ScienceDaily. Researchers at Colorado State University and The Ohio State University have found that a cultural backlash stemming from the rise of populism may limit opportunities for state fish and wildlife agencies to adapt to changing social values in the United States. The team reached this conclusion by analyzing more than 12,000 surveys from 19 states and studying ballot initiatives related to hunting.
Unwind your way through that maze. Academics have spent thousands of dollars to discover that some people have different values to academics. Some people who don’t like new laws are protesting, and that may stop “unlimited” changes. Isn’t that democracy?
In the case of human-wildlife conflict, traditionalists would be more likely to support lethal wildlife control methods while mutualists would be more supportive of restrictions on humans.
After two million years of meat-eating, I’d say homo traditionalist had already been “affecting the wildlife”. Even before the rise of populismisticness.
But if populism is pop-u-lar, what kind of “changing social values” do fish and wildlife agencies really need to adapt to anyway? If the changes are less popular, who says we need to change?
The problem is “Trust me”
Based on the new study, researchers found that in states with the largest change in social values, individuals who held traditional values had lower levels of trust in the state wildlife agency. In contrast to traditional values, in which people believe wildlife exists for their benefit, the researchers describe an emerging set of values, in which wildlife and humans are seen as part of a connected social community, as mutualism.
Here’s a thought, maybe traditionalists think of humans as being a “part of a connected social community” — a human one — one where people talk about things and persuade each other, rather than just deciding their own social values were Right, doing 12,000 studies and labelling people who disagree as an –ism? But that would make the traditionalists the mutualists, and the mutualists, well… insensitive totalitarians.
You thought this was peer reviewed science, but this is a Trump-Brexit thing:
The recent trend toward populist politics has occurred, in part, as a result of a cultural backlash, where select segments of society have rallied against progressive social changes of the later 20th and early 21st centuries. This trend includes the Brexit vote in England, election of Donald Trump as U.S. President, and increased representation of populist parties in European parliaments.
Missing something?
Researchers talk about the “backlash” but not about the “overreach” that might have caused it:
One area where the researchers looked at for evidence of backlash was in the surge of wildlife-related ballot initiatives. In the 1990s, there was a rise in initiatives that limited certain forms of hunting and fishing. In Colorado, initiatives included a ban on spring bear hunting in 1992 and the elimination of recreational trapping in 1996.
Between the turn of the century and the present, however, there has been a counter surge of ballot initiatives, most of which focus on protecting the right to hunt. This trend, the authors said, offers evidence of actions among traditional groups to fight back against change.
One mans “fight back against change” is another man’s protest at a stupid idea.
Only one of them gets a grant to misunderstand the other and put it in a press release.
Message to academics: If “trust” is the issue, try listening, behaving with honor, honesty and respect. Funny things might happen.
REFERENCE
Michael J. Manfredo, Tara L. Teel, Leeann Sullivan, Alia M. Dietsch. Values, trust, and cultural backlash in conservation governance: The case of wildlife management in the United States. Biological Conservation, 2017; 214: 303 DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2017.07.032
Flinders Island is in the Bass Strait North of Tasmania.
If there is a heaven for renewables, this island should be it. But instead, even on Flinders Island, renewables aren’t cheaper than diesel generators. This is a dismal reality, yet the ABC promotes it as a fantasy poster-isle, interviewing only vested or “no idea” people, asking no critical questions, doing no counter research and telling us renewables will be “more reliable” and implying they are cheaper too. The ABC is a three-million-dollar-a-day advertising outlet for other government agencies. Instead of serving Australians it appears to be there to help shake down the taxpayer.
ABC renewables hype strikes again: Rhiannon Shine reports Flinders Island as a showcase of the brave new renewables world. Let’s translate that spin and see just how pathetic it is. If anywhere was going to be totally renewable, Flinders Island would be it — a first world island, tiny population, massive subsidies, no access to cheap coal or gas power, government support at every level and placed in a handy wind stream known as “the Roaring Forties”. Yeah! This is one of the last places in the first world (short of Antarctic stations) where renewables might make sense. Ferrgoodnessake — they have to ship their diesel in. The ABC tells us “The Flinders Island Hub is becoming a showcase of the technology”. The real story here is that it will only theoretically be “60% renewable”, the price of electricity is already high, but won’t go down. No one will be farewelling diesel at all, except maybe on a few theoretical orgasmic days “sometime”. Even after this up-and-coming next leap, diesel will be the most reliable energy source on the island, still providing 40% of the electricity, and still the only thing that will stop blackouts when the batteries run flat. If this is showcase, I say: “Is that it?”
Check out the disconnect here
The propaganda:
Flinders Island going for green with renewable energy hub, farewells dirty diesel
“A Tasmanian island is about to swap fossil fuel for renewable energy as its major power source.”
The reality: Flinders has a population of 700 people and relies on diesel power, and next month they will “enable” the island to be 60% renewable “on average”. Sometime in the vague future, on a few days they might even switch off the diesels. Bowl. me. Over.
In December, Hydro Tasmania will flick the switch over to its Hybrid Energy Hub, which will enable the island to be powered by 60 per cent renewable energy on average.
When conditions are right, diesel generators will be switched off and the island will run 100 per cent on renewables.
