To understand the real value of electricity, consider the price at which people will give it up. “Demand Response” is the nice euphemism for a voluntary blackout. At what point do people volunteer to go without? For most of the market, apparently, it’s more than $7500/MWh.
If I read this graph correctly, look how fast the prices rise, and how small the response is. For example, in South Australia there is only about 10MW available at less than $300/MWh? (From this AEMO report). For reference the total SA demand is around 1500MW. So 10MW is less than 1%.
(See below for the
Consider how few people are willing to turn the electricity off:
AEMO expects there to be approximately 50 MW of demand response in NSW when the price reaches $1,000/MWh.
The total size of the NSW state market is about 10,000MW. Retail electricity sells for $250 — $470MWh (and only $100/MWh in the US). Hence when the price hits two to four times the normal retail cost of electricity, only about 5% of the market say they will willingly stop using it. When the price hits $7500MWh another 2% will give it up. We can’t take this reasoning too far, but the message is clear that the pain of giving up electricity costs a lot more than generating it. Demand is “inelastic”.
Electricity generation creates wealth. People value the product far above the cost of production.
We could raise prices but business locations are “elastic”….
Blah. Blah. Must act urgently. Blah. The two messages we will never hear is that we are doing enough or spending too much.
The leak is so predictable, and such a standard marketing tool, that the IPCC even has an excuse at-the-ready:
The document’s leak has become a standard affair for major United Nations climate science reports, because they are seen by so many reviewers.
This is supposed to be a transparent process to solve a global problem. How can that be “leaked?”
A slight change in flavour is that while we were always aiming for two arbitrary degrees of warming, now we are now also aiming for an arbitrary 1.5C as well. The lower target is unachievable, apparently, allowing script writers to simultaneously say we “are past the point of no return”, going to overshoot” and “not on track” and also say “we can keep warming under the target” (just, barely, etc) depending on which target you want to refer to. This scores double points in keyword bingo. Something for everyone.
Since such rapid and severe cuts aren’t likely, the report notes that it’s virtually unavoidable that the planet will “overshoot” 1.5 degrees Celsius. To cool the Earth down afterward and avoid staying at dangerously high temperatures for long, it would then be necessary to remove carbon dioxide from the air at a massive scale — but that, too, is highly problematic.
Anthony Watts: I got word tonight from David Ball, son of Dr. Tim Ball via Facebook messenger:
This morning the judge dismissed all charges in the lawsuit brought against Tim by BC Green Party leader Andrew Weaver. It is a great victory for free speech.
Weaver sued climatologist Dr. Tim Ball for, amongst other things, saying Weaver was “lacking a basic understanding of climate science,” according to a glowing New York Times article, cheering on his SLAPP suit.
Seriously? Suing someone, in a court of law, for saying you don’t understand global warming? This from a scholar, an academic, a teacher? And now a politician – an opposition politician, no less. Weaver is now a Green Party MLA in British Columbia, someone who hurls insults as part of his job description.
That’s not what true academics do. That’s not what politicians do – especially opposition politicians. Andrew Weaver is acting like a thug, not a scholar or a public servant. He is trying to censor and punish his enemies, not debate his opponents.
And from DeSmog in 2011 — all the prescience we’ve come to expect:
The suit arises from an article that Ball penned for the right-wingy Canada Free Press website, which has since apologized to Weaver for its numerous inaccuracies and stripped from its publicly available pages pretty much everything that Ball has ever written.
Ball, famously slow to notice the obvious, apparently didn’t realize that he was overmatched.
Congratulations to Tim Ball today, but most of all, a big thank you. Thanks for taking the harder road. We, all of us who value free speech, are sorry you had to do it, but so grateful you did.
See also Tim Balls Blog (though there is no announcement there yet).
*Headline edited. Weaver didn’t drop the charges. The judge dismissed the case. If only it had been done 6 years sooner.
Foster, who is 53, was charged with criminal trespass and criminal mischief, conspiracy to commit criminal mischief and reckless endangerment. At his bond hearing in Cavalier, N.D., he learned that he faced a maximum sentence of more than 26 years.
The NY Times gives them hero treatment. Scott of the Antarctic could not get a write up this nice:
What Foster didn’t expect was that once he’d broken through the chain-link fence, he would be briefly overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he was about to do. He faced away from the biting wind, and allowed himself to cry. He then put a gloved hand on the steel wheel, which was almost three feet across and mounted vertically as if on the helm of a ship, and began to turn it. For long minutes it spun easily, but then both the wheel and the ground below his feet began to shake. Foster had been told to expect this, but still he hesitated. When he resumed turning, he had to throw his body into the task, at times dangling from the wheel to coax it downward. Finally, he could wrestle it no farther, and the shaking stopped. He felt a profound sense of relief. He replaced the lock on the wheel with a new padlock, sat down and, breathing heavily, began to record himself on his phone. “Hey, I’ve never shot video for grandkids that I don’t have yet,” he told the camera, “but I want any grandkids, or grandnephews and nieces or whatever, anybody in any family tree of mine, to know that once upon a time people burned oil, and they put it in these underground pipes, and they burned enough, fast enough, to almost cook you guys out of existence, and we had to stop it — any way we could think of.”
