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West Australia – Unskeptical conservatives wiped out in election – No Trump, No Brexit vote

Don’t mention the climate — unskeptical conservatives give away some of their best weapons

The local Liberals (conservatives) got smashed on the weekend in the Western Australian election. Polls predicted it, but instead of a Trump-surprise, Colin Barnett’s team got a nasty shock instead — wiped out. There was no “hidden vote” waiting there because the local Liberals are just another brand of The Establishment. There is nothing politically brave about them.

In WA climate was a non-issue, yet pandering to the religion still cost conservatives. One of the main election messages was about the privatisation of “Western Power” (Electricity supplier). This strange spectacle unfolded where McGowan, the leader who’d suggested the ridiculous 50% renewables target was thumping Barnett’s campaign with messages of fear about rising electricity prices after the privatization. Barnett didn’t hit back — No one seemed to notice the incongruity of Mr Renewables accusing someone else of making electricity expensive.

There are many reasons the WA Libs crashed (read some here). But the “climate” policy hole gets forgotten. Colin Barnett was unarmed, unskeptically accepting the unaudited foreign committee reports. In 2014, when semi-skeptical-Abbott was PM, the premier of a state that lives off mining and energy wasn’t even brave enough to go with the federal government of the day. Barnett publicly backed Obama’s climate plans instead.

Like Turnbull, Barnett missed the chance to roast the opposition for pandering to the climate faith, wasting money, making energy unaffordable, crippling industry etc etc etc.

Last year the WA Labor party waved the fantasy that this 13% renewables state could become a 50% Renewable Energy State. This should have been ripe fodder since it was South Australia on steroids: bigger and more risky. We’re a small isolated grid, not connected to the rest of Australia. There’s no hydro, no nukes, and no hope of another state keeping us running. We would be the blackout-state-in-waiting. But weeks ago, after yet another South Australian debacle unfolded — and leader of the Labor Party, Mark McGowan dropped the 50% target. Criticism was muted instead of savage.

Turnbull couldn’t unleash on his opponents in last years election, and neither could Barnett. Unskeptical politicians are just firing blanks.

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8.5 out of 10 based on 63 ratings

Fake News: Whipping up a media frenzy over bizarre “records” before they occur

Australia’s “leading climate scientists” can’t predict the climate but they are very good PR operatives. Here in Perth we’ve had a cool year — for the last twelve months it’s been nearly a whole degree cooler than the average for the last 20 years. But last weekend in Perth, news stories told us we’d had an “autumn stinker” and wait for it, we might get Perth’s second hottest first eight days of March. Call that a HFEDOM record and write in the Guinness Book of records. It’s a permutation “record” almost as important as the longest distance run by a man holding a table in his teeth. Except it’s not even a record, it’s a news story about a record that “might happen”, but didn’t.

Let’s name Neil Bennett (BOM) and Will Steffen (ANU) as the Propaganda-in-Chiefs dumping meaningless climate-trivia on the people in order to generate FEAR and screw more money from the public.

Straight from the New Climate PRAVDA Manual:

  1. Invent contrived trivial permutations in order to use the word “record”
  2. Don’t bother waiting for real data, use forecasts
  3. If record includes the word “cool”, “cooler”, or “cold”, send to trash.
  4. When wrong, crickets.
Sizzling season start, media, west Australian, news, climate propaganda, fake news.

Click to enlarge, The Sunday Times

So science serves its purpose as a tax revenue generator and source of support for parasitic industries that need government money and government propaganda to keep them alive. (Yes, I’m talking about renewable energy).

The public is hammered with record hot stories, even before they’ve happened in this case, yet there are no BoM announcements or media stories detailing WA’s remarkable run of well below average temps since about April last year. Last week the Climate Council report on summer mentioned Perth had record rainfall and the second hottest December day on record at 42.4C on 21 December, but they didn’t mention 9 February when Perth had by far its coldest February maximum daily temp since records began in 1897, smashing the previous record by a whopping 1.6C.                                  — Jo

_____________________________________________________________________

Fake News doesn’t mention the real climate that West Australians should get used to

 GUEST POST by a Weather Watcher reader in WA.

