“End-Coal” Global Coal Tracker does a magnificent job of showing how essential coal is around the world, and which countries are pathetically backwards in developing new coal plants. It’s probably not what the “CoalSwarm” team was hoping to achieve, but this map is a real asset to those of us who want to show how tiny Australia’s coal fired assets are compared to the rest of the world. The site itself is a fancy-pants high gloss major database and website that also shows how much money is in the “anti-coal” movement. Oh, that skeptics should have even 2% of these funds. Heffa Schücking, the director of Urgewald, which created the maps, calls it a “cycle of coal dependency”. Normal people call it “freedom and wealth”.
These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.
Over all, 1,600 coal plants are planned or under construction in 62 countries, according to Urgewald’s tally, which uses data from the Global Coal Plant Tracker portal. The new plants would expand the world’s coal-fired power capacity by 43 percent.
“Even today, new countries are being brought into the cycle of coal dependency,” said Heffa Schücking, the director of Urgewald.
Coal plants operating and planned for China and Japan
This map undersells the enormity of Chinese coal. Look at the number of turbines in some circles, 46, 56, 77, 167!
Operating or new coal fired plants in China and Japan (Click to Enlarge)
Coal plants operating and planned for USA and Canada
The largest number of turbines in one place is 28.
Operating or new coal fired plants in USA and Canada (Click to Enlarge)
Closed or cancelled coal fired power in the USA and Canada
Closed or cancelled coal fired power in the USA and Canada (click to enlarge)
Coal plants operating and planned for Australia and New Zealand
The two in SA are in Whyalla (not Port Augusta). But the 18 in Victoria include Hazelwood’s turbines, so the map is not entirely up to date. Tell us again how shutting down coal stations in Australia will change storms, floods and cyclones in 2099?
Operating or new coal fired plants in SE Asia (Click to Enlarge)
Coal plants operating and planned for Africa
The saddest map of all. The total population of the whole of the 58 African countries is at 1.15 Billion people, and probably close to 600 Million people or even more have no access whatsoever to any electrical power. TonyfromOz shows how 22 African nations don’t even use as much electricity as the small town of Dubbo (pop. 40,000) in Australia.
Operating or new coal fired plants in Africa (Click to Enlarge)
Coal plants operating and planned for Latin America
Operating or new coal fired plants in Latin America (Click to Enlarge)
Tricky maths in Australia. Should we save $800 million dollars and get stable cheap modern electric power or give that money to renewables giants to help them compete with our fifty year old coal fleet and get us 0.0001% better weather in 2100*? Hmm. What to do?!
A new HELE Coal plant (also known as an Ultra Super Critical — USC– coal generator) would cost $2.2 billion. We currently pay $3b a year in renewables subsidies. A modern coal plant would make 1,000MW of electricity 24 hours a day (and stabilize the grid for free). Renewables subsidies get us free electricity at random moments which we may or may not need, they need expensive gas back up, and add enormous costs to stabilize the grid.
USC coal plants are the lowest cost generation option at $40-$78 per MWh in (2017 prices) on a long run marginal cost basis.
Other synchronous generation had higher wholesale costs, including combined cycle gas at $69-$115 per MWh and open cycle gas at $179-$430 per MWh.
Variable renewable energy (VRE), which is not available 24 hours a day, also has higher costs, including solar at $90-$171 per MWh and wind at $64-$115 per MWh.
….
…
Like Australia, the USA coal fleet is old and cold:
“Among the top 100 most efficient plants in the United States, the initial operating years range from 1967 to 2012. In China, the oldest plant on the top 100 list was commissioned in 2006, and the youngest was commissioned in 2015,” GreenTechMedia
If we cared about emissions intensity, these figures look wildly impressive — is that an 85% reduction in emissions intensity?:
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is important and replacing the existing coal fleet with HELE technology would save 44.2 million tonnes of CO2 or over 25 per cent of National Electricity Market coal generation emissions. At an individual power station level, with the future adoption of CCS, emissions intensity of USC plants would fall from 0.773 to 0.106 tonnes CO2/MWh.
