I’ll be there for the first time having great fun explaining how to burn billions and ruin reliable electricity — which was a big hit here in Perth.
How to destroy a perfectly good electricity grid in three easy steps
The World is watching Australia. Despite being handicapped with abundant resources, we’ve turned ourselves into an international spectacle with rampant blackouts, flying squads of diesel generators, and the highest electricity prices in the world. An achievement like this does not come easily.
The grand experiment unfolds around us, as the nation discovers why “free” energy isn’t free, why storage is deceptively expensive, yet baseload is deceptively cheap.
See the feisty, fabulous Ian Plimer, and Nick Minchin (former Senator, skeptic, who starred in the ABC documentary and invited David and me onto it). Not to miss Sinclair Davidson from Catalaxy, Graeme Young from Online Opinion (remember his great work analyzing Lewandowsky). Pretty much all the Libertarian M.P.s who want less regulation and an end to running the nation by Groupthink. People like Peter Phelps, Warren Mundine, David Leyonhelm and Aaron Stonehouse.
Ben Heard will speak too – I’m looking forward to meeting him — he wants to reduce carbon but scoffs at renewables and argues the only way to do it is with nuclear power. His understanding of how grids work and the failings of renewables is excellent.
There are international speakers too: people from Atlas, CATO, Ilya Shapiro, Jeffrey Tucker, and M.P. David Seymour from New Zealand.
Reserve your spot now at www.alsfc.com.au and save up to $50 off the standard price with the code Nova18!
Terrible fires destroyed 69 houses and 30 caravans and another 39 houses were damaged in Tathra in SE Australia last Sunday.
Greens Chieftain, Richard Di Natale, waited at least two minutes before exploiting their pain to make advertisements for the Green Industrial Complex:
Government’s climate stance ‘like NRA’s on guns after a massacre’
Greens leader Richard Di Natale has controversially likened the government’s refusal to recognise climate change as a cause of the southern NSW bushfires to the National Rifle Association’s failure to acknowledge the role of gun laws in preventing mass shootings in the US.
Asked what the government could do about a global problem when Australia accounted for just 1.3 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, Senator Di Natale said the risk of extreme weather events could be mitigated if the nation transitioned “away from coal”.
“We have to stop the Adani mine from being built. We have to recognise that coal doesn’t have a long-term future. We need to ensure that we take advantage of the huge jobs* that come with building more solar farms, more wind farms,” he said.
According to the Greens, fires are mostly a one variable event. More CO2 means more fires and fires can be prevented if we buy enough solar panels and Tesla batteries. The issue is not fuel loads, fallen power lines, or houses built close together and close to tons of tall flammable carbon forms with leaves. The damage toll is not affected greatly by turf battles, a lack of communication, poor mobile reception or decisions to say “No thanks” to extra fire trucks.
If only we converted the whole country to solar panels, no building would ever burn through bushfire — (only through solar malfunction.Like BeaverCreek Walmart, last week).
Power lines were the likely cause of the devastating bushfire that swept through the small town of Tathra on the New South Wales south coast on Sunday, a preliminary investigation has found. The investigation by the Rural Fire Service has found “electrical infrastructure on Reedy Swamp Road” as the likely cause.
Those power lines are managed by Capitalist Pigs... the NSW government.
… the Electrical Trades Union said there were “serious questions to answer” over cuts to funding for power line maintenance in the state.
The union alleged that, over the last seven years, Essential Energy had sacked almost 40% of its workforce, underspent on its operating expenditure by $129m and slashed capital expenditure by 38% since 2012 due to restrictions imposed by the Australian Energy Regulator.
So rules made by one government agency caused problems for another government agency:
The ETU’s NSW assistant secretary, Justin Page, said the funding cuts “may be placing the public at serious risk”. “The NSW government has been focused on cutting costs at Essential Energy, including slashing maintenance and capital works expenditure, while at the same time maximising profit,” he said.
Maximizing profit?
Government agency, Capitalist pig, what’s the difference?
Companies that compete make profits. Agencies with a government monopoly collect taxes.
“The bushes here haven’t been burnt off for that many years (and) there was that much energy and force in it that once it started, you couldn’t stop it.
“I think there should be a lot more backburning happening, which we’ve been fighting for and we can’t get it because of the new laws – it’s ridiculous.”
… and the turf war:
The Fire Brigade Employees Union claimed many of the 69 houses lost in the fire could have been saved if offers of assistance from metropolitan fire brigades weren’t rejected by the Rural Fire Service.
Our thoughts are with those who have lost so much.
In a bombshell, Scott Pruitt is expecting scientists to act scientifically.
In the US the EPA has been making rules that cost billions based on studies from groups that refused to publish their data. Regulations like The Clean Power Plan were estimated to cost $8.4 billion and magically return $14 – $34 billion in “health and climate benefits”. Scott Pruitt plans to pop that bubble.
“We need to make sure their data and methodology are published as part of the record,” Pruitt said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation. “Otherwise, it’s not transparent. It’s not objectively measured, and that’s important.”
“If we use a third party to engage in scientific review or inquiry, and that’s the basis of rulemaking, you and every American citizen across the country deserve to know what’s the data, what’s the methodology that was used to reach that conclusion that was the underpinning of what — rules that were adopted by this agency,” Pruitt explained.
My only minor, tiny, complaint is that there is no such thing as “secret science”. If it can’t be replicated, it isn’t science. What Pruitt is stopping is Fake Science.
The Union of Concerned Scientists immediately leapt to defend the right of certified scientists to issue declarations that no one could test or assess.
“A lot of the data that EPA uses to protect public health and ensure that we have clean air and clean water relies on data that cannot be publicly released,” Union of Concerned Scientists representative Yogin Kothari told E&E News.
“It really hamstrings the ability of the EPA to do anything, to fulfill its mission,” Kothari said.
Evidently, the Union of Concerned Scientists aren’t too concerned about whether “scientists” are acting scientifically. Like all unions, what matters is pay, power and working conditions, never mind about the Scientific Method.
In the Australian version, the BoM swamps skeptics with data, but admits it keeps its methodology secret. Only fully trained members of the sacred guild can play data games and issue prophesies.
Tellingly, environmentalists and democrats oppose the idea of transparent data.