Perth hottest March, cold year, 2016, graph.

Click to enlarge

It’s what Donald Trump likes to call Fake News.

The Bureau of Meteorology was in the media on Sunday 5th March to warn that if the forecasts in the following four days were accurate, Perth would have an average maximum of 35.5C in the first eight days of March. The alarm bells were ringing because Perth was sweltering through the second hottest first eight days of March ever recorded.

Well, the first eight days of March have passed and Perth’s average maximum was 34.8C. So the first eight days of March were the 5th warmest on record, not the 2nd warmest.

A warm start to March but a bit of a non-event and no longer of any interest to the media. However, the several hundred thousand people who read the Sunday newspaper will nevertheless be telling all their friends that the first eight days of March this year were the second hottest ever in Perth.

The bureau and the media created record temperatures before they had (not) happened, misleading the public but reinforcing the climate warming theme.

Are you used to it?

The same Sunday story included Will Steffen from the Australian Climate Council, who said WA’s temperatures and a hot eastern states season were further evidence that Australia can expect more frequent and hotter heatwaves, with WA to be belted by regular 50C days within decades.

Professor Steffen says what happened in Perth and WA this week is more data confirming that extreme heat is on the increase, and West Australians should get used to days such as the 36.1C recorded in Perth last Saturday.

Hang on. 36.1C in Perth during early March? Perth’s hottest ever March day was 42.4C and the month always has at least a few days in the high 30s, some years slipping into the 40s.

Recent WA climate

Fake News has created evidence of climate change because Perth had a warm first week of March.

But what does the real news have to say about the recent climate in WA? For that we turn to the bureau’s February Monthly Summary (www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/wa/summary.shtml):

  • On 8, 9 and 10 February 2017, 33 WA weather stations had their record lowest February daily maximum temperature. Their new record maxima averaged 17.04C and the previous record low February daily maxima at the 33 stations averaged 18.84C.
  • Eight WA weather stations had their record lowest February mean daily maximum temperature, their average being 27.54C. The previous record lowest February mean daily maximum temperature at the eight stations averaged 27.85C.
  • Three WA weather stations had their record lowest February mean temperature (Esperance Aero, Rocky Gully, York), their average being 20.67C. The previous record lowest February mean temperature at the three stations averaged 20.93C.
  • Rainfall averaged across WA was just over 100 mm, about 70% higher than the long-term average.

    Keep reading  →

9.2 out of 10 based on 79 ratings

WA Election — Conservatives who believe in “climate alarm” were wiped out

8.3 out of 10 based on 40 ratings

Climate Institute runs out of money

The The Climate Institute is a private think tank set up in 2005. It got about $2m a year back in the heyday of climate panic. Today Planet Earth is still about to collapse, but it’s not important enough for the team to keep working without a salary. Amazing what someone, who really believes in what they do, can achieve with 1% of what they had.

No more propaganda surveys from them then:

Icon, Surveys, Polls, Magnifying glass, propaganda, spot the weak activist survey.

Climate Institute announces closure, citing lack of funding to continue

After a decade of climate advocacy work, climate change research organisation the Climate Institute has announced it will be closing in late June.

The non-profit’s survival has until now been dependent on donations, and it has cited a lack of funding as the reason for its closure.

Best known for its Climate of the Nation reports, the organisation also helped, among other things, expand the renewable energy target in 2008.

The Climate Institute could be relied upon to pay for trite motherhood style surveys to score meaningless headlines about how 110% of Australian believe we have a climate.

My past posts:

As I said — their surveys were designed to get one kind of answer:

Obviously The Climate Institute don’t want real answers, which they must know would be devastating. They won’t ask how much people want to pay out their own pocket to fix the climate. They won’t ask people to rank “climate change” against all the other issues they care about. They won’t ask people if Climate Change is a scam, a con, or a scheme to make the green industry rich (a year ago a US poll showed 31% were happy to call climate change a “total hoax“). Things don’t get more skeptical than that, but if surveyors don’t ask, they’ll never know.

