if an identical storm hit in the year 2005, with modern development and prices, the storm would have caused $140–157 billion in damage ($196 billion in 2016); this would make the storm the costliest on record in the United States, adjusted for inflation, if it were to occur in contemporary times.[1][2] The lowest pressure recorded in the eye in 1926 was 930mbar. Highest winds 150mph or 240 kmh. Keep reading → Over the last century there was a remarkable decline in deaths due to hot days and heatwaves. (Not that the media seem keen to say so). Mortality on a hot day declined by fully 75% in the decades after 1960 when air conditioners started to be rolled out. In the words of the authors from this 2016 study, the people of the US have largely adapted in ways that protect them from extreme heat. The kind of hot days they are talking about happen on average 20 days a year in the US. There has not been a similar reduction in deaths from cold snaps. First, we document a remarkable decline in the mortality effect of temperature extremes: The impact of days with a mean temperature exceeding 80°F (26.6C) has declined by about 75 percent over the course of the twentieth century in the United States, with almost the entire decline occurring after 1960. The result is that there are about 20,000 fewer fatalities annually than if the pre-1960 impacts of mortality still prevailed. We achieved a lot of things in the 20th century, but when Barreca went through the statistics, it wasn’t the introduction of electricity that prevented most deaths — even though it brought fridges, and water, and fans — almost the entire effect was due to air conditioners. The researchers also considered health care access with doctors per capita, but that didn’t do it either. In terms of money — Air conditioners add about 11% to the average household’s electricity bill, but in the long run save money. “The present value of US consumer surplus from the introduction of residential AC in 1960, which is the first year in which we measure the AC penetration rate, ranges from $85 to $185 billion (2012 dollars) with a 5 percent discount rate. Apparently most of the money saved comes from “avoided deaths” — and an economist might need to explain to me what that really translates into. In the 2015 version they admit there are a lot of benefits and costs that are not included — like improvements to worker productivity, or increases in pollution. The paper is freely available. It’s an interesting history of mortality and technology in the last hundred years. The graphs of how temperature affects the mortality rate
 a/ 1904-2004 b/ 1931-2004 Click to enlarge The big difference shows when the data is divided into pre 1960 (c) and post 1960 (d) curves below. Then the increase in mortality for hotter days is more obvious.  c/ 1931-1959 d/ 1960 – 2004 | Click to enlarge
If we want to save the poor in Africa from dying of heat waves, the best thing we can do is help them get air conditioning and the cheap electricity to run it. AbstractThis paper examines the temperature-mortality relationship over the course of the twentieth-century United States both for its own interest and to identify potentially useful adaptations for coming decades. There are three primary findings. Keep reading → September 21st, 2018 | Tags: Air conditioners, Mortality, Temperature (Effect on Mortality) | Category: Global Warming, Health | Print This Post | |  Cropped from The Great Storm by Goodwin Sands, 1703 While we soak in storm footage this week, imagine this storm! Back when CO2 levels were ideal, the UK was hit by a monster nine-day storm: at least 8,000 dead, maybe as many as 15,000 people. Some 2,000 chimney stacks were blown down and 4,000 oak trees were lost in the New Forest alone. About 400 windmills were destroyed, with “the wind driving their wooden gears so fast that some burst into flames”. The worst toll was probably on ships — with some 6,000 sailors thought to be lost. As many as 700 ships were heaped together in the Pool of London, one ship was found 15 miles (24 km) inland. A ship torn from its moorings in the Helford River in Cornwall was blown for 200 miles (320 km) before grounding eight hours later on the Isle of Wight. Back then, people blamed the “crying sins of the nation” and saw it as punishment by God. The government declared 19 January 1704 a day of fasting, saying that it “loudly calls for the deepest and most solemn humiliation of our people”. Apparently, it remained a topic of preachy sermons well into the 19th century — until it was more useful to forget it and pretend the weather was always nice until people drove SUVs. Ponder that if cooler conditions prevail we may end up with a more extreme climate, worse storms and more extremes both up and down. Then the Eco-Worriers will claim they were right about everything (except for “average temperatures”). Was 1703 the worst storm ever?BBC The storm uprooted thousands of trees; blew tiles from rooftops, which smashed windows in their paths; and flung ships from their moorings in the River Thames. A boat in Whitstable, Kent was blown 250m inland from the water’s edge.  …. As Britain slept, the wind lifted and dropped chimney stacks, killing people in their beds. It blew fish out of the ponds and onto the banks in London’s St James’s Park, beat birds to the ground and swept farm animals away to their deaths. Oaks collapsed and pieces of timber, iron and lead blasted through the streets. The gales blew a man into the air and over a hedge. A cow was blown into the high branches of a tree. Lightning kindled fires in Whitehall and Greenwich. From the hours of five in the morning until half past six, the storm roared at its strongest. It is thought between 8,000 and 15,000 people in total were killed. Strong and persistent winds had already blown through the country for 14 days leading up to the storm. Those winds were already fierce enough to topple chimneys, destroy ships and blow tiles from the roofs of houses. “In terms of its dramatic impact, it’s up there with the best of them,” says Dennis Wheeler, emeritus professor of climatology at the University of Sunderland. “Thousands of sailors died. The number was put at about 6,000. At the time, we were engaged with the War of the Spanish Succession, so we could ill afford to lose them. We lost a lot of ships, a lot of trade, and there was horrendous damage.” At the time, the country was in the so-called Little Ice Age. “It’s quite possible that the chilliness may well have contributed to the storm, but like all these things they are multi-causal,” says Wheeler. “Certainly as far as the British Isles were concerned, the 1680s and 1690s were arguably the coldest two decades since the ice retreated about 12,000 years ago.” Daniel Defoe’s first book was called The Storm — his family hid indoors from flying bricks in the street
Rick Long, the Cape Cod Curmudgeon: With “Robinson Crusoe” still sixteen years in his future, Daniel Defoe was at this time a minor poet and pamphleteer. Defoe was freshly out of prison in 1703, having served his sentence for criticizing the religious intolerance of High Church Anglicans. Hearing the collapse of brick chimneys, the Defoes and their six children sought refuge in their gardens, but were soon driven inside to “trust the will of Providence”. “Whatever the danger was within doors”, he said, “”twas worse without; the bricks, tiles, and stones, from the tops of the houses, flew with such force, and so thick in the streets, that no one thought fit to venture out, tho’ their houses were near demolish’d within.” Nearly one third of the British Navy drownedClose to a third of the entire British Navy were drowned during the storm, as ships were driven as much as 15 miles inland. Many ships disappeared forever. Others washed up on the shores of Denmark and Norway. The most miraculous tale of survival was that of Thomas Atkins, a sailor aboard the HMS Mary. As Mary broke up, Atkins watched as Rear Admiral Beaumont climbed aboard a piece of its quarter deck, only to be washed away as Atkins himself was lifted high on a wave and deposited on the decks of another ship, the HMS Stirling Castle. Atkins was soon in the water again as Stirling Castle sank, when he was again thrown by a wave, this time landing in a small boat. He alone would survive of the 269 men aboard the Mary. See Wikipedia for the references. (Link at the top) Wikimedia commons: See the full art Goodwin Sands engraving of the Great Storm. September 20th, 2018 | Tags: Little Ice Age, Storms, UK | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | …  Shipping tracks, cloud patterns over the ocean. | Photo NASA. Ships leave a trail of sulfur dioxide in the sky behind them which seeds clouds and causes cooling. At the same time, black soot drops out on the arctic ice, absorbs sunlight and causes warming. So which effect is bigger? Scott Stephenson et al tried to figure out that out and the cooling effect won. The researchers also factored in global anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gas concentration trajectories, adopted by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), at a level closely aligning with today’s trends, along with global economic output that will drive the transport of goods. “We attempted to fully integrate the interactions between the various components of the climate system in ways that have not been done before,” Stephenson says. The main result was that the cooling effect won out over the warming effect in the simulations, to the tune of about one degree Celsius. Zowie. One real degree of Arctic cooling sounds like rather a lot — even undoing greenhouse gas warming as well as soot based warming. The cooling effect stops if we clean the smoke stack and remove the sulphur particles. Presumably the warming effect would also stop if we scrubbed out the soot. And there would be no effect at all if we converted most boats to nuclear bulk container ships. (Though some land-based snowflakes at Yale would melt.) Don’t look now, but sulfur pollution is saving the ArcticHaving found such a politically awkward result the don’t-pick-on-me caveat comes next. The researchers warn that we must not rejoice, even though Arctic shipping lanes may be 40% shorter, faster and more fuel efficient, because global warming will still be awful, and boats may have accidents in the Arctic. The environmentally better option is, apparently, to have those shipping accidents elsewhere, like, say, British Columbia? The Arctic continues to warm at twice the global average, and though increased shipping will likely have a cooling impact on the region, the researchers stress that these results should not be interpreted as an endorsement for Arctic shipping, especially as a potential solution to climate change. Stephenson notes that while trans-Arctic shipping routes would cut travel time by as much as 40 percent, growth in shipping traffic would mean heightened risk of oil spills and clearer access to extractable resources such as oil, gas, and minerals in the region — all scenarios that come with potentially dire environmental consequences should an accident occur. With fewer amenities within reach to respond to a