UPDATE: As Joe Bast says — Congratulations to Steve Milloy, Jim Enstrom, Stan Young, Robert Phalen, Willie Soon, and Lamar Smith for leading a years’ long effort to restore sound science to EPA.
The Greens have blamed the federal government’s failure to address climate change for a cyclone and bushfires which have ravaged communities across Australia over the past 48 hours.
In an anti-coal speech in the Senate today, Greens leader Richard Di Natale said the government had been doing “everything it can to slow this country’s transition to renewable energy”.
–Joe Kelly, Andrew Burrell
Four thousand IPCC-Chief-Gurus said cyclones will become “less frequent” but “more intense”. Which is why Cyclone Marcus was a Category Six … Two.
Apparently climate change just makes less cyclones.*
Evidently climate change causes stronger buildings, or perhaps that has something to do with fossil fuels?
But this week in Darwin the local hardware stores have run out of chainsaws. Forty three years ago they ran out of walls.
Tomorrow: the Climate Druids lecture us on Fires.
__________________
*Thought for today: Looking at the cyclone trend graph — ponder if we are returning to the cooling period of the 1950’s-70s? It’s possible we may get more storms again, but for the opposite reason. As it happens another cyclone may already be on the way?
Images: Wikimedia Druids | ABC NEWs | Darwin, 1974, Courtesy – National Archives of Australia A6135, K29/1/75/16
A funny thing happens when you line up satellite and surface temperatures over Australia. A lot of the time they are very close, but some years the surface records from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) are cooler by a full half a degree than the UAH satellite readings. Before anyone yells “adjustments”, this appears to be a real difference of instruments, but solving this mystery turns up a rather major flaw in climate models.
Bill Kininmonth wondered if those cooler-BOM years were also wetter years when more rain fell. So Tom Quirk got the rainfall data and discovered that rainfall in Australia has a large effect on the temperatures recorded by the sensors five feet off the ground. This is what Bill Johnston has shown at individual stations. Damp soil around the Stevenson screens takes more heat to evaporate and keeps maximums lower. In this new work Quirk has looked at the effect right across the country and the years when the satellite estimates diverge from the ground thermometers are indeed the wetter years. Furthermore, it can take up to six months to dry out the ground after a major wet period and for the cooling effect to end.
In Australia rainfall controls the temperature, which is the opposite of what the models predict, but things are different in the US. (In the US, temperature affects rainfall).*
In Australia maximum rainfall occurs in the summer but it is highly variable, whereas in the US, while the summer rain is heavier, it’s the winter precipitation where the big variations occur. This seasonal pattern makes a big difference. . Both the Australian pattern and the US pattern appear in other places around the world, but the models only have the one scenario. It appears the modelers figured out the situation in New Jersey and programmed it in for the rest of the world, but whole zones of the world are behaving quite differently.
Models predict that temperature affects rainfall — but in Australia the rainfall affects the temperature. No wonder these models are skillless at predicting temperature and on rainfall — they are even worse.
As far as I know this is new and original research. Tom Quirk has run it past a few people, including John Christy of UAH who notes that this has been seen elsewhere. Let’s keep up with the peer review…
UPDATE: I’ve discovered Ken Stewart reported this correlation back in 2015. So for the record — his post was the first: “over three quarters of the difference between surface and atmospheric temperature anomalies is due to rainfall variation alone.” Some great graphs there….
— Jo
* Added for clarity. A more detailed post coming very soon.
In Australia, the bulk of the rain,
Falls in summer across its terrain,
With less heat above ground,
Where temp. readings are found,
Which the surface through drying would gain
— Ruairi
Why Satellites and Surface Thermometers Don’t Agree: Explaining the Difference in Australia with Rainfall
Original Research and Guest Post by Tom Quirk
There is continuing questioning of the relationship of rainfall and temperature. Does temperature determine rainfall or is it the reverse…? The following analysis is a comparison of rainfall and near surface (BOM) and lower troposphere (UAH) temperatures for continental Australia.
This analysis shows that rainfall modifies surface temperatures in Australia.
Figure 1 shows a temperature comparison. The BOM annual temperatures are averaged from 1979 to 2017 and then normalized to the UAH average, an adjustment of -0.33 0C so the two different time series can be compared.
The temperature increases are:
UAH 0.176 +/- 0.036 0C per 10 years
BOM 0.154 +/- 0.048 0C per 10 years
There is no significant difference in trends at 0.022 +/- 0.030 0C per 10 years.
Yearly measurements and analysis
While there is a good correlation of surface (BOM) and lower troposphere temperatures, there are two periods, 1999 to 2001 and 2010 to 2012 where the UAH satellite temperature anomalies are 0.40C above the near surface measurements of the BOM.
Fig 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.
Bill Kininmonth, former head of Australia’s Climate Centre, suggested that this could be linked to periods of high rainfall as the dampened surface would lower the measured temperatures due to evaporation. This fits with other work by Bill Johnston showing a link between rainfall and temperature at individual sites.
A comparison of Australia wide rainfall sourced from the BOM (Figure 2) and the difference of UAH – BOM temperature anomalies (Figure 3) show that there is a correlation.
The government running the renewables crash-test-dummy state has lost
In South Australia, Jay Weatherill is gone. Resigned. Tally so far: Libs win 24 seats, Labor 18. Though according to commenters SA voters were choosing between Lite-Left and Hopeless-Left. The new premier will likely be less-bad. Xenophon (small alternate non-establishment player) was crushed. He didn’t side with either Labor or Libs, so voters probably felt they couldn’t afford to sit on the fence and risk more years of Weatherill’s reckless industry-destroying state government.
The Greens are down from 8.7% to 6.6%, a fall of 25% in their popularity. (Not that I could find any news headlines to that effect).
Chris Kenny: [A Lib win] … will flash a warning to Labor in Victoria, Queensland and Canberra about the perils of ambitious renewable energy targets prioritising climate gestures over electricity affordability and reliability.