Serfs can see the priorities for three layers of governments right here: Emissions reductions, “Yes”, Price reduction, “No”. They can also see ABC priorities — the first person interviewed (sorry, parroted, with no hard questions) is an employee of a government run renewable energy company:
Hydro Tasmania hybrid energy solutions manager Ray Massie said the project would reduce emissions by 60 per cent and put downward pressure on future power prices.
“This will reduce emissions down to about 40 per cent of what has traditionally been generated from the power station,” he said.
“The use of diesel is a large expense. The overall price for their electricity won’t be going down but it will put pressure on future prices.”
People on Flinders paying bills will be glad to know that their future-cheque-books are feeling “less pressure”. That must be a great relief. Is this the most desperate spin attempt — prices won’t go down, but hypothetically, possibly one day in the indefinite future “they might”.
Fantasy Island?
The system will use a combination of solar, wind, battery storage and enabling technologies to reduce the island’s reliance on expensive shipped-in diesel and provide residents with a more reliable energy source.
What’s an “enabling” technology? Who knows? But it has been modularized.
“We have modularised the enablers and we have used the platform of shipping containers,” Mr Massie said.
But wait — Renewables will be more reliable?
More reliable than what, exactly?
“…based on the King Island results, Flinders Island’s power supply would become significantly more reliable.”
So based on a different island which had a lot of blackouts, things could get better? How many blackouts has Flinders Island had? Don’t ask. Not stated. Who knows?
When will they really say “Farewell to diesel”?
“The islanders have an ambition for 100 per cent renewable energy,” he said…. It is fully feasible to achieve 100 per cent in the long term.”
Wait for it …“Deputy mayor Marc Cobham said the goal could be achieved through the adoption of tidal energy.”
Are they serious — Tidal!? Tidal?! Nowhere in the world runs on tidal energy. The projects come, they break. Tidal must be one of the most mechanically unfriendly ideas in the world: massive forces, coming from many angles, it only runs 10 hours a day, it’s wet and salty and full of life forms that corrode stuff. It’s legendary for its failures like the British £18MILLION tidal energy scheme that lasted just three months.
Deputy mayor Marc Cobham thinks tidal is “plug and play”:
“The beauty of the system that Hydro have put in is that when a wave tidal generation is developed more, this is a perfect location and the system will allow that to just plug in,” he said.
Rhianna Shine, ABC “investigator” doesn’t ask if this is realistic. She didn’t ask a skeptic to comment. She didn’t interview an engineer which did not work for a renewables group.
A Tourist Bureau guy thinks renewables will fit the Island’s clean green branding. Shine doesn’t ask him if tidal barrages or giant underwater blades that slice wildlife are also “clean and green”.
There is an intellectual quagmire in here. Spot the contradictions:
In the no-hard-questions ABC, journalists must be trained to ignore the most obvious problems and thread an Orwellian counter-meme of “cost reductions” through a story where the one promise made by an official is that renewables “won’t reduce the overall price”.
Hydro Tasmania hybrid energy solutions manager Ray Massie said the project would … put downward pressure on future power prices.
“The overall price for their electricity won’t be going down but it will put pressure on future prices.”
“We would like 100 per cent renewable energy on the island, particularly given the cost of fuel…”
“Anything that reduces the overall cost from a long term point of view is a positive…”
There’s one mention that costs won’t come down, and four implied suggestions that costs are a problem that renewables can solve. No wonder Australians are confused, and think renewables might “be cheaper”.
If renewables can’t provide cheaper electricity on a small windy island with no cheap competitor, where can it compete?
According to the World Bank, Australia has implemented an ETS
It’s charades all round. Carbon markets are so dismal that the World Bank marks up the Australian ETS (which most Australians have never heard of) as “implemented”. Which makes it so much better than Canada’s which is “under consideration”. In fact the World Bank says Australia’s ETS covers half our emissions and 381 Megatons of CO2 or equivalent. Sounds “impressive”.
Let’s poll Australians and ask ‘Do we have an ETS?” — maybe 80% would say “No”. Maybe ninety. But we do have one, waiting like a paper troll, ready to spring to life. It’s largely secret hidden legislation, buried under a title called the ERF Safeguard Mechanism — (don’t mention the word carbon). It’s dormant, but the World Bank don’t mention that. Other fool countries might believe it was doing something to our economy, and that serves the World Bank. Meanwhile foolish Australians might think we will get some say in whether we do have an ETS — But not while we vote for the two main parties apparently.
The World Bank just published the State and Trends of Carbon Pricing in 2017 ready for the big Bonn junket this month. They’ve mapped all the Emissions Trading Schemes, and apart from the EU basket-case, there is only Australia, NZ, Korea and Kazakhstan, so they have to brag about Australia’s secret dormant ETS because there isn’t much else to brag about. The orange nations in “spin-language” are listed as under consideration. The circles are states like California, Alberta, Ontario and Massachusetts. Countries with blue stripes have a carbon tax as well. Lucky them.
The report estimates that an additional US$700 billion a year will be needed annually by 2030 to finance the transition to low-carbon economies. Ambit claim du jour.
An ETS in Europe, Korea, NZ, Australia and Kazakhstan. World Bank Map, 2017.
