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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 1000Another 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.” Bankers explains AGL won’t sell Liddell because then electricity will get cheaper: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 valueAGL 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 upThe 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
Here’s how to ruin a power station: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:
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| 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
April 2nd, 2018 | Tags: BOM, Homogenization (temperature data), Quirk (Tom), UAH | Category: Global Warming | 
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Print This Post | | 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
Possible last orbital routes are likely along these tracks.
Keep reading →
Wishing everyone good health and good times…
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 AER report on the closure of Hazelwood:
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
March 29th, 2018 | Tags: Coal, Electricity Cost, Hydroelectricity, SA (South Australia), Wind Power | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | 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.
New Zealand report claims new generation electric vehicles threaten the power network
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…
March 28th, 2018 | Tags: Electric Cars (EV), Electricity Grids, New Zealand | Category: Electricity, Grids | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | 
…
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?
Ultra-fine film possible saviour for Great Barrier Reef
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.
March 27th, 2018 | Tags: Corals, Ocean Acidification, Reefs | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | Earthhour is “The Largest Global Movement for the Environment”*
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.
…
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 →
A huge conference is building in Sydney. Quick, join in, you can get a 10% discount with the code Nova18.
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.
Discover the Joy of Blackouts!
There is an amazing line up of speakers this year on May 25-27 in Sydney. A building full of sane people!
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!
March 24th, 2018 | Tags: Conferences, Social Events for Skeptics | Category: Event, Global Warming | Print This Post | |
Print This Post | | 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).
The Rural Fire Service thinks differently — blames power lines for fires:
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.
Meanwhile the guys paid to fight fires blame a lack of backburning in the area:
“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.
*Let’s talk about the “huge jobs” generated by wind and solar, and let’s also talk about the even bigger job losses that go with that. For every Green job created, between two and five other real jobs, that did something useful, are lost. But that’s only data from Spain, Italy, Britain, and Germany.
** Guns laws? Not so simple either: States with more guns don’t have more gun-murders. See also JustFacts for interesting graphs and Bill Whittle on “per capita murder rates”.
…
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.
Michael Bastach, Daily Caller:
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt will soon end his agency’s use of “secret science” to craft regulations.
“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.
h/t Robert, Scott of the Pacific, Pat, Jim S.
Druids at work
The voters smacked the Greens yesterday, so today the Greens smack the voters. Richard Di Natale, Green Chieftain, blames the recent spate of storms and fires for the governments failure to change the global weather.
The Australian
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.
Cyclone Marcus has swept across the Northern Territory, bringing down power lines and hundreds of trees in what Chief Minister Michael Gunner described as the biggest storm to hit the Top End in 30 years.
In Tathra on the NSW South Coast, at least 70 properties have been destroyed, while thousands of hectares of farmland, livestock and 18 homes have been lost in four blazes which were started by lightning strikes across South West Victoria.
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.*
Marcus had gusts to 130km/hour, thankfully, no buildings fell down and no deaths were reported.
If we reduce global CO2 by 70ppm at a cost of $42 billion trillion dollars Darwin might be lucky enough to get storms like this instead:
Darwin, 1974 — when CO2 was 330 ppm
That 1974 pre-climate-change storm had gusts to 240 km/hr, razed 70% of the town and killed 65 people.
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.
Fig 2: Australian annual rainfall – source BOM
Keep reading →
March 18th, 2018 | Tags: Australian rainfall, Australian temperatures, BOM, Predictions (that went wrong), Quirk (Tom), Stewart (Ken) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | |
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