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.
Perth was lucky enough to see a full blood moon eclipse last night (and at a sensible hour). The red color comes as sunlight passes through dust, and became much more obvious once we got half the moon covered. It was also a supermoon and a so-called blue moon (being the second full moon in January). h/t Tom Q. Thanks for the call.
Blood Moon, Super Moon, Blue Moon. Photo, Jan 2018
With a different exposure the shadow of the Earth was more obvious.
Blood Moon, Super Moon, Blue Moon. Photo, Jan 2018
Unlike the edge of sunrise on the moon, which is beautifully sharp, the edge of the Earth shadow was blurred and spread over a wider area. The camera found it hard to cope with both the intense full moon light and the shadow side. In some exposures there is a real sense of it being a 3D ball hung in space. A curiosity, but well worth the look if you get the chance. The next total lunar eclipse that will be visible in the UK is on July 27, 2018. Americans and UK folk can look forward to another “super blood moon” eclipse coming on Jan. 21, 2019. (No “blue” artefact, but whatever). The next super blue blood moon will happen exactly 19 years from now, on Jan. 31, 2037.
More bad luck for the renewables industry. Despite providing free energy from the sun and wind, electricity prices keep rising relentlessly, shockingly fast. Even doubling in wholesale costs in South Australia and Victoria.
Electricity prices have jumped by six times the rate of the average pay rise, new figures reveal, as family wallets are increasingly squeezed by essential services such as education, utilities and fuel.
The most significant price rises were electricity, up 12.4 per cent, fuel up 10.4 per cent, domestic holiday travel up 6.3 per cent and fruit up 9.3 per cent.
If you think our economy is flaming out now, wait til we reach the 23% RET target, and pay for the $1 billion interconnectors and the $4 billion extra hydro storage that we didn’t need when we had enough coal power. Then, after we reach the bottom, we’ll have to pay more to build new USC coal baseload, just to keep up with Indonesia, because we were too frightened to upgrade the old cheap plants; and it’s too frightening for any investors to do it for us.
High energy prices make everything else more expensive too. How much of the rise in hospital services, education, and beer is due to the higher costs of energy? Last week Victorian hospitals couldn’t even afford to keep all their lights on. The only thing that high energy prices don’t push upwards, is wages.
Most of the rises were in states that blow up or disassemble their coal plants
Samantha Hutchinson and Michael Owen, The Australian
…
Average wholesale energy prices in Victoria and South Australia have more than doubled since this time last year, as experts warn that blackouts and supply issues are likely to increase as state governments chase aggressive renewable energy targets.
The mass outages [last weekend] affected more than 60,000 residents, some of whom were cut off for more than 28 hours.
Grattan Institute energy director Tony Wood said Sunday’s and Monday’s blackouts and high pricing showed that the state had botched its energy transition program by allowing baseload power sources — such as the Hazelwood power station — to be replaced by renewables, which delivered intermittent power.
The Victorian State Premier blames privatization (can someone tell him about Texas?)
In Victoria, Mr Andrews blamed the outages on the Coalition’s decision to privatise the state’s energy assets in the 1990s. “Fact is, there was more than enough power being generated to meet the demand yesterday — but the private companies and their distribution systems failed yet again,” he said on Twitter.
The SA government thinks SA electricity is cheap:
SA Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis said wholesale power prices were “notoriously volatile”. “Since August, wholesale power prices in South Australia have been consistently cheaper than Victoria, and in September and October, SA had the cheapest wholesale prices of mainland states in the National Electricity Market,” he said.
In fairyland people only need electricity in months starting with O and S. Can someone remind him that a couple of years ago, in 2015, every state had cheaper wholesale electricity. The wholesale price in SA in 2015 was $41/MWh. By 2017 it was the “cheapest in the nation” at $69/MWh. Laugh til you cry.
Odd 2018 CPI trivia: Three of the four fastest rising items are energy: energy for our homes and businesses, energy for human bodies, energy for cars. Is that a message there?
What happens to a poor tree when you withhold rain for a whole month, then hit it with four days in a row of 43C temperatures? It was so hot, some of the leaves on these trees got close to 49-50 °C.
In at least one gum species in Australia, the answer is “not much”. They suck up lots of water from their deep roots and sweat it out til the heatwave passes. The trees become evaporative coolers “siphoning up” water. They cope so well, that not only did the trees not die, but their trunk and height growth were unaffected. Indeed, only about 1% of the leaf area even exhibited browning.
Whole tree chambers in Richmond, New South Wales, Australia. Twelve 9-m-tall chambers in a field setting (a) enclose the canopies of individual Eucalyptus parramattensis trees rooted in soil (b). Two heatwave chambers can be seen on the left of the infrared image, along with several control chambers (c; temperature in °C).