These surveys never ask if the public thinks windmills will slow storms or make floods less likely. There is a good reason for that…

 

 

 

9.4 out of 10 based on 74 ratings

Fifty Shades of Loadshedding — “Welcome darkness my good friend”

Love it!  (Sing ’til you cry).

Welcome darkness my good friend

it’s good to meet you once again

Because the power grids are stressing,

that’s the reason for load shedding…

— Shrish Viyas Hargoon                                      h/t Lance.

….

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9.2 out of 10 based on 89 ratings

Go NCSE “March for Science” — Rage for Cliches!

The whole NCSE march  on April 22nd is devoted to a strawman:

The National Center for Science Education was one of the first organizations to endorse the march, and we are encouraging our members to take part. Why? Because we believe that the marches will be a powerful and positive reminder that there is something that virtually everyone agrees on: the value and importance of science.

There is no public debate saying science is not important. It simply does not exist. So why march? According to Ann Reid, biologist, science is important for farming, water quality, and beer-making. No kidding. Load up the strawmen.

Rage On: March for the trite!

“Science is for Everyone” (except scientists who disagree with government propaganda):

And that’s where the March for Science fits in. On April 22, 2017, people all over the world will be gathering together to celebrate science, and to declare that science belongs to everyone. NCSE will be there.

Obviously the real subtext are controversial topics (why else does anyone march?) Guess which branch of establishment science is the one hardest hit by the Trump presidency:

At the National Center for Science Education, we know that science sometimes addresses controversial issues. It’s no surprise to us that scientific findings can trigger fierce disagreement. We’ve devoted over thirty years to making sure that science teachers have the expertise and support they need to teach about evolution and climate change, even when there are people in their communities who object.

So this is a climate protest in disguise, masquerading as a generic “science” protest. These people couldn’t form a sequential cause-effect argument if their lives depended on it. Indeed, their jobs almost depend on them not doing it. (If they did, they might get sacked, evicted, blackballed,   terminated, punished, vilified and bullied.) It will be touted by religious climate believers as a protest for “climate change”. Whatever: it’s another Science-for-Big-Government-PR exercise. It’s a form of Argument from Authority: “Trust us” some scientists can make good beer, therefore they can predict the climate. Wash out your brain, cleanse your thoughts, scientists speak with one mind.

The irony and projection of Ann Reid peaks in the next sentence:

But it is important to remember that many who object to the teaching of evolution or climate change haven’t encountered the science for themselves.

How much does Ann Reid know of the missing water vapor feedback recorded by 28 million weather balloons. How much has she looked at the scandal of temperature adjustments that are larger than the trends they measure?

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8.9 out of 10 based on 118 ratings

VW eco-scam, official corruption, is killing diesel

News is out that diesel cars which don’t comply with pollution standards will be banned from some roads in Germany on “high pollution” days. Depending on how often those  bad news for diesel industry and owners. How useless is a car that you can’t drive when you need it? Stuttgart is being called the “Beijing” of Germany for air pollution. Residents are suing the Mayor for “bodily harm”. The same thing happened in Oslo — governments told people to buy diesel to reduce carbon pollution, but they are now banning diesel cars on some roads on some days too.

This may apply to as many as 90% of diesels on German roads. Sales of diesels fell by 10% last month. The pain level in this depends on how often those high-pollution days are. See the current Stuttgart air-quality monitoring — it’s OK today, but if I read this air pollution road map from 2008 correctly, it suggests some roads are over the safe limit  60, 80, even 180 days a year. In 2014 fine particulate matter exceeded safe limits on 64 days a year.