The Libs appear to have made the most of hi-tech analytic campaigning. The Kochs and others in the US have set up i360:
Through i360 the SA Liberals believe they have progressed to a new level of targeted campaigning… the MP called up a marginal seat, much like finding a suburb on Google Maps, then zoomed in to a street where pins identified addresses deemed to house swinging voters. Deeper dives on households contained genders, ages, voting intentions or lack thereof as well as policy interests. The information is collated from the party’s existing Feedback system, updates from doorknocking and calls, responses to surveys conducted via email, online or phone calls plus census data and the harvesting of social media data. This is Big Brother meets grassroots campaigning. Neither the data nor the technology is much use without quality information fed in and strong analysis leading to the right strategies, along with diligent personalised attention in follow-up visits and communications.
Billionaire US Republican sponsors Charles and David Koch are major investors in the firm, which openly canvasses only for “free-market” candidates. The SA Liberals purchased a product licence and have worked with i360 to modify systems for compulsory and preferential voting. Motivated by the frustration of 2014 where, despite a huge popular vote win, just a few hundred votes in the right seats would have made all the difference,…
The Libs are offering only 40,000 household batteries compared with Labor 50,000. They are also planning a stronger link to NSW. That will enable the good people of NSW to share the pain of high power prices experienced first in SA and now in Victoria due to the way intermittent generators destroy grid economics.
An interconnector to NSW will “spread the misery” – as both RickWill and Graeme No 3 point out. SA will be able to milk the national RET subsidies longer, and avoid paying for its own stable base. In NSW, increasing the access to subsidized solar and wind power will hurt the cheap providers there, destroying the profits of the cheapest generators.
In Victoria, in one seat, Greens lose to Labor, blame internal bickering
In Victoria a byelection was held in the inner-latte seat of Batman. Conservatives (Liberals) didn’t run. Labor won, though the Greens started out as favourites.
John Ferguson: “The Batman result is a disaster for the Greens and a significant campaigning achievement for Labor.”
As usual, the Greens search anywhere but their hypocritical policies. They could try having principles like caring about the environment instead of supporting big-banks, big business, and giant supernational unaccountable institutions. They could have an interest in science instead of doing their best to destroy it through namecalling to silence debate. If they had even one principle above “being elected” they would have some foundation instead of being the third leg, fashionable extra for people seeking vanity points.
The first year’s data is out — Australia’s secret Emissions Trading Scheme is up and running, it’s small, inefficient, and pointless, but all the government needs to do is raise those caps, and the carbon trading monster octopus could wrap around on half our economy.
Australian carbon credits are for sale (called ACCU’s), the price was $14-$18 and the total volume was probably around $7 million. This supposed tiny “free market” marvel could not even match the $11/ton price that Abbott’s direct auctions achieved — proving yet again how inefficient economy-wide incentive schemes on essential molecules are. If the caps were raised the price would rocket. (Remember Labor’s carbon price ended up being$5310 per ton.)
What do you mean, you didn’t know Australia had a carbon credit market?
Obviously, you havent been spending your weekends reading the finer points of our legislative instruments. The legislation for this was voted on in the last sitting of Parliament before Christmas of 2015 while Turnbull was a new PM. There was no public debate, no parliamentary discussion and no news coverage of it til May the next year, and it was barely covered at all during the election which occurred the day after this “market” started. For some reason Turnbull didn’t brag about his master success — achieving what Rudd and Gillard failed to do. This is because he is a self-effacing and humble man … or maybe he knew his voters hated it, and he hoped to deceive them.
The Press Release from the Carbon Market Institute, this week:
Data released on Wednesday by the Clean Energy Regulator indicates that under the first year of the Government’s ERF Safeguard Mechanism sixteen facilities have exceeded emissions limits, collectively surrendering 448,097 Australian Carbon Credit Units (ACCUs) to meet compliance obligations.
“Today’s announcement by the Clean Energy Regulator clearly indicates that Australia has a functioning carbon market,” says Peter Castellas, Chief Executive Officer of the Carbon Market Institute.
“Companies that had a liability under the Safeguard Mechanism were able to purchase ACCUs directly from project developers or on the secondary market – and the market was able to meet supply,” says Castellas.
About a dozen large emitters caught by the safeguard had to buy an estimated 400,000-450,000 tonnes of Australian Carbon Credit Units, pushing the price to $17-18/T as the 28 February deadline for compliance approached. Most of the trade was in the $14-15/T region.
Potter’s article mentions Tony Abbott fully ten times — slavishly trying to pin this as an Abbott creation. The legislation was drafted two weeks before Abbott was ousted. Was Abbott even aware of the details — would he have allowed this to go through to be voted on? (It would be nice to get clarification on this.) Abbott certainly didn’t want this, and we have Gore and Clive Palmer to thank for it.
Coming next — International Credits — Australians to pay money to foreigners for atmospheric nullity
This market appears to be Australian credits only, but the government made it clear they want to accept international credits next. You didn’t know? That news was also released just before Christmas (when all poison news is announced). International carbon markets are loved by large financial houses like Goldman Sachs, and Deutsch Bank who broker the deals. They also serve supranational unaccountable large governmental bodies like The World Bank and the UN.
Australians voted emphatically against carbon taxes and carbon markets in two elections. Abbott won a landslide 90 seats with a blood oath in 2013. Then Turnbull ran, didn’t mention his carbon-desires, and barely scraped in. Elections turn on this issue. Gillard would have lost in 2010 if she hadn’t lied about a carbon tax (she only won by 400 votes in Corangamite). Would Turnbull have lost in 2016 if it was an election topic? He easily could have, but even if he didn’t — in a transparent campaign he would have been forced to make some public promises or vows. At the very least, minor parties would have grabbed more power as the Liberal base fled, and Turnbull would have had to make deals with them to form government.
Democracy is not supposed to work by keeping voters in the dark.
Some things were never meant to be in a free market — like basic molecules of life. To recap on the features of a “carbon price”: — The government sets supply and demand and enforces it with threats of jail. This is as fake and unfree as it gets.
The players in a carbon market include “every living thing” on the planet plus oceans, dead peat and some rocks. Most players can’t play, and the product is based on the absence of an invisible gas, and sometimes even the “intentions” of the players. Accounting is nigh on impossible — we still don’t even know all the big drivers of natural emissions and sinks.
Like all markets that were never meant to be, carbon markets feed crime and corruption, fraud, and financial sharks. It’s prone to cronyism where exemptions are granted according to marginal seat status or the whim of a politician. Australia needs one like we need a massage from the mafia.