The Australian national grid stretches from the tropics to the cold temperate zone from 16S to 43S. You might think that along those 40,000 kilometers of transmission lines there is always somewhere somewhere sunny at midday, but some days you’d be wrong.
Cloud cover over Australia, map, preventing solar PV generation.
How often does this happen? Hard to say, since data on rooftop PV has only just started to be released. It may not be as often as wind turbines, which simultaneously flounder across the whole Australian grid every 10 days or so.
This kind of comma-shaped band of cloud is relatively common over eastern Australia, when you have moisture from the Coral Sea area feeding into a trough with a low-pressure system near SA or VIC.
In this particular case of 19th May, the band of cloud happens to cover most of the populated areas of the NEM, and the cloud is very thick over a large area. Being a widespread and slow-moving cloud feature, it shows up as a significant outlier in Paul’s daily aggregate graph, since it lasted most or all of the day over most of the NEM’s installed rooftop PV.
We should be grateful solar made it (nearly) to half its normal power:
….
Imagine if a coal plant was forecast to produce 2GW (only at lunch time) but some days, randomly, could only do half?
Welcome to the world of baby-economics where people think a “negative” price is a sign of success. In Simpletown people are cheering. But in the real world a price signal that’s negative tells us that someone is selling something so awful they have to pay someone to take it away. It’s a burden that must be got rid of, like trash.
Germany set to pay customers for electricity usage as renewable energy generation creates huge power surplus — The Independent
Electrons cannot be created nor destroyed. If you make them, you have to deal with them. Negative pricing is a bad thing, a sign of “junk electricity” — a burden. It’s utter nonsense in a free market.
From the outset, I’m skeptical that anyone is actually paying someone to take electricity. If wind farms were coughing up dollars (euro) to “customers” surely they would just disconnect their spinning thingo from the grid? Who wants to be a shareholder in a company that forgets to lock the turbine, or press the “off” switch, and has to pay customers to take its electronic trash? The truth (whatever it is) will turn out to be some variation of an unfree market. Probably the companies pumping the unwanted electricity must be ordered to keep pumping by some government ruling, or subsidized by people (taxpayers or bill payers) who have no choice.
The headlines are occurring this week because a nasty storm hit Europe over the weekend. Sadly at least five are dead, but wind farms made out like bandits… and someone got robbed. But who?
A stormy weekend led to free electricity in Germany as wind generation reached a record, forcing power producers to pay customers the most since Christmas 2012 to use electricity. Power prices turned negative as wind output reached 39,409 megawatts on Saturday, equivalent to the output of about 40 nuclear reactors. To keep the grid supply and demand in balance, negative prices encourage producers to either shut power stations or else pay consumers to take the extra electricity off the network.
Spot the contradiction. Was it “free” or were they paid? Think about how stupid the situation is if people are paid to take electricity. It would be in their interest to do a “Power Hour” and turn on the pool pump, the air con, the heaters, the oven, the hot taps, and let them run while dollars add up in their account. Tell me again how this helps the environment?
The Green Optimistic (sic) thinks this is not just a good thing, but a historic glowing “new world” where “modern economics has hit the wall”. I think someone has just sold Nicolas Say a perpetual motion machine:
Wind Power Just Overtook All Other Forms of Electrical Generation This morning in Germany, wind power created the need to pay consumers to use electricity. This is probably some sort of historic event, but if you take a step back, it isn’t hard to see how wind and solar power could shatter the world as we know it.
Amazing.
A Not So Brave New World
Here is the thing, for my whole life I have been told that everything costs money, there are huge problems that involve endless wars against poor people, and that money for sure doesn’t grow on trees.
I have come to find out, that today, all of this might be high grade bull$#&%.
He goes on to outlay his plan for the Germans to get rich by mining bitcoins with “free electricity”. Good luck with that plan.
UPDATE: Ho! Czech’s so unhappy with “free energy” they are cutting off surges at the border
Thanks to ROM in comment #5 we find out that this “historic” moment may be partly because the Czech’s have got fed up with Germany dumping the excess wind power into their grid and have spent about $70m installing phase shifters on the borders to stop “disruptive surges”. So intermittent power is sometimes so worthless that other nations would rather spend money to reduce spikes of “free electricity” that could potentially cause a black out.
ROM: “…the Czechs have installed phase shifters in their grid system at their borders as the Poles are also doing. Which means that the Germans are now stuck with their own crazy wind generated s***
The Czechs have installed their first batch of phase shifters which can block the flow of German energy when and if required to keep the Czech and Polish grids stable, on their grid systems at their national borders and which own the Czech’s case, became operational in September this year.
And it certainly is not admitted by the renewable energy pimps…. but now the Germans are getting stuck in their own self created grid instability and can no longer export that instability into neighbouring nations grids.
S&P Global Platts: “The main aim of the phase shifters is to prevent disruptive surges of electricity from Germany, mainly caused by wind power production in the north directed to some of the main sources of domestic demand in the south.
The Czech Republic has been threatened in the past with blackouts because of such disruptive surges. Phase shifters are already operating on the Polish side of the joint Polish-German border to deal with similar problems.”
[New York Times] Germany has spent an estimated 189 billion euros, or about $222 billion, since 2000 on renewable energy subsidies.
But renewable energy subsidies are financed through electric bills, meaning that Energiewende is a big part of the reason prices for consumers have doubled since 2000.