Corruption always has a price but in this case the owners of diesels are paying for the corruption of officials, bureaucrats, car companies and politicians. It is time the real culprits paid. Way back in 2006 – 2009 the Eco-Worriers were pushing diesel as a green alternative to “save the planet”. E.g Diesel: Greener Than You Think. MotherEarth top ten Green Cars.

If the Greens actually cared about emissions and pollution they would have checked, protested and stopped this long ago. Instead, they ignored it and it is coming back to bite.

Diesel Cars Banned from Stuttgart on Days When Pollution is Heavy:

[Reuters] Stuttgart, home to Germany’s Mercedes-Benz (DAIGn.DE) and Porsche (PSHG_p.DE), said on Tuesday it will ban from next year diesel cars which do not meet the latest emissions standards from entering the city on days when pollution is heavy.

Only around 10 percent of diesel cars in use on German roads at the start of 2016 conformed with the “Euro 6” standard, which is the latest EU anti-pollution rule.

Death of Diesel, by EuroIntelligence.

When we reported on the VW scandal, we made the point that the really important implications are not the fines but the long-term industrial fallout. The long term is already happening now.

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9.5 out of 10 based on 80 ratings

Windy Clean Green Pollution

Looks like the halo is fading. Today-Tonight is a current affairs show in Australia. Today a few more Australians discovered that free energy is not just expensive but creates its own kind of pollution.

This hardly a surprise for anyone who can spell cost-benefit, but it’s healthy to see the prime-time media in Australia doing something other than singing the Clean-Green advertising jingle.

h/t Scott of the Pacific

8.8 out of 10 based on 98 ratings

Weekend Unthreaded

Sorry I am a bit distracted with other things this week. Light postings.

8 out of 10 based on 30 ratings

DiCaprio, Bono, and Al Gore: flying eyebrow artists for the planet

Advertising your virtues sometimes conflicts with advertising your social status.

Paul Joseph Watson never minces his words.

The surprising thing is that these guys get away with it. Not laughed out of town for their grandstanding piety at awards nights.

h/t Scott of the Pacific

9.2 out of 10 based on 96 ratings

Climate Change will suck the flavour from your daily bread

 Climate Change threatens to make bread less tasty

Over at The Conversation the panic is rising. Life is not going to be the same. Get ready for the bland future — if we stop all plant breeding tomorrow, and don’t change our fertilizers at all, it possible, by 2050, in dry years, wheat may have a 6% decrease in protein.

It’s that serious.

Everyone likes the high protein kind of wheat, and it’s worth more. Glenn Fitzgerald, at The Conversation argues that Australian wheat is going to be lower in protein, and downgraded, making us less competitive and our farmers poorer. (Cynics among us note that authors at The Conversation only seem to care about farmers when climate change might hurt them, not when climate-change-action actually sends them broke, makes them homeless or puts them in jail. Y’know — whatever.)

As for Australia’s export earnings, I say, forgive me, but I thought the CO2 elevation was a global thing — so unless we are competing with aliens and intergalactic wheat, color me unconcerned. All the wheat producers on Earth will be dealing with the same issue.

How to make a good thing sound bad

The bottom line in biology is that because CO2 is plant food, and makes the molecular carbon backbone of carbon-life-forms,  if there is more of it in the air, plants grow faster and the extra carbon will dilute everything else.

The benefits of carbon dioxide are greatest in dry years because CO2 makes it easier for plants to cope with less water and droughts. It takes some effort to construe this as a bad thing, but with enough government funding, and years of academic training, it’s possible. (Thank Glenn Fitzgerald, Honorary Associate Professor of Agriculture and Food, University of Melbourne).

Carbon dioxide is such a basic part of biology — plants wake up in the morning and drink in the CO2 from the air around them. In a cornfield, the plants will even change the atmospheric concentration of CO2 in the air over the field. By lunchtime every day, CO2 will have dropped, and growth slows. Carbon dioxide is that important.

