….
|
|
||||
|
UPDATE: MELBOURNE hospitals are enacting emergency procedures to prepare for the potential loss of power. Hospitals are switching off non-essential electrical equipment, including some lights, to minimize energy use. This is a “Code Yellow” alert asking hospitals to check their back up generators are ready. The Victorian Minister insists this is not about the “threat” of blackouts, but because hospitals need to be “good corporate citizens”. Pull the other one. At the very least, this is about reducing electricity bills. h/t Chris in Hervey Bay. See further UPDATES on “The art of blaming coal” at the bottom. How much fun can you have? The AEMO (Australian Energy Market Operator) projects that as temperatures hit 42C in Victoria, prices are forecast to rise over 100 fold. The AEMO is furiously busy issuing market notices. The ABC tells us it is 42C, that Portland Alumina has reduced production, but for an ‘undisclosed price’ (why can’t taxpayers know what they are paying this group, not to produce aluminium today?) Meanwhile the AEMO has put the RERT plan into action: “Under the RERT scheme, AEMO has contracted 884 megawatts of “demand side response” across Victoria, NSW and South Australia.” Translated, that means the AEMO has organised 884MW of controlled blackouts to prevent the system breaking. What’s the cost! For the next three hours Victoria is short of reserve by an eye-watering 1090MW. There is an Actual Lack of Reserve, level 1 (LOR1): “The Actual LOR1 condition is forecast to exist until 1800 hrs. The contingency capacity reserve required is 1120 MW. The minimum reserve available is 32 MW. “ South Australia has been upgraded to a LOR2 (2nd level) requiring 350MW but having only 32MW available. (Why the exact same number?). The next level up, LOR3 would mean “unexpected load shedding blackouts are likely.“ These industries would not be shutting down and prices would not be this high if Hazelwood power station was still open, last March it was producing 1,400MW at $30/MWh. Total NEM demand is just about 30,000MW, but this is far from being a record high (which I recall as being around 35,000MW). Fossil Fuels are producing 25,000MW of the total, or 83%. Right now, Australia’s entire East Coast wind fleet is working at 20% capacity, and producing about 700MW and falling. Victoria: …
SA: …
Or you can watch the state level electricity flows. Right now SA — the leading international star of renewable energy — is getting 350MW from Victoria, which is in turn, getting 700 MW from NSW and Tasmania. Queensland is sending 1,000 MW to keep the rest of the grid alive. Look at those prices! Tasmania, through some miracle of government run markets, is paying people to take electricity during these highest peak, most valuable hours of the year, when every other generator is about to earn millions. Go figure?
 … Apart from wasting millions of dollars, the Australian NEM might get through today just fine. But if anything goes wrong… Australian Electricity Generation by source:
Questions for the crowd:
The art of blaming coalIn the news at the moment people are saying coal is unreliable. But in the current bipartisan hostile anti-coal government scene — who would invest in and repair old stations? The rest of the world is building new coal. Only in Australia is there a bizarre subsidy-bubble where renewables make more “sense”. (OK, sorry, obviously the UK and Germany — also bonkers. Probably Spain, Italy, Denmark too.) TonyFromOz points out that only 3 of 49 coal units are out of action: Australia has 16 coal fired power plants and 49 Units at those plants. Currently, just three of those Units are off line. One is Liddell Number Two, now down for more than seven Months, and I have questions whether it will ever come back on line if the plan is to close the plant down, so why would they bother fixing it back up and realistically wasting the money if they plan to close it down. Then there are two Units in Queensland down, one at Gladstone and the other at Kogan Creek. So, that takes 1520MW out of the system. That leaves us with the total Nameplate for the remaining Units at 21500MW. Yesterday at around 4PM, just on Peak Power time, those 46 Units were generating 20200MW. So, they were, all of them, running virtually flat out, generating at a Capacity Factor of 94%. Barring a few plants in Queensland, all of them are older than the best case hoped for lifespan of 25 years for wind plants. UPDATE: The Sydney Morning Herald is blaming the failure of one coal station for the high prices yesterday: h/t Dave B Cole Latimer — The Australian Energy Market Operator has kicked off emergency measures to protect power supply after Victoria’s Loy Yang B brown coal-fired power station failed on Thursday afternoon, sending electricity spot prices soaring. As temperatures rose around southern Australia Loy Yang B’s generators failed at around 4pm, instantly taking around 528 megawatts of energy out of the state’s grid. The price rises to the cap were predicted by the AEMO yesterday before Loy Yang B’s generator problem. The prices simply did what the AEMO said they would. How can this be due to coal power? ___________________________________ LATE NOTE: Explanation of AEMO TermsLOR1 – Lack of Reserve: The safety margin is smaller than it should be, but services won’t be affected (as long as nothing breaks). LOR2: Things are even more marginal, and services will (hopefully) not be affected. The AEMO can start bringing in diesels and “demand response” type activities. (ie. This costs real money). LOR3: Even more serious, and load shedding is possible. January 19th, 2018 | Tags: Coal, Electricity Cost, Electricity Grids, SA (South Australia), Victoria | Category: Electricity, Global Warming, Grids |  Print This Post | | Watching the AEMO dashboard as a hot summer day hits Is this the summer crunch-time that the the National Grid managers have been fearing? Today things are not running smoothly in the green states of Victoria and SA where prices this minute have hit $14,000 per MW hour, or $14 per KWh. These are wholesale prices. Right now heads of major industries are watching the dashboard, turning off everything they can turn off, or switching on the diesel generators, or counting hundreds of thousands or even millions being added to their bills if production cannot stop. Demand Management schemes (a form of load shedding) will be running to reduce demand — air conditioners will be remotely switched down. How much of the productive brain power of Vic and SA is distracted from more useful tasks today? The AEMO has put out an Actual Lack of Reserve Notice (LOR1) saying that Victoria is 300 MW short: “The contingency capacity reserve required is 1100 MW. The minimum reserve available is 815 MW”. Another notice of a “non-credible contingency event” (a code for “something broke”) reports that a busbar, transformer, and line have tripped or opened in Victoria, unplanned. Victoria … SA … The notices and forecast for tomorrow are worseWith a few hot days in a row, as buildings get warmer and tempers get shorter, people use more electricity. Hence even if temperatures don’t rise, the longer a hot spell goes, the higher the electricity demand. This is the 30 minute graph including price and demand, and the forecasts for tomorrow. As far as I can tell, often the shocking forecasts which look like being 3 solid hours of $14,000 electricity will instead resolve to smaller shorter spikes. But millions of dollars of productivity is likely to be burned. Victoria Times here are Western Standard Time 3 hours behind actual. (It’s an unhelpful thing the AEMO site does). In SA: Times here are Western Standard Time 3 hours behind actual. (It’s an unhelpful thing the AEMO site does).
