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It’s about timeThank goodness for Tony Abbott Nine years ago the Australian Liberals were on the verge of splitting. Turnbull was about to give the Labor Party a free pass on the Emissions Trading Scheme and sell Australia out to the EU. Climategate broke (thank you FOIA) and the party rebelled and tossed out Turnbull. Now, after three elections where the people voted No to carbon taxes every time they could, we have an emissions trading scheme, a Renewable Energy Target, and one of the most crippling Paris targets of any nation. This is despite our rapidly growing population, huge distances and massive resources and the failure of almost every other nation to even achieve their Paris goals. We are The Global Patsy, obediently sacrificing competitive advantage, GDP, and lifestyle – all so Julie Bishop and Malcolm Turnbull get invited to the right parties. Economic carnage in a glorious quest to make the weather nicer. UPDATE: Time to pull out of Paris full speech It has got to end. The NEG (The National Energy Guarantee) is a dog:Turnbull is repeating mistakes says Abbott: Simon Benson, The Australian Delivering his most strident attack to date on his government’s own energy policy, the former prime minister has warned Liberal colleagues they risk a repeat of a split that almost destroyed the party a decade ago. Less than four weeks before five critical by-elections, Mr Abbott has sought to escalate the internal campaign against the national energy guarantee ahead of a pivotal August meeting of COAG in which the government will seek support from Labor states. “Does the Liberal Party nine years on realise the wheel has turned full circle and we are back to where we were in late 2009, with Malcolm Turnbull trying to do a deal with the Labor Party on emissions reduction,” Mr Abbott told The Australian, ahead of a speech tonight to the climate sceptic-think tank, the Australian Environment Foundation. It’s a fight, not a negotiation because there is no negotiating with witchcraft. Abbott is spot on: “It’s not a circle you can square with the Labor Party … it is a fight that has to be won. There can be no consensus on climate change … you either win or lose … and at the moment we are losing.” Abbott is discussing scientific points. This is rare from a politician — he’s not just debating the dismal economics, he’s confident, and right, about science. This is good. We want a science debate every bit as much as they don’t want one: Latika Bourke, Sydney Morning Herald He said despite the rate of carbon in the atmosphere increasing from 300 to 400 parts per million there had been no “dramatic consequences” on the climate. “Sea levels have hardly risen and temperatures are still below those of the medieval warm period. “Over time, temperature change seems to correlate rather more with sun spot activity than with carbon dioxide levels,” he claimed… Unlike other politicians Abbott is unloading the past, cleaning the slateThe former PM now says he never anticipated the climate change reduction targets he signed up would be binding. .. Mr Abbott said both he and John Howard had been in the dark about the full implications of their own climate change mitigation policies including the renewable energy target and the international emissions reductions pledges. “I’m not sure that the Howard government fully anticipated where the renewable energy target would lead when it first made the decision to impose one,” he said. When Abbott was PM he worked to get his direct action plan implemented (a cheap auction system that actually works to reduce carbon for bargain prices like $14/ton). Then up pops the macabre combo of Clive Palmer and Al Gore, and Palmer was got at. The coal miner suddenly “had” to have a seemingly empty clause leaving the door open for an emissions trading plan. The clause would only came into effect if all the other major world economies acted together which everyone knew would never happen. But that clause was the thin edge of the wedge, and when the Paris Agreement was crafted, all those big nations (India, China) agreed to do nothing, but officially, they agreed to do it together. The Paris deal was meaningless but they signed it, triggering sub clauses in domestic legislation in Australia, and probably in other Patsy Nations too. When he was prime minister, Mr Abbott signed Australia up to reducing emissions to 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030. But he said on Tuesday that was only ever intended to be an aspiration. “I certainly didn’t anticipate, as prime minister, how the aspirational targets we agreed to at Paris would, in different hands, become binding commitments,” he said. The word trickery had paved the way for Turnbull to claim he was sticking to Abbott’s plan even as Turnbull did the exact opposite of the spirit of everything Abbott had gone to the election with. He sold the nation out. He has to go. h/t Pat Australia tried too hard to please, –Ruairi Flashback:
Climate protestors put their best argument forward:It’s taken thirty years and $100 billion in scientific research to get here.  They think they can stop droughts. Now we know that the best thing about climate protestors is their cardboard. Australians will surely now poke, –Ruairi I don’t think these guys realize the upper tropospheric hot spot is missing. They are going to feel pretty silly when they find out someone tricked them into standing naked in the main street of Melbourne. As reported by EchonetDaily (whoever they are, they don’t appear to be a satirical site). This weekend in Melbourne …. sometime when it was very very dark and there were no pedestrians. (Or maybe it was photoshopped and they were never there at all?) Keep reading → July 3rd, 2018 | Tags: Satire & Parody | Category: Funny stuff, Global Warming |  Print This Post | | Some things just don’t belong at comment #1. Coal is a dying industry, but luckily for the Australian economy, the rest of the world is not as smart as The Australian Greens and Labor Party and they are still buying it. Coal is set to regain its spot as the nation’s biggest export earner amid higher prices and surging demand from Asia, sparking fresh calls from the Turnbull government for Labor to end its “war on coal”. The Department of Industry, Innovation and Science figures show total coal exports are forecast to reach $58.1 billion in 2018-19, overtaking iron ore ($57.7bn) for the first time in almost a decade. We’ve only got 300 years of these kind of coal profits to go.The big question, do we open up more coal mines now and rake in the dough, or try to make the weather nicer in one thousand years time? Tricky… Resources Minister Matthew Canavan said new export forecasts strengthened the investment case for Adani’s proposed $16.5 billion Carmichael coalmine and the development of Queensland’s Galilee Basin, which federal Labor has opposed. “Opening up the Galilee would generate 16,000 direct mining jobs and tens of billions in taxes.” What do Australia’s big four banks do — ask Greenpeace for investment adviceIn 2015, the National Australia Bank and Commonwealth bank announced they were refusing to finance Adani’s Carmichael Coal Mine. Then the ANZ agreed, and finally Westpac jumped on the anti-coal bandwagon too. Apparently, “Australian coal is an unbankable deposit”, at least according to Daid Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies. But what would he know? About as much as our four biggest bankers. So none of our big banks would finance a major project in our largest export industry. Screwed nation.
Last Chance to Book for Tony Abbott Lecture: Melbourne, 3 July 2018 … The place to be on Tuesday night.
Tickets: Book them through Eventbrite. Tickets:$35 for AEF members and $42 for others. Keep reading → …. What costs $1,500m, makes no electricity, but “saves money”?South Australia has used federal subsidies to build more wind power than it can use. They’ve spent half a billion already on diesel powered jet engines and a battery that can power the state for “minutes”. For 139 hours last year the state produced so much wind power it supplied 100% of the states electricity needs and then some, and the problem of excess electricity is only getting worse as wind generation keeps increasing and solar PV uptake is rampant. When government rules and regs have created an inefficient, expensive problem, what do we do? More of it. A new report suggests that South Australia needs a direct transmission line to NSW which will cost $1.5b. We could spend that on a reliable generator instead, or get the government out of the way and let the private sector do it for us, but instead we need to pay for another transmission line to connect up different zones-of-subsidy-rent seekers and hope we get $30 off the bill? It’s a savings in the statistic margin of error… South Australia didn’t even have an interconnector til 1990. Now with decentralized and renewable power they need two? It’s another hidden cost of unreliable power. Put the interconnector on the “Renewables Tab”. It appears to be the direct line from the wind farms that are supposed to change the weather to the proposed Hydro 2.0 scheme we didn’t need.  Image: Marcus Wong Wongm Power savings in NSW-SA interconnector: ElectraNet report