But with global warming running at a heady 0.13C per decade, you might wonder how many years will it take for the trees to adapt?
From the paper — “one day”:
The gums rapidly increased their tolerance for extreme heat, the researchers found. Within a day the threshold temperature for leaf damage had increased by 2C.
Righto. At the current rate of warming, the world might get two degrees hotter in 150 years. So these trees can adapt 55,000 times faster.
The researchers say the trees were not just likely, but remarkably good with heatwaves:
“We conclude that this tree species was remarkably capable of tolerating an extreme heatwave via mechanisms that have implications for future heatwave intensity and forest resilience in a warmer world.”
This research (yet again) fits the hypothesis that life on Earth is well adapted to a wildly variable climate, probably because it happened all the time. The researchers even looked to see if exposing trees to hot weather first would help adapt them to extreme heat, but found it didn’t matter. The trees ability to adapt was innate. They just coped.
The models didn’t predict this
As the trees transpired more, they also stopped photosynthesising — they shut down in a survival mode. This breaks a pretty long standing biology rule, and thus breaks most plant growth models (and some climate ones too). It’s pretty central to plant biology, leaves give up water to bring in CO2. As plants transpire more, they absorb more CO2 and turn it into carbohydrate (i.e. more plant) which is photosynthesis. We now know that rule breaks under extreme heat when trees take a sauna-break, stop working, and just … sweat. I’d probably do the same if my leaves were 50C.
As usual in the news, no one mentions that the models were totally wrong on this, they just say, they found “the opposite” and it needs revising.
Victoria is suffering the largest rises in wholesale electricity prices in the country, as it sits on large gas fields that it won’t touch. Why — geniuses hope to reduce global droughts and floods and sea level in 2100.
If Victoria allowed its gas to be developed the energy scene in Australia would be transformed, as would the outlook for the nation.
But that’s not much consolation for those in vast areas of rural NSW and Victoria plus suburban Melbourne and small areas of South Australia who suffered blackouts or reduced power on Sunday night. It’s true part of the outages were caused by fuses, but the outages were too widespread. It’s another smokescreen.
If similar conditions are repeated on weekdays and/or extend over several days the blackouts will be devastating as a result of the political vandalism. Government spin doctors and others are desperately trying to conceal the truth about the damage governments headed by Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian (plus her predecessors Mike Baird and Barry O’Farrell) and South Australia’s Jay Weatherill have caused.
South Australia suffered its blackouts last year so it was appropriate that this week’s blackouts were worst in Victoria — just as the residents of the gas-rich state discovered they suffered the biggest wholesale gas price rises in the country. –-The Australian
It costs a lot to conceal that much cheap gas
Specifically, it takes a $42 million committee to not consider the things that matter.
The art of bureaucrats is to make a lot of noise about pots and kettles in the hope that no one notices the elephant.
Taking its concealment one step further the Victorian government last year appointed a $42 million committee which this month declared the state short of onshore gas, but it did not look at the vast reserves of lignite gas that don’t require fracking (because development was banned) nor the reserves of Lakes Oil in Gippsland and the Otway (because Lakes Oil are suing the government). Unbelievable.
But they did reveal a fascinating diagram, which showed that Lakes Oil’s Otway areas are linked to those in South Australia. A few days after the report Beach discovered a major find in South Australia six kilometres from the Victorian border. –-The Australian
Blackouts are not caused by governments trying to change the weather and help crony parasitic industry supporters. Blame capitalist retailers for faulty fuses:
The Government said the spike in demand caused blown fuses and failed transformers on the distribution network.
About 50,000 homes across the state lost power, and many were still blacked out this morning.
“The distribution companies are required to maintain and improve the network and they’ve been charging customers handsomely to do that,” Mr Andrews said. — ABC
Can we find an excuse to call this a record — yes, we, can.
Energy Minister Lily D’Ambrosio said it was the highest peak demand ever recorded in Victoria on a Sunday.
Nobody mention that there have been plenty of days higher than this in every other day of the week (like 10,496MW). Victoria can’t even manage a Peak Sunday now. It’s sheer luck the heat didn’t hit on any other day. If only the ABC had real journalists, they could have asked D’Ambrosio a hard question. Instead … “crickets”.
Blackouts are your fault for wanting to use an air conditioner:
Andrew Dillon from Energy Networks Australia told ABC Radio Melbourne the statewide system held up under the strain of demand, but local networks were overwhelmed.
He said all five energy distributors across Victoria experienced outages, putting the problems down to air conditioner use.