This graph from Chapman in 1954 really shows how intrinsic CO2 is:

Fig. 1. Variations in the C02 content of air in a corn field and 152 m above it on a still day. A C02 deficit of more than 100 lbs an acre was developed within 3 hrs after sunrise, to remain nearly constant until late afternoon. See this for more detail.

That’s not to say that we shouldn’t be discussing this, or preparing for it, but honestly, Climate change will make bread taste bad? Fergoodnesssake.

Our lower protein diet, solved with a chickpea

Fitzgerald tells us that people might be malnourished because of nutrient changes thanks to excess CO2. We’ve been through this line of thinking before. The problem is so easy to solve, yet so obviously missed by our experts.

Even if the projected protein deficiency occurs in wheat, it is so small and irrelevant that all we have to do is eat slightly less wheat and slightly more of nearly anything else bar other grains. I calculated that a person could make up for the deficiencies in rice-of-the-future by swapping some rice for a chickpea: specifically, one extra chickpea for every 100g of rice:

According to the USDA nutrient profiles Gelatinous White Rice, Cooked (doesn’t that sound delicious) has all of 0.14mg of iron per 100 grams and 0.41mg of zinc. Chick peas on the other hand have 2.89mg  of iron per 100g  and 1.53mg  of zinc. So chickpeas have 20 times the iron content, and 3.7 times the zinc content. In other words, to solve a shortage of a 10% reduction in iron and zinc in rice, the average person eating 100g of rice would need to eat an extra 2.6 grams of chickpeas (or is that chickpea, singular?). As a bonus they would be getting five times more iron than what they are missing out on in the rice.

Wheat is richer than rice, and contains significant protein for people without access to meat.  But a mere 5- 10% deficiency is still easily solveable with a shift in dietry composition. Indeed, even if all food types became slightly diluted (like if poorer grain-feed leads to poorer beef steak) the principle still works.

Where are the grownups when you need them?

REFERENCES

[1^]Chapman H. W .,Gleason L. S., Loomis W. E. (1954): The carbon dioxide content of field air. Plant Physiology 29,6, pp 500-503  [PDF freely available]

9.1 out of 10 based on 76 ratings

Trump takes away EPA “right” to control every puddle in USA: WOTUS executive order

Smile. One more noxious, power-grabbing bit of legislation: fixed.

Farmers and land-owners lost control of the puddles and ditches on their land under the guise of environmental protection.

Remarks by President Trump at Signing of Waters of the United States (WOTUS) Executive Order

The EPA’s so-called “Waters of the United States” rule is one of the worst examples of federal regulation, and it has truly run amok, and is one of the rules most strongly opposed by farmers, ranchers and agricultural workers all across our land. It’s prohibiting them from being allowed to do what they’re supposed to be doing. It’s been a disaster.

The Clean Water Act says that the EPA can regulate “navigable waters” — meaning waters that truly affect interstate commerce. But a few years ago, the EPA decided that “navigable waters” can mean nearly every puddle or every ditch on a farmer’s land, or anyplace else that they decide — right? It was a massive power grab. The EPA’s regulators were putting people out of jobs by the hundreds of thousands, and regulations and permits started treating our wonderful small farmers and small businesses as if they were a major industrial polluter. They treated them horribly. Horribly.

If you want to build a new home, for example, you have to worry about getting hit with a huge fine if you fill in as much as a puddle — just a puddle — on your lot. I’ve seen it. In fact, when it was first shown to me, I said, no, you’re kidding aren’t you? But they weren’t kidding.

In one case in a Wyoming, a rancher was fined $37,000 a day by the EPA for digging a small watering hole for his cattle. His land. These abuses were, and are, why such incredible opposition to this rule from the hundreds of organizations took place in all 50 states. It’s a horrible, horrible rule. Has sort of a nice name, but everything else is bad. (Laughter.) I’ve been hearing about it for years and years. I didn’t know I’d necessarily be in this position to do something about it, but we’ve been hearing about it for years.

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9 out of 10 based on 165 ratings

Does Solar PV in half of Europe make more energy than it consumes?

