Forced, dragged to comply, the BoM finally releases a little bit of side-by-side data so skeptics can start to compare old and new thermometers
Congratulations to Jennifer Marohasy. Her preliminary study on this new data is enough to show that the electronic thermometers are not equivalent to the older liquid-in-glass ones and temperatures measured in the same spot differ by as much as 0.3C. She’s now writing to Minister Josh Frydenberg that the consequences and questions raised by this are so serious that the BoM should not be announcing any new records. We need an audit!
Bureau of Meteorology, data record, Sept 1996, Mildura.
This is what world-class modern data looks like.
Apparently, with only a million-dollars-a-day, the BoM can’t afford to digitize their thermometer data. The big question for me, is if this is the best data they have – how could they have analyzed it themselves to properly calibrate the thermometers — with hand-drawn graphs on paper? That would have been state of the art… in 1896. But this data was from 1989 to 2000, which includes the key years after November 1996, when the electronic sensors started (and when most offices had computers). Perhaps by the twentieth anniversary of the change to new thermometers they will do an indepth calibration? No wait… too late. Nevermind.
If the BoM did graph and calibrate those thermometers in a database, why couldn’t they just email that? We are not talking about market-sensitive corporate information. (Heck, it’s not like billions of dollars, 4,000 megawatts of wind power, and 25 million solar panels depends on data like this!) ;-).
Unfortunately for the BoM, Marohasy (and the other skeptics who helped with this processing, particularly Ken, Lance and Phill) want all the handwritten records and is prepared to transcribe the parts that matter by hand. In a matter of weeks she has already analyzed and published some preliminary information about the different thermometers at Mildura. Read it all at her blog site:
The electronic sensors record significantly different temperatures from the old liquid in glass.
The BoM should not be releasing any claims of “hottest ever day” at any of the 563 electronic (automatic) weather stations.
There are 38 sites with parallel old and new thermometers. Marohasy (and the Australian public) want that data.
“The bottom line is that since the introduction of automatic weather stations over 20 years ago, there has been no documented standard against which Australian temperatures at Mildura, or anywhere else, have been recorded. Of most concern to me is the muddling, (including by your staffers), of the numerical averaging-period with the time constant. The Bureau somewhat confusingly often refers to the time constant as the sensor “averages”.”
In this instance Marohasy looked at September (because the Bureau claimed there was a record hot day there this year). She found that the temperature differences are about 0.3C lower in the electronic sensors (which was not necessarily what we expected, though may be different in summer, or different in other stations). If the Mildura sensor was somehow reading low, it might make the latest record an underestimate (don’t the BoM care?) but, but, but, the sensor has changed again since the late 1990s, the Stevenson Screen was replaced with a smaller version, and the BoM have gone from one-minute averaging to one-second records. How many ways can we mess up the climate signal? It looks like the BoM were averaging over one minute back in 1997 – 1999, but the recent “record” was the one-second-record type. If true, this, obviously, changes everything.
Finally, side-by-side, Max temperatures in Mildura, 1996. (One example of the key section cut from the image above)
The BoM needs auditing
These temperature recordings are now the primary input data which determine a range of scientific predictions, projections and model outputs with enormous, fiscal, economic and political implications both for Australia and internationally. If these temperature recordings are wrong then all the consequent scientific, fiscal, economic and political decisions based on this data may be wrong also.
The fiscal records of government agencies are independently and regularly audited for amounts far less than the fiscal and economic impacts of global warming policies so it would seem only prudent and reasonable that the temperature records of the Bureau of Meteorology, which have such huge fiscal and economic impacts, should be subject to a similar audit regime to ensure their accuracy, integrity and reliability.
Every “record” temperature the BoM issues from an electronic station is suspect because of the assumption the BoM makes that the electronic sensors are “equivalent” to the old style mercury and alcohol ones. (And the other stations are suspect because they’ve been homogenized, but that’s another story).
When o’ when did the one-second-records start? Only the BoM knows.
Yingying Xie, a post-doc at the University of Buffalo, says global warming is bringing changes to the region’s fall colors. In general, warmer temperatures cause leaves to turn color later in the season.
But changes in frost and moisture levels, and stresses like drought, heavy rain, and extreme heat can also affect the timing of peak fall color.
Xie: “Climate extremes may bring pretty high uncertainty.”
Peak color may split timing: Color clash coming
If there be droughts, the ash and birch red leaves will occur at a different time to oaks and beeches. Imagine forests with red and green at the same time?