Consumers will save up to $30 on their power bills if a new interconnector between NSW and South Australia is built, electricity transmission company ElectraNet says in a draft report into the Marshall government’s proposal. The report, released by ElectraNet today, finds a new electricity transmission link “would deliver substantial economic benefits”. ElectraNet chief executive Steve Masters said net market benefits were estimated to be around $1 billion over 21 years. But on current estimates, Mr Masters said a new interconnector would cost $1.5bn across both states. The link would be operational between 2022 and 2024. From Anero.id we can see why SA now wants an interconnector that it didn’t need.The total demand in SA is around 2,000MW, so we can appreciate the fun the guys must be having in the control rooms of the SA network as 1,400MW comes and mostly goes. (Graph below). The megawatt mayhem in South Australia was backed up with Victorian brown coal. Now that Hazelwood is shut, they need coal power from Queensland, or if there is any to spare, from NSW. SA has excess renewable power to sell (sometimes) to collect those renewable forced RET payments from too.  SA Wind power, graph, June 2018 As TonyfromOz says on THIRTEEN occasions this month (so far), the ENTIRE 1800+ MW wind turbine capacity in SA failed to generate 50 MW of electricity. South Australia already has more renewable power than it can useAll up SA has 1,806MW of wind power and then there is 781MW of rooftop solar meaning on a sunny, windy day at midday SA needs to dump some excess on other states. This works like mosquito repellent for any reliable baseload generator, effectively sucking all the fun out of owning a billion dollar resource. Wind power is already often running in excess of the state demand — AEMO: Wind penetration was over 100% [in SA] for 139 hours across the 2016–17 year, on 30 separate days across the year. On these occasions, South Australia could have supplied its local demand entirely from wind generation, with surplus wind generation available to export to Victoria.
At all times the wind and solar power need almost complete back up standing by at the ready. Wind power is constrained if there is not enough back up sitting around waiting to spring into action. The entire point of all this extra infrastructure is to reduce CO2 emissions and change the climate for our grandchildren. The electricity it produces is virtually always surplus to what existing infrastructure could produce. Thought of the dayThrough some freak of nature, even though South Australia has the *cheapest* electricity generators known to mankind, it also has the most expensive electricity in the world. Lest we forget, as I keep saying –there was a cheaper option: Not long back, Port Augusta had a thirty-one year old coal plant generating 520MW. The Premier could have spent $30 million to keep it going. h/t to William B in comments on The Australian’s site. June 30th, 2018 | Tags: SA (South Australia) | Category: Cost, Global Warming, Grids, Renewable | Print This Post | | This is serious. The World Cup cometh, and the United Kingdom is running out of beer. The UK emits over one million tons of CO2 each day but bottles of flood-drought-n-coral-killing CO2 are in short supply. Trade journal Gas World, which first revealed there was a problem last week, said it was the “worst supply situation to hit the European carbon dioxide business in decades”. Carbon capture is the way of the future, which is a shame. If it worked now, people wouldn’t be running out of beer, bacon, coke and even crumpets. We spend billions to take pollution out of the sky and stuff it into deep holes. Then we pay people to generate the same pollution and put it in our food. Someone, join the dots. Cut out the middle man and move Heineken next to Drax! Keep reading → Don’t camp under an old wind turbineWhat weighs 100 tons, sits 100 meters above the ground, leaks transmission fluid and may disintegrate into a million sharp fibreglass spikes…  …. As much of Germany’s nearly 30,000 strong fleet of wind turbines approach 20 or more years in age, the list of catastrophic collapses is growing more rapidly. The turbines are now being viewed by technical experts as “ticking time bombs”. According to a commentary by Daniel Wetzel of online German Daily ‘Die Welt’, the aging rickety wind turbines are poorly inspected and maintained and thus are now posing a huge risk. Over the past months alone there’s been a flurry of reports over wind turbines failing catastrophically and collapsing to the ground, e.g. see here, here and here. Industrial systems in Germany need to get technical inspections and safety approvals, but wind turbines don’t… Vernunftkraft keeps a list of failures. The Greens, of course, are apoplectic (not). _______________________ Photo: this particular turbine crashed in Antarctica. If you own a photo of a failing German one, please let me know. … Australia is figuring out how to change the global climate and power up the nation. It’s the old “have cake: eat cake: sell cake and build a sea-wall with cake” dilemma. The PM, Malcolm Turnbull, has come up with a plan called the National Energy Guarantee (NEG), which will manage to hurt the environment, jobs and industry at the same time. Who benefits? Gas companies, Renewables Co. Who loses? Everyone else. One of the key ideas is that we should have an average emissions target of 0.4 magical tons of CO2 per