potential disaster, responders would be faced with huge logistical challenges to deal with those scenarios. “There are clear economic benefits to shipping in the Arctic, with shorter routes and less fuel being burned,” he says, “but there are also enormous potential risks.” Additionally, the cooling could be offset by international regulation and trade agreements, for instance if planned global limits on sulfur emissions from fuel used by the ships go into effect. Without the sulfur-induced cloud formation, the cloud-driven cooling effect will not happen. Anyhow, file this one away when Arctic disaster stories arise, or people recommend some expensive geoengineering. If the Arctic warms too much, we can just send more shipping traffic. And if we overdo it, the problem will sort itself out. No more shipping lanes. Of course, if another little ice age is coming, the last thing we want is to cool the arctic. REFERENCE
September 19th, 2018 | Tags: Aerosols, Arctic | Category: Atmosphere, Global Warming, Meteorology | Print This Post | | Still leading the nation from the back benchScott Morrison wants to meet the Paris agreement and have cheap electricity. The have-cake: throw-cake-in-river option. How to resolve that dilemma (or at least have an answer for his Environment Minister, Melissa Price to give) — repeat the Tony Abbott plan. “Direct Action” uses an auction system to find the cheapest ways to reduce CO2 — which obviously rules out intermittent renewables because they are wildly expensive. Abbott is painted as a denier, yet his plan was more effective at reducing CO2 than any of the Green’s schemes. Naturally this only makes the cult believers hate him more — because he threatens the cash cow for dependent renewables. He exposes how useless wind and solar are and thus, how most greens are hypocritical self-serving political activists who pretend to care for the environment in order to get rich, go on junkets, or pump their ego while they fly to skiing trips in Japan. Direct Action back on the agendaGraham Lloyd, The Australian The Coalition will refocus environment policies on the Abbott-era Direct Action plan, including a rebooted Green Army and a reverse auction scheme to improve land management and help communities, Environment Minister Melissa Price has declared. Melissa Price: We can meet Paris targets responsibly Naturally, and for no good reason, this is not thanks to Abbott: “I do not see it as a return (to Abbott-era policies). We have had very good environmental programs under Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull.” Direct Action reduces CO2 for $13 per tonWind Turbines cost seven times as much to reduce CO2. Solar PV is at best $110/ton (EIA), and in a badly managed plan, more like $2,000/ton. At best in Australia the RET (Renewable Energy Target) costs $57 per ton of reduction. We could reduce four times as much CO2 if we blew up the RET plan and used Direct Action. The economy-wide scheme was the star-studded absolute worst — the Carbon Tax cost $5310 per ton — 300 times more expensive than the Direct Action auction. There is about $250 million left of the $2.5bn original budget funding for the emissions reduction fund. The last auction in June supported 32 projects to save 6.67 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions at an average price of $13.52 a tonne. Direct Action proved to be up to 300 times more effective per dollar than the Carbon Tax. Where are the Green cheers? That $2.5 billion was still $2.5 billion too much, but at least it improves soil, adds trees and has a few redeeming side benefits. Better than a scheme supporting jobs in China, banker’s yachts, and the installation of grid-destroying infrastructure. Why pay to make our electricity expensive, destroy jobs and our quality of life? As I’ve said before, the only problem with Direct Action is that it doesn’t feed the parasites:What Direct Action won’t “achieve” is a class of dependent corporatesThe most important outcome is that, unlike a carbon market, there won’t be a new dependent class of companies who have to go to Parliament lobbyist-in-hand to beg or butter-up MP’s. With a blanket carbon tax, every industry wants carbon permits, or free passes, for themselves to keep doing business as usual. The carbon market of the EU, Rudd, and Gillard fosters these sort of deals and pleas. Big-government could use subsidies to feed industries that will vote and cheer for them (think renewables). They could use the fake free markets to put reigns on the real free market. (What would stop them?) The miners, the electricity generators, the manufacturers generate independent wealth and power, and if they choose to, they could run major campaigns against the big-government taxes and imposts. But if they need to ask special favours, they are less likely to rock the boat. A carbon price is just another tool to keep them in line and obedient; it sure isn’t much good at reducing carbon. Thanks to Eric Huxter for estimating the solar PV cost of CO2 abatement in Australia. September 18th, 2018 | Tags: Carbon Abatement (cost), Emissions (CO2) | Category: Global Warming, Politics | Print This Post | | Poor McCartney tries to write a rebel saviour song. Instead he captures the blind mystification of a protected class living in a bubble who have no idea that millions of people are rebelling against the bully thought police and their demands for hero-status and money. Half the population of the West see through the modern witchdoctors who get every prediction wrong. McCartney’s genius solution? “Lock him up” Spot the irony, apparently