Recent Posts
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In trying to be a small target, the Liberals accidentally disappeared
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Tuesday
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Monday
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The best thing about the Australian election was that Nigel Farage’s party won 30% in the UK
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Sunday
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Saturday — Election Day Australia
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Vote for freedom…
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Friday
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Bombshell: Sir Tony Blair says climate policies are unworkable, irrational, and everyone is afraid of being called a denier
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Thursday
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Blackout in Spain to cost 2-4 billion Euro, likely due to solar plants — blind and biased ABC says “cause is a mystery”
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Wednesday
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Days after Spain reaches 100% renewable, mass blackouts hit, due to mysterious “rare atmospheric phenomenon”
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Tuesday
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Help needed: Site under DDoS attack from hundreds of thousands of unique IPs this week — especially China and the USA
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Monday: Election Day Canada
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When the Labor Party talk about “The Science” the Opposition can easily outflank and outgun them with bigger, better science
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Saturday
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UK Gov spends £50 m to dim sun to create slightly less beach weather
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Friday
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The cocoa price crisis is a Big Government price fixing disaster, not a climate change one
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Thursday
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Blame the Vikings! Moss found in East Antarctica lived in warmer summers a thousand years ago.
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Wednesday
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Tuesday
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Monday
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Easter Sunday
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Saturday
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Good Friday
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In crash-test dummy land, we solve teenage girl climate anxiety with $500b in fantasy weather experiments…
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Thursday
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Nothing says “Safe and Effective” like destroying all the data from Australia’s giant abandoned vaccine study
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Wednesday
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Who owns the oceans? The UN wants to tax ships to reduce carbon emissions — a $40b windfall for unaccountable global bureaucrats
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Tuesday
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Monday
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Sunday
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Saturday
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Conservatives promise to axe the car tax that would have added $10k to petrol and diesel cars
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Friday
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The monster Green Tariffs we put on ourselves are worse than a foreign trade war
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Thursday
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Trump goes gangbusters on coal power and coal mining to supply AI energy demand
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Wednesday
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Instead of $8b in rebates, Labor could have built gas and coal plants and actually made cheap electricity
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Tuesday
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Labor wants the working class to help rich people buy batteries
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Monday
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Sunday
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We couldn’t kill the worlds corals if we wanted to: They already suffered for two thousand years and recovered
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Saturday
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The Climate Crisis was Christopher Columbus’s fault — “a mutant offspring of European Scientific racism”
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Just when you think headlines can’t be that stupid:
Baby fish may not find their way home as the level of CO2 in the ocean rises, study finds
— ABC Isabel Dayman
Baby fish may lose their ability to find their way home in the future due to rising CO2 levels in the ocean, a marine ecology expert has found.
What the study found was that fish larvae were not paying attention to the right noises.
The researchers put the larvae in a tank and bubbled CO2 through it constantly. They appear to forget that CO2 changes naturally every night on reefs all over the world. Fish are not just used to having a daily shift, they prefer it.
In shallow water, ocean acidification happens at 7pm daily, and after 400 million years, somehow, fish have adapted.
One previous study declared fish might become reckless in a high CO2 world, but later discovered that it was the laboratory setting that was the problem, not the CO2. When they added the daily pH swing back to their tanks, the fish behaved better and coped with the extra CO2. The real message is that laboratories are bad for fish.
As far as adapting to long term climate change, fish carry around hundreds of millions of years of assorted junk genes in the gene-pool, which help them cope when things change. (Remember the fish that adapted from salt-water to fresh-water in just fifty years?) Tools from past disasters may well linger on in a small proportion of the population. Natural selection can find that and amplify.
Barramundi have 32 million babies to lose at a time:
It’s gloom and doom on the ABC:
“When we raised these larvae under elevated CO2, we saw that those larvae were no longer attracted — and worse, they were deterred by — the natural sounds of their natural habitat,” he said.
And that will have devastating consequences because there will be no “recruitment”, or returning larvae, Professor Nagelkerken explained.
“The question is, what proportion of species will show this response — is it 10 of the fish species? Is it 50 per cent or 80 per cent?” he said.
Since one big Barramundi mother seriously does have 32 million eggs at a time, it might not be the end of the world if only 27% find their way home instead of 65%.
If it half the babies are wiped out, Barramundi numbers will drop temporarily — then five or six years later the new generation will be better adapted to higher CO2. One hundred years allows 20 generations of adaption. Like the salt-water fish stuck in a fresh-water pool, natural selection is crushingly brutal but effective. Spread over a century, fish will make it…
What’s next: CO2 causes bald kittens, and confused dogs?
REFERENCE
Rossi et al, (2017) On the wrong track: ocean acidification attracts larval fish to irrelevant environmental cues, Nature journal, Scientific Reports. You can read the whole paper. (Lucky you)
Keep reading →
9.6 out of 10 based on 63 ratings
Former PM Tony Abbott and a team of conservative pollies suggested the government should forcibly acquire the old coal plant Liddell to keep it running and save our grid.
Our current PM called this idea “socialist”:
This drew immediate criticism from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who accused Mr Abbott of suggesting that the Coalition adopt socialists policies of nationalising the means of production.
Our energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg, suddenly remembered how conservative governments support free markets:
The Energy Minister ….[said] there will be no subsidies for coal-fired power plants under a Turnbull government and [claims]that right-wing ideology has no place in the energy debate.
Who’re the socialists here?
Turnbull and Frydenberg are the same team who preside over a system which takes billions from some electricity generators to reward others and is intended to drive the former out of business. They bought the giant Snowy Hydro generator for $6b, and are planning to spend $4.5b to build a hydro storage “battery” that is only needed in order to stop their pick-the-winner favourite new generators from destroying the grid or the household budget, whichever comes first.
Apparently nationalizing a hydro generator is not “socialist” but nationalizing a coal one is. Find me a dictionary that can defend that one and I’ll show you a politically correct chock for the boat trailer.
The ideological people in this debate are the ones that are destroying coal businesses to change the weather.
What Abbott and co are suggesting is the only pragmatic option left in a semi-socialist and screwed electrical network. The government shouldn’t be buying coal plants, but when the government destroys the free market, grid efficiency and reliability — buying an old coal plant is the only sane icing left on this cake.
Obviously the free market answer is to get the heck out of messing up our grid in order to hold back the tide. Which is exactly what Tony Abbott has been trying to do for years. Abbott tried to shut the Renewable Energy Target, close the GONGOs and QUANGOs and get the government out of meddling and futile weather-controlling policies. Since the socialists wouldn’t let him, the only bandaid solution left is to buy up the parts the government hath baked and broke.