MWh, because “storms”. Tom Quirk has laid out our current situation below and how (theoretically) we might meet that target. (Especially if clouds start raining money, thinks Jo, preferably in USD and filling Lake Eyre.) The “good news” is that South Australia can stop already, it’s there. The bad news is that the rest of Australia will need to catch up with South Australia, including the size of the electricity bills (and then some). In 12 years Australia needs to shut nearly every single coal plant thus turning black coal into white elephants. The one last black coal plant or two will operate barely at break-even point, sitting on a utilization rate of 68% (thereby doing nothing 32% of the time, and being a part time white-elephant). By 2030 we “need” to build four times as many wind farms as we already have. And four times as many gas plants. Somehow we need to get six times as much gas as we already use and do that without fracking or even exploring for gas in some states where both are banned. Since the Northern Territory has just permitted fracking perhaps we can get it all from there. Especially if the NT drillers can get the horizontal frack pipes to extend 2,000 miles underground. Thanks to Tom for all the data and calculations, and to all the people who helped him. — Jo ____________________________________ Guest Post by Tom QuirkNEG – The white elephant in the roomWhen the King of Siam wished to rid himself of a troublesome courtier, he would send a white elephant as a first sign of oncoming ruin. Our federal government has served up a troublesome elephant of a plan, the NEG that might ruin our country. The information used in this analysis is sourced from the Department of the Environment and Energy, Australian Energy Statistics, and gives the sources of electricity generation for the calendar year 2017. The generation plant data comes from the AEMO. This note will explore what could happen were one of the key conditions of the NEG was actually met – the condition that CO2 emissions from electricity generation should move to average 0.4 tonnes of CO2 per megawatt hour of electrical energy. South Australia has already achieved this NEG goal but at great cost to consumers whether domestic or business. The table below lays out the mix of generators. Coal fired generation has ceased, wind farm energy takes priority in the market and the inter-connectors to the Victorian power system keeps South Australia from having too many blackouts by supplying some 15% of demand. Renewables meet 37% of demand while Victoria supplies 15% and the NEG target is achieved with an average of 0.38 tonnes CO2 per MWh.
 … So turning to the other states, New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and Victoria that are in the National Energy Market, the table below is for the same period as the South Australian analysis above. In these states renewables generate 15% of supply with half coming from hydro plants. Coal and gas provide 85% of supply and the CO2 emissions average of
 …. So what might happen if this same energy were to be generated under the NEG target of 0.4 tonnes CO2 per MWh? The final table shows what changes to generator plant might be made up to 2030 to reach the NEG emission target while generating the same energy as in 2017.
 NEG, Table, Generation, renewables, 2030, NSW, Vic, Tas, Qld. A comparison of the present and the desired outcome points to the following:
No attempt has been made to estimate the costs for these changes or the prices consumers would pay. But if South Australia is setting an example then the prices will be amongst the highest in the world. The consequence will be smelters closing and other energy intensive processes moving elsewhere in the world. The conclusion from this analysis is that the political and policy-making class have taken us and the white elephant into a labyrinth of regulations that will further disrupt electricity supply. Whether we meet the Minotaur or the elephant, like Theseus has a piece of string to help us escape remains to be seen. *Edited 6pm with more accurate numbers, highlighted in tables. … Oh the dilemma. When faced with a crocodile do you get out a gun or put up a windmill?It could be that natural cycles change animal habitats as they have for millions of years. It could be that we made crocodiles a protected species and stopped hunting and killing the wild ones in Queensland from 1974, but whatever, it must be climate, climate, climate. Buy an EV and stop the spread of crocodiles! Crikey! Crocs heading south and other changes forecast for Australia’s wildlifeABC “Science” By environment reporter Nick Kilvert The chances of limiting climate change appear to be growing slimmer by the day — and this may have big implications for Australia’s wildlife. Recently a number of crocodiles have been trapped in the Mary River, just 105 kilometres north of Noosa and 250km south of their usual range. Irukandji