You might think we’d know whether a solar PV system produced energy before we installed 1,000 Megawatts of it. But it’s hard to even know after the fact. Dr John Constable points us at an interesting new paper that discusses the odd creature called EROEI. This stands for energy return on energy invested. If you get back less than “one”, it sucks.

That sounds like a fine idea except everyone seems to get different answers to the same question. Solar PV in Switzerland achieves either a tenfold return or it costs a fifth of your energy. Plan your national policy with a Ouija Board?

Constable comes to the conclusion that the whole calculation is so uncertain it’s useless. There are so many subjective estimates on the “energy invested side” that the answer is almost irrelevant. Constable points out that what we really need to know is how the whole system responds to the addition of a new generator –but the whole grid analysis is even harder than just the EROEI to calculate.

His conclusion, it that we really need something more like a neural net to calculate the costs. Luckily we have one — us — and the contractual free market. It’s just the government keeps getting in the way of it working.

ENERGY RETURN AND ECONOMIC PLANNING

 Date: 22/02/17 Dr John Constable: GWPF Energy Editor

In 2016 Ferruccio Ferroni and Robert J. Hopkirk published a striking article (“Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation”, Energy Policy 94 (2016), 336–344) claiming that the energy return for Solar PV sites in Switzerland might be as low as 0.8, implying that the technology was not a net energy producer but a consumer. Unsurprisingly, this paper has been the subject of intense criticism, and a detailed and in many points persuasive rebuttal has recently been published by Marco Raugei et al. (“Energy Return on Energy Invested (ERoEI) for photovoltaic solar systems in regions of moderate insolation: A comprehensive response” Energy Policy 102 (2017), 377–384). Raugei and his colleagues make a number of methodological criticisms of Ferroni and Hopkirk and using alternative methods, calculate that the energy return is in the region of 7 to 10. While Raugei et al’s figure is positive it is not particularly high, as compared for example to figures in the literature for electricity from coal and gas (EROEI = 28–30), and nuclear (EROEI = 75–105) (see D. Weissbach et al. “Energy intensities, EROIs (energy returned on invested), and energy payback times of electricity generating power”, Energy 52 (2013), 210–221).

See —  ENERGY RETURN AND ECONOMIC PLANNING

 

If you think the Swiss were crazy, ponder the Germans. If I read this chart correctly, they’ve installed 40,000MW.

9.3 out of 10 based on 84 ratings

Weekend Unthreaded

8.2 out of 10 based on 28 ratings

How progressive: ship dead trees 5,000km and burn them (use £450m for kindling)

It would make any hunter gatherer proud.

[The Times] Britain is wasting hundreds of millions of pounds subsidizing power stations to burn American wood pellets that do more harm to the climate than the coal they replaced, a study has found.

Chopping down trees and transporting wood across the Atlantic Ocean to feed power stations produces more greenhouse gases than much cheaper coal, according to the report. It blames the rush to meet EU renewable energy targets, which resulted in ministers making the false assumption that burning trees was carbon-neutral.

The UK tribes can thank chief Huhne (Energy and Climate secretary) for the 7.5 million tonnes of dead trees otherwise known as biomass — which  mostly come all the way from the US and Canada.

Naturally, doing something this improbable takes a lot of money.

Drax, Britain’s biggest power station, received more than £450 million in subsidies in 2015 for burning biomass, which was mostly American wood pellets.

Curiously, there are over 200 trillion cubic feet of dead trees stored under Lancashire. They may have been very very small trees, like algae sized, but nonetheless, 4,999 kilometers closer. Apparently when all the trees of Canada and the US are used up, and the UK moves out of the Wood Age, it will have some spare gas  to heat UK homes for the next 1,200 years.

The climate debate has now moved on to arguing whether trees are renewable. There’s a kind of death-spiral bickering between different varieties of “renewables” beasts. If it takes 200 years to grow a tree back, and you believe the models that are 97% wrong, oceans might boil before the carbon is back in the tree.This is just another carbon accounting bun-fight.