Where were Frydenberg and Turnbull’s cheers for the “free market” when Abbott was trying to recreate one?
9.5 out of 10 based on 106 ratings
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9.4 out of 10 based on 14 ratings
Just another hidden cost — intermittent generators are vandals on our baseload suppliers. Wind power needs gas, but gas doesn’t need the wind. When the two are paired together it makes the wind energy “reliable” but adds nearly $30/MWh to the cost of the energy from gas. Right now that cost will be added to the gas plant, but in a free market, it should be paid by the wind farm investors.
Stacy and Taylor compared the cost of running a Closed Cycle Gas plant (CC Gas) on its own or combined with a wind farm. The combination produces reliable electricity “on demand” and uses less gas to do it. The sole benefits to this odd industrial couple are a smaller gas bill and lower emissions of a fertilizing gas (CO2). All the capital and labor costs of running a gas plant are the same, but now it sits idle more often, pointlessly waiting like a spare wheel til the wind slows and gas power is needed again. About the only thing we can predict about the wind farm is that it can be relied on for almost nothing, so the gas plant must be almost as large whether or not it is chained to a wind generator.
Here’s a detailed estimate of some of the hidden costs of adding an intermittent power source to a reliable one. The figures are based on US data and came out a couple of years ago.
The idealized extra cost of adding wind to gas is $15/MWh, but the cost using real world capacity factors is $30/MWh.
Notice the “Nameplate capacity” on the right. Look at all the extra capital infrastructure required to generate the same amount of electricity. All that extra blood, sweat, tears and investment sitting around doing nothing most of the time.
Renewable energy saves fossil fuel, but wastes infrastructure, land, labor and resources.
 Click to enlarge. Here’s how you can use 1.8 times as much infrastructure to achieve no extra electricity
In the lowest cost scenario a 1MW gas plant works at 87% capacity. If it is paired with an equal nameplate capacity wind farm, the gas plant needs to be almost as large because wind power can only be relied on to produce 2.7% of its full capacity all the time. Hence rather than building a 1MW gas plant, we need to build a 0.97MW gas plant, only a tiny bit smaller, and 0.87MW of wind. The wind+gas combo will work together in synchrony to create the same amount of electricity as the 1MW wind. But it’s obviously a horrible deal — it requires a lot more capital outlay and infrastructure to build, then a lot of the time either the gas plant or the wind plant is sitting idle. The new gas capacity factor falls from 87% down to 58%.
The imposed cost of generating a MW from gas rises by at least $15/MWh when the gas plant is chained to a wind plant. This is the best case capacity factor, but real world capacity factors are lower. Using the real world data the capacity factor for gas on its own starts at 47% and falls to 32% when combined with a wind plant. The capacity factor of wind is 33%. In the real world scenario the cost imposed on the gas plant is $30/MWh.
The cost of running a gas plant on its own (LCOE) is $73 /MWh
The cost of running a new wind farm (plus the imposed cost on the gas plant) = $113 /MWh.
Renewables are not just a waste of space, they’re like anti-matter on the grid, damaging everything around them.
Thanks to commenter Lance.
REFERENCE
Stacy, T. Taylor, G. (2015) The Levelized Cost of Electricity from Existing Generation Sources, Institute for Energy Research (IER), based on EIA figures in the USA.
10 out of 10 based on 77 ratings
You may have thought that solar panels were designed to collect sunlight and convert it to electricity. But obviously the real aim of solar industrial plants is to attract government handouts and convert them into yachts.
Energy producers were encouraged to start solar farms with generous handouts funded by a ‘green levy’ on taxpayers’ bills.
But many of them now make the majority of their cash from the subsidy – instead of the electricity they produce.
This was part of the £5.6billion subsidy paid to green energy producers, which critics say inflates household energy bills.
Owl Hatch is the largest solar subsidy farm in the UK, harvesting £3.8million from captive UK taxpayers which allowed it to sell £2.5million of electricity. Supposedly, it can provide enough clean energy to power around 12,600 average UK homes. The 49.9MW Owls Hatch Solar Farm was constructed in just 12 weeks, showing just how fast subsidy sucking infrastructure can be created.
Owl’s Hatch Solar park collected 65% more money from subsidies than from sales of solar energy. (Another government “winning pick”). Owl’s Hatch only has to increase revenue from solar energy by 250% in order to legitimately earn the same total income as “sales plus subsidy” currently bring in.
The idea of subsidies was to help the new industries find their feet. Solar feet apparently take 15 – 20 years to find, as that’s how long the subsidies were guaranteed for.
The expected lifespan of the solar farm is only 25 years:
Councillors were ultimately swayed by the conditions attached to the permission – including that the farm be dismantled after 25 years and that council officers be satisfied that concerns about flooding were properly addressed.
Is there a penalty if the farms ends the same year that the subsidies do?
h/t GWPF
9.8 out of 10 based on 74 ratings
The world has record high CO2 levels, which supposedly warms us in winter but apparently not as well as cheap electricity does. As the long winter is set to drag on, Brits are being advised to heat one room as well as they can and live there. This is “progress”…
After a brief mild spell, temperatures are set to dip again in April after the chilliest March in 21 years.
It is estimated that 20,275 Brits more than average died between December 1 and March
That includes nearly 5,000 Brits under the age of 65 whose lives may have been cut short.
According to the Office of National Statistics, one in 10 cold weather deaths are among under-65s, one in 10 among 65-75s and eight in 10 among over-75s.
The Department of Health also said cold conditions worsen winter killers including flu, chest diseases, heart attacks, strokes and dementia.
It doesn’t matter where you live — more people die in winter than summer all over the world. It’s not outdoor temperatures that matter — it’s the indoor climate that kills.
Save the world, burn fossil fuels. Make CO2 and cheap electricity. We need more of both…
Cold weather kills 20 times more than heat does.
h/t ClimateDepot
REFERENCE
Antonio Gasparrini et al. (2015) Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study. The Lancet, May 2015 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62114-0. Full PDF.
9.7 out of 10 based on 77 ratings
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9 out of 10 based on 21 ratings
The Australian Fake Free market is so screwed. What asset is worth more in the trash-can than sold to a willing bidder? AGL is the definition of Predatory Capitalism.
Everyone is talking about Liddell. The old coal plant is on the chopping block in 2022 and we can see the electricity price rise coming from here.
People in Australia are going without their veggies to pay for electricity. Liddell coal plant makes cheap electricity (like old coal plants everywhere). This is a problem that would solve itself if not for Malcolm Turnbull, the RET, and the AEMO. It takes a lot of money and whole fleets of bureaucrats to stop the free market fixing this by default.