So having some solar waste panels lying around is not exactly like having a second-hand nuclear fuel rod in the basement, but there will be Gigatons-to-Go, the volume is spectacular, and we can’t eat cadmium for breakfast. There will literally be a mountain of toxic garbage — and only Europe, apparently, has a rule about solar manufacturers having to collect and figure out what to do with the solar waste. (And with a 25 year lifespan, how much, exactly, is even that worth? Just say “Solyndra“.)
A new study from a group called Environmental Progress shows that solar panels make 300 times more volume of toxic waste per megajoule as nukes do. All estimates like these are based on assumptions and guesses, so perhaps it’s not that bad. The study might be exaggerated, and maybe solar panels are only 100 times larger in volume than nukes eh? Where’s the Green outcry.
Discarded solar panels, piling up around the world, are detrimental to the environment, according to a new study by Environmental Progress.
And carcinogenic.
And teratogenic.
While environmentalist have warned for decades of the hazard of nuclear power, solar panels produce 300 times more toxic waste per unity of energy than nuclear power plants, warns Berkeley, California-based EP.
Discarded solar panels not only contain lead, but chromium and cadmium – both of which are carcinogenic.
Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it.
A recent report found that it would take 19 years for Toshiba Environmental Solutions to finish recycling all of the solar waste Japan produced by 2020. By 2034, the annual waste production will be 70 – 80 times larger than that of 2020.
Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue of nuclear waste.
We found:
Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.
If solar and nuclear produce the same amount of electricity over the next 25 years that nuclear produced in 2016, and the wastes are stacked on football fields, the nuclear waste would reach the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (52 meters), while the solar waste would reach the height of two Mt. Everests (16 km).
In countries like China, India, and Ghana, communities living near e-waste dumps often burn the waste in order to salvage the valuable copper wires for resale. Since this process requires burning off the plastic, the resulting smoke contains toxic fumes that are carcinogenic and teratogenic (birth defect-causing) when inhaled.
If you wonder about the validity of the assumptions (fair enough) check out the Environmental Progress blog. There are some pretty aggressive critics, and some very informed replies (and more in that chain). Look for responses from Michael Shellenberger and Jemin Desai and Mark Nelson (the latter two are the authors).
The government has contracted privately owned South Australian electricity distribution company SA Power Networks to obtain and install 200 megawatts of back-up generation across the state before summer. But despite promising a “detailed costing” would be provided in last week’s state budget, Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis did not offer any such details.
The opposition said the budget had allocated $114m for operational costs in 2017-18 from the $550m energy plan, “indicating the diesel generators are going to be very expensive”.
This $106m sacrifice is expected to reduce global temperature by 0.000C, but will save the premier from being called a climate denier at dinner parties:
“Eighteen months ago the Tasmanian government spent $64m in leasing, site establishment and operational costs for 220MW of diesel generation for three months when a combination of drought and repairs to the Basslink left it short of electricity,” energy spokesman Dan van Holst Pellekaan said. “Rather than spend $8m a year to keep the (coal-fired) Northern Power Station operating, Jay Weatherill has chosen to spend up to $100m a year on diesel generation until the government turns on its promised new gas generator in two years’ time.”
— The Australian, Michael Green.
SA will be building a new gas generator in two years time to take advantage of obscenely high gas prices.
South Australia has the largest uranium deposit in the world, which it digs up to sell to other countries to make electricity. It also has lots of sun and wind and empty space. If any state can make solar and wind power work, surely it’s there.
And renewables are working for SA, working to put it in top place for Global Electricity Bills.
South Australia power prices to rise to highest in the world on Saturday, energy expert warns
South Australia will overtake Denmark as having the world’s most expensive electricity when the country’s major energy retailers jack up their prices this Saturday.