Not necessarily a harmless protest:
Lonny Johnson, the TransCanada employee who visited the site after Foster turned the valve, testified that the valve wasn’t designed to be closed against pressure as Foster had done, but that he’d found no cracks or leaks when he inspected it. The prosecutors, however, argued that a leak could have caused a fire or explosion or polluted the nearby Pembina River.
One trial ended in a hung jury, and that Valve Turner got 2 days jail, plus 30 days community service. He should have been been given 30 days boot camp with skeptics as therapy for his delusions and a lesson to read both sides of the story so he is not an easy victim for rent-seeking, self-serving industries and bankers.
Foster however got a real one year sentence:
Judge Fontaine … rejected the necessity defense because, in her view, there were still legal means to address climate change. “If you can’t convince the government, then you convince the people,” she said, “and it seems to me the way you convince the people in this world is by 60-second sound bites, by commercials.”
Commercials cost thousands and are unattainable for many. Someone should tell the judge about blogs, radio interviews and cartoons. Then again, perhaps she did say that.
…“Everything about you, and everything you’ve said to me, is this was the right thing to do, this is what I’m called to do, this is what I have to do. So nothing about that tells me you wouldn’t do the same thing next month, next year, next week.”
Judge Fontaine sentenced Foster to three years in prison, with two of those years to be suspended and served on supervised probation. Jessup was given a suspended sentence of two years.
Michael Foster and Emily Johnston set up 350.org.
Foster, a family therapist, longtime environmentalist and father of two….
Check the irony. He’s a former family therapist, now divorced and estranged from his own kids. I can’t throw in a wry line. This is just sad:
When Foster committed himself to the climate movement, he also recruited his children, then 8 and 10, to march and speak alongside him. His older child, now a cleareyed 16-year-old, says that both siblings were initially happy to participate — in part because it gave them a chance to spend time with their father, whom they saw less and less of as his activism increased. But before long, they felt pressured. “When we would try to refuse, when we would say, ‘Hey, I’m tired,’ or ‘Hey, I have homework,’ or ‘Hey, I have school today,’ it would be: ‘Don’t you care about the planet? Don’t you care about the future?’ ” the older child explains. “That felt awful, because of course we cared, of course we wanted to do our part. But it felt like he was using our voices to spread his message.”
He couldn’t let his family off the hook either, and resentments deepened. “When people asked me how things were going, how I was doing, I’d say, ‘He’s doing important stuff, and it matters,’ ” says his ex-wife, Malinda, who asked that her last name and her children’s names not be used to protect her family’s privacy. “I’d also say, ‘I really respect Gandhi, but I wouldn’t want to be married to him.’
Both Malinda and her older child say they felt constantly judged, and frustrated, by Foster’s inflexibility. In 2014, Malinda filed for divorce, and his children said they no longer wanted to be part of his activism — or part of his life.
The media, spineless politicians, and university academics who fail to do their jobs take advantage of weak-minded, obsessive types. That doesn’t excuse reckless action and personal responsibility. But taxpayer funded operatives shouldn’t be feeding that element with a personality flaw either.
h/t to Howard “Cork” Hayden: author of many skeptical books including NEW! Energy: A Textbook, at www.energyadvocate.com. There are free resources at the site too.
More than 20,000 homes in Melbourne’s southeast had another night without electricity on Sunday, the third major power outage for Victoria in three weeks.
An Ausnet spokeswoman confirmed 23,915 customers were left without power for about 90 minutes from 11.42pm in suburbs including Bayswater, Boronia, Ferntree Gully, Heathmont, Knoxfield, Scoresby and Wantirna. She said the power cut was the result of a fault at the Boronia substation, which could have been triggered by leaves or branches or other plant debris flying into overhead power lines, or animals, birds or possums on the line.
Incredibly bad luck.
Or not. They don’t really know why this blackout occurred yet.
Workers are still investigating the cause of the fault…
The Victorian government blames the privately owned retailers, and has ordered them to pay compensation. This is the funny asymmetry with electricity pricing – it costs less to generate it, than to not generate it. A 3 – 20 hour blackout might “earn” $80 in compensation.
The EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2018 is out. The hard heads at the US Dept of Energy crunched the numbers, assumed technology will improve, and modeled the outcomes. According to their best estimates (and even their “worst” estimates) thirty years from now, the main energy source for the US is natural gas and fossil fuels. Renewables grows from 5% to 14%, but coal, nukes, hydro stays about the same. When the Australian Greens say “we don’t want to be left behind”, the answer is “Exactly! So explore for gas! Use Nukes!”
On the road, most people are still using gasoline cars, and here’s the kicker — electricity prices are still at about 11 cents per kilowatt hour. Weep all ye Australians, Brits, Germans and other who would be grateful if electricity only rose 10% a year, not 10% over 30 years.
How much does an interconnector cost from Townsville to Texas? 😉
Despite all of the hype, hope, cheerleading, fuel standards, portfolio standards, and taxpayer subsidies for renewable energies like wind and solar, America’s energy future will still rely primarily on fossil fuels to power our vehicles, heat and light our homes, and fuel the US economy.
EIA, 2018, Graph, Total energy use projections.
Electricity prices are dirt cheap and will stay that way:
The Green Blob is going to have to get rid of satellites. Real data is so inconvenient.