AGL is the largest coal-fired producer in Australia, but it’s also the largest generator in toto and the largest investor in renewable energy on the Australian Stock Exchange. Spot the conflict of interest? The company controls 30% of the generation in our two largest states, and 40% in South Australia. The man in charge of AGL – Andy Vesey — formerly of New York, earns $6.9 million a year, and can probably afford to pay his own electricity bill. But as Tony Cox points out, he has surrounded himself with Gore-trainees and Get-Up and ALP staffers. Not a great combination for a man controlling something like a fifth (more?) of our generating power. Not surprisingly, after the NSW government practically gave the old coal plant away for free to AGL in 2014, it appears the company has been running Liddell into the ground.
Rather than being incompetent, this is no doubt part of the plan, and an advantage for shareholders in the new tribal world of Good-Lectrons:Bad-Lectrons. After a few more years of AGL management, it won’t be worth taking over.
When 2000 is equal to 1000
Another example of “these people are not good with numbers”: AGL plans to replace 2250MW of reliable coal with 990 – 2050MW of random unreliables. Thanks to Judith Sloan at Catallaxy:
 … What could possibly go wrong?
Can someone ask Vesey to explain how this renewable solution will make electricity cheaper when supply shortages will be more likely, a cheap generator is taken out of the bidding, average bids will rise, and short-supply-spikes will surely be more likely?
The best coal plant is a dead one?
Three years after buying two large coal assets that generated 11% of the total Australian grid, AGL’s new boss said no one would buy coal. Publicly trashing the value of their own assets is not normally the way CEOs attract investors or start a negotiation.
“We do not believe that any private capital will invest in new coal plants,” CEO Andrew Vesey told the assembled analysts. “Someone may say they want to, but that does not mean they will.”
So much for that theory. No one wants coal except for the people building 1600 new plants in 62 countries. Three companies have already offered to buy Liddell. Alinta is suggesting $1 billion:
Alinta Energy has flagged a $1 billion offer to take control of the Liddell power station as AGL faces mounting political pressure to sell the ageing coal-fired plant in NSW to extend its life by up to seven years.
AGL ‘s excuses not to take that offer are “creative”:
But AGL resisted the building pressure yesterday, saying it was relying on Liddell to generate power for its customers until 2022. “We will require its infrastructure for our replacement plans into the future. We have received no offers for Liddell,” AGL said. “AGL received an approach from Alinta last night expressing an interest in entering negotiations to acquire the Liddell power station … Should a formal offer for Liddell be received, it would be given consideration in order to meet our obligations to customers and shareholders.”
But research from analysts at JPMorgan yesterday said it was unlikely the deal would ever eventuate due to a number of market and logistical reasons.
Selling the power station to Alinta would hurt the wholesale prices that AGL can charge for energy from its other assets, the analysts said, while also helping a rival that is determined to eat into AGL’s market share. Operationally, Liddell and AGL’s nearby Bayswater power station are supplied with coal from a single coal loader and are subject to a number of contracts that would need to be unwound.
“Extending (Liddell) would likely have a negative impact on wholesale prices, and therefore the value of the rest of AGL’s generation assets; it would support the growth of a competitor in electricity retailing; and a separation from Bayswater would be complicated with the two assets intrinsically linked,” JPMorgan said. — Paul Garvey, The Australian.
Lower wholesale prices means “good news for customers” and “bad news for expensive retailers” — like owners of renewable generators. Many are blaming the privatisation of an electricity generator, “a national asset”, but the real crime was nationalizing our electricity market and Big-Government demands that we use our generators to cool the climate.
There’s immense political pressure, but AGL won’t sell:
“AGL is under immense political pressure but the Australian government at this stage does not appear to have the power to force a change, with the ACCC appearing to indicate that it is entitled to close the asset and AEMO indicating if (AGL’s post-Liddell) plan is adopted the shortfall will be covered,” Macquarie said.
Here’s a little history and background on what’s becoming an issue of major national interest.
Liddell – bought for nothing — zero dollar value
AGL made it clear to investors in 2014 that it had acquired the 2,000MW Liddell generator for free from the NSW government, bundled in with the Bayswater Plant like a toy with a McHappy Meal.
 AGL Investor Presentation 2014 At the time, AGL valued Liddell as a very low coal electricity supplier generating at $20/MWh. (That hasn’t changed in 2017. See page 6). Two cents a kilowatt hour?
When cheap bidders are lost, the winning bid goes up
The AGL investor presentation in 2014 pointed out that both old black coal plants in NSW were among the cheapest electricity providers on the Australian national grid. SRMC means Short Run Marginal Cost. If we can get rid of a few more of those cheaper megawatt providers, the “winning” bid prices will keep rising up that curve. And in Australia, every successful bidder gets the price asked by the top winning bidder. On this graph below, with Liddell gone, each time National demand hits 25,000MW instead of 27,000MW, higher bids will win. This is what caused the step up when Hazelwood closed.
 Liddell is the third “brown” supplier from the left. * Not graphed, most diesel plants costing more than $350/MWh
In the worst instances, three times the plant’s equipment had oil supply failures that led to turbines grinding to a halt in about 10 minutes compared with 40 minutes under normal conditions, “basically wrecking” the machinery.
The engineer also noted how Liddell routinely has at least one of its four units out of operation, and that half of the four units were suddenly unavailable on February 10 – the first day of a record NSW heatwave – due to leaks in boiler tubes. That poor performance was despite its turbines being replaced about a decade ago.
A new group in Australia has formed to talk some sense and call for Hazelwood 2.0 and an extension of Liddell. Good on The Monash Forum. I’ll be talking more about that soon and the incredible furor their sensible suggestions have raised.
Ownership of the generation on the Australian Grid:
Keep reading →
9.7 out of 10 based on 85 ratings
Let this go down as a prime example of Big Meaningless Numbers used to scare you:
Ben Webster — The Times (copied at The Australian)
Antarctica has lost an area of ice the size of Greater London since 2010 as warmer ocean water erodes its floating edge, a study has found. Overall about 1,463 sq km of Antarctica’s underwater ice melted between 2010 and 2016.
What does 1,463 fewer square kilometers of ice mean?
The findings suggest that melting glaciers on the continent could add significantly to long-term sea level rises, with severe implications for thousands of coastal towns and cities.
Your house might wash away. Or not. How close to zero can a number be and still be “a number”?