The government blames the energy retailers, the energy retailers blame the customers, and the AEMO serves the government, not the people:
The Australian Energy Market Operator [AEMO] also said the outages had nothing to do with supply.
Did the ABC ask the AEMO hard questions, like, wondering why we have the most expensive energy in the world because of “network poles and wires” costs (that’s what we’re told). If network costs are so high, how come the network is the problem?
With not enough watts to go ’round,
Australia keeps gas in the ground,
Where politicians won’t act,
Being media backed,
And by Green ideology bound.
The temperature reached 38C in Melbourne (100F) on Sunday — something it has probably done most summers since 10,000BC.
CitiPower, Powercor and the United Energy spokeswoman Emma Tyner said that as of 9.25pm, about 41,190 homes were without power across those three networks. — Sydney Morning Herald
Now why would that be? Ms Tyner puts a lack of supply in the nicest possible way:
“The extreme heat has significantly increased electricity use and this has resulted in localised power outages,” Ms Tyner said.
It’s not that governments didn’t plan energy policy — it’s the users who wanted too much (i.e your fault.) Though Victorians used to use more power than this. On Sunday, peak electricity demand was 9,124MW, about 13% less than the all time peak of 10,496MW in 2009. (In case you are wondering, Hazelwood (now closed) produced 1600MW or about 25% of Victorian baseload power.)
Mr Armstrong from Ausnet Services (another power company) blamed unreported air conditioners:
“There are a lot fuses blowing in the hot weather and a significant power pull with people having put in air-conditioners they didn’t tell us about,” Mr Armstrong said. — The Age
Who knew you needed to tell your power company when you put in an air conditioner?
Gone are the days when people could willy-nilly run down to Retrovision and just buy an air con.
Ms Tyner and Mr Armstrong may have inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. Perhaps they will get quiet reeducation tomorrow on how to phrase the cause of blackouts. (Aren’t they due to old coal turbines breaking?) 😉
Next, expect people to start saying how normal it is to have blackouts on hot days. “It’s just a part of life.”
If only the same people would say that about hot days.
You know things are serious when Kmart runs out of fans.
A Kmart in Northcote on Sunday has completely sold out of all cooling devices, from fans to air-conditioning units, its duty manager said.
So no willy-nilly fan buying either.
Tonight some people have fans, but no electricity. Others have electricity but no fans.
Welcome to Australia’s deadly game of Melbourne and Sydney blackout roulette. The stakes involve hundreds of millions of dollars of refrigerated food and the operations of thousands of factories and offices who don’t have emergency power contingencies in place.
…Victoria took longer than NSW to wake up but it too has been working hard to reduce the risk of blackouts. For the most part, both states are borrowing ideas from third world countries by getting industry and consumers to cut back on power usage when days are hot. In addition, those organisations with back up power (like phone companies) are being asked to use it so as to cut demand and, if possible, put power back into the grid. Accordingly, highly polluting diesel becomes the saviour.
Could someone teach editors what “record-breaking” means?
Last night the minimum was 22.8C in Melbourne. Tonight was forecast to be 28C. If the Bureau are right, it won’t be close to breaking the record. (UPDATE: It ended up being 27.5C min)
UPDATE: Worth watching. He is quite the statesman. He could have used the economic success to laud himself, to scorn those who mocked him, but instead he is saying — This is what we’re doing. It’s working brilliantly. You can do it too. He’s talking about how tax cuts and lower regulation have created a flood of investment to the US. In the audience are a group of people who may well mock him, but they are quietly thinking, “how do we catch up”. Trump has created a race, and all the investment that flows into the US is coming from all the nations sitting in the audience.
We knew something apocalyptic was coming in Davos today. Those tactically released photographs of President Trump arriving by helicopter with his entourage were the giveaway: the silhouetted choppers strung out in extended line in the orange-yellow light above the mountains.
Why, if you’d listened carefully, you might almost have heard the strains of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyrie…
The enemy on this occasion, of course, was Davos Man. Or – if you prefer – the globalist elite which has spent the last several decades stitching up the world in its own interests: the Vampire-Squid-trained central banksters; the EU technocrats; the corporatist crony capitalists; the rent-seeking sustainability experts; the priggish, politically correct, sermonising NGOs; the controlling one world government freaks; the woke Hollywood groupies; George Soros; pretty much all the reasons that made us vote for Donald Trump or Brexit, all gathered in one very expensive Swiss ski resort.
Trump’s speech in Davos today establishes him as – by some margin – the most significant and inspirational and ideologically robust leader of the free world since the era of Ronald Reagan.