Trump should have listened to “the will of the people”? What exactly does McCartney think 60 million people voted for? The captains crazy but he doesn’t let them know it. Below decks, the engineer cries Despite repeated warnings Now the ropes that have bound him (What can we do?) — Lyrics to “Despite Repeated Warnings” The song captures the frustration of the people who have no idea and no clue on how to get an idea either. “What can we do?” he asks over and over. How about trying to understand why people voted for Trump by reading what they read instead of just having the BBC-on-a-drip? There is no doubt about McCartney’s intent — denying climate change is the most stupid thing everLee Moran, Huffington Post Legendary Beatle Paul McCartney has revealed he had climate-change deniers such as President Donald Trump in mind when writing one particular song on his new solo album, “Egypt Station.” The track, titled “Despite Repeated Warnings,” contains lyrics such as “despite repeated warnings of dangers up ahead, the captain won’t be listening to what’s been said,” and “those who shout the loudest, may not always be the smartest.” McCartney told BBC Music’s Mark Savage in an interview published online Thursday that denying climate change was “the most stupid thing ever.” “So I just wanted to make a song that would basically say, you know, occasionally, we’ve got a mad captain sailing this boat we’re all on and he is just going to take us to the iceberg,” he added. Asked if the “mad captain” was “anyone in particular,” McCartney responded: “Well I mean, obviously it’s Trump but I don’t get too involved because there’s plenty of them about. He’s not the only one.” h/t Mark M As EricWorrall says: “People like McCartney in my opinion epitomise the kind of out of touch “Champagne socialists” who look down on the deplorables…”
First — The Weather Channel gets caught faking the strength of Hurricane Florence (in case you haven’t seen it). The Weather Channel went on to defend their reporter: “It’s important to note that the two individuals in the background are walking on concrete, and Mike Seidel is trying to maintain his footing on wet grass, after reporting on-air until 1:00 a.m. ET this morning and is undoubtedly exhausted,” a spokesperson wrote. Then see the parodies:
Beware of shopping trolleys:
Anderson Cooper, star of CNN, finds the deepest ditchhe can report from (h/t WattsUp)… UPDATE: Ryan Maue asks and his readers tell him it is a photo from Hurricane Ike ten years ago.
Keep reading → September 16th, 2018 | Tags: FakeNews, Funny | Category: FakeNews, Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | … Australia’s new PM, when pushed, is a mini-Turnbull. The RET is the toxic renewable energy target, the guaranteed gift to unreliable, uneconomic performers. It’s the cancer on the system that makes the cheap generators die. At it’s best, the RET is theft through electricity bills to support industries in China in the hope that storms will be nicer in 2100. Scott Morrison has assured key crossbenchers he will not dump renewable energy targets as he hedges against the possibility of the Coalition losing the Wentworth by-election and finding itself in minority government. Morrison’s hand is forced thanks to Malcolm Turnbull, because of the Wentworth byelection to be held October 20th. Turnbull didn’t have to resign in a one-seat majority government, but he did. When you look at how well his resignation works for the Labor Party and the green-freeloaders, how could he say “No”? Thanks to Turnbull being such a bad choice as PM, he lost so many seats he could barely form government, so every byelection now means the entire government is up for grabs. His “safe” seat is no longer safe. Labor are well ahead in the polls there on Wednesday. Ponder that this was a blue-ribbon seat, won with a 62% primary vote in 2016. For a party “turning right,” the inner city Wentworth seat is a risky one to toss in the air. From this fragile position, Morrison had only two dark choices: 1/ pander and capitulate to stay in government for a short time, or 2/ be brave, speak the truth, and pull the Federal election trigger, a tough call when the party is so behind in the polls. He chose “to pander”. Turnbull has handed Morrison a poisoned chaliceWithout calling for a Federal election, Morrison has to capitulate to the left in both the Wentworth seat and to the independent crossbenchers who might theoretically keep him in government even if the Libs lose the byelection. If it [The Liberals] lost the seat, the government’s numbers in the House of Representatives would fall to 75, forcing it to rely on the support of two independents to fend off confidence motions if Speaker Tony Smith remained in the chair. So Morrison has to throw away the best election winning strategy of the Libs in order just to stay in government for a pitiful ‘nother six to nine months until the next federal election. Therefore he will go into it as a Turnbull-lite version, without the base support, the donors, and any strong argument, and the Libs will likely lose. The winning easy option for any conservatives around the world is the Abbott-Trump-Dean plan. Morrison can’t play that on climate now thanks to Turnbull’s parting gift, or he looks like a liar. Presumably the cross-benchers will play their immigration chips next and bolt that topic down too. The spineless Liberals cannot point out the stupidity of using our generators to control the weather. They can’t explain how stupid and sacrificial Paris is, nor how badly the RET drives our prices up. They can’t point out that every country