The Press Release from the Carbon Market Institute, 14th March, 2018
Pierre Gosselin has found a new study showing bats really don’t want to be around wind turbines. The effect is so strong there are 20 times as many bats around normal comparable sites compared to sites with wind turbines.
But when a turbine moves into the area, Bat-real-estate values must plummet:
The result of the study demonstrates a large effect on bat habitat use at wind turbines sites compared to control sites. Bat activity was 20 times higher at control sites compared to wind turbine sites, which suggests that habitat loss is an important impact to consider in wind farm planning.
…
What about the insects?
Since these are insect-eating bats, the next obvious question is whether mosquitoes are 20 times as common around wind turbines, or whether they hate the turbines too.
Has anyone even looked at this? Think of the possibilities: Are wind farms mosquito repellent, or will wind farms help spread dengue fever?
Apparently this was one of the first studies to look closely at the impact of wind farms on insectivorous bats in tropical hotspots. If so, we built some 350,000 wind turbines, then — then, we thought we might check to see if it affected bats?
The Western media was apoplectic about Russia!Trump!Hillary! but apparently missed the real game. Behind the scenes, the Russians were feeding the eco-gullibles “Frack-hate” campaigns in the UK and elsewhere in the hope of curbing the threat Fracking posed to Russian gas exports. It’s paying off — British people are buying Russian gas.
Did the Russians capture Victoria and South Australia? Who knows. The ABC won’t ask, and environmentalists won’t tell. Possibly Putin didn’t need to bother — we’re pretty good at destroying our export industries ourselves.
Before we’d even had a debate here in Australia, everyone “knew” fracking was bad.
Half of Britain’s imports of liquefied natural gas so far this year have come from Russia, illustrating how UK households have started sending more money to Moscow after Vladimir Putin made boosting exports of the super-cooled fuel a priority.
Today, Russia is waging another active-measures campaign. But this time Russia’s target is fracking. The facts are clear. Fracking, which is revolutionizing energy politics, offers a cheap, new source of global power. But that’s not all. In offering Europe independence from Russian energy exports, fracking poses a direct challenge to Russia. Because Putin depends for revenue on his oil and natural gas-exports, fracking’s cheaper alternative presents him with a big problem. Indeed, lower oil prices are already driving Russia’s economy into recession.
Facing this threat, Russian intelligence has implemented a three-pronged strategy.
First, Russia has ramped up covert payments to environmental groups in the West. By supporting well-intentioned environmentalists with hard cash (often without their knowledge), Russian intelligence gains Western mouthpieces to petition Western audiences in its favor. Based on Russia’s prior record, we can also assume that Putin has funneled money through intermediaries to sympathetic Western politicians.
Second, the Russian SVR (CIA equivalent) has directed its spies to gather intelligence on the American energy industry….
Finally, Russian intelligence’s biggest cover operation — its RT “news” outlet — is undertaking a massive propaganda campaign against fracking….
Romanian officials including the prime minister say that the struggle over fracking in Europe does feature a Goliath, but it is the Russian company Gazprom, not the American Chevron.
Vlasa Mircia, the mayor of this destitute village in eastern Romania, thought he had struck it rich when the American energy giant Chevron showed up here last year and leased a plot of land he owned for exploratory shale gas drilling.
But the encounter between big business and rural Romania quickly turned into a nightmare. The village became a magnet for activists from across the country opposed to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Violent clashes broke out between the police and protesters. The mayor, one of the few locals who sided openly with Chevron, was run out of town, reviled as a corrupt sellout in what activists presented as a David versus Goliath struggle between impoverished farmers and corporate America.
“I was really shocked,” recalled the mayor, … “We never had protesters here and suddenly they were everywhere.”
In 2012, Bulgaria issued a shale-gas license to Chevron. Immediately, activists pounced, peddling hyperbolic warnings that fracking pollutes drinking water. (In reality, the practice carries a minimal risk of groundwater pollution when done properly.) Protests erupted, and the Bulgarian government caved, banning fracking entirely. Gazprom, Russia’s state-run energy company, proceeded to give the Bulgarian government a 20 percent discount for signing a ten-year contract for the provision of natural gas.
According to the reports, entities connected to the Russian government are using a shell company registered in Bermuda, Klein Ltd. (Klein), to funnel tens of millions of dollars to a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) private foundation, the Sea Change Foundation (Sea Change). This money appears to move in the form of anonymous donations. Sea Change then passes the money originating in Russia to various U.S. 501(c)(3) organizations such as the Sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, and others. These funds are dispersed as grants that will be used to execute a political agenda driven by Russian entities. The purpose of this circuitous exchange of foreign funds is to shield the source of the money.
— Rep. Lamar Smith and Randy Weber
And were the environmentalists concerned that they were being used as useful idiots by the Russians. Are we kidding? They’re in so deep the greens think they are using the Russians.;-)
In the West, when it comes to end fracking,
Certain groups will not be found lacking,
If it means the destruction,
Of cheap fuel production,
The Left and the Greens give it backing.
Many Australians don’t realize that those without solar panels pay are forced to pay for those who do through their electricity bills. That pain point is about to launch itself above the horizon and into public view. For those readers with solar panels (there are a lot) this is not about you, this is about the system. Our badly managed grid is now so obscenely inefficient and expensive, droves of people are installing solar panels because they feel they have no choice.
Tony Abbott says “Australians are paying too much for our emissions obsession”.
NSW MP Craig Kelly: “It’s effectively a reverse Robin Hood scheme where we are increasing the electricity prices on the poor to reduce electricity prices for the rich.”
As Jo says: We could have put that billion into a new hospital. Instead we put magic squares on our houses, hoping to get nicer weather.
The Clean Energy Regulator has released figures showing that more than 1057 megawatts of capacity was installed last year, equating to 3.5 million solar panels being fixed to rooftops.
Industry analysis obtained by The Australian reveals the cost of small-scale technology certificates — created to increase the incentive to install rooftop solar — shows the value of the subsidies was $500 million last year.
The solar industry is expecting the subsidy to increase to about $1.3bn this year….
— Joe Kelly, The Australian
With 8 million households that works out as $100 extra added onto electricity bills this year — on top of the $60 per household we paid last year for solar subsidies. That will be $160 total per household, just for solar subsidies, this year alone.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott is demanding action… [he] led a chorus of Coalition backbenchers urging the government to end the small-scale renewable energy scheme, with Liberal MP Craig Kelly declaring the policy was more economically damaging than the Rudd government’s home insulation scheme.