The total area of Antarctic sea ice averages about 11 million square kilometers. So that’s one part in 7,500 that melted or 0.013%. But volume is what matters and the percentage of volume that melted is even smaller. Let’s assume ice volume was lost to a depth of one kilometer (the depth of the “grounding line” where the ice-sheet meets the earth). The giant Antarctic Ice Sheet itself covers 14 million square kilometers and is two kilometers thick, so there are 29 million cubic kilometers of ice there (not counting the sea ice). The volume that melted in this breathtaking news is 0.005% of that. If this six year long trend keeps up, Antarctica will melt in 118,933 years.
Quick, build a windfarm.
The Antarctic of course was permanently fixed in all aspects prior to 1979 when the satellite program began. Hence any change at all means blame your car, or coal, or conservative voters.
But how much of this melting is man-made and how much is due to hot-magma?
In 2015, a seismic survey found there is a blob of superheated rock 60 miles below West Antarctica. Then there are the 91 (count them) new volcanoes we only discovered last year, plus who-knows-how-many we don’t even know about. Perhaps that has something to do with making the water warmer?
Follow the reasoning, either a trace gas 10 kilometers up is causing some spots of Antarctica to warm and other parts to cool, or hot magma at 1,200C is. What’s more likely?
 …
I doubt we can measure Antarctic volume to three decimal places. But see the error bar point below. Maybe I’m wrong.
Antarctica is pretty big:
Who thinks up these area analogies? Let’s compare “Greater London” (or the whole UK) to Antarctica.
These scientists at the University of Leeds are not trying to mislead or scare you, they just aren’t good with numbers.
(Does that make you feel better or worse? These are the same people being paid to calculate how fast the ocean might rise.)
Likewise, Ben Webster might not be a one-eyed political activist pretending to be a journalist. Perhaps he just doesn’t have the internet yet. Can someone can send him an email (assuming he has one).
How do we measure where the Antarctic Ice Sheet meets the earth underwater?
In case you are curious, the grounding lines are 1km underwater and were detected by satellites. Really.
Grounding lines typically lie a kilometre or more below sea level and are inaccessible even to submersibles, so remote sensing methods for detecting them are extremely valuable.
The team were able to track the movement of Antarctica’s grounding line using European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 across 16,000 km of the coastline. Although CryoSat-2 is designed to measure changes in the ice sheet elevation, these can be translated into horizontal motion at the grounding line using knowledge of the glacier and sea floor geometry and the Archimedes principle of buoyancy – which relates the thickness of floating ice to the height of its surface.
How big are those error bars?
According to the paper: the continent has lost 1,463 km2 ± 791 km2 of grounded-ice area.
Cryo-sat has a surface resolution of plus or minus 1.3 centimeters, which is amazingly, fantastically good. Across the full surface of the Antarctic ice sheet, that error works out to plus or minus 175 km3 — plus about the same again for the sea ice extent. So there is 400km3 of error right there. Presumably, the rest of the error is in the guesstimate of how the grounding line relates to the surface. I think we need error bars for the error bars.
______________________________
PS: Fun Tip Of the Day: How big are those nations?
The True Size Map site compares Antarctica to the UK. Check it out. It’s a neat site, great for showing just how large countries really are in a comparative way. You can pick any nation and drag and drop. Nations shrink as you move them over the equator and expand as you shift towards the poles. Show the kids. 🙂
h/t Darn. I am searching for two names that I cannot find, please email me… 🙁
REFERENCES
RESOURCES
9.8 out of 10 based on 88 ratings
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7.6 out of 10 based on 22 ratings
The gold-plated stars of our national grid are the old coal plants we’ve built and paid off.
A US report (thanks Lance) shows how fantastically cheap and bountiful old coal and nuclear plants are. The LCOE or the Levelized Cost of Electricity includes the costs of the concrete, turbines, car parks and coal, plus the maintenance and salaries. It reveals that thirty year old, and even fifty year old coal plants, are the gift from past generations — enormous infrastructure, built and paid for, and ready to churn out bargain electrons. Or in crazy-land, ready to be blown up.
Look how long it takes to pay off the capital cost of building them (the red sector in the graph), and look how wonderfully cheap that electricity is from a 30 year old plant. Watch the pea. All those “investigative news stories” that compare the cost of building new coal to the cost of solar or wind are hiding the most brilliant and essential assets on our grid. Reopen Hazelwood now. (!)
Both sides of politics are choosing to destroy the family jewels in the hope of controlling global weather.
 …. From the report by Stacy and Taylor, of the Institute for Energy Research (IER):
Most existing coal, natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric generation resources could continue producing electricity for decades at a far lower cost than could any potential new generation resources.
If anyone sees a 30 year old nuclear plant on ebay please call Josh Frydenberg:
 …LCOE, Nuclear Power, Graph, EIA. These old plants just go and go
Below, see the real world data on capacity factors (this is a reflection of how well that plant keeps working as it ages). There is very little decline, and maintenance costs are small (especially compared to fixing gears and wings in giant towers in windy locations far out to sea and that break after just a few years.)
These old US plants keep kicking along for decades without a loss of capacity:
 In the US, these plants keep working as they age. Old coal plants in Australia are working at even higher capacity factors
The cheap old brown coal plants in Victoria were running at 90% capacity year in, year out. Though here, the capacity factor partly reflects pagan energy policies. The carbon tax dinted the capacity factor of brown coal in 2012-2014. The RET takes a growing bite.
In the US coal competes with nuclear plants and cheap shale gas. In Australia, nothing bar anything, competes with Victorian brown coal (at least in a free market) which is why it is run virtually flat out all the time.
Hazelwood is a national treasure.
Thanks to commenter Lance.
Keep reading →
9.7 out of 10 based on 85 ratings
It’s just not cricket. And in so many ways.
Shame to let a perfectly good dataset go to waste… Australian data comes from some of the longest stations running in the Southern Hemisphere; it could be useful. Instead we get more evidence here that the BOM’s magical and secret homogenization adjustments can take poor data and spread false signals into better data. Homogenisation errors are already visible in a site-by-site analysis, but this shows the problems may be so big they affect averages across the whole of Australia, and we can detect them with satellites.
Tom Quirk continues comparing the satellite record of Australia with the BOM surface version. Previously, he (and for the record, Ken Stewart in 2015) showed that some discrepancies are due to the effect of heavy rain or drought. But now he looks further and finds that not-so-coincidentally, the largest gaps and most “inexplicable” differences occur in the mid nineteen-nineties, the same years the BoM shifted from using old large Stevenson screens to electronic thermometers. Around the same time, the large screens were often also swapped for much smaller ones too — like double jeopardy for data. Oddly, spookily, the BOM makes many adjustments to data during those same years that are vaguely referred to as “statistical” adjustments (rather than specifically called site moves or screen changes), and it is exactly these kinds of adjustments that are implicated here. (All together now with the cliche du jour: hullo lies, damned lies and “statistics”?)