with renewables pays more for electricity. They can only say the Labor party are right, but they’ve taken it a bit too far. You can’t Axe a Tax that you want to half do yourself. Turnbull’s resignation is a win for the Labor party-globalists any which wayEither Labor wins the seat and threatens a vote of no-confidence that could bring down the government, or the Libs win but lose the conservative base in doing so. Turnbull is not even bothering to hide his true lefty colors. He is doing everything possible to destroy the real conservative base — tweeting to put pressure on Dutton who almost beat Morrison and sits in a very marginal seat. It’s hard to believe he was PM of a conservative government merely weeks ago. Takes a true Narcissist-in-chief to so shamelessly bomb his own party. Why are the Libs in dire straits? They believed the ABCThe Libs romped home in 2013, but find themselves in this pathetic position because in 2015 weak willed and gullible MP’s in a strong 90 seat government tossed aside the landslide winner and instead installed the ABC’s favored candidate. Conservatives and libertarians, anyone who fears the slide to the gimme-dat side of politics, better get organized. Time to write letters to editors and ministers, to study the pre-selection rules, pick the decent candidates, get email lists running and send donations to people who work to keep the nation free. September 14th, 2018 | Tags: Australian Politics | Category: Global Warming, Politics | Print This Post | | Someone leaked an in-house Google video to Breitbart. A couple of days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election the impartial and analytical monopoly team was doing group hugs, almost in tears, and doing psychoanalysis of how Trump and the fascist extremists won. In their expert opinion voters are irrational, and motivated by xenophobic fear or conversely boredom (which is a lot like fear, except for being the opposite. The Google team clearly have a good grip on the topic.). It’s a message of hate and ignorance. In Google-land half the US population are like extremists, have things in common with terrorists, and definitely didn’t have any legitimate concerns. Amazing how these brains had more access to search keywords and websites of Trump supporters than almost anyone on the planet, yet have not apparently read any. Google has come out saying this was just some employees and executives expressing personal opinion. So let’s just clarify that this was only the Chief Executive Officer, the Chief Financial Officer, two Vice Presidents and the two men who founded Google. Not the whole of Corporate Management then, and there might be one secret Trump voter in the Maths and Algorithms Department. Though they would have to stay in hiding lest they suffer the same fate as James Damore. With 88,000 employees Google is bound to employ a few Trump voters, but those deplorables just can’t say so at the office. Eileen Noughton, VP of People Operations, even acknowledges that conservative employees don’t feel comfortable revealing themselves. Google also insists that nothing they said suggests any political bias in their products. The CFO tears up and talks about the moment she realized the election was “going the wrong way”, the first moment she realized “WE were going to lose”. It was like a “ton of bricks”. Later the co-founder, Brin, asks what they can do to ensure a “better quality of governance and decision-making.” He doesn’t appear to be talking about better governance of Google… See the comments from Walker and the CEO Pichai below. THE GOOGLE TAPE: Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin ‘Deeply Offended’ by Trump’s ElectionAllum Bokhari, Breitbart Sergey Brin, co-founder of one of the most influential companies in the world: ““As an immigrant and a refugee, I certainly find this election deeply offensive, and I know many of you do too.” Walker says that Google should fight to ensure the populist movement – not just in the U.S. but around the world – is merely a “blip” and a “hiccup” in a historical arc that “bends toward progress.” CEO Sundar Pichai states that the company will develop machine learning and A.I. to combat what an employee described as “misinformation” shared by “low-information voters.” John Hindraker watched the whole 1 hour and 3 minutes: Powerline: It’s Official, Google Is a Democratic Party FrontAll of the speakers express grief over Donald Trump’s election. All of the speakers assume that every Google employee is a Democrat and is stunned and horrified that Hillary Clinton–the worst and most corrupt presidential candidate in modern history–lost. There is much discussion about what Google can do to reverse the benighted world-wide tide exemplified by Brexit and Trump’s election. The insane doctrine of “white privilege” rears its head. You really have to see it to believe it. Having suffered through the hour-long cri de cœur–OK, to be fair, there is a huge element of schadenfreude, too, and you will relish much of it–you probably will have several reactions: 1) These people may have certain valuable technical skills, but they aren’t very bright and are unusually lacking in self-awareness. 2) It is remarkable that they can achieve such an extraordinary monoculture in an organization with thousands of employees. It must require vigorous enforcement of right-think. 3) It is easy to see how these uniformly left-wing robots/people seamlessly transitioned into Resisting the duly elected Trump administration. These are the people in charge of your search results:Click here to see the full video on Youtube.
Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge has lots of quotes (for those who don’t feel like watching the Google execs struggle themselves, or those who just want to pin point the most fun moments — all times are listed there).
Whatever Google’s values are, they are not the same as US voters.
Go for it — fight the oppression sayeth the people running the most visited website in the world. Not the best timing for Google to show its real face. Google faces global media revoltChris Merritt, The Australian, September 10 After being fined billions of dollars for anti-competitive conduct in Europe, Google is facing an international revolt by mainstream media seeking a regulatory crackdown and possible break-up of its business empire. These moves have been triggered by persistent complaints by publishers in Europe, the US and Australia that the tech giants, and Google in particular, are abusing their market power to stifle threats to their dominance over the online distribution and monetisation of news. News Corp has Google in their sights — pushing for structural interventions that may mean the break up of Google, Facebook and other tech giants. They want more transparency in the algorithms: In the lead-up to those hearings, the European Publishers Council has told the FTC the tech giants’ algorithms were exposing online readers to “echo chambers” filled with opinions that confirm and do not challenge their existing views and values. The News Media Alliance, representing 2000 publishers in the US, has urged the FTC to use its antitrust and consumer protection powers against Google and the other tech giants because of the “dire consequences the further erosion of quality news will have for society. “When platforms are accused of manipulation or bias, their most common response is that they rely on objective, neutral algorithms,” the submission says. “The problem is that no one — not the victims of the alleged manipulation or bias, not regulators, not the public, not even the advertisers who purchase the products generated by the algorithms — has any insight into how those algorithms work. “The algorithms are ‘black boxes’ and many platforms expect the public simply to accept the output,” says the News submission.
Time to pay for subscriptions for real journalists (and donate to independent commentators, hint hint 🙂 ). When hunting, check out IXQuick, DuckDuckGo, and Mojeek. h/t Willie, Pat September 14th, 2018 | Tags: Free Speech, Google | Category: Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | Viv Forbes sums it up brilliantly. — Jo Politicians again show “Real Genius”.A British observer [in 1975 or so] noted “Any fool can bugger up Britain but it takes real genius to bugger up Australia.” Australian politicians are again showing real genius. Now, we have incredible tri-partisan plans to cover the continent with a spider-web of transmission lines connecting wind/solar “farms” sending piddling amounts of intermittent power to distant consumers and to expensive battery and hydro backups – all funded by electricity consumers, tax-assisted speculators and foreign debt. We are the world’s biggest coal exporter but have not built a big coal-fired power station for 11 years. We have massive deposits of uranium but 100% of this energy is either exported, or sterilised by the Giant Rainbow Serpent, or blocked by the Green-anti’s. Australia suffers recurrent droughts but has not built a major water supply dam for about 40 years. And when the floods do come, desperate farmers watch as years of rain water rush past to irrigate distant oceans. Once, Australia was a world leader in exploration and drilling – it is now a world leader in legalism, red tape and environmental obstructionism. Once, Canberra and the states encouraged oil and gas exploration with geological mapping and research – now they restrict land access and limit exports. Once, Australia was a world leader in refining metals and petroleum – now our expensive unreliable electricity and green tape are driving these industries and their jobs overseas. Once, Australia’s CSIRO was respected for research that supported industry and for doing useful things like controlling rabbits and prickly pear and developing better crops and pastures. Now CSIRO panders to global warming hysteria and promotes the fairy story that carbon taxes and emissions targets can change the world’s climate. Once, young Australians excelled in maths, science and engineering. Now, they are brain-washed in gender studies, green energy non-science and environmental activism. Once, the opening of a railway or the discovery of oil, coal, nickel or uranium made headlines. Today’s Aussies harass explorers and developers, and queue at the release of the latest IPad. As Australia’s first people discovered, if today’s Australians lack the will or the knowledge to use our great natural resources, more energetic people will take them off us. Viv Forbes h/t Ian B, David E, Dennis, C.J.O. Thanks. …. “Paris” is rock solid and on the brink simultaneously