“Australians are paying far too much for our emissions obsession. Government must end subsidies for new renewables,” Mr Abbott said yesterday.
Nationals senator John Williams said the policy forced struggling families to subsidise rich people’s solar installations.
Mr Kelly, chairman of the Coalition backbench committee for energy and the environment, said the government should halve the maximum certificate price to $20, followed by another halving in its value next year before it is phased out a decade early in 2020.
When people find out just how expensive, toxic and pointless this is, there will be a riot.
The Minister Josh Frydenberg talks about ancient history and promises Santa is coming:
Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg said the Australian Energy Market Commission had found the average cost to households over the past five years was about $29 a year, with the price peaking in 2012 at $44 for the year. “The AEMC forecasts residential electricity prices will fall over the next two years as renewable energy, including small-scale solar supported by the Renewable Energy Target, enters the system,” Mr Frydenberg said.
Giles Parkinson at Reneweconomy calls this a “right wing push” to slash “incentives”
Don’t threaten the cash cow! In parasite-language a subsidy is not a subsidy, it’s an “incentive”. A sensible request not to force the poor to pay for the rich is labeled an ideological “right wing” push. And when you don’t have an answer, blame the Murdoch media for standing up for poor consumers.
After the namecalling, the claim that rooftop solar is helpful:
Criticism of the small-scale solar scheme invariably ignore the considerable benefits of having such a large amount of rooftop solar in the grid.
Network owners and operators in all states have highlighted how rooftop solar has reduced and deferred the events of peak demand, thereby reducing the cost of wholesale electricity because there is less need for peaking plant and less opportunity to trade on scarcity.
… rooftop solar is more popular than it has ever been – including when some state governments offered overly-generous feed-in tariffs in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Yes and coal power is more popular than it has ever been with 62 countries building 1600 new coal plants. Perhaps they are all stupid and we the only ones who can see the obvious blinding truth? Is Jay Weatherill the only genius running a state or is he the gullible fool who believes the green industry propaganda and thinks the ABC has impartial reporters?
Rooftop solar is only popular because our grid is so screwed people feel they can’t afford electricity any other way.
One in five houses have solar panels. What happens if we all got solar?
Flannery will be on Q&A tonight (bet you can’t wait, copy your questions and tweets below please!). Let’s check the exact wording of his original 2004 prediction that Perth would become a ghost town. It tells us something, not just about Flannery and a messiah complex (he really does talk of himself as an old testament prophet), but about journalism. Back then journalists interviewed critics too. Flannery was even called “alarmist” in 2004.
Perth will become a ghost city within decades as rising global temperatures turn the Wheatbelt into a desert and drive species to the brink of extinction, a leading Australian scientist warns.
To bring back the rain, Flannery advised windmills to defeat “the enemy”:
In years to come these will be seen as totems to the wind and sun gods:
The South Australian Museum director and author of the best-selling The Future Eaters said a major shift from coal to renewable fuels such as solar and wind energy was needed in WA. “Coal is the enemy,” Dr Flannery said…
As temperatures around the world warmed by 2 to 7 per cent, [Per cent of what? — asks Jo] Sydney could glimpse its future by looking at the devastating impact that global warming had already had on Perth, which he said was likely to become a “ghost metropolis”.
“There will be conditions not seen in 40 million years…”
–Anne Davies, Sydney Morning Herald
Perhaps “per cent” was a misprint. But 40 million years was not, and includes the formation of the Antarctic circumpolar current, super volcanoes, asteroid strikes, countless ice ages and millions of years of temperatures higher than present. The end of the last ice age saw a 125m sea level rise.
Still it’s not like the man is a paleontologist… oh, wait.
And what do we make of this 2007 admission? The man was billed as a “top scientist” in 2004, but in Feb 2007 he tells us he’s just spent two whole months reading about “climate change”.
Dr Flannery said he had spent the past two months reading “everything I can get my hands on” about climate change, and had been horrified by what he had learnt.
After a full nine week crash course, the man is a prophet:
The next line after that:
“I wake up in the morning thinking there are lots of times when people have woken up feeling like this, like the Old Testament prophets,” Dr Flannery said.
“I try to find a way out of it, but I can’t. Its life-changing to realise what is going on.”
–Anne Davies Sydney Morning Herald
Flannery, expert on fossil mammals, offers his global geopolitical, physiological, and economic synopsis:
“We are one of the most physically vulnerable people on the Earth,” Dr Flannery told the Herald.
The dryness of the continent made it especially fragile in the face of climate change.
“There may be a few worse places, like Bangladesh. But southern Australia is going to be impacted very severely and very detrimentally by global climate change.”
Somehow a nation which is among the richest, with more square kilometers per person, more resources per capita than possibly anywhere on the planet, and on a stable landmass, and exporting food and coal, are “the most physically vulnerable people on Earth”. The journalist, Anne Davies, did not even question this or think it might be worth getting a second opinion.
Archaic media: Back in the old days journalists would talk to critics too:
In 2004, in a different era, when Carmelo Amalfi of The West, had the sensationalist headline “Perth Will Die” but still clung to the old fashioned anachronistic habit of getting an alternate view, in this case from Jorg Imberger, who called Flannery’s prediction “alarmist” (even though he seemed to believe the IPCC):
Jorg Imberger, head of the University of WA’s centre for water research, agreed, saying the plant would produce about 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. “Building such a plant is the worst thing we can do when we have Yaragadee, with 1000 years of water in it,” he said from Singapore yesterday. But Dr Imberger said Dr Flannery was wrong to suggest WA was heading for an arid future when overall the world was getting wetter, not drier. He said his forecast was alarmist.
It’s a simple world. Flannery appears to be a one-variable man:
Hydrologists understand that streamflow and run off is determined by undergrowth, land clearing, evaporation rates, wind speed, etc. Flannery seems to think that only temperature matters. Warming means “less rain” which means “less run off” which means “death to flowers”:
He said a global temperature rise of less than 1C last century had robbed the State of over half its annual rainfall run-off. Global temperature rises of up to 6C would transform Perth into an arid city unable to feed itself.