January 18th, 2018 | Tags: Electricity Cost, Electricity Grids | Category: Electricity, Global Warming, Grids | Print This Post | | Insidious is the word
Twitter employee admits they target conservatives, and shadowban them:Daniel Greenfield: How do you know you’ve been shadowbanned? You may be tweeting, but you’re no longer being heard. You wonder if maybe people just aren’t interested in what you have to say. But they might be interested. Twitter just isn’t interested in letting them read your messages. Shadowbanning is the censorship that social media companies do in the shadows. It’s cowardly and dishonest. And it’s how the big firms get away with covertly censoring conservatives. “The idea of a shadow ban is that you ban someone but they don’t know they’ve been banned, because they keep posting and no one sees their content,” Abhinav Vadrevu, a former Twitter employee, explains in Project Veritas’ undercover investigation of the company. “They just think that no one is engaging with their content, when in reality, no one is seeing it.” Twitter employees are so closeted (and selected) they have no idea that real people may even be patriots who talk about guns, flags, or the cross. Algorithms pick up these words, and “delete accounts that twitter employees think are bots. ” Some Social Justice Warriors (SJW’s) may never have met an outspoken patriot. Conservatives Are Being Destroyed by Facebook, Twitter and Google Without Even Realizing It,By John Hawkins:
Facebook bleeds groups dry slowly:
Youtube is demonetizing conservatives and libertarians:
These giant monopolies are staffed and owned by people who really do despise you:
Fight back, spread the word. First we make sure everyone knows. Then we find alternatives and take back the schools, the movies, and grow the alt-media. Despite all this concerted, organised, dirty-work, Trump still won, over half the population in western nations are skeptical, and the extreme left have parked themselves far out on bizarre, indefensible ideas. Windmills won’t hold back the tide, and almost no one believes they will. The bubble will pop, it’s fragile, which is why the deluded and rent-seeking are working so hard to stop the sensible masses from even talking to each other. They are ripe for the mocking, and we still have free speech. h/t David E Shadowbanned through their own home P.C., –Ruairi * * * PS: I’m a slack slack tweeter (four months between messages). I don’t think my tweets are being blocked. If you “follow me” @JoanneNova, can you check now, and find a way to let me know if you can’t see the tweet today in your account? Thanks. January 18th, 2018 | Tags: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | … The electric car push is on. Sadly, what people save on petrol bills looks like it’s going to be spent on electricity or tax.
Steve Goreham outlines the international push to get our cars and heaters electrified. But the dark alter-implication of electrification is renewables. (No point in driving a coal driven car.) It follows then, that electrification of everything that isn’t already electrificated, will mean more solar, more wind, and then more decimal places on your electricity bill. Welcome to the Bermuda triangle of cost savings in a subsized-mandated-unfree-market. The more you save, the less you have.
We all know wind power is “free”, but somehow costs seem to keep rising in places with more wind power. It’s so unfair:
Inconvenient Factoid: Electricity prices in most top “wind” powered US states rose 2 – 7 times faster than in other states
Read and weep Australians. Pedal faster:
“…on average US electricity prices increased less than five percent during the eight years from 2008 to 2016″
Some US consumers are still paying rates in single digits.
For contrast, the Australian situation, is pathos and bathos simultaneously:
Australian households are paying 60 per cent more for their power than those in the US and double their Canadian counterparts after enjoying the third-lowest electricity prices of any OECD nation a decade ago. — Simon Benson
See the graph. Please someone tell me why Texas prices have fallen. Is that shale oil I see? Wikipedia tells me “Texas produces the most wind electricity in the U.S., but also has the highest Carbon Dioxide Emissions of any state.” Ahhh. — Jo
UPDATE: From comments below and from Goreham — Texas electricity is deregulated, so competition is fierce, and obviously it also has shale.