jellyfish too, appear to be expanding south, with 10 suspected stings near Fraser Island and a child stung at Mooloolaba last year. Numerous tropical fish have been recorded up to 1,000 kilometres south of their traditional range, such as the Great Barrier Reef’s lemon-peel angelfish which turned up on Lord Howe Island in 2009, and habitat-modifying sea urchins have landed in Tasmania. According to Climate Action Tracker (CAT), the world is not reducing emissions sufficiently to limit warming to below 2 degrees. So how will warming of 2 degrees affect the distribution of Australian animals? Will we have crocodiles sunning themselves on the beaches at Noosa and Irukandji in Byron Bay? And what happens when rare species clinging to mountain tops run out of room to climb? Or maybe there are just lots more crocs since we don’t shoot them anymore? …there is uncertainty about whether the recent instances of crocodiles in southern waters is climate related or due to increasing numbers. Crocodile populations have dramatically recovered from the brink of extinction since the 1970s, and the need for new territory may push some individuals to move outside their natural range. A Queensland Department of Environment and Science (DES) spokesperson said they currently “don’t have evidence” to suggest crocodiles are expanding south. Jellyfish are coming, spreading and deadly because “climate”It was cooler in 1970 for reasons climate models don’t understand, but if you compare a naturally cooler part of recent history to a naturally warmer time, it’s clear (like sump water) that the cause is coal plants, cars and air conditioners. Despite there being limited knowledge of Irukandji biology, toxinologist associate professor Jamie Seymour from JCU who has studied them extensively, said they were already responding to warming conditions.
“We looked at how far south the stings were 50 years ago and they were around about the Whitsundays. And we looked at where we’re getting stings now, which is the southern end of Fraser Island.”
 Solar panels across Australia reduce our emissions by almost nothing. The ABC is whipping Gorgon for not getting carbon sequestration to work, claiming that this is a crisis that will wipe out the entire “gain” from installing two million solar panels across Australia. What the ABC don’t say is that the entire infrastructure of solar panels (on 20% of Australian homes) is only reducing our CO2 emissions by one pointless percent. So the Gorgon delay in achieving the impossible is likewise irrelevant. Australian emissions are rising at 1.5% pa now anyhow. In terms of our national emissions, the real question is if we shut every solar panel in the nation would anyone notice? Despite the $1.1b budget, the ABC could have got this bigger and more useful perspective for free from any number of skeptics, none of whom it tried to interview. With minimal training in arithmetic ABC staff could even have figured it out for themselves. Instead, as per usual, the ABC provides free advertorials for green-industry hacks, with no hard questions and little research. Can someone please explain to ABC investigative journalists the difference between a megaton and a ton? All they had to do was graph the solar contribution on the same graph or even in the same units… How the Gorgon gas plant could wipe out a year’s worth of Australia’s solar emissions savingsAlmost 2 million Australian households have installed solar panels to cut their power bills while also doing their bit for the environment. Households account for most of the country’s total solar panel emission savings. Look how useful solar panels are — there are lots of zeroes on that axis when we use the odd units like “tons of carbon”. What nation graphs anything in tons?  … The whole Renewable Energy Target (RET) cuts total emissions by around 5%The ABC helpfully provides the dismal detail: “If the RET is met and 33,000 gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity is generated in 2020, this would represent avoided emissions of about 26 million tonnes of CO2-e [a standard unit for measuring carbon footprints] per year,” Dr Hare said. “These reductions in emissions from the power sector are unfortunately almost completely offset by the estimated increase emissions from the LNG sector.” How easy is it for ABC readers to compare the value of solar panels in terms of our total emissions as measured in the standard megaton unit? How many readers didn’t see the fine print at the bottom explaining the units?  …. … Our Paris targets are obscenely ambitious. See the graph below regarding how much we have to cut. And there is no allowance for having one of the highest population growth rates in the West. Still, the Paris agreement is a nonbinding, ineffectual plan that almost every other nation is going to fail to meet. So “whatever”. We can bail out at no cost apart from being called a few names.  … Almost no one anywhere has got large scale carbon storage by injection to work. The industry is so immature that only a few months ago some pundits were saying the carbon capture era might be “starting” because of a new approved tax credit: Chevron predicted that process would have seen between 5.5 and 8 million tonnes of CO2 injected into the ground during the plant’s first two years of production from the Gorgon field, making it one of the largest carbon abatement activities in the world. Instead, technical problems with seals and corrosion issues in the infrastructure have delayed CO2 storage and the Federal Government, which contributed $60 million towards the green technology, is not expecting the problem to be rectified until March 2019 — about two years after production began from the Gorgon gas field. By that point, experts including energy consultancy firm Energetics predict the additional CO2 emitted into the atmosphere will be roughly equivalent to the 6.2 million tonnes in emissions saved in a year by all the solar panels in the country combined — from small household rooftop systems to major commercial installations. Let’s calculate the cost per ton “saved”Can someone with some time to spare add up the cost of all those solar panels? I’d like to know how much we spent to achieve something so insignificant. No nation should ever feel bound, –Ruairi June 22nd, 2018 | Tags: ABC, Solar Energy (PV), Subsidies | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | Thank the ABC. This is the best comedy I’ve seen them do on “climate change” — albeit unwittingly. The ABC has a new comedy show on Wednesday nights called RoadMap to Paradise. This is Big-Government Comedy. You’ll swear this was made by a skeptic. No really.
Is he a skeptic infiltrator? Nooo. The same episode includes an interview with a CSIRO scientist, Kathleen McInnes, who drops in to tell us things are “pretty bad”. And one of Corey White’s big ideas is to treat Elon Musk’s business like a tax deductible religion. I don’t think he sees the funny side of that either. What was he thinking?It’s tough being a comedian. I’m guessing Cory White wanted to expose the futility of individual voluntary action to change the planet’s climate, with the bigger aim of convincing the audience that only Big-Government regulation can save us! Sadly for him, Big-government action is futile too, and worse, no matter what hair-shirt-hell you can make for yourself, the government can do it ten times better. You, personally, can only waste one life. The government can waste a nation — it can bankrupt good citizens, blow up assets, and jail people. (Like Tommy). Crunch those numbers Cory — we can all leave Australia and a hundred years from now the world will be 0.0154 °C cooler. (At best!) We could turn our entire GDP over to Elon Musk and … crickets! Celsius crickets. Crickets with zeros! Keep reading → June 22nd, 2018 | Tags: ABC, Satire & Parody | Category: Funny stuff, Global Warming | Print This Post | | Australia’s public broadcaster is under public fire. It’s about time. The rank and file of the Liberal Party voted to sell it off which sparked off a national debate about the value of subsidizing the largest media outlet in the country in an era when the average Australian can broadcast their opinion for free from their own phone. We don’t need a government funded voice, we just need free speech. Fighting back, the ABC head says Australians think the “ABC is priceless”, so I say: Fine — let those people pay for it. I’m Pro-Choice on the ABC. Let the people choose which media outlets they want to contribute to. Since the ABC costs $1.1b that’s about $50 per person per annum or $200 per household of four (assuming everyone pays, which they won’t). I say, launch the IPO, sell the shares, or at least, give us the tick-a-box option on our tax return. Make it voluntary. Stop the forced payments for Big-Government-lovin’ propagandaWe could spell out the actual cost on the tax returns, and ask who wants to pay…
In a democracy this could be done for lots of items — want to send your tax dollars to medical research instead of windmills, or welfare for art? Want to keep your tax dollars so you can employ another Australian? Why not. Let us vote with our wallet — what could be more democratic? ABC boss Michelle Guthrie launches counter attack against Liberal Party, critics…Ms Guthrie launched a counter-attack saying the public and media industry was against privatisation. “I think the public regards the ABC as a priceless asset, more valuable now than ever in its history. I can appreciate that the ABC would fetch a high price in a commercial market. But does the public want a new media organisation that compromises quality and innovation for profit? Does the commercial sector want a new advertising behemoth in its midst? I think not. Why should a farm hand who doesn’t watch the ABC have to subsidize the Double Bay crowd that