A 1C rise was enough to wipe out an estimated two-thirds of WA’s native flowering plants.
Another day I’ll do something on the issue of rainfall versus runoff in WA which is a whole ‘nother topic.
For the moment, this is really about the media. Flannery doesn’t realize it, but he’s been hung out to dry by the failure of the media to ask sensible questions and interview informed critics. With better journalism, his wild, unresearched fantasies would have been ignored, or couched in sane terms with skeptical headlines. But the man has been walking the red carpet for years because he was so uninformed he could say the things that real experts couldn’t. He deserves the mocking he gets.
We heard years ago from an insider at The Australian Greenhouse Office that he appeared to be a dejected man when he walked.
Four Corners has become TwoCorners — it represents both sides of politics — Green AndLeft
Brissenden has done no research, interviewed no critics, and asked no hard questions. When it comes to serving the Australian people, protecting them, and holding our government to account, he’s AWOL — promoting his own pet interests instead, hiding the scandals and critics. What do we pay him for?
The iconic show on the ABC won’t interview skeptics that walked on the moon or won Nobel and NASA prizes, but if a cherry farmer feels the climate is changing, send in the film squad!
After years of telling skeptics that you don’t ask a plumber to do heart surgery, the ABC “Weather Alert! last Monday was 90% plumbers.
The formerly iconic FourCorners “public affairs” show crafted a 43 minute advertisement for the Renewables Industry and Carbon Trading Bankers and the Green Blob. And we taxpayers paid for it all. As usual, most of their facts were correct, but only because they barely had any. The facts apparently are that at least four farmers across Australia have the feeling that their climate has changed and are “doing something”. Yeah. Plus a whole bunch of consultants paid to solve a crisis say there is a crisis to solve.
…
Witchdoctors from neolithic tribes used similar techniques to the ABC so-called journalists Sarah Ferguson and Michael Brissenden. In the stone-age, a Voodoo Chief would chant a list of recent weather porn (like Al Gore does now), then loosely connect it all with the evil new type of, say, cooking pot, (brought from his competitor). He’d follow it up with some Yes-Men “witnesses” who’d nod solemnly and declare they have seen the weather change since the new pot arrived. Voila, blame the pot for the storms, “see the light” and give the man some more conch shells.
…
Keep your eye on the pea. All the farmers are probably right about recent changes to the weather patterns, but like the cooking pot, there’s no cause and effect link between your air conditioner and earlier grape harvests. How do we know it’s not natural? Answer, broken “climate models”.
The ABC also gave time to APRA and the RBA — both notable climate science authorities (not) — who agreed with the IPCC. They interviewed (or rather, promoted) someone from a left wing think tank, the Special Counsel for Climate Risk from Minter Ellison, a consultant from “ClimateRisk” and a spokesperson from the industry body for insurance companies. All four of these specialists, predictably, were happy to help sell the topic that brings them more business. Could we imagine an insurance agent telling us that things are not going to be worse than we expect? Or how about a Special Counsel for Climate Risk that said the risk was inconsequential and her job was irrelevant? It’s a bit rich to call these “interviews” — no hard questions were asked. Much was made of the farmers historic weather books, but Brissenden didn’t ask to see their records from, say, Jan 1896 when a long heatwave killed hundreds across Australia and temperatures hit 50C in four states. He travelled around the country “over four months”, but didn’t find half an hour to phone one skeptical scientist, businessman, or lowly blogger who could have saved him from looking like a gullible patsy.
All the alpha-plumbers, I mean “experts” in something else, were followed by a yes-man who told the audience that the APRA or RBA “don’t make these decisions lightly” as if those organisations had done what even the peer review journals never did — check the actual data, replicate the method, get the same result. Did APRA or the RBA interview any skeptics? Don’t expect the ABC to ask.
We got the reverse osmosis version of the truth…
All up, this was the Agitprop star-list of filtered factoids. We got the reverse osmosis version of the truth — where 80% of the information goes down the drain, and the mineral-free-story gets presented to at least twenty or thirty Australians, or whomever is left that still watches this Pravda type predictable stuff. No wonder few commentators cite TwoCorners anymore. Everyone knows what every show will explain before it goes to air.
But wait, I hear you say, they interviewed a real climate scientist — Karl Braganza, the visionary modeler who can “see a direct link to extreme weather” through his crystal ball, I mean climate model. With his psychic gift he can see the real pattern hidden under error bars two miles wide with a skillless model (see the refs at the end). Sure, let him speak, but a real journalist might be able to find another expert modeler who can point out the dismal failure rate of the IPCC approved models, the inconsistencies and the fact that none of the models include any solar magnetic effect, solar wind, or changes in solar spectra. They might also mention that sun spots actually correlate with our climate — with the raw measurements — and on both the “up” bits and the “down” bits for the last 5,000 years. A real journalist might have asked Braganza how well his models predict all those past turning points? Australian voters who pay something like $600 a year per household for Renewable Targets might like to know that from the dawn-of-civilization up until 1979 his climate model’s success rate is “zero”.
The show opened by blaming the intransigence of the political system, which translated, is the ABC confession that after all these years of propaganda, the voters still picked the wrong people.
Rob Rogers, Deputy Fire NSW Fire service, conveniently said that modern records are so unprecedented there are “no records” of weather existing on that scale. Which — as we have seen from hundreds of historic weather reports is false — see the drought and death in 1896, and 1878, 1939 the fires of 1851 and the news of “Australia cooling” that came out in the 1950s...
Only a few weeks ago the BOM said the same thing about warming in Sydney and scored a lot of headlines, but had to retract it the same day when they realized it had still been hotter in Richmond in 1939. Not so unprecedented.
Braganza [BOM] explained that it is really only since the 1990s that we have started to see the extreme heat. What he didn’t mention is that a totally new method of measurement came into effect on 1 November 1996 – with the transition continuing, so each new year, additional weather stations have their mercury thermometer replaced with an electronic probe taking one-second spot readings.
Brissenden has done no research, interviewed no critics, and asked no hard questions. When it comes to serving the Australian people, protecting them, and holding our government to account, he’s AWOL — promoting his own pet interests instead, hiding the scandals and critics. What do we pay him for?