_________________________________________
Electrification—The Road to Higher Energy PricesGuest post by Steve Goreham, Climate Science Coalition of America Originally published in Master Resource. “Electrification” is the new buzz word touted by climate fighters and environmental groups. Where electrification once meant providing electricity to people, today it often means elimination of traditional fuels. But the only tangible result of green electrification policies will be higher energy prices. Proponents of electrification intend to force transportation and heating and cooling systems to run on electricity, and eliminate the use of hydrocarbon fuels. Electric cars, electric furnaces and water heaters, and heat pumps must replace gasoline-powered vehicles and gas-fueled appliances. In addition, wind or solar systems must supply the electricity, not power plants using coal or natural gas, in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. California’s 2017 Climate Change Scoping Plan calls for a 40-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and an 80-percent reduction by 2050. Goals call for 4.2 million plug-in electric and plug-in hybrid cars on California roads by 2030, up from about 300,000 today. The plan also calls for electrification of space and water heating. Utility Southern California Edison (SCE) recommends an even more aggressive plan. The SCE “Clean Power and Electrification Pathway” plan calls for 7 million electric cars on California roads by 2030 and for one-third of state residents to replace their gas-fired furnaces and appliances by 2030. Nine other states promote adoption of electric cars as part of a broad electrification program. New England states are exploring “strategic electrification” in order to meet tough emissions reduction goals. In most of these efforts, cost to consumers is rarely discussed.  Graph, increase in costs of electricity in wind powered states of the USA. Electrification has become a global quest. Germany, Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom propose to ban sales of internal combustion engine cars by 2040. The Dutch government proposes to eliminate gas as a source of heating and cooking from all homes by 2050. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht announced intentions to become “gas-less neighborhoods.” Keep reading →
We were destined to be an abandoned ghost town with worthless property: Perth is set to become the world’s first ‘Ghost City’ according to a long-term weather forecaster and a news anchor. “I’m reading here that unless drastic action is taken, Perth could become the world’s first ghost city – a modern metropolis abandoned by the 1.7 million people there for lack of water,” she said. Tim Flannery started the Ghost Town scare in 2004. He felt the best way to fill WA dams was to vote for emissions reductions. As I write, the remnants of a small cyclone are raining down on us in midsummer, which the ABC earlier warned was a “deluge” dropping “three months of rain”. What they don’t mention is that, even before this “downpour” (of 90 mm or 4 inches so far), Perth Dams already have 35% more water than at the same time last year, and an extra 69 gigalitres of the precious wet stuff. We have more water than we’ve had since 2009, and more is on the way. WA Water corporation data shows Perth Dams have 267GL of water which is 42% of capacity (unusually good for Perth).  Perth Dam Levels Jan 2018 By the way, this graph from December includes the bumper year of 2009 (for comparison). So far in the last 24 hours we’ve had 90mm, which is unusual for Perth in summer, but hardly a “deluge”. Perhaps that’s why the ABC changed their headline. The Water Corp says 70 Billion Litres is Nothing to See Here…You might think this was “good”, but the WA Water Corporation helpfully explains that this extra 70 billion litres is “little”, “slight” and may not even be from rainfall, (though those figures are strangely unavailable): What does this mean?Our metro dams are currently holding Perth’s recent rainfall is welcome but it has made little difference to our dam levels. While it may look like dam levels are increasing slightly at this time of year, this may not be the result of increased streamflow. The water in our dams is no longer just made up of inflows from rain. Groundwater and desalinated water are stored in these dams during periods of low demand so it is available when it is most needed in the hotter months. And if that extra 70GL is not from rain, somebody tell me why we might be pumping groundwater or adding expensive desalinated water into our dams in a year with average rainfall? Curiously, the numbers at the Bureau of Meteorology are different, shows Perth’s Water Storage is 37% and only 216GL — somehow 50 billion litres are water are missing. Despite average rain and well stocked dams, it is always the time to panicThe local State Minister for Water says there is no escaping the impact of climate change on our dams and rivers. Here’s a headline from last month: WA rivers losing climate change battleSophie Moore, News.com.au, December 2017 (Here’s a similar story from AAP) Rivers in the southwest region of WA are struggling to cope with the impact of climate change despite average winter rainfalls returning to the area. Got more rain than usual? That’s climate change: Mr Kelly said the February rainfall was another example of climate change where more extreme and unusual weather is predicted. “River flows are one of the best indicators for measuring the effects of reduced rainfall,” he said. Because when you get extra rainfall we need to talk about the effects of something that didn’t happen. “What this year shows is there is no escaping the impact of climate change, which is not only reducing flow to our water supply dams but to our rivers as well.” Another effect of climate change is that journalists will write self-evident contradictions, internally inconsistent stories, and general click-bait meaningless climate drivel. The well of nonsense is deep and no end is in sight, no matter what the climate does. And general climate noise can always provide mindless cherry-pickable truthisms: Keep reading → January 15th, 2018 | Tags: Australian rainfall, Predictions (that went wrong) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | … By Crikey! Birds are deliberately using fire as a tool. Humans are not the only animals on Earth setting things on fire. Aerial arsonists are on the loose. Sneaky Australian raptors have been spotted picking up burning sticks, or even stealing them from a campfire and then deliberately dropping them on grass so they can feast on rodents fleeing from the fire. Apparently they do this in hunting packs, and will drop the burning stick half a mile away on the far side of waterways or roads. Aboriginal people have been talking about this for years, but no one quite believed it. This really puts a spanner in the works of the fire management plans. So much for firebreaks. Someone is going to have to get these birds to apply for permits.  