Julian Hermneuwöhner … a 27-year-old computer science student, said his family paid an additional €800 a year because of Energiewende.
As TdeF pointed out in comments, this is like the situation in Australia where the RET subsidy ends up coming from consumers, not from tax revenue. Customers are only paying this fee because they have no choice, as they would in a free market.
[In Australia] The ‘government’ pays nothing. The LGCs and STCs are Carbon Certificates which are theft from fossil fuel electricity retailers and so from all the other electricity users. This is the RET scheme. It is buried in everyone’s electricity bills. Even those who use solar. So is the pay in tariff for unwanted lunchtime solar.
What’s the point? The unfree market isn’t reducing CO2 anyway. (And it wouldn’t help if it did).
Double-useless for everyone, except the renewables-crony-industry:
But emissions have been stuck at roughly 2009 levels, and rose last year, as coal-fired plants fill a void left by Germany’s decision to abandon nuclear power. That has raised questions — and anger — over a program meant to make the country’s power sector greener.
Germany’s carbon emissions per person actually rose slightly in 2013 and 2015. The country produces much more electricity than it needs and is not addressing oil in the transportation sector.
Nearly half of Australians are already paying more than they want to for the Paris Agreement. Sixty percent of Australians wouldn’t mind us dumping it if it meant getting cheaper electricity. That fits with most other surveys for the last four years. It’s a stable slab of the population — despite the ABC and Fairfax running prime-time adverts for renewables constantly pushing the line that renewables are cheap, inevitable, and that only stupid “deniers” would want us out of Paris.
In Australia, no major party represents these voters. Instead, both sides of the establishment are competing on how to meet an agreement that, if the truth were known about the costs, at least 60% of Australians either oppose or couldn’t care less about.
When will the Liberals and Nationals figure this out?
A Newspoll survey, conducted exclusively for The Australian, has revealed that 45 per cent of Australians would now support abandoning the non-binding target, which requires Australia to reduce emissions to 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030, if it meant lower household electricity prices.
This compares to 40 per cent who would oppose opting out of the agreement, with 15 per cent of people uncommitted. Significantly, more than a third of Labor voters backed ditching the Paris target when asked to consider whether the economic cost outweighed the likely benefit, while 54 per cent of Coalition voters backed withdrawing from the agreement if it did.
Pulling out of Paris is not discussed as if it were a real option in Fairfax or the ABC. Despite that, so many Australians are in favour of pulling out.
Given the years of propaganda, lack of debate, and Nobel Prize fawning documentaries — this is as good as it’s ever going to get for the believers. When the ABC explains Paris, it doesn’t mention the cost. When it talked about Trump pulling out, it compared the US to Syria and Nicaragua. How backward are the nations that aren’t signed up! In terms of popularity, it’s all downside from here for the Paris Agreement as electricity bill shock hits and the screws turn. Even among the Labor Party supporters 37% would like to get rid of the Paris deal if it reduced their costs.
It is why One Nation appears on this list now and why Turnbull’s poll figures are bad and worse. All the Liberals have to do is convince the voters that renewables are expensive (which is not too hard, since it’s real). All the Libs have to do (or the Nats) is say the words: subsidies, storage, batteries, maintenance, long transmission lines, back up base load and stability).
No countries with lots of wind and solar power also have cheap electricity. Repeat, rinse, wash, collect the votes.
While most voters rank “the environment” at the bottom of their lists, when this becomes a costs-of-living debate, it rockets up the ranking.
Jack Ponton, emeritus professor of engineering at Edinburgh University, said another 16,000 turbines would be required in order to replace petrol and diesel cars with electric vehicles.
“If you want to do this with wind turbines, you are talking about 16,000 more wind turbines, four times as many as we have at the moment, and I’ve estimated that would occupy some 90,000 square kilometres, which is approximately the size of Scotland.”
The academic – a member of Scientific Alliance Scotland, a group which promotes open-minded debate on issues such as climate change – believes the plan is “unworkable”…
The UK plans to phase out combustion engines by 2032. What happens when surges of holiday tourists arrive in a town without enough charging points? “Charge-rage” and long queues. Lets spend our holidays waiting for the car to fill.
Sure, eventually, with a lot of money we can build enough towers and wires and plug-holes, but if we want cars running on wind turbines we need to store the amps in batteries that stand still, so they can load it into batteries that travel.
UPDATE: Lionell Griffith in comments:
“Obviously, the only solution is to have car owners certified and to have get permission from a newly formed government bureaucracy for when, where, how long, and for what purpose they can use their cars. If you don’t have permission, it will be a felony to use your car for any purpose.
We can’t have the public going just anywhere anytime for frivolous trips to nowhere in particular. Clearly, it is a public health issue.”
Remember this great Saturday Night Live parody (The AA Class Mercedes) with Julia Louis-Dreyfus (of Seinfeld fame).
h/t Pat
POST NOTE: The headline is tongue-in-cheek. I can’t take the idea of converting a nation-to-electric-cars in just fifteen years seriously. Assuming we want to run a nation on electric cars, and assuming we can’t use nuclear power (for no good reason) and assuming we are are doing this to reduce CO2 and “change the weather”, only then does it make sense (in a fragile way) to use wind power.