See the worst place on Earth for global warming — but hide bumper crops, cool summers and good rain
South West WA and Perth was made out to be the global posterchild for climate panic — “the changes here have happened faster and earlier than anywhere else on the planet”. ABC viewers won’t know though that the horrors of climate change mean we’ve had one of the coldest summers in two decades, a record surplus on a bumper grain harvest, and that our dams are fuller than they’ve been for years. These things are just “weather”, but so are most of the heatwaves and the storm surges that the ABC is pretending are prophetic “signs” of our guilt. Why is it OK to mention one kind of weather but hide the other kind?
” what a pageant of old wives tales mixed with assorted lies and exaggerations.”
Starting with the “Braidwood drought” was a dud move due to rain and floods a week or so ago in the region – so that should have been cut. Surely the show has staff that are half awake?? I mean Canberra flooded!!
ABC enables virtue signaling “free advertising” for companies that say the right message:
Mark Valencia, sustainable growing blogger at SelfSufficientMe was scathing:
One of the farmer interviewees, the multimillion-dollar corporate winemaking dynasty Brown Brothers, cited climate change as the reason for its decision to buy into Tasmania in order to “climate-proof” their business. …
I guess spending 32 million acquiring vineyards in Tassy had nothing to do with this “poor Aussie battler” expanding their business hey… wink wink. Sorry, but call me cynical if I think their appearance on Four Corners was nothing more than a publicity stunt aimed at toffee nosed left wing wine guzzlers residing in inner-city Melbourne.
Another farmer (I heard speaking on the ABC Radio promo) said climate change has made him “change” his farming method drastically! For example, he now rotates crops and cattle on his property… well, duh… shouldn’t you be doing that anyway? You are a farmer, for goodness sake, crop rotation and moving your cattle to prevent scorched earth makes sense, doesn’t it!?
Four Corners then introduces its resident scientific talking head, Karl Braganza from the BoM. Braganza wastes no time in saying things are going to get worse, temperature, storms, the lot. Braganza is amazing. Here he is back in 2016 claiming storms will decrease, albeit become more powerful in the future. That claim about storms becoming worse, albeit less frequent, is thoroughly rebutted here. In fact, all extreme weather is reducing: droughts, storms, rainfall, as even the IPCC and other prominent alarmists like Professor Muller concede.
UPDATE #2: Reader Peter P writes that the farmer’s numbers don’t make sense:
MARTIN ROYDS: Yes we have 130 years of rainfall and temperature graphs
Since 1985 to now, the temperatures have been increasing .8 of a degree per decade.
So, in that thirty year period, it’s gone up 2.4 degrees, maximum temperature. [my bold]
I was interested in this quoted rapid temperature increase, so I checked out the temperature figures for Braidwood on the BOM site. It appears that you can get an average max temp for the period 1907-1975 from a recording station in one of the main streets of Braidwood – my reading of the data shows the average annual maximum for that period to be 19.0C. After that period there are the records from an AWS at Braidwood Racecourse for 1985 – 2018. They show an average annual maximum of 19.2C, barely changed from the earlier period. And this is (roughly) the 30 year period of rapid temperature increase claimed by Martin Royds in the program. – -Peter
UPDATE #3: The great Ruairi
Many media, duped and misguided,
Have on climate-change, long since decided,
To report with great zeal,
The fake climate spiel,
From the Left and keep it one-sided.
–Ruairi
This is the ABC speaking to the fence sitting and ignorant, and the 2% of the population who need affirmation that they are smart, caring, and deserve their junkets, jobs or solar subsidized electricity bills.
If FourCorners wants to represent the four corners, and get some relevancy back, it needs to generate actual controversy by interviewing the best of both sides of this debate.
*Regarding the ABC interviewing those “paid to find a crisis” — the ABC should interview them — along with the skeptics who question them. And may the best argument win.
REFERENCES
[1^] Anagnostopoulos, G. G., D. Koutsoyiannis, A. Christofides, A. Efstratiadis, and N. Mamassis, (2010). A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data’, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 55: 7, 1094 — 1110 [PDF]
[2^] Koutsoyiannis, D., Efstratiadis, A., Mamassis, N. & Christofides, A.(2008) On the credibility of climate predictions. Hydrol. Sci. J. 53(4), 671–684. changes [PDF]
[3^] Previdi, M. and Polvani, L. M. (2014), Climate system response to stratospheric ozone depletion and recovery. Q.J.R. Meteorol. Soc.. doi: 10.1002/qj.233
[4^] Christy J.R., Herman, B., Pielke, Sr., R, 3, Klotzbach, P., McNide, R.T., Hnilo J.J., Spencer R.W., Chase, T. and Douglass, D: (2010) What Do Observational Datasets Say about Modeled Tropospheric Temperature Trends since 1979? Remote Sensing 2010, 2, 2148-2169; doi:10.3390/rs2092148 [PDF]
[5^] Fu, Q, Manabe, S., and Johanson, C. (2011) On the warming in the tropical upper troposphere: Models vs observations, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 38, L15704, doi:10.1029/2011GL048101, 2011 [PDF] [Discussion]
[6^] Paltridge, G., Arking, A., Pook, M., 2009. Trends in middle- and upper-level tropospheric humidity from NCEP reanalysis data. Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Volume 98, Numbers 3-4, pp. 351-35). [PDF]
[7^] Anagnostopoulos, G. G., D. Koutsoyiannis, A. Christofides, A. Efstratiadis, and N. Mamassis, (2010). A comparison of local and aggregated climate model outputs with observed data’, Hydrological Sciences Journal, 55: 7, 1094 — 1110 [PDF]
[8^] Sheffield, Wood & Roderick (2012) Little change in global drought over the past 60 years, Letter Nature, vol 491, 437
[9^] Miller, M., Ghate, V., Zahn, R., (2012) The Radiation Budget of the West African Sahel 1 and its Controls: A Perspective from 2 Observations and Global Climate Models. in pressJournal of Climate [abstract] [PDF]
Belated H/t to Robert Rosicka, DonS, MurrayShaw, Tony Thomas, toorightmate, Pat, Dave B, Original Steve, Another Ian, el gordo, Chris G
BBVA, the second largest bank in Spain, has launched a major new financing initiative to support sustainable development and combat climate change in the coming years.