For years many people called scientists have assumed, like any smart 5 year old would, that islands are fixed blobs of rock and sand that just sit there and sink as oceans rise. Now satellite images show that three quarters of the islands in Tuvalu are growing rather than shrinking.
Total land area is up 2.9%. Total government funded scientists who predicted reality, down 97%.
Since our emissions helped create nearly a square kilometer of free real estate in Tuvalu, it seems only fair that they return any climate funds, and pay a royalty. 😉
The whole of Tuvalu is 26km2 and about 10,600 people live there. Total GDP is $32 million. It’s a cheap marketing tool. In May last year, despite Tuvalu being used as an advertising posterchild for climate change for years, it had not received funding from the Green Climate Fund. In August 2017 UNDP finally promised $38 million. That’s theoretically an extra income equivalent to 20% of their GDP for the next seven years. No wonder these islanders are keen to talk “climate change”.
Nils-Axel Mörner’s claims regarding sea level rise are the very definition of denial, involving nothing more than conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated accusations of data falsification wich (sic) are easily proven untrue.
Tesla car sales in Hong Kong fell from 2000 to just 300 cars in one year, a crushing indictment of their competitiveness and … No wait, it’s worse:
Data from Hong Kong´s Transport Department shows Tesla sales fell to just 32 between April and December 2017, a dramatic decline from the near 2,000 sales notched up over the same period of 2016.
The removal of tax incentives in Hong Kong almost doubled the price of some Tesla models.
In total, including non-Tesla models, just 99 electric cars were registered in Hong Kong over the last nine months of 2017.
We get some idea of why so many Chinese people are “willing” to buy EV’s by reading the SMH. By Kirsty Needham:
Beijing’s annual quota for conventional tail-pipe licence plates was more than halved this year, from 90,000 to 40,000, and the capital is among seven major Chinese cities to restrict conventional licence plates. Would-be drivers wait years in an annual lottery. Those willing to get behind the wheel of an electric vehicle wait just a few months, with 60,000 plates on offer.
Once she had the plates, Ms Dan went shopping. Government subsidies brought the price of her zippy white car with electric blue hub caps down to 70,000 Chinese yuan ($A13,800).
Is this writer, Kirsty Needham, a journalist for the SMH or a PR marketer for the EV industry?
Lecture coming:
In Australia, the Turnbull government is debating the merits of electric cars, with conservative Liberal and National politicians pushing back against the suggestion of government subsidies while complaining about the impact on fuel tax excise and the environmental cost of electric vehicles if they are charged using coal fired electricity. Meanwhile China is simply getting on with converting its enormous fleet.
Greenpeace interview following:
Greenpeace’s China energy analyst Lauri Myllyvirta: “The share of coal in the electricity mix is on track to fall below 50 per cent by 2030, which is the earliest that you could expect a substantial share of the car fleet to be electric,”…
“The popular simplification that China’s power generation comes almost exclusively from coal is no longer true, and emissions from manufacturing and charging an EV – as well as from manufacturing a gasoline car – are falling at a significant rate in China.”
So sometime after 2030, if any of today’s Chinese EVs are still running then, they will be only 50% coal fired.
Royal Adelaide Hospital, dubbed the “third most expensive building in the world” is doing more to help with global climate control than any other first world hospital. But a few weeks ago some of the planet saving batteries leaked all over the floor.
The government has claimed it [Royal Adelaide Hospital] produces half the greenhouse gas emissions of other hospitals.
Are battery acid burns covered on your health plan?
Four giant batteries installed inside the new $2.4 billion Royal Adelaide Hospital to help the facility meet the Weatherill government’s strict low-emission targets have ruptured without warning, spilling 80 litres of sulphuric acid.
The toxic accident in a power generator room inside the hospital, which opened in September after delays and legal disputes over building defects, saw one person exposed and decontaminated at the scene by firefighters.
The batteries won’t be replaced til people know what went wrong:
Central Adelaide Health Network chief executive Jenny Richter said replacement batteries had been ordered but would not be installed until the cause of the initial rupture was determined and all issues had been resolved.
The affected batteries are separate to the hospital’s back-up power system, which includes six diesel generators.
The acid spill comes weeks after it was revealed the hospital had to employ people to hold some doors open for orderlies because of a design defect.
An investigation into the incident has yet to determine what caused the batteries to rupture. However, an SA Health spokeswoman yesterday confirmed the batteries had been replaced with a newer model and that “tests … have declared the system safe to resume normal operations”.
Another variation of Climate-Panic was unleashed today on hapless tourism operators. The whole entire $40b tourism industry in Australia is at risk apparently. Here are three points the doom-mongers and our “journalists” didn’t think of:
People like hot weather holidays. “Climate change” (if it happens) would mean longer beach seasons, more greenery, and coral reefs could spread.
Average temperatures vary by 14C across Australia. The average January maxes range from 22.5C to 36.5C. Some fans of the renewables industry want you to believe that a two degree rise will wipe the nation off the list of visitable places, as if Hobart at 24C will be unvisitable? Sure. (Please sell me your tourist resorts now.)
Australia’s $40 billion tourism industry is in danger, with visitors likely to face more bad weather, deadly jellyfish and damaged beaches due to climate change, the Climate Council has warned.