Trump’s vision is not – as his enemies mischaracterise it – one of insularity and narrow self interest. It’s about Making America Great Again in order to help the world follow by example and become great too.
Like all nations represented at this great forum, America hopes for a future which everyone can prosper and every child can grow up free from violence, poverty, and fear. Over the past year, we have made extraordinary strides in the U.S. We’re lifting up forgotten communities, creating exciting new opportunities, and helping every American find their path to the American dream. The dream of a great job, a safe home and a better life for their children.
Trump is restating here truths which ought to be obvious…
I mean, he’s so blatantly stupid. He’s a punk, he’s a dog, he’s a pig, he’s a con, he’s a bullshit artist, he’s a mutt who doesn’t know what he is talking about, doesn’t do his homework, doesn’t care. — Robert De Niro.
“A person who thinks only about building walls — wherever they may be — and not building bridges, is not Christian.” Pope Francis. [Bridges good: Walls bad, says a man who lives in a 40ft high walled enclave. – Jo]
This nation [the U.S.] is going to fail if it goes into the hands of a crazy guy.” Former Mexican president Vicente Fox.
“Mr Trump is so stupid, my God!” Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo
Since my election we’ve created 2.4 million jobs…. We lowered our corporate tax rate from 35 percent all the way down to 21 percent. As a result, millions of workers have received tax cut bonuses from their employers in amounts as large as $3,000. The tax cut bill is expected to raise the average American’s household income by more than $4,000. The world’s largest company, Apple, announced it plans to bring $245 billion in overseas profits home to America. Their total investment into the United States economy will be more than $350 billion over the next five years. Now is the perfect time to bring your business, your jobs, and your investments to the United States.
He is winding back the clock on the growth of big-gov, and the self-serving green blob after decades of non-stop growth. Here’s hoping the message will spread.
UPDATE: Thus did the crony climatista capitalists speak
Businesses should seize a $US6 trillion ($7.45 trillion) opportunity to invest in tackling climate change over the next two decades, the head of an Indian multinational said at Davos on Thursday.
“Climate change is the next century’s biggest financial and business opportunity,” Anand Mahindra, chairman of the Mahindra Group, a $US19 billion conglomerate, told the World Economic Forum (WEF), an annual meeting of global business and political leaders held in the Swiss Alps resort of Davos.
Mahindra likened the transformation to when cars were first introduced and the industry that developed around them. Climate change will also bring new appliances, technologies and retrofitting of old ones, he said.
Today the South Australian government destroyed the smoke stack of the Playford B Plant, one more part of what’s left of the cheapest base-load electricity generators in the state.
For about $8 million a year over three years, they could have kept some coal power going and wouldn’t have needed to spend $400 million on emergency diesel generators they don’t want to use, and over $100 million on a battery that can supply 4% of the state for one hour. They also would’ve paid less than $120 million for two days of electricity last week.
On the upside, they can feel good and pretend to be “world leaders”. Virtue signalling is expensive, eh?
….
The plant employed 185 people, the coal mine 200. Other businesses in the town, who knows? People are leaving.
SA, a star in the race away from being a competitive, powerhouse rich state. Creating wealth and jobs in China.
The concrete and brick structure at the 240MW Playford B power station, named after long-serving South Australian premier Sir Thomas Playford and mothballed in 2012, leaves only the 200-metre high stack at the nearby Northern power station standing in Port Augusta, 280km north of Adelaide.
That is expected to be demolished in April or May as part of a decommissioning process undertaken by Flinders Power, an offshoot of former power station operator Alinta Energy.
Before announcing the closure of Northern in mid-2015, Alinta unsuccessfully sought $25 million in subsidies over three years from the South Australian Labor government to keep it operating until this year, to ensure an effective transition occurred, after a rapid rise in renewable energy made it unviable.
However, the Weatherill government, which is ideologically opposed to coal, rejected the offer.
It’s wrecking the town too:
Locals in Port Augusta this week expressed frustration…
Deirdre McKerlie, who works at KD’s Hair Flair, told The Australian that not having a transition plan was “just stupid”. She said Port Augusta hit “rock bottom”, with many businesses unviable and residents moving away.
Premier Jay Weatherill said “Port Augusta is a symbol of South Australia’s transition from old to new…”
Exactly our point.
The boilers were blown up in November.
The rest will be demolished in April or May. SA, living standards thereafter.
This ETSA PR film from 1954 may be of interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMKPz-kVgcc
Shows the opening of Playford A power station, the first of three powered by Lee Creek coal.
Tom Playford himself appears briefly in the film.
A brief history of the complex is here.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok
.jpg)
Recent Comments