Only gas and oil companies are “vested interests” seeking to profiteer from our demise. Banks are charities:
BBVA Group Executive Chairman Francisco González said, “At BBVA, we want to play a key role in mobilizing resources to halt climate change and promote sustainable development. It is an ambitious, long-term goal in line with our purpose of ‘bringing the age of opportunity to everyone.’”
Apparently, the bank’s role is to change Earth’s climate, and “bring the age of opportunity to everyone”.
Do their shareholders know, I wonder?
Can anyone see an elephant?
Warning — Meaningless acronym coming — SBTI:
BBVA has also become the first Spanish bank to commit to the Science Based Targets Initiative. The campaign helps major corporates work out how they have to cut emissions to prevent the impacts of climate change.
If you wanted to dress up a neolithic druid program to use windmills to slow storms, you’d call it “Science Based” too.
Right now Exxon are on trial even though they “believe in climate change” because they spent $23 million or so on skeptics over ten years, and a long time ago. Yet, here’s a bank offering one hundred thousand million… it’s 4,347 times as much.
Plenty more money where that came from.
Does anyone doubt that a river of money and power flows through this science debate?
Much of this “$100 billion” will be rebadged bragging money — money that would have been spent anyway but a change of label makes it “good for advertising greenness”. It’s also good for whipping up momentum in a struggling market.
The implications are staggering, half the population fail at blink tests, and can’t see newspaper headlines about “climate change”. If only we could make them see by using rhetorical and psychological trickery to get past their faulty filters, the world would be saved. Please send us another grant!
Naturally, this self-serving, circular, and poorly researched piece is brought to you by The Conversation. Where else?
The big insight looks like pattern seeking and confirmation bias to me:
When we modified the test to measure people’s attention to climate change, we found people who are concerned about climate change are better at seeing climate-related words, such as carbon, right after the first target than those who are less concerned.
When we analyzed the data, we found a pattern: Conservatives who were less concerned about climate change were less likely to see climate-related words than liberals who were worried about the issue.
Or in another hypothesis, conservatives had better filters for pointless news stories with a prediction success rate lower than random chance. From experience, conservatives have figured out that these news stories are a waste of time.
Wrong with their first fact. Please, someone teach these Profs to use a search engine
The real problem with this study is that it starts from flawed assumptions, and everything “builds” on that. Apparently they only get their news from the BBC, or possibly 350.org flyers:
So the three authors based their entire research on untested assumptions that they may have sourced in a Greenpeace seminar (which is what the BBC did). Perhaps they formed their opinions surrounded by young left-wing lecturers and then went on to become three of the same.
A professor or bright undergrad,
Can easily be duped and be had,
By those who hoodwink,
Through consensus group-think,
To fall for the climate-change fad.
–Ruairi
The way to (Not) win over skeptics
Genius advice in communication apparently starts with calling people demeaning names:
We can do this by using messages that align with people’s political ideologies and personal values.
For example, we can frame climate change action as protecting our nation against climate catastrophes, advancing economic and technological development and creating a more caring and considerate society, which is an effective message to engage climate deniers.
Good luck with this theory:
Framing environmentalism as a form of patriotism can be successful, particularly if the appeal is seen as coming from one’s in-group.
It’s always hard to get someone’s attention, but if the messaging is in line with their personal values and motivations, they will take notice.
Messaging can be “in line” with personal values, but junk-in-line is still junk. Unproven half-truths and wild extrapolations won’t convince anyone bar the gullible groupthinkers.
Paul Homewood has either caught a Met Office prof rewriting history (the politest way I can put it) or Homewood has caught him issuing deliberately incorrect forecasts. Which is it — deception about the past, or deception about the future? Apparently he thought no one would check his past statements? (And as far as journalists go, he’s almost spot on.)
Ministers were warned about the Beast from the East a month ago by a Met Office forecaster who stockpiled provisions in preparation for the weather bomb.
Professor Adam Schaife, head of long-range forecasting at the Met Office, alerted the Cabinet Office to the incoming weather bomb four weeks ago.
He told them that they should expect Britain to be battered by a deep freeze.
In preparation for the polar vortex he stocked up on essentials.
‘I got extra oil, food and logs in, knowing this was coming,’ he said last week.
But Paul Homewood checked the past Met Office Forecasts. The Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW) was key to the Beast, but when the BOM issued the 3 monthly forecast on the 26th of January they said:
…”there is little likelihood of a SSW, and an increased likelihood of milder-than-usual conditions at least in the first half of the 3 month period.”
Perhaps this was code for Ministers to buy tuna tins? By the 9th of Feb, Homewood says they had an “inkling” of the SSW, which was already happening by the 12th. Then they said it was ” too soon to determine exactly what impacts it could have on our weather in the UK.”
It was only by the 18th of Feb that the Met Office warned it: could lead to prolonged cold conditions over the UK, increasing the risk of easterly wind and significant snow”.
But wait! “Signs” appeared:
Prof Adam Scaife, head of monthly to decadal prediction work at the Met Office Hadley Centre, said “Signs of this event appeared in forecasts from late January”[2].
These mysterious “signs” apparently were signish enough for him to order logs and oil, but not spell that out for the public.
What were the “signs”:
a/ it’s winter
b/ tea leaves spelled “SSW. “
c/ a dream about the Dalai Lama.
The Met Office has some story about the weather patterns repeating from 2009 and 2013, and “starting over India”. Welcome to climate science where forecasts are post hoc but not predictive.
Paul Homewood:
Scaife has serious questions to answer.
If he really did give the Cabinet Office detailed advice about the severe freeze up at the beginning of February, then why did the Met Office not include the warning in their news releases until just over a week before?
On the other hand, if what the Met Office has said is correct, then Scaife is guilty of misrepresenting his advice to the Cabinet Office. He may well have said that there was a chance of some cold weather arriving, but to pretend he warned them about “the beast from the east”, as The Times claims, is clearly deeply misleading.
Perhaps the Met office are feeling a bit insecure?
Commenter RAH: Joe Bastardi was forecasting this Artic blast hitting western Europe a month ago just as he forecast the Nor Easter that is going to strike the East Coast here in the US over a week ago and has said it’s just the first of several that will hit the coast. It is all just WEATHER and Joe was telling people it was coming. — Read more here.
PS: Had a blackout last night, and no internet coverage most of today. I’ll get to the 4Corners report tomorrow.
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