Some of the nation’s most prized natural assets, such as Uluru, Kakadu and Ningaloo Reef, are most at risk from rising temperatures, while more than half of the continent could see conditions deemed “unfavourable” for visitors by 2080, the council says.
“Climate change is placing one of Australia’s most valuable and fastest growing sectors under threat. In 2016 alone, more than eight million international visitors arrived on our shores to see our natural icons, bringing in more than $40bn.
“In fact, tourism employs more than 15 times more people in Australia than coalmining.”
Australia’s oldest and most iconic site has changed dramatically, but major site changes are not even being recorded.
The way the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) treat this site says a lot about the unscientific, shoddy, biased standards it uses at sites everywhere. This was their headquarters. Experts walked past new walls, construction and highways, yet they didn’t record them? Beggars belief.
Just as Peter Ridd warns us that we can’t trust some marine and reef institutes, Bill Johnston is the whistle-blower warning us about the Bureau of Met. There is no law of science that says human institutes are infallible. When they run off the rails, how do we find out? Ridd issued a warning from the inside and ended up in the Federal Court. When people, like Bill write from the outside, the BoM waves the peer-review gatekeeper, and anonymous reviewers can easily shut that gate, and without any penalty.
The louvered thermometer house in front of the Observatory in 1864. (Courtesy of the State Library of NSW.)
Sydney Observatory is one of the longest running stations in the Southern Hemisphere, starting in 1859. It was Australia’s premier meteorology site and in the 1800’s it was known as a cool breezy place that recorded temperatures that were lower than the rest of Sydney. One hundred and fifty eight years later and it sits on the verge of the main route to the Sydney Harbour Bridge which carries 160,000 cars a day and right beside the CBD of our largest city. What is really gobsmacking is that most of those significant site changes are not even recorded in the BoM metadata file. Oddly, the BoM makes corrections for site changes that don’t appear to affect the thermometer readings (see Bill Johnston’s full report) but they don’t compensate for site changes that do. Why are some changes overcorrected, yet others disappear from the record? The BoM are ignoring shrinking screens, walls that come and go, and new highways. Perhaps they tell themselves they have found other ways to correct, or check, these major changes, but if it isn’t published, it isn’t science. When a big screen became a small screen, where is the comparison data? When a wall is built nearby, what correction factor do they use? Is it “zero”; ignore the artificial heating, and pretend it’s CO2? Do they cheer when taxpayers have to pay billions to mollify atmospheric hob-goblins?
The details below come from exhaustive research by Bill Johnston. Around the same time as photos and documents show these unrecorded “forgotten” changes, the temperature record changes in a step. It’s quite possible that most of the warming in Sydney — since 1859 — is due to man-made site changes.
The biggest question for me, is why were most of these site changes not even recorded, or if, as Bill suggests, if they were — what happened to those records?
As he says:
After 1938 when work on the Cahill Expressway up-ramp started, staff passed within 15 m of the Stevenson screen to access their former office and observers were constantly in attendance. It’s impossible that rebuilding of the school, the move in 1947/48, opening of the expressway, construction of the wall and traffic-changes were not noticed or that works were not documented in local files. As they are not in the National Archives or other repositories, it’s plausible that site and instrument files (and possibly the data register) have been deliberately destroyed.
Don’t let anyone tell you this site is not important just because it is not an official ACORN station. This site “buys” history and prestige for the BoM, even as they forget, ignore or wash out the history of it. It features in the news constantly, and is used to “homogenise” many official ACORN stations. So artificial step-ups here can be spread to other sites. In a different kind of PR blur, short data sets (like Penrith’s which started in 1995) get converted into 150 year records by the mere mention that Sydney Observatory started in 1859 in the same story.
The BoM is behaving as a PR machine, a marketing arm of the renewables industry, and a political support team for Big Parasitic Government. They are not even competent at keeping a written record of major site changes, yet they expect us to believe their tricky statistical games with homogenization? Where’s the accountability? The ABC never asks a hard question, and the SMH amplifies the fake news. The minister should be all over this.
Sydney Observatory used to be the coolest spot in Sydney, even in “unprecedented heat”
It has been a matter of surprise that when the thermometric-readings in various parts of the country were so high that of Sydney should be so low. The following clipping from Tuesday’s Herald fairly explains the matter. In future, in order to understand what the proper shade temperature of Sydney is, as against country towns, it will be well to add about 10 or 12 degrees (on the authority of the Herald) to the official reading of the thermometer at Sydney Observatory.
The truth is that on Sunday night at 9 o’clock, when the temperature at the Observatory, was 88.6 F, it was 98 F in one of the coolest buildings in Sydney with all windows open. And it is easily accounted for when one takes into account the heat of last week and its effect upon the buildings—how they absorbed it all the week and retained it, never cooling.
This estimate [that the Observatory was 10 F cooler than the rest of Sydney] was certainly verified by a corrected thermometer (one low rather than high) at Ultimo. There, covered by a strong passionfruit vine, the reading on the shadeside of the building was 120 F.
The Herald might have added that the Observatory with its “loveliest little summer house, almost buried in foliage,” is situated on the highest hill in Sydney where breezes off the water blow on nearly all sides of it. — Trove, Sat Jan 18, 1896, The Armidale Chronicle
Ten degrees Fahrenheit is 5.5 degrees C. You might think past records from there should be raised by at least 5 C (or more) in order to compare with temperatures today. Instead the Bureau of Meteorology ignores most of the changes to this site since 1896.