The big clue comes from correlations – on a yearly average the two datasets look very similar, but it’s artificial — on a monthly scale a few key correlations fall apart.
You might think that changing instruments should be no big deal — the BoM just has to run both types of instrument side by side for a couple of years and analyze and adjust accordingly. But as we’ve heard before, they claim they do that, but they won’t publish it, and when skeptics like Bill Johnston ask, they admit they’ve deleted the data. Instead of using this simple, obvious approach, the BoM “corrects” the record by getting data from another statistically selected thermometer which may be hundreds of kilometers away and which may also have been changed/shifted/degraded/watered/cleared or had a ten-lane highway installed next door.Edit
Tom Quirk implies homogenization is a process that can be improved but I think it should be thrown away — we need to start from scratch. We need a proper historical, documentary analysis of each and every site first (and a full independent audit of the BoM). There is no point blending bad data with good. False signals are smeared across real data. Homogenization is vandalism.
If the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s work was a million-dollar scandal involving celebrities breaching international rules and hiding secrets down their pants, they’d be on every news talk show and problems would’ve been fixed ten years ago. Instead it’s a billion dollar scandal, international guidelines are blitzed, and meh.
Jo
h/t to both Tom and Barry C for the cricket scandal comparison.
————————————————————————————–
Guest Post by Tom Quirk
Comparison UAH and BOM temperatures and homogenization Part II
(Part I: Mystery solved: Rain means satellite and surface temps are different.)
Near-ground temperatures in Australia have been subject to a process called homogenization. This process adjusts temperatures at a given location to take into account nearby temperature measurements as preparation for area estimates of temperature. Fortunately the satellite measurements of the lower troposphere (UAH) provide an opportunity to audit the Australia-wide near surface measurements of the BOM. Figure 1 shows a comparison with a correlation coefficient of 83 +/- 5 % which is very respectable.
 Figure 1: UAH and BOM Australian annual temperatures where the BOM anomalies have been normalized to the same mean value as that of the UAH measurements However when the comparison is made on a monthly basis the correlation coefficient falls to 68 +/- 2 %. That detail is shown in Figure 2.
 Figure 2: UAH – BOM Australian monthly temperature anomaly correlation for a 13 month sliding average correlation coefficient.
The range of values for the correlation coefficient is from a maximum of 91% to a minimum of -8%. Curiously, the loss of correlation occurs in the period 1995 to 1998 at the same time as the automatic weather stations were introduced.
This loss of correlation will be examined firstlyon a year by year basis and then on a month by month basis from 1979 to 2017.
12 monthly measurement correlations
The first test is to look at the 12 monthly measurement correlations year by year to see if any particular years stand out. Figure 3 shows extremes from a high correlation coefficient of 88% in 1999 to a low of 12% in 1996. The average 12 month correlation coefficient is 64% to be compared with the correlation coefficient of 83% for the 39 year annual time series.
 Figure 3: 12 month correlation coefficients on a year by year basis. The correlation coefficient for the 39 year time series is 68%
The temperature anomalies for the two years with the lowest correlation coefficient, 1996 and 1997 are shown in Figure 4. There are very large temperature anomaly differences of between 1 and 2°C.
 Figure 4: Temperature anomalies for the two years with the lowest correlation coefficient, 1996 and 1997 1979 to 2017 measurement correlations month by month
The second test is to look at the 39 year measurement correlations month by month to see if there are particular months where the two datasets diverge. This can be seen in Figure 5 Left and shows most months have a decent correlation coefficient above 70%, peaking at 88% in September. But things come apart in February and December when correlations fall to 40%. In the ten year periods of 2007 to 2017 and 1979 to 1989, the December correlation falls to -40% (Figure 5 Right).
 Figure 5: Left 39 year measurement correlations month by month and Right correlations split for 1979 – 1988 and 2008 – 2017
Scatter plots of low-correlation months also show some significant differences (Figure 6). Note that there are quite different trend lines for December as shown in Figure 6 Right that reflect the positive and negative correlation coefficients in December shown in Figure 5 Right.
 Figure 6: Scatter plots and trend lines for low correlation months. Left February and March and Right December 1979 – 1988 and 2008 – 2017.
Source of low correlations from ACORN-SAT data
The Australia-wide temperature is constructed using ACORN-SAT temperatures. ACORN-SAT is the official dataset used to report on climate variability and change by the Australian government, CSIRO, and also university researchers. Adjustments are made as step-changes, which are promulgated backwards in time. Temperature measurements are homogenised, that is to say, adjusted by reference to nearby temperature measurements.
The reasons for the temperature adjustments for the period 1979 to 2017 are listed below with the number of changes made for each class of adjustment. Note that there is no supporting observational evidence for the changes when they are described as “statistical” adjustments.
| Adjustment |
|
| Statistical |
91
|
| Move |
80
|
| Merge |
52
|
| Move/screen |
2
|
| Screen |
2
|
| Site env |
3
|
| AWS |
2
|
|
Total
|
232
|
In addition there are seasonal adjustments in 65 of the 232 all-year adjustments:
| Seasonal changes |
Summer
|
Autumn
|
Winter
|
Spring
|
|
Dec Jan Feb
|
Mar Apr May
|
Jul Jun Aug
|
Sept Oct Nov
|
| Total |
20
|
11
|
14
|
20
|
| Statistical |
3
|
1
|
1
|
3
|
The years in which adjustments are made is shown in Figure 7. The period 1993 to 1998 shows a peaking in adjustments and this is the period when the UAH – BOM 12 monthly correlations are at a low…
 Figure 7: Years in which adjustments are made and the type of adjustment.
The period 1993 to 1998 is when the automatic weather stations (AWS) replaced mercury and alcohol thermometers. Consequently sites were moved and time series merged.
This would explain the loss of correlation between lower troposphere and near surface temperatures.
The month in which adjustments are made is shown in Figure 8. The changes are made on the first of the month so the temperature adjustment appears in the previous month. So a 1st January change in 1995 is added to all preceding days, months and years starting at 31st December 1994.
 Figure 8: Months in which adjustments are made and the type of adjustment.