Saw this extraordinary rock in the sky five minutes ago. Had to take a photo sitting on the lawn in the dark of something, apparently, 400,000 kilometers away. I do like the way the sun illuminates the weathered texture on the edge of the light.
The maxi cave is in Marius Hills, which as best as I can tell is on the dark part on the right hand side. Though it’s hard to tell. For some reason, people keep posting photos of this rock upside down.
Here’s a challenge, in the daytime, the UV index is off the charts (if it gets to 14 in Darwin, what does it get to on the lunar surface? I can’t find the forecast, NOAA thinks its in Wisconsin, and nobody can tell me what SPF I need.)
It’s not often that a technology provides so much instant enjoyment, astonishment, shaking, even tears.
Tim Blair found a movie of a colorblind man seeing color for the first time. And there are lots of videos out there.
Know someone colorblind? Great Christmas Present (costs $350 USD plus).
People with red-green color blindness have red and green receptors that both react to an overlapping band of wavelengths producing shades of “brown”. I gather these glasses filter out the overlapping light so that the red receptors only react to red light and the green only to green.
(OK, so the first guy does “go on a bit” so watch then skip forward…)
The WA government-run electricity provider (Horizon Energy) has called a halt to new solar installations in Broome, a town in Northwest WA that is not connected to the national grid, or even the main WA grid. (It’s 2,000km north of Perth). About 10% of the town’s power comes from solar* but apparently the little grid can’t handle the fluctuations, so the early birds got the subsidies, and the rest got grumpy.
State-owned energy utility Horizon Power allows just 10 per cent of the town’s power to be generated from solar to protect the grid from fluctuations during periods of high and low light.
Small business owner Cameron White has been trying to switch to solar for two years in a bid to reduce his power bill but said he has been blocked at every turn.
“We’re in the sunniest place in Australia, probably, but we can’t use it,” he said.
Tell me how this helps the poor or the environment…
How fair is it when a government can offer subsidies on a first-in first-served basis? Here the costs of the first subsides are so large and unsustainable, that electricity prices are forced up on the rest of the owners, but they can’t partake of the same scheme. The random benevolence of government.
Time to talk about the hidden costs of solar and wind power — battery storage.
UPDATE: Government subsidies for installing solar are around $3,600 for a 5KW system. That doesn’t include feed in tarriffs (Energy Buyback schemes).
UPDATE: #2 TdeF in comments explains that while the Government mandates these subsidies, the money doesn’t come from tax dollars, but from payments forced on fossil fuel suppliers, which in turn pass the charge on in electricity bills.
There is no government subsidy. That is a popular misconception. The ‘government’ pays nothing. The LGCs and STCs are Carbon Certificates which are theft from fossil fuel electricity retailers and so from all the other electricity users. This is the RET scheme. It is buried in everyone’s electricity bills. Even those who use solar. So is the pay in tariff for unwanted lunchtime solar. Plus it is marked up.
The greatest ripoff in the world. For this you do not get electricity. Just the right to buy electricity, 90% from power stations already built and coal we already own.
Government Subsidies? No such thing. Theft. $3billion a year goes overseas. As much again to reward private companies in Australia. For nothing. When you do get the ‘free’ renewables, you pay again. Will people stop talking about Government subsidies. Weatherill has not paid for one windmill.
*EDITS: Was — About 10% of the town “put solar panels on their roof”.Looking at the Google satellite image, there are hardly any solar panels on houses (though more on the largest houses in Cable Beach). The wording in the ABC article mentions “10% of the town’s power”, but doesn’t specify, indeed, the only hint is in the caption to a photo of a house with panels, that it is a “limited number of homes”. Where is that solar coming from? The title of this post was also tweaked: “Only 10% of peoplepower allowed to usefrom solar in Broome WA to stop grid “fluctuations””. Hunting for the solar power turns up a trial by the Government run Water Corp in August 2016 to power “Solar Diesel” pumps for water bores and an undated Solar PV Trial involving only six homes now, and six later. BTW Tom Harley lives in Broome and has a photo of the Gas Plant.
‘We live in an age where we see evidence of cultural decline, the erosion of values, the decline of civility, the denial of truth and the elevation of unreason. Many people are asking, “Where is our culture heading?” This website is devoted to exploring the major cultural, social and political issues of the day. It offers reflection and commentary drawing upon the wealth of wisdom found in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It offers reflective and incisive commentary on a wide range of issues, helping to sort through the maze of competing opinions, worldviews, ideologies and value systems. It will discuss critically and soberly where our culture is heading. Happy reading!’
For adults interested in finding out more about the history of Western Civilisation and how a Biblical Worldview has impacted and continues to shape our world including Australia and the region.
This is your chance to ask questions and engage with the ideas that have shaped human history.
UPDATE from Jo: I don’t know Muehlenberg’s work, but other Classic Nights have discussed Homer, Beowulf, The fall of Rome, Gold as a Currency, The Battle of Beersheeba, Reaching the iGeneration, and other topics like that including Medieval times and Feudal systems. It was suggested to me that Libertarian types might want to come to this one, so I’m posting the info. I’ll be there. There is usually plenty of social time and discussion afterwards.