The brick wall was built behind the Stevenson screen around 1972, but the BoM does not record it.
The official history of this site only mentions three changes — the last of which occurred in 1917. A brick wall was built around 1972 (see the photo). The Western Distributor (a giant spaghetti hwy) was done around the same time. These would have changed those “cooling breezes” but are not even listed in the metadata. Johnston estimates temperatures warmed there at the same time by a third of a degree. That’s a third of the whole warming trend of the last century.
As usual Johnston analyses records by looking at rainfall and temperature together. Wet years are cooler years, and dry years are warmer. If a thermometer moves to a warmer spot, the relationship changes — the rain stays the same, but the temperatures rise. This marks an artificial change.
Instead, the site is surrounded by walls, traffic masses, buildings, and the BoM puts out fake news press releases about records. Did the opening of the Cahill Expressway make the area warmer? The BoM apparently don’t think so.
Another major change (which has occurred in many other places too) was the switch from the old large Stevenson screen to a small one in the late 1990s. These are very different boxes — the older, large ones are 230 litres the new smaller ones, 60 litres. How could such a small screen not make any difference to the responsiveness of the thermometers within? Small boxes heat faster, they respond to the surrounding changes quicker. Even if the averages were somehow similar, the extremes, the distribution, or the seasonal spread may change. Data could be skewed in so many ways. Surely, the BoM didn’t just ignore this. Could it be that the BoM experts feel they could compensate for this big change with statistical tricks? Where is that published? There is another step up in temperatures in 2013, a big one of 0.77C — one that doesn’t fit with rainfall patterns. Johnson finds that the spread of datapoints changes after 2013. He wonders if the BoM changed the filter algorithms and allowed more spikes (noise) through, which would make the temperature appear to rise when it hadn’t.
The Stevenson screen is located next to the Expressway that feeds Sydney Harbour Bridge, and beside the CBD.
The BOM needs an independent audit. No one would accept this from a public company.
— Jo
________________________________________
Sydney Observatory’s temperature trends, extremes and trends in extremes
By Dr. Bill Johnston
Former NSW Department of Natural Resources Senior Research Scientist (and weather observer).
The Sydney Observatory weather station seems to tick all the boxes:
Starting in 1859 it is Australia’s longest continuously operating weather station and the main reference weather station for Australia’s largest city.
Observations were initially made under the watchful eye of NSW Government Astronomers, and since 1908 by the Bureau. As the Bureau’s (1922) NSW office, situated behind the historic 1862 Messenger’s cottage, was 35 m west of the site, datasets and the site should be rigorously documented and non-climate effects understood.
Now an annex of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, the Observatory itself is well maintained and preserved; a site of exceptional national significance; it is interesting, easily accessible and free to visit.
Figure 1 The two Stevenson screens at Sydney Observatory are beside an open wire fence in 1966 (A); the school gymnasium opened in 1952 (B); west is the 1922 Sydney Weather Bureau office (C); north, the Fort Street School (D); the original (pre-1917) site was in the Observatory grounds (E). The area enclosed by the Cahill Expressway up-ramp is about 1 ha; school grounds are concrete and the buildings and heritage-listed fig tree in front shade the site in the late afternoon, especially in winter. (A 1974 aerial photograph shows the open wire fence (A) replaced by an 8-foot high (2.4 m) solid brick wall.) (Portion of “View from IBM; Max Dupain and Associates 1966”. State Library of NSW, Mitchell Library, courtesy of Hely, Bell & Horne.)
The Stevenson screens have always been close to where the action is: they moved to the front yard of the cottage in 1917 just before work started on construction of the Harbour Bridge (1920-1932). The Weather Bureau office behind the cottage was built in 1922; the Fort Street school was demolished and rebuilt from 1938 to 1941; they moved away from the school (and fig tree) to the southeastern corner of the yard probably in 1948/49, and the school gymnasium opened in 1952.
The Cahill expressway opened in 1958; a brick wall replaced the open fence south of the screens probably in 1972/73; an electronic automatic weather station (AWS) was installed in 1990 and thermometers were removed on 31 May 1995. A small screen replaced the large one (and the AWS was probably replaced) in 1997. Also, immediately in front (east) of the cottage the Bradfield Highway was widened three or four times and various changes implemented to smooth the movement of traffic out of the city centre.
Figure 3. Residual step-changes in Sydney Observatory temperature data aligned with changes verified independently (the effect of rainfall is removed statistically). Red squares indicate statistical outliers. As step-changes are aligned with site changes post hoc, analysis is independent and unbiased by prior knowledge. The Tmax decline in 1879 is not climate-related and can only be due to cooling in the vicinity (watering) or changed exposure (shading) or a change of instrument (changing to a thermometer having a different calibration).
The question is: why haven’t all these changes and their effects been documented by the Bureau or the many climate scientists who use the data as a climate-change reference?
Figure 2. The small Stevenson screen seems neglected; there are cobwebs between the louvers and in the roof cavity and it is covered in a thin coating of black soot, which would make it warmer (left). The serial number (right; 97/C0526) indicates it was made in 1997; data stepped-up in 1998 but Bureau documentation says the screen was replaced in 2000. (Its also possible that nobody really knows!)