AGL, EnergyAustralia and Origin Energy will all increase their electricity prices from July 1, adding hundreds of dollars to annual household bills. Residential customers will see an average rise of 18 per cent under AGL, 19.9 per cent from EnergyAustralia, 16.1 per cent with Origin Energy. Bruce Mountain, the head of a private energy consultancy firm, said the increases would see South Australia take the lead on world power prices — but for all the wrong reasons.
“After taxes, the [typical] household in South Australia will be paying slightly more than the [typical] household in Denmark, which currently has the highest prices in the world,” Mr Mountain said.
Naturally, though both Denmark, and SA have the highest percentage of “renewable” energy in the world, this has nothing to do with them also being number one and two for Global High Cost Electricity. It’s just really bad luck that there is no country anywhere in the world which has both wind and solar and cheap electricity.
Michael McClaren, interviews Bruce Mountain, expert:
From commenter Pat: “…he exonerates wind and solar early in the piece, but it’s enough to listen from 11 mins in where he says (paraphrasing) – “…renewables have nothing to do with electricity price rises. wind & solar now cheaper at an average cost than coal or gas. transformation in energy, old world vs new world (of renewables). Mountain finally admits he doesn’t know if the total cost of the new world is higher than the total cost of the old world, but simply saying wind & solar are driving up our costs is not right.
AUDIO: 13mins29secs: 29 Jun: 2GB: Michael McClaren: Power prices highest in the world
Poor governance and market oversight is to blame for power prices soaring out of control, says energy expert Bruce Mountain. http://www.2gb.com/podcast/power-prices-highest-in-the-world/
Bruce Mountain blames bad governance, which is also surely true, but alas, a confounding problem. Which state with a free market in electricity could also have a high uptake of wind and solar? Mountain thinks it’s worth mentioning that the marginal cost of wind and solar when they are producing is zero (as if the aim of an electricity grid was to provide random spikes of electricity “as the wind blows”. He doesn’t think it’s worth mentioning the 24 hours demand for spinning inertia to stabilize the grid, which coal and gas provide “for free”).
He argues that the zero cost nature of wind and solar depresses the wholesale price of electricity, and then people play a lot of games with electricity pricing (which I’m sure is true). He doesn’t say that in the old electricity market, there were less games, because it was a lot less complicated, and it didn’t need so much “governance” and “regulation”.
Ignoring the extra grid costs, transmission lines, and the devastating effect the intermittency and instability of wind and solar power Mountain claims a lot of wind and solar has a cheaper average cost than coal or gas. Yet even he has to concede that he “doesn’t know if the total cost of the new world is higher than the cost of the old world”.
Given that grid scale electricity is so difficult to estimate costs for surely the only marker that counts is the actual consumer price (plus taxpayer subsidies). If solar and wind are so cheap where is the key observation — the wealthy state running on wind and solar that attracts new businesses because of its cheap electricity?
How often do you clean your solar panels? Spare a thought for the poor sods in the Middle East, India and China, where migratory dust coats solar panels and hangs around in the air, blocking incoming sunlight. Researchers in India who cleaned their panels every few weeks and discovered that they got a 50% jump in efficiency each time. If the cleanings happened every two months, the total losses were 25 to 35 percent.
The article very much blames human pollution for half the capacity loss, but in the detail, the press release admits that 92% of the dust on each panel was natural. Apparently human made particles are smaller and stickier which makes the 8% human-emitted-dust equivalent to the 92% of other dust.
Either way, real pollution and natural dust will slow the clean-green-energy future in India and China until we get auto-cleaning panels or roof slaves. Unfortunately, cleaning panels also risks damaging them, so the price of solar power really needs to include the cost of windscreen-wipers/slaves, electricity losses, damage to panels, and damage to the panel cleaners too.
But solar panels will definitely power all the other parts of the world that are near enough to the equator and not in the path of flying dust, pollution, or under too many clouds, and especially those with electricity demand that peaks at 12 noon daily, which no modern country does.
South Australia’s sky-high electricity prices have forced an Adelaide plastics recycling business to shut its doors, costing 35 workers their jobs, its managing director says. Plastics Granulating Services (PGS), based in Kilburn in Adelaide’s inner-north, said it had seen its monthly power bills increase from $80,000 to $180,000 over the past 18 months.