In a kind of Schrodinger’s-Agreement Paris means everything and nothing all at once. The Grand Emissions-Mouth says every country on Earth has signed up except the US. The Giant Money-Mouth says it’s unravelling, an emergency and on the brink. How can that be? Spot the pea. This strange superposition can exist because the emissions agreement is vaporware: 200 countries signed up but almost none of them are going to meet their agreement and no one cares. On the money side though, almost no one is going to give or get what they expected, and it’s a complete bunfight down to the last comma. It was and always is, about The MoneyNo one gives a toss about the CO2: The Paris climate change agreement has started to unravel as a dispute over a $US100 billion-a-year climate fund prompts new demands that developing countries be given greater freedoms to increase their emissions. Environment groups have claimed the Paris deal was “on the brink” after an emergency meeting in Bangkok at the weekend failed to reach consensus on crucial details on how the agreement would be managed. The body established to distribute the limited funding that had been raised to date has been gripped by turmoil. A meeting of the GCF in July disintegrated into acrimony over who should control the money, leading to the resignation of Australian chairman Howard Bamsey. The cash cows want to issue loans they can get back or use for power games. They want transparency and control. The cash-cowees want freedom to spend their free money, and want it to be more-more-more than just rebadged foreign aid. Who wouldn’t? Negotiators said a key issue had been whether loans could be counted as part of the $US100 billion a year financing promise. The Bankok bunfight was meant to settle the rules on money before the next two-week COP junket in Poland in December when thousands of activists and activist-scientists are rewarded for their faith and creative interpretation of raw data. Wikimedia: US Dollars in Uncut sheet. Christopher Hollis for Wdwic Pictures September 12th, 2018 | Tags: Climate Money | Category: Big-Government, Global Warming | Print This Post | |
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 HoleTed Hill is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Georgia Tech. He has just published a memoir PUSHING LIMITS: From West Point to Berkeley and Beyond. In the highly controversial area of human intelligence, the ‘Greater Male Variability Hypothesis’ (GMVH) asserts that there are more idiots and more geniuses among men than among women. Darwin’s research on evolution in the nineteenth century found that, although there are many exceptions for specific traits and species, there is generally more variability in males than in females of the same species throughout the animal kingdom. Evidence for this hypothesis is fairly robust and has been reported in species ranging from adders and sockeye salmon to wasps and orangutans, as well as humans. Multiple studies have found that boys and men are over-represented at both the high and low ends of the distributions in categories ranging from birth weight and brain structures and 60-meter dash times to reading and mathematics test scores. There are significantly more men than women, for example, among Nobel laureates, music composers, and chess champions—and also among homeless people, suicide victims, and federal prison inmates. Darwin wondered why males might have evolved to be more variable than females, but could not settle on an answer, so Ted P. Hill took up the search… My aim was not to prove or disprove that the hypothesis applies to human intelligence or to any other specific traits or species, but simply to discover a logical reason… I came up with a simple intuitive mathematical argument based on biological and evolutionary principles and enlisted Sergei Tabachnikov, a Professor of Mathematics at Pennsylvania State University, to help me flesh out the model. He got great feedback, the preprint was published, the paper reviewed, typeset, accepted and scheduled. But at about the same time James Damore was triggering international strife at Google for suggesting that differences in gender variability might explain gender disparities in careers in Silicon Valley. The accepted article was published as a preprint and then the trouble began: A representative of the Women In Mathematics (WIM) chapter in his department at Penn State warned that “the paper might be damaging to the aspirations of impressionable young women.” She worried that some will see maths being used to “support a very controversial, and potentially sexist, set of ideas…” Is the maths sexist, or is reality?For weeks the department at Penn State was embroiled in debate and private lectures: … the Department Head had explained that sometimes values such as academic freedom and free speech come into conflict with other values to which Penn State was committed. A female colleague had then instructed Sergei that he needed to admit and fight bias, adding that the belief that “women have a lesser chance to succeed in mathematics at the very top end is bias.” Sergei said he had spent “endless