Australian raptors can spread fires. Credit: Bob Gosford Australian Birds Steal Fire to Smoke Out PreyLive Science, Mindy Weisberger Three species of raptors — predatory birds with sharp beaks and talons, and keen eyesight — are widely known not only for lurking on the fringes of fires but also for snatching up smoldering grasses or branches and using them to kindle fresh flames, to smoke out mammal and insect prey. Australian birds have weaponized fireDick Eussen thought he had the fire beat. It was stuck on one side of a highway deep in the Australian outback. But it didn’t look set to jump. And then, suddenly, without warning or obvious cause, it did. Eussen, a veteran firefighter in the Northern Territory, set off after the new flames. He found them, put them out, then looked up into the sky. What he saw sounds now like something out of a fairy tale or dark myth. A whistling kite, wings spread, held a burning twig in its talons. It flew about 20 metres ahead of Eussen and dropped the ember into the brittle grass. And the fire kicked off once again. All told that day, Eussen put out seven new flare-ups, according to a research paper published recently in the Journal of Ethnobiology. All of them, he claims, were caused by the birds and their burning sticks. What’s more, the paper argues, the birds might well have been doing it on purpose. Birds of Prey Deliberately Setting Forests On FireScience Alert, Peter Dockrill According to the team, firehawk raptors congregate in hundreds along burning fire fronts, where they will fly into active fires to pick up smouldering sticks, transporting them up to a kilometre (0.6 miles) away to regions the flames have not yet scorched. “The imputed intent of raptors is to spread fire to unburned locations – for example, the far side of a watercourse, road, or artificial break created by firefighters – to flush out prey via flames or smoke,” the researchers write. Live Science: Scientists recently collected and evaluated reports from Aboriginal and nonindigenous people of these so-called firehawks — black kites (Milvus migrans), whistling kites (Haliastur sphenurus) and brown falcons (Falco berigora) The range of the birds’ reported fire stealing spans a significant area measuring approximately 1,490 by 620 miles (2,400 by 1,000 kilometers) across part of northern Australia, the scientists reported. From their reports, a behavioral pattern emerged: Firehawks (also described as kitehawks, chickenhawks and, on several occasions by non-Aboriginals, s—hawks) purposely swiped burning sticks or grasses from smoldering vegetation — or even from human cooking fires — and then made off with the brands and dropped them into unburned areas… Australia is such a highly evolved nation of fire, the trees drop incendiary bark, plants are pyrophytic, the indigenous people did firestick farming, and even the birds are arsonists.REFERENCEMark Bonta, Robert Gosford, Dick Eussen,Nathan Ferguson Erana LovelessMaxwell Witwer (2017) Intentional Fire-Spreading by “Firehawk” Raptors in Northern Australia, Journal of Ethnobiology Dec 2017 : Vol. 37, Issue 4 Special Section: Birds II, pg(s) 700- 718 https://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-37.4.700 January 14th, 2018 | Tags: Birds, Fires | Category: Birds, Fauna, Fire, Global Warming | Print This Post | | Forget 2 degrees of warming, Hawking says “460”.Oh, look, there goes another attention-seeking celebrity scientist — flaming out –watch the arc: In the second episode of his new series “Stephen Hawking’s Favorite Places,” the British physicist warns Earth could soon become as hot as Venus if action to halt climate change is not taken immediately. Now temperatures on Venus reach 250°C with powerful 300mph winds. Hawking says a greenhouse effect burned the planet’s oceans and lands, and that something similar could happen right here on Earth if climate change continues unabated. “Next time you meet a climate-change denier, tell them to take a trip to Venus; I will pay the fare,” says the physicist in his show. Sadly, Hawking is an atmosphere-denier. Venus’s atmosphere is ninety times denser than the Earths. The lapse rate* just goes on and on through 60 kilometers of “air” and Venus ends up with a 467 degree surface, just like Earth would if it had an atmosphere this thick. (See these calculations.) When Hawking yells “Venus”, I yell back “Mars”. Both have atmospheres of 95% CO2, but one is 467 degrees and the other is minus 40. Hawking may say “but the Martian atmosphere is thin”. I would say “Exactly“! It’s not the percentage of CO2 that matters most, it’s the thickness of the atmosphere. On Earth, to get the same atmospheric pressure you need to get down about a kilometer below sea-level or 50 kilometers down a mine shaft, which is 40 kilometers deeper than anyone has ever dug. Hawking can save himself the money for my fare to Venus, and get himself a ticket to Mars. He wants to go to there anyway, so I’m doing him a favour. Keep reading → Compare the outrage: Germany abandons carbon target, but stays in Paris agreement. US abandons Paris, but makes actual “carbon” cuts. One of these nations is a global pariah. BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s would-be coalition partners have agreed to drop plans to lower carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, sources familiar with negotiations said on Monday — And this is a problem, how? — a potential embarrassment for Chancellor Angela Merkel. Oh.? Well, it’s only dates and numbers anyway: Instead, they would aim to hit the 40 percent target in the early 2020s, the sources said, adding that both parties are still sticking to their goal of achieving a 55 percent cut in emissions by 2030. Which is more important, paper promises you don’t keep, or lower outputs of “planet destroying gas”? Nevermind about CO2.  