The monthly distribution of adjustments explains the loss of correlation in December (Figure 5). Looking at the years when adjustments were made (Figure 7), there are no statistical adjustments for the period 2008 to 2017, and the correlation coefficient for December is similar to the earlier months (Figure 5 Right). But there are 58 statistical adjustments from 1989 to 2006, all of which will reduce the December correlation found for 1979 to 1988, and in that period there are a further 33 statistical adjustments and the correlation coefficient falls to -40% (Figure 5 Right). However the low correlation coefficient for February increases from February to July due to the interaction of rainfall with evaporative cooling lowering the surface temperatures over a period of months, and thus lowering the correlation coefficient for the UAH – BOM comparison.
The years in which seasonal changes are made is shown in Figure 9. There is a peaking of adjustments in the period 1993 to 1998 when the automatic weather stations (AWS) replaced mercury and alcohol thermometers.
 Figure 9: Years in which seasonal adjustments are made and the seasons
This would add to the loss of correlation between lower troposphere and near surface temperatures.
Conclusion
There is a clear connection between the loss of correlation between UAH and BOM temperatures and increasing adjustments seen in the ACORN-SAT temperatures. The sources of the differences are likely to be due toinstrument changes and particularly statistically derived temperature step changes.
The analysis shows that the homogenization process applied to the construction of the Australia wide temperature is probably adding to the flaws in the datasets rather than correcting for them.
It would be useful to see whether improvements are possible by excluding statistically derived shifts and with a careful approach to step changes. Further a comparison with the USA 48 states near ground and troposphere temperatures might give rise to some further improvements.
BACKGROUND:
The BOM trend is higher than UAH but the difference is not significant (as seen in the last post on this topic last week)
BOM annual temperatures are averaged from 1979 to 2017 and normalized to UAH average, a -0.33 °C adjustment. The temperature increases are:
UAH 0.176 +/- 0.036 °C per 10 years
BOM 0.154 +/- 0.048 °C per 10 years
There is no significant difference in trends at 0.022 +/- 0.030 °C per 10 years.
It should not come as any surprise,
That Met. Offices homogenize,
To let data read high,
So that temps. will comply,
With what governments authorize.
–Ruairi
9.6 out of 10 based on 57 ratings
The ESA blog has this trajectory “prediction” (below). Given that the window of reentry stretches across a day and the object in question is doing 28,000 km per hour, we can say for sure this will hit Earth. (Or rather, some small part of the satellite that survives the burning up process will touchdown somewhere). Two weeks ago Roy Spencer predicted it will probably hit “the ocean” and explained why it is so difficult to estimate the actual impact point. It is circling the Earth every 89 minutes.
UPDATE: This was China’s first space station. Launched in 2011. It has two sleeping spots for astronauts, and was visited twice. View this as a mark of the rise of China. Though it also says something that China lost control/contact with it in March 2016. Tiangong-1 is only 8,500 kg. The Russian space station Mir was 120,000kg.
UPDATE #2: 3pm Watch the LIVE track at N2Yo (overloaded) or at SATview or Heavens Above.
UPDATED #3: Narrowing the risk map. Dr Marco Langbroek
Aerospace estimate is April 2 at 02:00 UTC ± 7 0:18 UTC ± 2 hours. (Current UTC time is 5:10pm, so seven-ish hours to go, more or less.) USA and Australia now unlikely. Twitter discussion is @Tiangong1
UPDATE #4: With the new estimates of UTC 0:30 (Aerospace) and UTC 0:56 (satview) it may have already come down, or not. Langbroek warns people not to rely on the tracking sites which are calculating the orbit path, but will continue to show the satellite for several hours after it is gone. Apparently actual data on the satellite is a bit rare! There are some other satellites which are watching for the infra red signature, but if Tiangong goes down in a remote location we may not know for a few hours. The absence of a sighting may be the first confirmation. People in Ukbekistan/Turkmenistan should have seen it in the last half hour? Does anyone there have twitter?
UPDATE #5: Rakesh @densaer At this point we can refer to #Tiangong1as “Schrodinger’s Space Station.” Since nobody knows whether it’s up or not at this point, it has entered a superposition only resolves when someone puts eyeballs or radar on it.
UPDATE #6: China’s official news and the US Joint Force Space Component Command are reporting that it went down at 0:15UTC over the Southern Pacific (about an hour ago). The crash zone was expected to cover 2,000km, but apparently none of the 7 billion people on Earth saw it. And if you thought you might get 30 minutes warning that space junk was about to hit your town…
 Possible last orbital routes are likely along these tracks. Keep reading →
9.5 out of 10 based on 46 ratings
Wishing everyone good health and good times…
9.6 out of 10 based on 37 ratings
Last year one of our largest coal power plants suddenly closed, with only five months warning, catching the market by surprise and taking out 5% of our cheapest generation. (This kind of improbable anti-free-market feat shows just how screwed our national market is). The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has looked at the effect the closure of Hazelwood had on electricity prices and concluded that closing cheap brown-coal plants and replacing them with black coal and gas will make electricity prices rise. This will come as no surprise to anyone who can count to 100.
Dan Harrison at the ABC reports:
A year on from the closure of the 1600 megawatt-sized plant in the Latrobe Valley, the report from the Australian Energy Regulator found wholesale prices in Victoria were up 85 per cent on 2016.
Because electricity retailers use hedging for wholesale prices, the rise in retail prices is still feeding through. In the wash, the wholesale increase is expected to add 16% to retail prices this financial year compared to last year. After that, through some miracle, the AEMC expects prices to come back down from Exorbitant to Slightly Lower Than Exorbitant in the next two years thanks to an increase in renewables.
For most of the history of the Australian National Grid prices averaged $30-$40/MWh. Now they are twice that. (A drought caused the bump in 2007, the carbon tax caused the hump from 2012-2014.)
 Quarterly spot prices, Australian national Grid since 1999 | Source: AER. The arrow marks the spot after Hazelwood closed. We learn a few things about the seismic jump in prices in Australia that occurred last year:
In the Australian national grid the prices for everyone are set by the highest successful bidder. Without enough brown coal fired generation to set the price, the price jumped up to the next highest bidders. The remaining brown coal generators were working flat out, no more to give, so Australians needed to draw on supplies from the more expensive black coal and gas to set the final bid prices. (And most electricity generators can’t have been too unhappy about that.) In addition, the commodity price of both black coal and gas jumped — in part surely due to the extra demand for these to replace the brown coal that would have been burned — and prices became, not just a bit higher, but a lot higher. We can blame those commodity prices but if we’d had the flexibility to use cheap brown coal instead, who cares?