hours” talking to people who explained that the paper was “bad and harmful”… Ted Hill wrote to the organisers at Penn State (Women in Maths) offering to go there, discuss their concerns, and even edit the paper if necessary. They didn’t reply. Instead the NSF (National Science Foundation) suddenly asked to be removed from the papers acknowledgements as a source of funding, which was unheard of. (Turns out the Women in Maths crew had been lobbying the NSF). Worse, the journals editor rescinded the offer to publish. Suddenly the accepted paper was unaccepted. Not because of scientific errors but because the bullies won: “Several colleagues,” she wrote, had warned her that publication would provoke “extremely strong reactions” and there existed a “very real possibility that the right-wing media may pick this up and hype it internationally.”” The people warning of the strong reactions were also the ones providing the strong reactionsAmie Wilkinson, a senior professor of mathematics at the University of Chicago had become involved. Read the original longer version to find out how she used relatives, facebook, and social media in order to stop this paper being published and then punish the journal and authors. At this point it was too much for his co-author Sergi who was facing departmental action, fury of collegues, the diversity committee as well as putting out the NSF. He asked for his name to be removed even though he’d done the simulations. Ted Hill was the last man standing:Fortunately for me, I am now retired and rather less easily intimidated—one of the benefits of being a Vietnam combat veteran and former U.S. Army Ranger, I guess. So, I continued to revise the paper, and finally posted it on the online mathematics archives. The paper was quickly picked up and then published by the New York Journal of Mathematics on November 6th last year, but not for long: 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. The paper should be deleted said the political activist because it was “political” and the editor was a horrible man too: As it turned out, Amie Wilkinson is married to Benson Farb, a member of the NYJM editorial board. Upon discovering that the journal had published my paper, Professor Farb had written a furious email to Steinberger [the Editor in Chief] demanding that it be deleted at once. “Rivin,” [the editor who published it] he complained, “is well-known as a person with extremist views who likes to pick fights with people via inflammatory statements.” Farb’s “father-in law…a famous statistician,” he went on, had “already poked many holes in the ridiculous paper.” My paper was “politically charged” and “pseudoscience” and “a piece of crap” and, by encouraging the NYJM to accept it, Rivin had “violat[ed] a scientific duty for purely political ends.” Half the board of the NYJM had threatened to resign and “harrass” the journal “until it died” unless the article was deleted. So the editor in chief had capitulated lest the journal he founded 25 years before ceased to exist. Professor Wilkinson, having “won” the day, is apparently continuing to tar and blacken the names of all people and journals involved. It’s a warning to other journals to toe the line. Sitting ducks — How can a journal survive that?It will end up that only retired scientists can freely speak on contentious topics, and where will they publish? Small institutions are soft targets unless they are extremely well funded. To thwart the bullies the board would need to be vetted, trained and prepared to deal with the escalation (and who needs it?) It would help if they had lucrative positions or rewards that were worth defending. But our current system relies more on a code of honour. Only an implacable belief in the importance of science, plus serious training, and funding would carry a team through. The last word from Ted Hill — Who will be next?… I understand the importance of the causes that equal opportunity activists and progressive academics are ostensibly championing. But pursuit of greater fairness and equality cannot be allowed to interfere with dispassionate academic study. No matter how unwelcome the implications of a logical argument may be, it must be allowed to stand or fall on its merits not its desirability or political utility. First Harvard, then Google, and now the editors-in-chief of two esteemed scientific journals, the National Science Foundation, and the international publisher Springer have all surrendered to demands from the radical academic Left to suppress a controversial idea. Who will be the next, and for what perceived transgression? If bullying and censorship are now to be re-described as ‘advocacy’ and ‘academic freedom,’ as the Chicago administrators would have it, they will simply replace empiricism and rational discourse as the academic instruments of choice. Wrapped under all this is that politically incorrect fact about the different spreads on the bell curves… h/t David E, Willie S. Photo: Wikimedia commons | Centenial light bulb, Livermore, CA. | Image LPS.1 |
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