Source: Washington Times US Outshines other countries in CO2 emission reduction. In other unrelated news: Wind energy is taking over the world, highly competitve and in Germany — collapsing. The German wind market is “threatening to implode”:In the past year alone, more than 2,000 employees in this sector have lost their jobs. Locations like Carbon Rotec in Lemwerder or Powerblades in Bremerhaven have been closed. The Hamburg wind turbine manufacturer Senvion had to go 660 full-time employees. Nordex , the second large wind power company based in the Hanseatic city, wants to cut up to 500 jobs due to eroding profits. And Enercon, the German market leader with more than 20,000 employees worldwide, recently announced “unpopular measures” to cut costs. Read the article. Try to explain the problem in 25 words or less. As far as I can tell, for some reason, the German government cannot design enough loopholes to allow this revolutionary, cheap, technology to make a decent profit. Tony Thomas has unearthed a ten year old document that reads like a wet dream for mini-climate dictators. It envisages, by 2028, that the first climate skeptics will be convicted of denying the existence of climate change and exiled to three penal colonies in, wait for it, Kerguelen Island, South Georgia and New Zealand’s South Island. Magically, these are “International convict settlements.” So it’s globalist prisons for the deplorables who say unpermitted things, because they are so bad, we wouldn’t want them mixing with normal criminals back home who believe in climate change but rort the carbon markets. Luckily their fantasy fiction is even less accurate than climate models. By 2030 they are tipping Africa as an economic powerhouse: 2030 … the global economy today is less dominated by the big three of China, India and the US. Instead, economic blocs such as the African Union, the Latin American Trade Council and the Alliance of Turkic States have emerged as powerful players on the scene. As Tony Thomas points out they also estimated oil would rise from $150 in 2008 to $400 by 2022. So far it has risen all the way to $60. They also predicted a global depression in 2009-18. Instead we got “Dow Record highs “. I guess they didn’t see Donald Trump coming either. And by 2020 they predict that not only will there be no snow in the Northern Hemisphere, there will be “No more Winter.” Though I expect Canadians and Americans are disappointed to know that five feet of snow can still fall in a New Year “spring”.
 Forum for the Future This dream is so wet it should come with flood warnings: “In most cases this [emissions control] has happened gradually, ratcheting up over time, with citizens surrendering control of their lives piecemeal rather than all at once, as trading regimes, international law, lifestyles and business have responded to the growing environmental crisis. “Expensive, state-funded information campaigns reinforce the need for changes to lifestyles and aim to keep the mandate for state intervention strong. Inevitably parallels are drawn between this and the authoritarian state propaganda of the twentieth century. “‘Climate crime’ is a social faux pas everywhere, but in some countries it is a crime to publicly question the existence of anthropogenic climate change or to propose actions that could in some way contribute to climate change. “It is very rare to come across dissenting voices with any real power, but resistance to overly strong state intervention is occasionally violent. The media in some countries has been permitted to discuss … The climate futures fantasy would also look like manna for simple sheeple who ache to get off the treadmill, grow kale, and tye-dye hemp shirts, but don’t have the balls to go do it unless everyone is forced to join them. As loopy as this sounds, look at the list of supporters?Commenter — Manfred posts Go to Wikipedia and download the Forum for the Future
Tips and homeless ideas… This was Sydney before “Climate Change” hit — fifty degrees:Penrith may have recorded 47.3C for at least one-second this week, but Windsor is only 23 km north-east of Penrith, and on January 13th, 1939, it recorded 122F or 50.5C with an old fashioned liquid thermometer, not a modern noisy electronic one. Apparently, climate change makes our extreme heat less extreme. Furthermore, this was not measured on a beer crate in someones back-yard, but on the historic Windsor Observatory which was built in 1863 by John Tebbutt F.R.A.S who had discovered The 1861 comet, and published many scientific reports in Astronomical Journals. His meteorological observations are published at Harvard in 1899 (among others). Tebbutt died in 1916, so it’s not clear what instrument the 122 F was recorded on in 1939, but a Stevenson Screen had been installed around 40 years earlier, and the measurement was made by Mr Keith Tebbutt, presumably his son. Tebbutt’s portrait graced the back of our 100 dollar note from 1984 -1996. See, Many Collapse in the Heat: Thursday Jan, 12, 1939, The Northern Star  Windsor Observatory | Photo: Winston M. Yang Wyp All part of Greater Metropolitan SydneyIn 1939, I doubt either town was considered part of Sydney. But now both are on the metro network. Penrith is 54km from the CBD, Windsor, 56km. Notably, Windsor is a few train stops closer than Richmond, which the BOM acknowledges recorded 47.8C in 1939 on January 14, three days after the high of 122F recorded at Windsor. Apparently Penrith that particular day, January 11th, was 110F, while Richmond was 115F or 46.1C. Neither Penrith nor Windsor appear to be recognised in BOM climate records. Extreme heat of long ago — 48.2C (118F) at Windsor in 1896:Thanks to Warwick Hughes, who has been looking at Windsor historic records too: The Windsor and Richmond Gazette for Sat 18 Jan 1896 Page 6 Hawkesbury Heat – On Monday 13 Jan 1896 John Tebbutt’s Observatory recorded 118.8°F or 48.2°C – also well clear of the 47.3 at Penrith last Sunday. So in 1896, as recorded in an old liquid in glass instrument, temperatures were very similar to 2017, as recorded with an electronic sensor. The old thermometer was probably reading a bit high in a Greenwich Screen, but the new thermometer is reading a bit high due to electronic noise. It follows then if the BOM was interested in our climate history, they could build side-by-side models and figure out how to compare these historic records. That they don’t — when climate is the Biggest Threat To Human Civilization — tells us all we need to know about how interested the BOM is in the climate history of Australia. Imagine if Tebbutt’s 40 years of records from the late 1800s showed a cooler climate? Hands up, who thinks studying them would have been a hot topic for Australian PhD students…  Note the Stevenson Screen and Greenwich Screen side by side at Windsor Observatory in 1906. h/t Daily Telegraph. More extreme heat — 117.1 F was recorded in 1878Yesterday (Sunday) the shade temperature at this Observatory reached 116.8 degrees, or the same as that attained on the 6th instant. To-day, however, the maximum recorded was 118.8degs, the highest experienced here since 1862. The next highest was recorded in 1878 when the thermometer registered 117.1 degrees. During the 33 years of my experience I have never till today recorded as high as 100 degrees at 9 o’clocka.m. At that hour this morning the reading was 102.8 degrees, and at 6 o’clock this evening the temperature had not sunk below 105 degrees. From what I have stated it will be seen that the heat of to-day is quite phenomenal. — JOHN TEBBUTT. The Observatory, Windsor, January 13, 1896. Old Windsor Observatory — more scientific than the modern BOM?Here’s a bit of curious history. At Windsor Observatory there was a Greenwich Stand from 1862 til at least 1897, then a Stevenson screen was added: At Windsor the old Greenwich stand was employed ever since 1862, while at the College the thermometers are enclosed in a Stevenson’s stand. I suggested that a Greenwich stand should be placed beside the Stevenson’s stand and a series of comparisons be made with both modes of exposure in order to get an equation Tebbutt made comparisons between Greenwich stand and the Stevenson, and published them, putting him ahead of the current $365 million a year Australian Bureau of Meteorology which has not published side-by-side comparisons of the two main thermometer types currently in use: In accordance with the suggestion recorded on page 17 of the last Annual Report, I have had constructed a Stevenson’s themo- meter screen exactly similar to that employed at the Hawkesbury Agricultural College. It has been placed beside the old Greenwich stand employed at this Observatory during the past thirty-eight years, and a series of themometer comparisons is now being conducted in order to get an equation between the results derived from the two methods of exposure. I trust to be able to give, in my Report for 1901, a table embodying the results of these comparisons. The readings in the Greenwich stand are, as anticipated, considerably higher than those in the Stevenson’s screen. It’s hard to tell, but as best as I can make out from an unformatted text page, at very high temperatures — over 100F, the Greenwich screen recorded temperatures about 2-5 F higher. (I’d like to see the original, can anyone help find it?) For what it’s worth, the old Observatory has been renovated and was on the market this year “for the first time in 170 years” for $5 m. January 9th, 2018 | Tags: Australian temperatures, BOM | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | The decrepit legacy media is now so low there are competing stories in the same week discussing which form of decay is the worst. Is it that the media suppresses the good news, or that it amplifies the bad — throwing fake mud that is never cleaned up? It’s two sides of the same corrupt, self serving coin. Pass on these links to friends who think the legacy media still has journalists with , a) a backbone or b) ethics. Suppressing the Good News is the media’s dirtiest tacticSteve Sheldon Here are headlines you won’t read in almost any major American newspaper, hear on any of the evening news programs, or see in your Yahoo “news” feed: Dow Hits 87 Record Closes Since Trump Elected Texas Hero Was NRA Instructor Dow Reaches Four 1,000 Point Milestones in One Year for the First Time Ever ISIS on the Run, Almost Completely Destroyed New Home Sales Highest in a Decade Texas Hero Uses AR-15 to Save the Day Dow Hits Two Streaks Lasting More Than Ten Days, First Time Since 1959 Trump Donates One Million Dollars of His Own Money to Hurricane Victims U.S. Economy Gains Over Six Trillion in New Capital U.S. Senator Viciously Attacked by Deranged Socialist Neighbor U.S. Economy Grows at 3% for First Time Since Bush Administration Unemployment Rate Lowest in 17 Years h/t David E. Smear: Toss enough fake mud and make anything dirtySharyl Attkinson describes the abject decay of journalistic ethics as opinions become fake facts, and mistakes are rarely corrected. A Prager video. Thanks to MichaelSmith news. “Why no one trusts the mainstream media anymore” h/t Another Ian Spread the word. January 8th, 2018 | Tags: Media bias | Category: Global Warming, Media-matters | Print This Post | | The BOM announced it was the hottest ever day in Sydney today, then realized it had it wrong, but not before headlines spread across the country. For a million dollars a day you’d think the BOM would check their own “high quality” database. A scientific agency would take great care before announcing “historic all time records”for a city of five million people. A shameless PR agency might see that sort of mistake as an advantage. It’s careless, piled on rank neglectEven if the day had been “a record”, the temperatures are often artificially inflated due to site changes, thermometer changes, and the one-second-record effect thanks to the introduction of electronic thermometers, all of which are a product of careless BOM management and analysis. And even over and above that, past temperatures have been adjusted or homogenised downwards — often years after they are recorded — and by secret methods that the BOM will not disclose. I’ll have more information soon on changes at Sydney Observatory, that the BOM don’t make any allowance for. Looks like another one second record?The BOM announced the record after Penrith hit 47.1 at 1:55pm, the BOM tweet wrongly claimed it had “broken the all time maximum temperature record for … the Sydney Metropolitan area”. Later, they updated that Penrith was 47.3 at 3:25pm. They did not mention that the observations showed that five minutes after the first “record” at 2pm it was only 46.0, so temperatures fell as much as 1.1C in five minutes. Again, five minutes after the second at 3:30, temperatures fell to 46.5. How long did the 47.3 record last? It might have been just one single second. Electronic equipment picks up one second noise (like the two stars on the graph below) which the BOM unscientifically converts into tweets and headlines. Other countries average electronic readings over one to five minutes so they can be compared to the older records.  