Poor Nick Kilvert at the ABC again, finds climate yeti’s everywhere — that imaginary creature, the converted skeptic. This is an important missing link in the fictional narrative — obviously if The Evidence Is Over-bloody-Whelming, there will be a stream of people gradually awakening. Alas, Kilvert doesn’t realize the traffic isall theotherway, an exodus, and there is no single outspoken skeptic that has convincingly switched the other way. The best he can do is drag out the self-declared convert Richard Muller who got away with his skeptic facade for while, until awkward quotes surfaced from during his skeptic days where he declared that fossil fuels were the “greatest pollutant of human history”. He was outed five years ago, but alas, Kilvert apparently still hasn’t got an internet connection and didn’t think to look. If only Kilvert could have emailed me?
To which I might say “Once were journalists: Why don’t these writers do any research any more?”
This is as good as it gets. Muller is the “star” convert. He and his whole team were doubting skeptics:
In 2010, Professor Muller from Berkeley University was funded to carry out a comprehensive study by a group of individuals who doubted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) data. They believed that urban heat islands, data-selection bias, and inaccurate climate models were being glossed over by scientists. Professor Muller and his team — all of whom doubted climate change was happening or that carbon dioxide was its cause — were shocked to find a correlation between carbon dioxide emissions and warming.
Richard Muller, 2003. “… carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate.”
Richard Muller, 2008: “There is a consensus that global warming is real. …it’s going to get much, much worse.”
Given what Prof Muller said in 2003 and 2008 you’d think he might have heard before that rising temperatures correlate with rising CO2? Even skeptics know that. But then he’s only a professor.
There must be a converted skeptic somewhere…
The second supposed convert is a man called Dr Anthony Purcell. Purcell explains post hoc that he had some “doubts” about high sensitivity (sounds like a scientist to me) but was converted, “shaken” when he read that Prof Frank Fenner, the famous virologist, predicted humans would be extinct, perhaps within 100 years. Well that does it then, eh? Strange that he did his PhD on sea level change in 1997, but remained a silent skeptic til he read the OpEd in The Australian 13 years later.
Purcell claims sediments from 55 million years ago during the PETM “demonstrated first-hand that Professor Fenner’s prediction had a historic precedent.” Yet even a stupid beginner skeptic in their 7th post was able to surmise that resolution in 50 million year old mud might not be too decisive and google search to find papers like Sluijs 2007. (Which suggested the CO2 rose 3,000 years after the warming.) Purcell couldn’t find definitive cause and effect evidence from 1998, but only in data from 50 million BC.
To authenticate the pain of conversion we get sob stories. Purcell calls his father a “deeply entrenched climate denialist” and says his acceptance of the man-made catastrophe has “severely eroded” his personal relationships. No kidding. Maybe he could try not calling people names?
Digging deep, the third convert is Prof-Catastrophe-Karoly himself. Allegedly, 31 years ago, he had an open mind for long enough to write an abstract for a conference that favored natural causes, but changed his mind by the time he presented it. That’s it.
Since then, he has converted himself into someone who believes in “consensuses”, despite the radiosondes, the ocean buoys, the satellites and the ice cores and the entire philosophy of science.
He might be a convert, but if he was a scientist, he converted to something else.
Very few skeptics have cracked,
Even though some colleagues were sacked,
By consensus conformists,
From the legions of warmists,
All funded and government backed.
–Ruairi
REFERENCE
Sluijs 2007, Environmental precursors to rapid light carbon injection at the Palaeocene/Eocene boundary, Nature 450, 1218-1221 (20 December 2007) doi:10.1038/nature06400 [Abstract]
Since eating raw fruit and vege is associated with lower mortality, efforts to stop people dying of climate change in 2100 may be killing people today:
Australians are cutting back on basic things like fresh fruit and vegies in order to keep the lights on with the National Debt Helpline taking 14,000 calls in September — a record for the month, and up 14 per cent on the same time last year.
Dying stranded coal plant increases in value by 73,000% in 2 years:
In November 2015, the NSW Government offloaded Vales Point Power Station — an old, polluting coal-fired plant on the shores of Lake Macquarie — for $1 million.
Last week,… Sunset Power quietly released its latest financial reports — revaluing the Vales Point Power Plant at a cool $730 million.
Over the past year, Vale Points’ owners gained $380 million from electricity sales from the power station, compared to $270 million for energy generated during its last full year of state ownership.
The first gas is due from the Northern Gas Pipeline next year.
…plans to widen links between the east coast energy network and the Northern Territory’s gas fields, as well as new Queensland gas sources due to come online before the end of the year, may drive down gas prices due to increased supply. The Northern Territory government’s proposed gas pipeline has expanded its scope to supply gas to the eastern seaboard, via Queensland and South Australia.
Queensland gas company Senex Energy will this week bring 30 new coal seam gas wells online, with production to begin before the end of the year.
Apologies to foreign readers as we rake over the Stupidest Energy Policy on Earth. This really takes the cake.
Back in 2010 Rudd signed off on an extension of subsidies to renewables generators that would apply from 2020-2030, long after he would be gone. Effectively this decision will take up t0 $300 per Australian over that decade — in the order of $1000 per family — and gift to the renewables industry. Naturally, in the public arena, an issue this big was decided with major, some, no discussion at all.