do? If the ABC is so loved and respected, why do we have to force Australians to pay for it? Time to discuss the optionsIt doesn’t have to be this way. Australians paid the Television License Fee from 1956 until 1974 when Gough Whitlam made it a forced payment. (h/t Jeff) Should we consider the optional tax return “tick-a-box”, or a license fee, or sell it off outright? I’d rather sell it, but the tax-return option may be more achievable. Though there are risks. There will be heavy social pressure, school indoctrination and advertising for people to tick “yes”, so what will the uptake be? Without any enforcement or punishment, the uptake, despite the ABC’s “pricelessness” may be very low. That would tempt pollies to adopt the British system where everyone with a TV pays regardless of whether they like or use the BBC. The cost is about £150pa and though a quarter of Brits don’t watch the BBC in any given week, as many as 200,000 people get fined each year for the criminal offence of avoiding the fee. If I understand things correctly, the “fee” has the illusion of being optional, but really isn’t. Do Brits have to give up all screens (including their PC, laptop and mobile phone) in order to not pay the BBC? Some “choice”. The benefit of the tick-a-box tax payment is that it would reorient the ABC towards taxpayers (but only if taxpayers really can opt-out), and provide a slight dampener on their derision and scorn towards taxpaying Deplorables since they may punish the ABC come June 30th. The ABC might even have to serve the public to keep its funding. What a change! Let’s make the people the gatekeepers instead of the deep-state bureaucrats and the politicians. For what it’s worth, there were 12.8million people who filed tax returns in 2013FY. … What would China do if it wanted competitors to keep shackling themselves to an industry-crippling religious weather-fetish?
Notice the size of the carbon markets: The EU’s trading scheme is the largest in the world and “covers” 1.8 gigatons of carbon emissions. China’s power sector (just power) produces 3 gigatons of emissions. The plan is to carefully strap a very mild carbon market on the Chinese power sector starting in 2020 and expand it later to other industries which would then include some 5 gigatons of emissions. Sounds like a marvelous advert for people trying to sell carbon trading schemes: Clean-energy advocates trumpeted the creation of the planet’s largest carbon market, which will be nearly twice the size of the European Union’s. The headline in TechnologyReview, James Temple: China is creating a huge carbon market—but not a particularly aggressive oneNot aggressive is the phrase — join these dots:
So this is the kind of giant carbon market where emissions will still increase and there will be no incentive to stop using coal. Note the main outcome — factories will get more efficient — which is a nice side benefit which happens in every maturing economy anyhow. The Chinese know exactly what they are doing. …early signs indicate that China is taking an extremely cautious approach, driven by fears of undermining economic growth. Keep reading → Despite 20 years of non-stop propaganda and belligerent namecalling, strangely, expert green policies have achieved exactly nothing of what they said they aimed for. Coal provided 38% of our power in 1998 and it is still the same 38% in 2017. The non-fossil fuel sector has actually declined slightly as nukes decrease. We spent billions doing exactly what was asked. Perhaps following the advice of people who think the debate is over and “denier” is a scientific term might not be the best national energy policy?  Fuel shares in global power generation for the last 20 years | BP Energy Review, 2018. Long-term dominance of fossil fuels unchallengedGraham Lloyd, The Australian Global demand for coal and gas to generate electricity was back on the rise last year … Most striking had been the failure of renewable energy to make an impact on the fossil fuels share of power generation, BP group chief economist Spencer Dale said. “Despite the extraordinary (global) growth in renewables in recent years, and the huge policy efforts to encourage a shift away from coal into cleaner, lower carbon fuels, there has been almost no improvement in the power sector fuel mix over the past 20 years,” he said. The share of coal in the power sector in 1998 was 38 per cent, exactly the same as 2017. “The share of non-fossil fuel in 2017 is actually a little lower than it was 20 years ago, as the growth of renewables hasn’t offset the declining share of nuclear,” Mr Dale said. h/t Pat. Engineers and other skeptics predicted this would happen. At this point, honest Greens who care about CO2 emissions would be asking for help. Since they aren’t, we can assume the expert green policies are achieving what the Greens want, they just aren’t being honest. If renewables were cheap and reliable the