The half hourly readings are marked in red. The “one second records” that the BOM uses for historic data and newspaper headlines are marked as stars.  … From 1859 until 1990, mercury and alcohol thermometers could not possibly produce “one second records”. For 130 years, they missed all this noise. The BOM may be only scientific institute in the world that doesn’t seem to know the difference between electronic buzz and slowly expanding liquids in glass. And they appear to be working to keep it that way — the comparison data that would show the difference between old thermometers is being destroyed as routine practice. “All time” is deceptive, misleading erasing historyHow many Australians now think today was the Hottest Ever Day in Sydney, making the 1939 heatwave a bit more invisible? The Penrith Lakes station only started recording in 1995, so this “all-time” record was not necessarily a record for anyone in Penrith over the age of 22. The Sydney Morning Herald claimed it went back to 1859, because that’s when records started at Sydney Observatory. But there was no official BOM station in Penrith in 1939 or 1896, two notoriously hot years, when it might have been hotter. In 1896 in Kiama, south of Sydney on the coast it was 117F (47.2C). In Camden, 45km south of Penrith they recorded 125F. That’s 50.5C! Naturally, these are not recognised by the BOM — like the scores of other records across Australia that recorded 120 plus in the shade. Were they all wrong? Even a tweet can fit the phrase “since records began in 1995”. Heck, the BOM could probably find the money for a double tweet if it had to. Shouldn’t all records be reported accurately? Normally the media and twitt-o-sphere adds the baseless hype, not the scientific institutions. The Fake News HeadlinesSydney Morning Herald Sydney sizzles through its hottest day on recordPenrith has sweltered to the highest temperature ever recorded in the Greater Sydney region, on a day of baking heat that saw international tennis cancelled and residents flock to the beach in droves. The Penrith observation station reached 47.1 degrees just before 2pm, with the Bureau of Meteorology confirming it was the highest reading ever recorded at the station. That makes it the highest temperature ever recorded in the Greater Sydney region, in records stretching back to 1859. The SMH and ABC both changed the headline and text after the BOM realized they made a mistake. The original ABC Headline appears to have been and may have stood for three hours (hard to tell): Sydney Hits Highest Temperature Ever RecordedThe original link (which contains the headline) now redirects to the newer story. Sydney hits its highest temperature recorded since 1939 with Penrith reaching 47.3CIn a mass syndicated snafu, the news that “Sydney sizzles through its hottest day on record” was shared by the MSN.com site, the SMH Facebook page, The Daily Advertiser, The Herald, The West Australian, The LaTrobe Valley Express, The Port Lincoln Times, the Northern Daily Leader, The Penrith City Gazette, The Bendigo Advertiser, and so on and on to scores more outlets… Many of these publications have back edited or altered the stories post hoc sometimes leaving the headline in contradiction to the first line of the story. None of these news outlets did a google search, or a trove hunt for past hottest headlines. The mass of different mastheads gives the appearance of a free press, but all of them speak as one voice when it comes to the BOM. h/t to Dave B, Andrew, Pat, Scott and Brett. The B.O.M. with their temperature ‘fact’, –Ruairi Blackouts affect 7000 households in NSWHidden among the hottest headlines was a quiet mention: As temperatures soared across the state, thousands of people were left without power, according to electricity provider Ausgrid. Power outages across the NSW Central Coast affected more than 4000 properties, while almost 3000 properties were left without power throughout Sydney. An Ausgrid spokeswoman said while additional load on the network from the high temperatures had contributed to some of the outages, there were several other factors at play. Ah, the mysterious case of the “other factors”? Keep reading → January 8th, 2018 | Tags: BOM, Sydney Morning Herald | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | …. Australia may be the worlds largest exporter of coal, sending out 388 million tons in 2015, but China’s production of coal the same year was 3,747 million tons — nearly ten times as much, and nearly half of global coal production. But the Chinese coal boom is turning. David Archibald describes the geopolitical ramifications. For me, the next question is what stops China doing nukes? — Jo PS: There is a rumor that Australia has only 4-5 days of fuel stocks today, and is especially low on aviation fuel. Anyone with info, please comment or email joanne AT this site. ________________________________________________________ Here is what’s holding back China’s plans for world dominationGuest post By David Archibald
There is no doubt that China wants to subjugate Asia, echoing Japan’s role during World War II. For those who think China’s economy might overtake the United States economy, and thus make China a more formidable adversary, this article aims to provide detail on China’s main constraint in that ambition: that its domestic coal production is near its peak and will then go into long-term decline. Even if China can keep its energy supply constant with an accelerated expansion of its nuclear power sector, the cost of producing coal from deeper mines will mean that the costs of industrial production will rise due to higher feedstock costs. One of the reasons that China produces the world’s cheapest solar panels, for example, is because it has some of the world’s cheapest coal-fired power. German solar panel-producers are hobbled by that country’s energiewende, which, translated from the German, means the miracle required to replace coal and nuclear power with sunbeams and breezes and still have a functioning economy.  Figure 1: The United States and China: Primary Energy Consumption by fuel in 2016.