The report author, Mr Bracks, calls the subsidies ridiculous, but only because the money could have gone to “zero carbon” wind or solar instead. Shame he didn’t point that out then, when he was the special advisor to Chris Huhne.

Having poured countless millions into Biomass, by a remarkable coincidence, three months after Huhne got out of jail for lying about speeding fines, he was appointed European Director of a company called Zilkha Biomass.

Wood pellets fuel Huhne’s journey into private sector

He is not the only one to follow this gravy laden career path:

Several other former energy ministers have gone on to lucrative jobs in the sector. Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem who replaced Mr Huhne as energy and climate secretary but lost his seat in 2015, advises three companies on low-carbon energy projects. Lord Barker of Battle, the Tory former energy minister, took up posts advising a renewable heat business and a solar panel company. The appointments of both were approved by Acoba.

Pretending to save the world can be a lucrative career.

 They claim to reduce greenhouse gases,
From mulched trees as burnt bio masses,
By importing wood pellets,
The renewable zealots,
Are behaving like right silly asses.

 — Ruairi

9.7 out of 10 based on 90 ratings

Solar Homes use more grid electricity than non-solar homes

There are probably more solar panels in QLD than anywhere else in the world. Back in February last year, the boss of the Queensland state power company announced the awkward result that households with solar panels were using more electricity than those without. Apparently people without solar were turning off the air conditioner because electricity cost too much, but the solar users didn’t have to worry about the cost so much.

Queensland solar homes are using more grid electricity than non-solar, says Energex boss

Feb 2016:  Solar-powered homes in south-east Queensland, which boasts the world’s highest concentration of rooftop panels, have begun consuming on average more electricity from the grid than those without solar, the network operator has found.

Terry Effeney, the chief executive of state-owned power distributor Energex, said the trend – which belied the “green agenda” presumed to drive those customers – was among the challenges facing a region that nevertheless stood the best chance globally of making solar the cornerstone of its electricity network.

From October 2014 in Queensland, the average grid electricity use of solar homes started to exceed the average use of people without solar power and stayed higher for the at least the next 18 months (when this story appeared).

In other words, subsidized solar panels could mean that the people who pay the subsidies use less electricity than the people who get the subsidy and the panels. It also means the poor, who can’t pay for panels, have to go without more often.

Playing God with markets doesn’t have to be this hard. If the price of electricity is the largest influence on behaviour, the government could have just slapped on a bigger electricity tax, and that would have cut electricity use across the board. Thousands of people wouldn’t have wasted millions of dollars installing solar panels. The money would have helped the state government provide a service that was more useful than weather-unchanging-electronic-panels. Queensland could have had more healthcare, more holidays or less debt, instead they changed the color of their electrons.

 

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9.3 out of 10 based on 88 ratings

Y’think Donald Trump will bring in a carbon tax? (And pigs will knit socks.)

Bob Inglis is a former Republican congressman who lost out to a Tea Partier (you’ll see why). He’s visiting Australia to talk us into doing climate manipulation. I can’t see his reasoning catching on:

Former Republican congressman Bob Inglis says he knows it sounds improbable to say the US president would impose a carbon price, but he thinks reality will force Mr Trump’s hand.

“Donald Trump said climate change is a Chinese hoax and conspiracy – but he couldn’t possibly believe that,” Mr Inglis told the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday.

Obviously it’s impossible for Inglis to believe Inglis Could Be Wrong.

In the five stages of grief, he’s stuck at number one…

Watch the contortions to fit that worldview into a round hole:

He laments the tribalism of the debate, saying there’s such fear among conservatives about being seen as weak in the face of the environmental left they refuse to hear anything.

He frames the question to conservatives as not whether they believe in climate change, but if they think free enterprise can solve it.

“We’ve got to build the confidence of the right so that they can send the tribal leaders down to the river to meet with the other tribe’s leaders,” Mr Inglis said.