Whole flows changed: Victoria used to be a powerhouse, but stopped being a net exporter of electricity and started to be a net importer. Luckily, South Australia produced so much wind power it became a net exporter of electricity for the first time in years. Yet somehow, despite that gift of all this “free” and subsidized wind electricity, prices still went up. Go figure. 😉
 All the extra wind power in late 2017 … | Graph: Jan 2015 to Jan 2018, GWh The signs are not good that there is some loophole or tweak that will fix this mess. Ominously, the AER did not find much volatility in pricing. The high averages were not due to freak high spikes, but were caused by relentlessly higher averages. Also ominously, even though the states pay separate rates, the interconnectors “worked so well”, that losing a cheap plant in Victoria affected the price in all the states. Queenslanders paid more because of choices made by distant people they didn’t elect. In this conglomerate market influenced by five state and one federal government the incentives fold like an origami wallet.
Naturally, if any state was free to dump the RET and stop the market-destroying effect of the renewables subsidies, investors might be able to inject some cheap energy back into the grid. At the moment, the screaming Banshee price signals that call for cheap generators have been sealed in bureaucratic bunkers.
On the upside, the ABC reports that the closure of Hazelwood has “slashed” a piddling 4.1 mT of carbon “pollution” which might otherwise have improved our crop yields. At a cost of billions, this will keep the world 0.00 degrees cooler.
Victorian gas shortage only going to get worse
Victoria, which now doesn’t profit from exporting electricity, cannot profit from increasing gas exports at the new higher gas prices either. Victorian gas fields are running out and the government has banned people from exploring for new ones.
In a separate report, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) predicts there will be a shortfall of gas in Victoria, due to the depletion of offshore gas fields in Gippsland and Port Campbell.
AEMO expects the state’s gas production to decline from 435 petajoules in 2017 to 187 petajoules in 2022, resulting in a shortfall of 19 petajoules for that year.
Victoria is thus, the new “crash-test-dummy” of renewable-government.
The problem isn’t that complicated — less of the cheap stuff means more of the expensive stuff.
The increased output of gas and black coal fired generators coincided with increased fuel costs for some of these generators. As highlighted in our NSW report11 , NSW generators’ black coal costs increased from late 2016, particularly under short term contracts. NSW coal fired generators were also facing problems with coal supply during 2017, which drove higher offers from these generators. At the same time, there have been increases in gas prices in recent years affecting gas-fired generators. Our review also found that brown coal plant set the electricity spot price in Victoria far less often following the closure of the Hazelwood power station. Higher fuel cost generators set the price more often, in particular gas fired and hydro generation, while NSW and Queensland black coal generation continued to set the price a significant proportion of the time, but at much higher prices. Our key finding therefore is that the exit of Hazelwood removed a significant low fuel cost generator which was largely replaced by higher cost black coal and gas plant – at a time when the input costs of black coal and gas plant were increasing. These factors in turn drove significant increases in wholesale electricity prices. Annual average wholesale electricity prices in Victoria in 2017 were the highest they have been since the commencement of the NEM. South Australian average prices were also consistently high.
 Graph, AER, Electricity prices, set by gas, black coal, hydro in 2018. Significant? Ho yes. Australia changed net generation type and flow:
Victoria changed from being a net exporter of relatively cheap brown coal generation, to being a net importer. Flows from Queensland into NSW (and then through to Victoria) increased significantly as Queensland black coal generators increased output in 2017. South Australia also became a net exporter to Victoria, where previously it was a net importer. More generally, the interconnectors between the regions were constrained less often, resulting in greater price alignment between regions
What a difference a small deficit in brown coal generation makes
After Hazelwood (see the lighter columns) Australians had to rely on a different form of generation to set the price.
 … Ownership in the South Australian and Victorian markets is concentrated, with a few, largely vertically integrated participants controlling a significant proportion of capacity..
The AER did not find evidence that the players were gaming the system much or doing “opportunistic” bidding or withholding generation. But there was less bidding at under $50/MWh, and more bidding at $90-$100. In the past it was spikes of high wholesale prices that drove averages up, this time there was less volatility, and more just plain old constant high prices. I don’t think this can be fixed any other way than the utterly obvious.
Spot the problem — 3500MW of coal closed down and was replaced with 2500MW of unreliable wind and solar:
In the five years prior to Hazelwood closing there has been around 5000 MW of capacity withdrawn from the NEM, 3500 MW of which was coal generation. In NSW around 1900 MW was withdrawn mainly due to Wallerawang and Munmorah power stations (1600 MW combined capacity). In South Australia the Northern and Playford B power stations exited (740 MW combined capacity), while in Victoria Energy Brix and Anglesea (355 MW combined capacity). Over the same period there has been around 2500 MW of new capacity added to the NEM, 2100 MW of wind and 240 MW of solar. Around 1600 MW of this wind capacity is in Victoria and South Australia along with a 100 MW battery.
The capacity factor for wind is about 30% and for solar is about 20ish percent, meaning the real capacity added was more like 600MW, plus or minus 2000MW.
Curiously, about 750MW of previously uneconomic withdrawn power, which was mostly gas plants, made a comeback.
Look at these interesting graphs: What’s the cost of brown coal, black coal and gas power?
It’s difficult to say exactly what generation costs, but these graphs show the amount of time these different power sources were setting the price and what that price was. Worth an eyeball. Hazelwood closed at the end of Q1 2017. Prior to that, note the incredibly cheap winning bids from dirty, brown, outdated coal, which has “no future” (in a market controlled by the tooth fairy).
 … Bayswater coal plant used to be able to win bids at $40/MWh (or it used to have to bid that low to win). Thanks to the RET (Renewable Energy Target) destroying some of the cheapest power, that’s not happening any more. Costs are up and competition is down.
 … One gas plant. Not cheap to start. Not cheap to finish.
 … Hydro costs are up too:
 … Unreliable wind and solar must be backed up by something and cheap brown coal is punished by pagan aims to control the weather. Thus it is inevitable that the more wind and solar we add, the more we need gas, black coal or hydro, code for “expensive”.
The AER report also noted that Victoria and SA have only three big “vertically integrated” players. That’s another story, but with convoluted incentives we can be sure all three are taking advantage of the perversity on offer.
h/t Dave B
When warmist politicians distort,
The truth about climate, they thwart,
A grid’s power supply,
It’s then costly to buy,
Making many Australians go short.
–Ruairi
9.8 out of 10 based on 67 ratings
New electric vehicles have big fat batteries, which will help solve the problem known as “charge anxiety” (let’s call that the Flat-Bat-Fear).