To put China’s situation in perspective, Figure 1 shows the contributions to total energy supply in China and the United States in 2016 expressed in millions of tonnes of oil equivalent (data from the 2017 BP Statistical Review of World Energy). [Editor’s note: One tonne, or metric ton, is equal to about 1.102 U.S. tons.] Coal absolutely dominates China’s energy supply. This would be good for China if its coal were going to last a long time. But China is depleting is coal endowment rapidly.  Figure 2: World Coal Production, 1830-2014.
One of the reasons why the U.K. dominated the Industrial Revolution is because it was the major coal-producer on the planet at the time. China now dominates world coal production with half the total.  … Figure 3: UK Coal and Oil Production, 1853-2016. What goes up in fossil fuel production must eventually come down. A classic case of that is the U.K., which provides two fossil fuel production peaks. That country’s coal production peaked in 1913 and, over the subsequent century, fell to a little over one hundredth of the peak production rate. Keep reading → Strangely, the more free, clean, green energy we get the more household incomes fail to keep up with inflation. Who would have thought that using inefficient energy in an artificial government-picks-the-winner market could possibly reduce our living standards? Of course, this is not all due to electricity efficiency and pricing. Bill Shock only affects things that need to heat, cool or move. Bill Shock as Standard of Living SlumpsDavid Uren, The Australian
Australians have endured their longest period of falling living standards in more than a quarter of a century as growth in costs outstripped earnings for the fifth consecutive quarter, leaving households worse off than they were six years ago. After allowing for inflation, taxes and interest costs, average household incomes dropped 1.6 per cent in the year to September, capping a sustained fall in living standards that has not been seen since the 1990-91 recession. Economists say more than half the cost increases for households are being driven by electricity, rent, health, new housing and tobacco, while modest wage rises are being partially absorbed by workers being pushed into higher tax brackets.
Energy prices feed into every other cost. Even the value of a house depends on the capacity people have to pay off their mortgage. Higher electricity bills means more expensive food, smaller profit margins, reduced consumer spending, and fewer jobs. The energy transition we-didn’t need-to-have has a hidden price. PS: Can anyone find or create a graph of employment in the renewables energy industry in Australia that is up to date? *The Kyoto Agreement date is just a marker, and indicator of a new government that put “climate change” as a much higher priority. All subsequent governments largely shared that priority. The RET has become increasingly important as the percentage of renewables required to meet the target has risen every year. Rudd was elected in Nov 2007. March 2008 was the point when electricity prices started rising faster than inflation. At what point did “Bill Shock” begin?From this post: Labor wants to waste $100b to make Australian energy 50% renewable, more expensive, by 2030  Electricity prices in Australia. The Carbon Tax was introduced July 2012. Source: Parliamentary Library Note the inflexion point:  …
h/t TdeF Sources:Australian Household Income: ABS, 6523.0 – Household Income and Wealth, Australia, 2015-16 Solar and Wind Generation from Prof Ray Wills page. January 5th, 2018 | Tags: Renewable Energy, RET (Renewable Energy Target) | Category: Global Warming | Print This Post | | ” The Bomb Cyclone isn’t a winter hurricane — just a bad storm with good branding” — Vox A “Bombcyclone” off the East Coast of the USA is verging on, or has broken a record for the fastest drops in pressure. It’s now at 965mb. It’s not a bomb, nor a cyclone, just a common winter storm. Though this one is a bad one which has already dumped snow on Florida– “most snow in three decades”. The hastag Also known as a Blizzard, the National Weather Service forecasting winds as high as 70 miles per hour (113 km per hour), and more than 3,300 flights have been cancelled. — Reuters  BombCyclone, NE USA, Jan 4th. Record breaking? Rarely do you get to see such perfection w/ the structure of a winter storm. Running out of adjectives for this one. Our blizzard has dropped 54 mb’s in 24 hours, making it not only a “meteorological bomb,” but one of the fastest stengthening winter storms in modern history. — @WeatherOptics Roy Spencer explains the Bomb term: The term “bomb” was coined by meteorologist Fred Sanders in 1980 to refer to a non-tropical low pressure area that intensifies at least 24 millibars in 24 hours. They happen every year, and are usually centered offshore in the winter where cold continental air masses meet warm oceanic air masses, providing maximum energy to the intensification process. Bombcyclones are more common than real cyclones, @RyanMaue: Keep reading → January 5th, 2018 | Tags: Extreme weather, Storms | Category: Global Warming, Meteorology | Print This Post | | |
Jo appreciates your support to help her keep doing what she does. This blog is funded by donations. Thanks!
Follow Jo's Tweets
   
 
|
|||
|
Copyright © 2026 JoNova - All Rights Reserved |
||||
Even if you don’t use Twitter or Facebook, you need to know this. If you disagree with big-government intrusion and rampant corruption, these dirty tricks are working against you, though you may never have sent one tweet or opened a facebook account. They’re stopping the thousands who agree with you from meeting, organising, helping each other, and generally clawing back power from the deep state. We’ve known about
South West WA and Perth have been the Australian posterchild for Water-Panic for years.
Recent Comments