The ABC investigated the intricacies of who knew what and when in the knifing of a first term PM, but billions of dollars — who knew?
Electricity customers face an extra burden of between $3.8 billion and $7.5bn in “windfall” subsidies for renewable power generators in the next decade because of the stroke of a pen in the last months of Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership.
Against advice from consultants, energy companies and the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Rudd government in 2010 extended the phasing out of the renewable subsidies for existing operators from 2020 to 2030.
The 10-year extension beyond the contracted 2020 phase-out under the Howard government is estimated to cost households and businesses up to an extra $7.5bn.
The subsidy scheme had been put in place by Howard, and back in 2003 the MRET (Mandatory Renewables Energy Target) was designed to end in 2020. Not only did the Australian public not get a chance to say much about extending this gift for another ten years, but neither apparently did Parliament. Indeed, perhaps not even the sitting ministers in the Government at the time:
Former Labor ministers cannot recall cabinet discussion or parliamentary debate over the extension of the subsidies for existing renewable generation to 2030, which was seen as a minor part of the massive changes to renewable energy policy.
There was a Senate Review, and apparently everyone thought it was a bad idea — the advisors, the big gas-giants, big industry, even the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and Greenpeace. This gift was a windfall to businesses that were already running and which had made their investments based on the current plan and conditions:
“Facilities built between 1997 and 2007 should only be eligible for incentives due under the existing MRET,” the ACF said in a submission to the Climate Change Authority.
Rudd did it anyway — being greener than Greenpeace. What a hero, with other people’s money.
Now Turnbull is left with this ball-and-chain, the best way to undo some of the damage is to build a nuclear plant. Then again, we could just take that money from the ABC budget instead. (Which one would grow the economy more? Oh the dilemma!)
The AAA tested 30 cars under Australian real on-road conditions and found that like VW and so many others, the cars pass pollution tests in the lab, but fail in the real world:
— Sydney Morning Herald
The report by the Australian Automobile Association, members of which include the NRMA and RACV and RACQ, says real-world testing reveals some new cars are using up to 59 per cent more fuel than advertised. Almost six in 10 exceeded the regulated limit for one or more pollutant in cold-start tests.
The report found that, on average, real-world fuel consumption was 23 per cent higher than laboratory results, including one diesel vehicle that used 59 per cent more fuel than lab tests indicated.
One fully charged plug-in hybrid electric car consumed 166 per cent more fuel than official figures suggest – or 337 per cent more when tested from a low charge. It also emitted four times more carbon dioxide than advertised.
Of 12 diesel vehicles tested, 11 exceeded the laboratory limit for nitrogen oxides emissions….
Environmentalists accused the AAA of “seeking to delay the introduction of new standards” and urged the government to ignore the “misinformation”.
Shots from Geographe Bay, SW WA. I won’t be winning an award for these, but it was kinda cool.
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They were having fun.
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Showing off:
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Judging by their very long flippers, dorsal fins, and the time of year, these were humpback whales which grow to 30 – 50 tonnes, and 15-18m long (medium sized for a whale). They are heading south for the summer to feed around Antarctica. They are apparently pretty friendly and curious, popping up to check out boats and allegedly even flirting, playing around and occasionally rescuing other species of whale and dolphin.
We were on the beach, the zoom was 64mm – 155mm (yes it did not look this close). Holiday house generously supplied. (You know who you are, thank you! :- ) ).
Turnbull threw away the Lib’s best election strategy in the last election and almost lost. He couldn’t run a carbon tax scare like Abbott had (or Trump did even moreso). Now he can’t run a cheap electricity campaign in a nation where wallets are bleeding from power bills. It would be a gift campaign to mock the idea that wind and solar make prices cheaper — that’s a bubble desperate to be popped. But Malcolm’s campaign (if he survives that long) is a Santa tricky plan to have it all — lower emissions, lower prices, and more stability. And if you’ll believe that…
He’s leaving his entire right flank open, unguarded.
A few dismal facts that won’t go away:
Malcolm’s NEG plan to reduce electricity prices aims pathetically low ($2 a week) and will fail anyway. The country already knows that.
The world still awaits the glorious discovery of a single nation powered by lots of wind and solar that has cheap electricity.
Australia’s 1.5% of global carbon emissions are irrelevant. Australia may be the only nation on Earth that is even trying to meet the Paris accord.
Today’s Sydney Morning Herald Readers Panel quiz asks if people believe the main promise behind the “Game Changer”:
Do you feel confident that the Prime Minister’s energy policy will cut electricity bills?”.
The responses: Yes: 9%
Don’t know: 16%
No: 75%
So people who believe in the magical power of windmills and solar panels don’t believe his plan will work. Those who understand reality also know his plan won’t work. That leaves Turnbull reaching the 20 people in between these two groups who all appear to be columnists in the media: Paul Kelly, Paul Maley, Dennis Shanahan. Not fooled, McCrann, Bolt, Blair, and most of Australia.
Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg have made a deliberate decision to lose the next election and to lose it badly. The government woke up to the reality that a 43 per cent clean energy target would be all-but indistinguishable to Labor’s (insane) 50 per cent renewable energy target. But it then opted for something even more opaque. And, $2 a week off your power bill, in 10 years, maybe, doesn’t really seal the deal.