In their haste to make the weather warmer Bureau-metadata (data about the data) only mention the 1917 site move, the AWS being installed in 1990 and the small screen (in 2000). They forgot that the site moved away from the school building and fig tree in 1948/49; the Cahill Expressway opened in 1958 and that the wall was built in 1972/73.
But here’s the big problem: homogenisation changes the data to achieve the warming trend they want. Adjustments are made arbitrarily for changes that made no difference (like the maximum temperature in 1917 and the minima in 1964), while changes that did impact on data (for example, the 1948/49 move; the expressway and the wall and small screen) are blamed on the climate.
When journalists describe normal summer days as ‘scorchers’, ‘weekends from hell’, ‘sweltering’, ‘record-breakers’ the BoM doesn’t correct them and mention our hot history. Every time there’s a day warmer than the last time it was cooler its announced as significant event. They even create inflated stories about events that haven’t happened yet, with creatively adapted file-photos to make it seem they have.
For the last 158 years Sydney’s climate has not changed or warmed. There are no records being cracked; not at Sydney; nor at Newcastle’s Nobbys Head where the AWS and small screen moved to the edge of the cliff above the beach in 2001; not Brewarrina Hospital where new accommodation warmed the site; or Wanaaring where they put the small screen beside a dusty track; nor Moomba between the airport runway and materials dump; neither at Melbourne’s Laverton RAAF (also a small screen) nor Sydney airport where the small screen is 35 m from traffic emerging from the General Holmes Drive tunnel; nor Alice Springs, Hobart, Charleville, Adelaide, Mandora, Launceston, Ceduna, Cape Leeuwin nor … (insert so many here). Site changes have happened everywhere, and nowhere does warming unequivocally reflect the climate.
The bottom line
Evidenced by careful analysis (and tracking-down historic aerodrome maps and information at the National Archives of Australia; the National Library of Australia (NLA); state libraries; museums; searching NLA’s collection of historic aerial photographs and the online collection available from Business Queensland; local historians and groups such as the Civil Aviation Historical Society at Essendon) it’s clear that the Bureau of Meteorology either doesn’t know what’s going-on or they “know” the answer they are looking for before they start. Either way, they are crafting an enormous myth about Australia’s climate.
Another day, another apocalypse. Life in a perfect climate
Poor sods. After 90,000 dismal cold years things were finally just warming up when a bunch of comet fragments from a a 62 mile-wide comet, crashed into our atmosphere. It was around 13,000 years ago, and the fireballs started the ultimate black Saturday blaze which converted 10 million square kilometers of wilderness into unauthorized carbon emissions*. Somehow, all those reckless greenhouse gas additions didn’t seem to stop the airborne dust triggering a return to a mini ice age for a thousand years. It also punched a hole in the ozone layer meaning everyone probably had to wear more yak-fat sunscreen or get more skin cancer (I suspect data is bit lean on that).
Glaciers started growing again, some ocean currents changed and thus the Younger Dryas unfolded according to a couple of new papers.
In a fairly dramatic shift of landscaping styles, mother nature razed whole pine forests and replaced them with poplars.
Gaia is full of surprises: in the end, falling lumps of ice set fire to 10% of land on Earth, and making 10,800BC the worst carbon footprint since the last 62 mile wide rock hit Earth. Primitive tribes blamed each other and tried to stabilize the climate by banning cooking fires.
On a ho-hum day some 12,800 years ago, the Earth had emerged from another ice age. Things were warming up, and the glaciers had retreated.
Out of nowhere, the sky was lit with fireballs. This was followed by shock waves.
Fires rushed across the landscape, and dust clogged the sky, cutting off the sunlight. As the climate rapidly cooled, plants died, food sources were snuffed out, and the glaciers advanced again. Ocean currents shifted, setting the climate into a colder, almost “ice age” state that lasted an additional thousand years.
Finally, the climate began to warm again, and people again emerged into a world with fewer large animals and a human culture in North America that left behind completely different kinds of spear points.
This is the story supported by a massive study of geochemical and isotopic markers just published in the Journal of Geology.
The results are so massive that the study had to be split into two papers.
Everyone is talking about The Nunes memo, possibly because the bigger implications of what it reveals — something like an attempted coup. Explosive. Corruption at the highest level.
Big Claims:
Bigger than Watergate. Tip of the Iceberg. More Memos to come.
This thread covers the most interesting things I’ve read. First up, some very provocative talk. Further down, elected Reps. speaking I presume in careful legally vetted words. Lastly, some Democrat replies. In the middle, a diversion about the role of the media — also a part of the Deep State. h/t David. Roger. Scott of the Pacific. Charles. Pat. RAH. others… Thanks.
With the release of the memo, we finally have proof that … the Clinton machine, powered by the Obama Administration, using the DNC as its main appendage, funded the creation of a false dossier, that they simultaneously leaked to the press and sold to the FBI, and then pressured top government employees to turn that into a FISA warrant, and more broadly into what the MSM refers to as the “Russia Investigation”.
Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and the DNC manufactured a completely false dossier, which led to the United States government, under the Obama administration, spying on Trump staffers. The DNC paid for the Steele dossier and then used their Obama administration contacts to say that it’s grounds for an investigation. … The information from the ongoing investigation … was then illegally leaked to the press in an attempt to steer public opinion toward the impeachment of now elected President Trump. …
These supposedly neutral government agencies acted and functioned as wings and branches of the DNC.
The Hill: The FISA memo is a ‘deep state’ bombshell
The Nunes memo is out, and it is a stunning rebuke of the prevailing Democrat narrative on Trump-Russia collusion. It shows, beyond reasonable doubt, that extreme abuses of authority and bad faith were instrumental in getting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to approve a counterintelligence warrant that circumvents normal 4th Amendment processes for an American citizen.
This is a deeply concerning development, one for which there must be accountability at the government level, and a complete rethinking of the entire Russia collusion storyline that has news coverage for over a year.
There can no longer be any doubt — oppo research was used to weaponize the intelligence collection process on behalf of one American political party against the other during a presidential election.
It gets worse. We now know that, despite the highly dubious provenance of this dossier, senior DOJ and FBI officials never once, in three renewals of the FISA request, told the secret court about the dossier’s origins.
It defies belief and common sense that seasoned lawyers and investigators like James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Bruce Ohr would have missed the massive significance of this omission. The much more likely explanation is that they felt they could get away with it, and stopping Trump was more important than fulfilling their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Top figures in the DOJ and the FBI, some loyal to Obama and Hillary, abused the FISA process in the hopes of influencing or reversing the results of an election by targeting their political opponents. The tool that they used for the job came from the Clinton campaign. Using America’s intelligence services to destroy and defeat a political opponent running for president is the worst possible abuse of power and an unprecedented threat to a democratic system of free, open elections.
We have been treated to frequent lectures about the independence of the DOJ and the FBI. But our country isn’t based around government institutions that are independent of oversight by elected officials. When unelected officials have more power than elected officials, that’s tyranny.
A Justice Department that acts as the Praetorian Guard for a political campaign is committing a coup and engaging in treason. The complex ways that the Steele dossier was laundered from the Clinton campaign to a FISA application is evidence of a conspiracy by both the DOJ and the Clinton campaign.
h/t Pat
For those who want the key background points, the excellent Ross McKitrick sums up the story so far in an 11 page PDF. h/t commenter Ross (not the same Ross)
The media is part of the deep state
Things would never have got so far down the well if the media were not part of the campaign team for one side of politics. Thanks to commenter Pat for the video of Newt Gingrich speaking from a few days ago. The comments are at 4:45 and 6 minutes, but the opening comments are interesting too.
Youtube: 7mins44secs: NEWT GINGRICH FULL ONE-ON-ONE INTERVIEW WITH SEAN HANNITY (1/31/2018)
4mins49secs: “The elite media is part of the deep state. The elite media group has survived by being in collusion with the senior bureaucracy, the city of Washington, the senior reporters, the senior bureaucrats, the senior lobbyists, they all hang out together, they all talk to each other, they all compare notes.”
6mins28secs: “The elite media in the United States is not neutral. They’re not referees. They’re the offensive wing of the other team. You saw this in some of the clips you had, some of which are frankly outrageously anti-Trump in a way that is almost bizarre. These are folks who are so deeply hostile to what Donald Trump is trying to accomplish that they are fully as much a part of the opposition as is Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer and that’s part of why you’re getting this unbelievably biased coverage.”…
The bottom line
What does it mean at the bare minimum? The Republican Reps are talking about the spying issue, presumably waiting for more pieces of the puzzle to pick up the more sweeping implications. This presumably is the strongest point (legally).
That’s it? Top brass at FBI/DOJ take “salacious & unverified”(your words, not mine) partisan funded dossier to get secret warrant from secret court to spy on private American on rival campaign. Doesn’t bother you? Bothers me. And more importantly, it bothers the American people. @Jim_Jordan
FBI doesn’t tell the court that the DNC/Clinton campaign paid for that dossier. And they did that FOUR times. @JimJordan
What this issue is all about: whether the Department of Justice and FBI, under President Obama, abused their surveillance authority against American citizens and political opponents. Put another way: was the Obama DOJ weaponized to spy on the Trump campaign?
AEMC is the Australian Energy Market Commission. It’s “the rule maker for Australian Electricity and gas markets”. They make the National Electricity, Gas, and Energy Retail rules. There are a lot of government bureacracies. AEMC sound more influential than most, and they are asking for consultation, but by Monday. There will be a chance to comment in March, but I know some readers have material already written that is relevant. Sorry about the short notice.
AEMC invites consultation on ways to deliver a reliable supply of energy at the lowest cost
Stakeholders are encouraged to provide input on the Interim report.
Here’s a smattering of US news that isn’t being heard much in Australia. 75% of Americans liked Trump’s speech, and 80% felt proud. Trumps tax reforms means companies are returning to the US for the first time in decades. (How will Australia compete?) In the last month, approval for his tax bill has tripled as people figure out they will get to keep more of their money. Meanwhile James Delingpole notes a big moment in the climate debate: “It’s over” he says. Climate change didn’t rate a mention in The State of the Union or in the Democrat rebuttal.