The new fat-batteries, however, have the small catch that they need two days to trickle charge. Hmm. Then there is the other catch that each slow charger (7kW) is equivalent to adding nearly three houses to the grid. Our Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg predicts there will be one million electric cars on Australian roads by 2030.
You might think this is slow motion train wreck, but we might avoid this if households opt for fast 50kW chargers. In that case we can do the train-wreck at top speed.
Each fast charger will apparently be “like” adding the equivalent of 20, count them, 20 homes.
This is fearmongering obviously — no one is going to want a fast charger when they could leave the car in the garage for 48 hours instead.
Ben Packham, The Australian
New Zealand’s biggest energy distributor, Vector, warned electric vehicle chargers “put a large electrical load on the network”, with even 2.4kW “trickle” chargers adding the equivalent of one additional home to the grid.
Vector’s electric vehicle network integration green paper said the shift to larger batteries would encourage drivers to opt for faster chargers, to avoid a two-day charge. A “slow” 7kW charger would add the equivalent of 2.8 homes to the grid, while a “rapid” 50kW charger would add the equivalent of 20 homes.
It said New Zealand’s power grid could require a $NZ530 million ($500m) upgrade if 7kW chargers were used, and one in four cars on the road were electric vehicles.
Can someone calculate the cost per EV in NZ? Thanks…
9.4 out of 10 based on 95 ratings
 … Scientists are suggesting that a thin layer of floating calcium carbonate can cut sunlight over reefs by 30% and save some high value reefs from bleaching.
This should work well on all the reefs that evolved in the last fifty years and which don’t have moving water.
But half of the coral genera around today have been around since the Oligocene (23-34 million years ago) and for most of that time the oceans were warmer. (Lucky human civilization evolved just in time to save all these reefs from extinction.)
Bleaching has probably been going on for millions of years longer than we have been scuba diving with cameras to film it. We only discovered coral bleaching in the 1980s. Not surprisingly, marine life has ways to adapt to heatwaves by chucking out the symbionts that don’t thrive in higher temperatures and replacing them with new inhabitants that do.
Yes, let’s cover our most diverse and important reef systems with an artificial layer that cuts incoming sunlight by a third — What could possibly go wrong?
Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Biology say tests of a floating “sun shield” made of calcium carbonate show it could protect the reef from the effects of bleaching.
“It’s designed to sit on the surface of the water above the corals, rather than directly on the corals, to provide an effective barrier against the sun,” Great Barrier Reef Foundation managing director Anna Marsden said.
The trials, headed by the scientist who developed the country’s polymer bank notes, on seven different coral types found that the protective layer decreased bleaching of most species, cutting off sunlight by up to 30%.
Marsden said it was impractical to suggest that the “sun shield” – made from the same material found in coral skeletons – could cover the entire 348,000 square-kilometre reef.
“But it could be deployed on a smaller, local level to protect high value or high-risk areas of reef,” she added.
It’s not like the whole ocean is at one temperature and one constant pH
There is and always has been constant turbulence in the oceans and marine life is used to it. Ocean acidification happens every day in some places — no biggie. There is a large daily swing after sunset in pH over many reefs. Far from that being a problem, fish seem to behave better when artificial tanks mimic these natural swings. Indeed a bit less alkalinity is better for hundreds of species. Some coral reefs thrive in a more acidic ocean, and we appear to have a pretty big safety margin: farmed fish seem to cope fine with CO2 levels that are even fifty times higher than today.
The story of life on Earth is that everything keeps shifting and biology adapts. In one situation, when trapped, salt water fish evolved to become freshwater fish in just fifty years*. In private, NOAA experts will admit they can’t name one single place that is affected by ocean acidification.
While some estimates said 90% of the Great Barrier Reef was bleached recently, other studies said it was more like 5%. Even the head of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has said that activists are distorting and exaggerating the threats. The Great Barrier Reef is recovering faster than scientists expected. Possibly because it is 3,000 kilometers long and has over a hundred tough spots that survive and replenish the rest.
Other ideas to save the reef include putting shade cloth over the Great Barrier Reef to save it from climate change or using giant fans to stop bleaching.
Coral reefs first became widespread about 200 million years ago. It takes some kind of delusional hubris to think they suddenly can’t survive without human help, or that we have any idea what we are doing messing with a complex well developed system.
Of course, if you work at an Australian university and say that, you too could face misconduct charges, like Peter Ridd.
Image: Wikimedia, author Wise Hok Wai Lum: Flynn Reef 2014.
*Error corrected. This originally said “six astomishing months” but should have said “fifty years”, which on evolutionary time frames is still incredibly fast.
9.5 out of 10 based on 84 ratings
SBS tells us that it started in Australia (sorry), is observed by millions, and now occurs in 187 countries. (Since only one person has to turn off one light to qualify, I want to know which seven countries didn’t?)
To mark Earth Hour this year, WWF asked the public to make a “promise for the planet” – a small step in their own lives to help reduce their environmental footprint – such as refusing plastic cutlery or carrying a reusable coffee cup. While these promises are small individually, WWF stated that “millions of people taking these actions together will have a massive, powerful impact”.
Which day was EarthHour Day in Australia — Spot the difference:
Was this EarthDay?
 The Australian National Electricity Grid last weekend.
Or this?
 The Australian National Electricity Grid last weekend (the other day). Source: Aneroid 24th March and Aneroid 25th March.
Notice the Earth-saving electricity dip at 8:30pm when millions turn off their lights!
Megagrams of carbon was saved. (Maybe.)
Take it from WWF — this is the sum total effect of all the voters that care about climate change.
There were similar successes in California (WUWT) and in the UK (Paul Homewood).
The word you are looking for is “noise”.
Like every carbon scheme…
PS: The top graph was Earth Hour Day in Australia.
_____________
*It must be true, the website says so.
8.6 out of 10 based on 63 ratings
…
5.7 out of 10 based on 21 ratings
Remember EarthHour? Tonight is the night to rejoice in electricity from 8.30-9:30pm.
Some of those fossil fuels have been waiting for 100 million years to return to the sky.
Things you can do:
- Turn on all the lights you can find — Put on the party lights, the patio light, the pool light, the mozzie zappers, unpack those Christmas decorations. Get out your torches. Switch the movement detector spotlights to continuous operation. (Involve the kids — they love to help).
Keep reading →
9 out of 10 based on 111 ratings
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JoNova A science presenter, writer, speaker & former TV host; author of The Skeptic's Handbook (over 200,000 copies distributed & available in 15 languages).
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The nerds have the numbers on precious metals investments on the ASX
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