One reason is that different tree species react to climate stresses in different ways. In her research, Xie found that drought caused ash and birch trees to change color earlier than usual. But it made oaks and beeches change color later.
Climate change will definitely make long mixed seasons unless it makes shorter ones.
Extreme weather can also result in less vivid colors or trees losing leaves unusually quickly.
Double your electricity bills! Stop this outrage!
Xie: “People may have shorter time period to enjoy the view and they may observe less brilliant color.”
As extreme weather becomes more common, she says it will get harder to predict when fall colors will peak across New England.
Currently climate models can predict the peak week of color all the way up to 2016.
Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy/ChavoBart Digital Media.
Image graphic: Created by David McCarthy.
Some people in Sydney will be paid to not use electricity in peak periods
Instead of a big blackout the plan now is to have lots of little “by choice” blackouts at the appliance level. It’s smarter than crashing the grid, but ponder what we’ve swapped –once electricity was cheap and “all the time” and now after this discount it will still be more expensive but also “not there when you need it”. Let’s all cheer for progress.
Cashing in for slightly less obscene electricity bills? How low is that bar on our expectations.
Sydney households to cash in for turning off appliances
Houses and business in some high-growth Sydney suburbs will be offered payments to dial down or switch off appliances during peak demand periods under a scheme being trialled by the state’s biggest distribution network.
Ausgrid is planning the demand management trial for up to 10 suburbs across the city — including Alexandria, Redfern, Auburn, Kingsford and Waterloo — over summer in a bid to reduce the peak load on its network.
It is expected to cost around $1.5 million in payments to households and business and to involve up to 1300 households that would agree to reduce demand at peak times and if successful it could become a permanent program and help Ausgrid defer the expense of major upgrade.
The payments would be linked to a commitment to reduce demand at peak times. “If they are not switched of at the peak, that becomes a problem for us,” he said.
If CO2 mattered, and renewables were useful, there would be some point to this pain.
Tell the kids: one day when I was young, we could switch on the heaters, the pool pump and the oven whenever we felt like it.
It takes a really big government to waste money on a scale like this
Carbon capture aims to stuff a harmless fertilizer underground in order to change the weather. With CCS, the hard part is deciding which obstacle is the most stupidly unachievable. One ton of solid coal generates nearly three tons of CO2 in a puffy, fluffy, expanded gas form. It doesn’t take a genius to know it won’t fit back into the same hole. And even if you get it down there, it may not stay there. The gas has to be compressed, or refrigerated (or both). Underground holes are hot. Not surprisingly, this takes a lot of energy, so that to build a coal plant with the capability to “store CO2” we must spend 60% more dollars, and then throw away 40% of the electricity as well.
You, I, global business, practically no one would spend their own money on it. The geniuses planning it thought the carbon price would rise from 30 euros to 100 euros which would make it a goer. Instead the carbon credit price feel to seven. (And that’s only after the EU propped it up.)
An investigation found that Brussels blew the colossal sum of cash on a drive to build underground storage facilities for CO2 emissions – but no such facilities were ever constructed.
This week the architect of the scheme, a former Lib Dem MEP, admitted this was because officials bungled their predictions for the environmental costs facing businesses.
The reports concern a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project the EU set up in 2007, which was designed to help companies reduce their emissions and so save money on Brussels’ green taxes.
Under the scheme businesses could buy pollution permits, or allowances, from eurocrats the proceeds of which would then be spent by the EU on capturing and storing carbon emissions.
However the fund, called NER300, did not support a single such project after officials catastrophically miscalculated carbon emissions pricing in Europe, which they expected to go up but which actually dropped drastically just after the programme was announced.
Pollies assumed they would have customers, but at seven euros a ton, there were no takers in the CCS scheme.
PS: Re Brexit — We all know a new hole in one place means a new hill in another. In the same story:
Britain’s departure from the bloc is set to blow a £9 billion a year hole in its budget, with a number of member states actively calling for Brussels’ largesse to be be reined in.
Hopefully a pile of Euro will be not crossing to the EU soon, and then there are extra benefits from the multiplier factor. Funding stupidity, multiplies it.
We are trying to collect dilute energy across a million square kilometers with heavy machinery in extreme conditions. What could possibly go wrong?
Last night around 9pm, the top part of the 30-metre turbine fell off in 40 knot winds — which is not unusual in Mawson (in September wind gusts of 185km/hr were recorded). Fortunately no one was killed because people were inside. Though it looks pretty close to that red building (was anyone there?) No one knows why it happened. The other turbine at the station has been turned off as a precaution (though I wouldn’t be walking underneath it). Maybe someone can tie ropes with a helicopter?