developing world would be rushing to follow the west. The Chinese are not stupid, they sign pacts to do nothing while they use coal and nukes. They tried solar, but realized it’s toxic, costs more and are cutting subsidies. Make no mistake, renewables policies are achieving “Green” aimsPolicies pretending to reduce CO2 have shrunk the role of the free market, turned a fifth of all homes in Australia into subsidized generators, and increased government control of our energy as a larger sector becomes dependent on handouts. They’ve demonized independent energy producers, created a crisis and are using that crisis to blame “privatization” and the free market. They’ve polluted the concept of a free market to the point where people came to think that a fake market where the government entirely and artificially fixed supply and demand was “free”. They’ve polluted the word pollution… If the Greens/Labor really cared about CO2 they’d be doing something different. BP toes the line of the Ruling Class perfectlyWhy wouldn’t BP? It profits from it – gas sales increase with more unreliable wind and solar generation, plus pandering holds the bullies at bay. Spencer Dale, Group Chief Economist at BP gnashes teeth, “Oh Woe” The power sector really matters. It’s by far the single biggest market for energy: absorbing over 40% of primary energy last year. And it’s at the leading edge of the energy transition, as renewables grow and the world electrifies. This year’s Statistical Review for the first time includes comprehensive data on the fuel mix within the power sector, aiding our understanding of this key sector. Global power generation increased by 2.8% in 2017 close to its 10-year average. Almost all that growth came from the developing world. OECD demand edged up slightly, but essentially the decoupling of economic growth and power demand in the OECD seen over the past 10 years continued, with OECD power broadly flat over the past decade. Spot a problem: half the growth in total power generation and yet only making 8% of total power? The increase in global power generation was driven by strong expansion in renewable energy, led by wind (17%, 163 TWh) and solar (35%, 114 TWh), which accounted for almost half of the total growth in power generation, despite accounting for only 8% of total generation. Although wind continued in its role of the bigger, more established, elder cousin, it was solar energy that made all the waves. This is striking and worrying, and we recommend …doing more of the same. Standing back from the detail of what happened last year, the most striking – and worrying – chart in the whole of this Statistical Review is the trends in the power sector fuel mix over the past 20 years. Striking: because despite the extraordinary growth in renewables in recent years, and the huge policy efforts to encourage a shift away from coal into cleaner, lower carbon fuels, there has been almost no improvement in the power sector fuel mix over the past 20 years. The share of coal in the power sector in 1998 was 38% – exactly the same as in 2017 – with the slight edging down in recent years simply reversing the drift up in the early 2000s associated with China’s rapid expansion. The share of non-fossil in 2017 is actually a little lower than it was 20 years ago, as the growth of renewables hasn’t offset the declining share of nuclear. I had no idea that so little progress had been made until I looked at these data. Worrying: because the power sector is the single most important source of carbon emissions from energy consumption, accounting for over a third of those emissions in 2017. To have any chance of getting on a path consistent with meeting the Paris climate goals there will need to be significant improvements in the power sector. But this is one area where at the global level we haven’t even taken one step forward, we have stood still: perfectly still for the past 20 years. This chart should serve as a wake-up call for all of us. Keep calm and keep doing what we’re doing Conclusion: Global energy markets in 2017 took a backward step in terms of the transition to a lower carbon energy system: growth in energy demand, coal consumption and carbon emissions all increased. But that should be seen in the context of the exceptional outcomes recorded in the previous three years. Some backsliding was almost inevitable. The road to meeting the Paris climate goals is likely to long and challenging, with many twists and turns, forward lurches and backward stumbles. To navigate our progress will require timely, comprehensive and relevant data. That’s the role of BP’s Statistical Review. Remember coal and nukes are the enemy of gas. REFERENCEBP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2018. June 17th, 2018 | Tags: Coal, Greens | Category: AGW socio-political, Electricity, Global Warming, Renewable | Print This Post | | |
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