On the other hand, the Australian ABC said Trump’s State of the Union call for unity falls on deaf ears. Sure. Listen to the crowd. There is so much applause you will get bored of it. The ABC spin is the sanitized reference to how the left half the crowd sits, stony faced, wearing black, with sad expressions, apparently disapproving of wages rising and other good news. Black jobs. Tax cuts. Car companies coming back to the US. Who cares? Meanwhile, the other half of of the audience is doing a fitness workout, up, down, up, down. Stand, sit, clap, clap, more clapping. At least Bernie Sanders could clap. Give him a point.
I am astonished, very relieved and most importantly incredibly grateful for the support. I would also particularly like to thank Anthony, Jennifer Marohasy, Jo Nova, Willie Soon, Benny Peiser and many others for getting the issue up on blogs and spreading the word.
Kind regards, Peter
_________________________
JCU is trying (and failing) to gag Peter Ridd from discussing why we can’t trust scientific organisations
Last August Professor Peter Ridd said the unsayable — that we can no longer trust scientific institutions. His employer, James Cook University (JCU) could have explained why they were trustworthy, but instead they fired back with a formal censure and ordered him to be silent, effectively to stop him criticizing the current state of science or scientific institutions. Then knowing exactly how respectable, ethical, and scientific this is, they also ordered him not to mention the censure too. Let’s censor the censure!
If there was a crisis in science, what academic would be allowed to point it out?
It gets dirtier, apparently now they are even trawling through his private emails as well, hunting for more ammunition for their misconduct case. Who’s a bit desperate?
Hypothetically, if there was a crisis in modern science, with a failure to replicate results or a lack objectivity, this could cost the nation billions, risk the reef, slow medical research, and hurt our children, but JCU have effectively said that no one they employ can talk about it. Does the state of science matter to JCU? Not as much as their right to issue prophecies, no hard questions asked, star on the tellie, and help their favourite political cause. (Science for Big-Government’s sake).
Obviously, Ridd is having none of this, and is determined to openly and brazenly breach both instructions. Tell the World! Furthermore, he’s taking the matter to the Federal Court, and raising funds to fight for free speech. (You can help!)
If Ridd loses, what person at any Australian university will be able to discuss systematic, cultural problems with the practice of science that are damaging our research and trashing the reputations of great institutions? JCU have a dismal record of isolating, blackbanning, and ousting people who disagree with the consensus (vale, Bob Carter!) This has to stop now.
Thou shalt not question the Cardinals of Scientificness!
“The basic problem is that we can no longer trust the scientific organisations like the Australian Institute of Marine Science, even things like the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies – a lot of this is stuff is coming out, the science is coming out not properly checked, tested or replicated and this is a great shame because we really need to be able to trust our scientific institutions and the fact is I do not think we can any more.”
“I think that most of the scientists who are pushing out this stuff they genuinely believe that there are problems with the reef, I just don’t think they’re very objective about the science they do, I think they’re emotionally attached to their subject and you know you can’t blame them, the reef is a beautiful thing.” — Sky News with Alan Jones, August 2017.
On the basis of these comments I was accused of not acting in a ‘collegial’ manner.
Ironically, Ridd had submitted a paper on exactly this topic, which was published a few months later in November in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. It’s a peer reviewed paper on the problems with peer review (among other things). Eleven days after it was published, JCU wrote saying he had engaged in serious misconductand issued him with a “final censure”!
So that which can’t be said on a Sky News chat show can be published in a peer reviewed science journal. It might be good enough to pass expert review, but don’t mention it to “a shock jock”. Imagine if the public started to question the words of certified, authorized scientists? (Imagine if the public realized that all those certified, authorized scientists are only certified and authorized as long as they speak the Uni-commissars approved lines?)
From Peter Ridd:
The way I have been treated, if they get away with it, will have a serious chilling effect on future research and public discussion.
I am putting myself on the line – this action will be costly in terms of time and reputation – but I have spent my whole life fighting for scientific truth and I do not intend to stop now.
A revised statement of claim alleges JCU trawled through private email conversations in a bid to bolster its misconduct case against him.
“This is as much a case about free speech as it is about quality of science,” he said.
“I am very keen that the trawling of emails to dig up more dirt becomes known.”
From The Institute of Public Affairs (who have been very supportive of Ridd from the outset):
JCU claimed that Professor Ridd’s comments denigrated the university and the university directed him to make no future such comments.
“The actions of James Cook University (JCU) follow a now-familiar pattern of behaviour by Australia’s universities. The search for truth has been replaced by unquestioning allegiance to consensus, group-think, and orthodoxy. The treatment of Professor Ridd by JCU is no different to what the University of Western Australia did to Bjorn Lomborg in 2015,” said Mr Roskam.
IPA research has found a worsening state of free speech on Australia’s university campuses. The IPA’s Free Speech on Campus Audit 2017 found 34 of Australia’s 42 universities are hostile to free speech on campus through their actions and policies.
Professor Ridd has launched a GoFundMe to fundraise the legal costs for action against James Cook University to protect his academic freedom to discuss integrity in science.
I spoke with Peter Ridd today. He’s calm, well spoken, and absolutely determined to get science back to where it should be. We can’t let the forces of groupthink win.
The group-thinking warmists who preach,
A consensus, will censure free speech,
And those who might dare,
Have their science laid bare,
They would gladly dismiss and impeach.
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