The Liberals instead backed Turnbull as he smashed their last hope with a plan that is boring, incomprehensible, backed by no credible modelling and – even on its own terms – will not cut power prices for a decade, and even then by just $2 a week on the average bill.
That plan will be even deader once Labor realises its best attack on this dud is simply to describe it as it actually is – just another plan to cut emissions – and then to argue it’s not as good as their own plan to do exactly the same. Already Labor is moving to this better attack.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology collects one-second records and can turn them into newspaper headlines. In contrast, the UK averages its readings over one minute, and the US over five. Obviously longer averaging could slow the latter down in the PR stakes (if that was their aim).
Hypothetically old glass thermometers just wouldn’t be as good at generating headlines. They take a lot longer to respond to bursts of hot air, sometimes missing short heatwaves completely (the kind that last less than a minute). It’s potentially quite an unfair race to run the two different thermometers in the same competition. It all depends on the handicap applied to the faster electronic ones.
In 2015 Bill Johnston warned that the introduction of electronic sensors in the late 1990s was artificially warming the records and asked the Bureau for data from the two different kinds of instruments side by side. The Bureau said they throw that data away (as you would). Lately, Jen Marohasy asked the Bureau for the manufacturing specifications and the Bureau said it’s all fine, the electronic thermometers were ‘purpose-designed’ to the Bureau’s specifications. We just don’t know what those specifications are exactly. No documentation. No data. (Send in your best guess.)
“All racing participants, as well as the general public, have every right to gain an understanding into the way in which their horse is handicapped. … In all instances, Handicappers must be able to provide logical and reasoned explanation for their decisions made. “
We can only hope our BoM should aim that high.
Don’t miss a great Spectator piece this week from Jennifer Marohasy on her quest to find out whether our BoM meets international standards, and whether our new thermometers are fit for purpose (and comparable to our old thermometers):
For about five weeks now the Bureau have been obfuscating on this point. There is ‘more than one way’ of achieving compliance with WMO guidelines they write in a ‘Fast Facts’ published online on September 11 – after I wrote a blog post detailing how their latest ‘internal review’ confirmed they were in contravention of international standards.
The Bureau has been insisting for some time that they don’t need to average because they have sensors with a long response time, which actually represent an average value, that is the same as the time constant for a mercury thermometer.
How this is achieved in practice was detailed for the first time in a letter from the new head of the Bureau Andrew Johnson, last Friday.
The letter explains that all the sensors the Bureau uses have been ‘purpose-designed’. I had been requesting manufacture’s specifications, but instead, I received this advice that it’s to Bureau specifications and, by inference, there is no documentation. To be clear, there are also no reports detailing the laboratory and field tests that explain how the custom-built devices have been designed to ‘closely mirrors’ the behaviour of mercury thermometers including the time constants – to quote from Dr Johnson’s letter of last Friday.
I am not blaming the sensors for being so responsive, just the Bureau for pretending one-second spot-readings from their purpose-designed sensor are comparable with instantaneous readings from mercury thermometers – while providing no proper documentation.
Did some politicans just wake up? The news today is that our Energy Minister may realize Australia is conducting a wild experiment with our electricity grid, and may have managed to convince other Australian federal politicians of the risk.
The Australian: Robert Gottleibsen (even Gottleibsen gets it).
When Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg walked into the Coalition party room with his energy policy earlier this week he faced a sea of hostile faces. But they left the room shocked. At last, the government politicians understood that Australia faces a long term blackout power crisis the like of which has never been seen in modern times.
It’s one thing to read commentaries warning of what is ahead but another to see a minister use confidential information from independent power authorities and regulators to show the desperate state of affairs that is looming for the nation. And then Frydenberg went to the ALP and showed them the same material.
Frydenberg was, if anything, even more alarming than me … [says Gottleibsen who wrote about how the “Energy crisis risk is criminal. March 2017″].
Between 2012 and 2017 Australia has built 1,850MW of weather-linked “intermittent capacity” and only 150 MW of “dispatchable capacity”.
At the same time “dispatchable capacity” has been reduced with the closure of coal and gas fired power plants and the failure to maintain existing coal fired plants.
According to the Australian Energy Market Operator back in 2012-13 we had 20 per cent “reserve capacity”— power generation capacity above maximum demand. Currently that’s down to 12 per cent and if the Liddell power station is shut there will be a big shortfall. We therefore face the clear certainty of frequent and long blackouts in all our cities if we do not invest in “dispatchable capacity”.
This graph shows what a fantasy-land most Australian state governments exist in — look at the targets set in Queensland and Victoria. Look at how far gone South Australia is:
State based penetration of solar and wind generation 2017
Gottleibsen doesn’t show this graph but here’s the SA Medium term outlook for the next two summers according to the AEMO:
Predicted outlook for demand and supply of electricity in South Australia from Nov 2017 – November 2019.
The red bars are the reserve shortfalls predicted to occur in summer next year and the year after. In itself, that doesn’t mean there will be blackouts but it means that SA is likely to be completely dependent on the interconnector to the coal plants in Victoria and the risk of blackouts is higher. SA is not self-sufficient.
The renewables fans must be hoping for a minor La Nina here over summer, so the temperatures are not so high and the air conditioners in Adelaide won’t be pumping, and so the hydro dams may fill.
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