Wind Turbine, Antarctic research station, Mawson, break, collapse.
Right now things have warmed up a lot at Mawson, and temperatures even climb above 0C by 3pm some days. Though on November 1 the maximum temp was -8.8C. Naturally diesel saves the day. Of course Mawson is fully backed with diesel power.
These are 300kW turbines installed in 2003, so only 14 years old. Maybe it was just bad luck.
The maintenance costs of renewable energy are only just being figured out. Imagine the headlines if a 14 year old coal station suddenly dropped something from 30m up on a path that must weigh several tons, it would be “another reason” to give up fossil fuels.
The poor ignorant readers, fed the anti-science spin, and missing all the relevant info below (or any counter point of view) — predictably respond with the words “sociopath”, “Hitler”, “Nazi’s”, “criminals”, “crooks”, “liars” and “sychophants” — and that’s just in the first 20 comments of nearly 400.
The author Robin McKie found one scientist willing to hype this in a suitable way:
“This is like throwing away the medical records of a sick patient,” said David Gallaher of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.
If McKie bothered to get calmer and more accurate views, he does not report them. Though he also says: “Many scientists say this decision was made for purely ideological reasons.” He names none of the “many”. Way to go McKie.
In short, the story is that a series of US military satellites are monitoring sea ice. Four were launched from 2003 – 2014 (numbered 16 – 19). One, number 20, was in storage, supposedly to be used from 2020-2025. But storage costs got a bit much, the program was old, better ones are coming along, and Congress decided, last year, to dismantle it. As bad luck goes, #19 suffered a mishap and broke down a few weeks ago. Now the Guardian and others are howling that #20 should have been kept to replace #19 but it was destroyed deliberately in some kind of Trump conspiracy to stop scientific research to hide the effects of global warming.
Trump is so evil he must have arranged this while running the election campaign last year. Somehow he fooled Obama too. Maybe he had help from the Russians? 😉
The bottom line:
We can still monitor sea ice every day (which is enough — it’s not like we need hourly data)
There are more modern satellites around. (The old sensor was a 1987 model).
The US decided years ago to let the Japanese be the stars of satellite microwave radiometers. Spencer says “everyone knows” the Japanese will take over with the best sea-ice monitoring satellites soon (The AMSR series, since you asked).
At a pinch we could still use other US satellites if we had too –specifically, the AMSU sensors flying on the NOAA polar-orbiting satellites.
“As the U.S. Science Team leader on that instrument, I and others helped Japan become a leader in producing and interpreting this kind of data.
“This claim that the Trump Administration is to blame, or that our capability is being blocked or crippled is, quite frankly, silly.
Trump Derangement Syndrome?
One could more justifiably ask why President Obama in his 8-year term could not have asked for a dedicated climate monitoring network of global satellites. Most people don’t realize that our long-term climate monitoring with satellites has always been piggy-backed on either NOAA weather satellites, which are not designed with the stability and lifetimes needed to monitor subtle trends in climate, or on NASA one-off science experiment satellites which provide just enough data to help address specific science questions.
Details at Roy Spencers blog. Thank goodness there are still honest experts out there.
So much for the theory that Congress doesn’t like data:
The last satellite, DMSP-5D3 F20, which is in storage since the 1990ies, might eventually not launch, as the Senate drafted a bill, which prohibits the Air Force from spending any money on the DMSP-5D3 F20 launch pending certification from the secretary of defense that the military cannot obtain comparable data at a lower cost from other sources, such as civilian or international weather satellites. In the omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2016, lawmakers provided no funding neither for DMSP nor for the launch of DMSP-5D3 F-20 around 2018, effectively ending the program.
Gunter also points out that the US originally planned two satellite systems to replace the aging DSMP series, but they were both cancelled on Obama’s watch:
The DMSP-5D3 series was to be succeded by the jointly with NASA and NOAA developed NPOES system, which was cancelled in 2010 due to massive cost overruns. As a replacement, they were to be replaced by the military DWSS series, which in turn also was cancelled [in 2012].
The other insidious meme in The Guardian is the fakery that skeptics don’t like data, with the added myth that the data somehow supports the climate religion. How ripped off will Guardian readers feel when they find out one day that skeptics were the data hounds who used it all the time to make their case. Don’t get me started…
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]
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