Free enterprize has solved it. When people are free to choose, 98% don’t buy carbon credits.

 

Story – The Australian (paywalled)

9 out of 10 based on 67 ratings

Baby corals learn from mummy corals warming lessons

Corals survived through four hundred million years of climate change. Despite that, corals still surprise survivors of four years of academia with their ability to keep dealing with climate change.

It’s been known for years that after corals bleach in warmer water, they acclimatize.

Here one shiny young researcher shows her carbonnointed worldview. She asks a really interesting question:

In one study of corals, for instance, she exposed adults to increased temperature and acidification, then exposed their offspring to the same conditions to see if they are more successful because of their parents’ previous experience.

Then sees the answer through AlGoreEyes:

“Interestingly, we found that there is potential for beneficial acclimatization because of parental history,” she said. “There is a more positive metabolic response and ecological response, greater survivorship and growth if their parents have been preconditioned to future scenarios.”

What’s the difference: “Preconditioned to future scenarios” or “Evolved to survive past ones”?

Not a reference

University of Rhode Island. “Professor examines effects of climate change on coral reefs, shellfish.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 February 2017. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170221082101.htm>

8.8 out of 10 based on 60 ratings

If Greens cared about CO2 they would dump renewable targets

Those who say they want a “free market” in carbon still don’t understand what a free market is.

Wind farm, RET, Renewable Energy Target,RET’s or Renewable Energy Targets are screwed (in the head): If Tony Abbotts Direct Action plan was useless, RETS are five times more useless.

In Australia the Renewable Energy Target (RET) in theory, helps wind and solar,  so we lower CO2 emissions and cool the world, slow storms, things like that. But Tom Quirk calculates it costs $57 a ton (at best) for those “savings”. Since the Direct Action plan cost $11 a ton,  we could reduce five times as much CO2 if we blew up the RET scheme.

The secret is that the Abbott plan tackled CO2 directly rather than picking winners (see “competition”,
“free markets” that sort of thing).  Predictably, the Greens hated it — who needs CO2 reduction if you can support big-government-loving industries instead? (Especially the kind who lobby for the side of politics that wants more bureaucrats, more handouts, and less independent competition?)

Those who say they want a “free market” in carbon still don’t understand what a free market is. It’s pretty simple, if they want a reduction in CO2, they need to pay for a reduction in CO2. That’s not the same as paying the wind industry. When a subsidy is applied to a secondary, indirect factor, it has perverse effects other than the supposed original aim. Quirk shows that we are not just paying a bit more to reduce CO2 this way (like 500% more), but quixotically we effectively pay more to displace gas emissions rather than brown coal.

The other perverse effect is that by insisting we take wind and solar “whenever” — these generators are not competing in the wholesale market at all, they simply bypass it and head straight to the retail level. Effectively, they take a chunk out of the demand side of the wholesale market which would be useful at peak load times,

The RET started at 2%, is now 12.5% and is climbing to 25%.

In Table 2 we see that utilization (or capacity factor) is very low for all the generation types in SA. A great deal of infrastructure and capital is just lounging around drinking pina coladas or something. Ironically, the whole free market idea is so botched up that  SA has an oversupply of electricity, yet pays more for electricity and suffers more blackouts. Tom Quirk calculates that the RET currently adds 2.15c for wind power and 0.26c for solar to power bills in SA. This does not include the cost of state based schemes, nor the diabolical effect of having an excess of supply at the wrong times and perverse subsidies:  price spikes and volatility. The real cost is o-so-much higher…

Jo

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States of confusion

Guest Post by Tom Quirk

The Renewal Energy Target (RET) scheme is a splendid example of the growth of a policy cancer that if not checked will do substantial economic damage. The scheme was introduced during the time of the Howard government with a target of 2% contribution from renewable sources of electricity and has grown tenfold within the federal government jurisdiction and has spread to state governments that aim to double the present federal target of some 25% renewable energy contribution by 2030.

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