Managing director Stephen Scherer said the high cost of power had crippled his business of 38 years and plans for expansion, and had led to his company being placed in liquidation. “I hate to think of how many hours I’ve wasted on the AEMO website with tools to monitor spot pricing, to assess the implications of power, the trends of power and the future costs of power.
The SA Government is still in denial:
SA Environment Minister Ian Hunter said it was disappointing the facility was shutting down, but he said the pain of high electricity prices was being felt across the country. Mr Hunter said help was available through the State Government’s energy efficiency programs.
“Green Industries and Zero Waste have quite a bit of expertise in this area [and] they’ve worked with other companies and other industry sectors,” he said. “If that help is not required then that’s up to him, but that’s the offer I can make.”
“Having high power prices … is a reality,” he said.
“That’s why the Government has introduced its state plan for energy in South Australia.
Commenter Bulldust:
“It’s a shame most Greens supporters don’t get irony.
U.S.-based CFACT, along with its Australian partners, is hosting a showing of its new groundbreaking documentary, Climate Hustle, and you’re invited! Following each event, join film director CFACT Executive Director, Craig Rucker and film host and publisher of ClimateDepot.com Marc Morano, for a question and answer session. Get the behind the scenes scoop on both the film and the US’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.
July 12- Melbourne, Australia
Village Roadshow Theatrette- State Library of Victoria
Doors open at 5:30 PM, film to start at 6:00 PM
Reception and Q/A session to follow Get Melbourne TICKETS here
July 15- Brisbane, Australia
Sponsored by the Australian Institute for Progress
New Farm Cinema
Doors open at 4:30 PM Get Brisbane TICKETS here
FILM DESCRIPTION:
Scorching temperatures. Melting ice caps. Killer hurricanes and tornadoes. Disappearing polar bears. The end of civilization as we know it!
Are emissions from our cars, factories, and farms causing catastrophic climate change? Is there a genuine scientific consensus? Or is man-made “global warming” an overheated environmental myth being used to push for drastic government control and a radical “Green” energy agenda? This film, hosted by award-winning journalist Marc Morano of CFACT’s ClimateDepot.com, features interviews and comments from no fewer than 30 renowned and well-regarded scientists and experts.
These include a number of individuals who were former global warming believers or came from the political Left but were compelled to speak out after reexamining the evidence or watching the debate about global warming degenerate into absurd political demagoguery. These are people like: Dr. Judith Curry, former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology; Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania; Former Greenpeace co-founder and ecologist Patrick Moore; UN IPCC lead author and economist Dr. Richard Tol of the Netherlands; and the late Dr. Bob Carter of James Cook University.
Viewers of Climate Hustle will get an informative and entertaining look at the media hype stoking the climate fires, along with the science refuting the outlandish claims of activists and alarmists who want to blame every strange weather event – and bizarre societal evil – on man-made global warming.
“We climate change skeptics have long needed a film to counter An Inconvenient Truth. This may be it. I was honored to be asked to record the introduction of the movie for its May 2nd debut at 400 theaters, so I was provided a preview of the entire film. It is not made for scientists and political activists. It is designed to reach the general public including teenagers. It is my hope that in the years to come it will be shown just before or after Al Gore’s sci-fi epic in every school. I the meantime I will buy tickets and attend the showing at the nearest theater to my new home in Las Vegas. I hope it draws a crowd and holds and pleases the audience.”
“The film’s strength is it’s wickedly effective use of slapstick humor, and making use of the words and deeds of alarmists to make you laugh at them. Climate Hustle is a brilliant use of their own ammunition against them… Monday May 2nd will be an historic night, since there’s never been a skeptic film like this before. So if you haven’t already, invite a friend who thinks the world is going to hell in a hand-basket due to climate change to sit back and take in the reality with some popcorn. Get a large bucket, you’ll need it.”
“While the former VP Gore lectured us on what will happen in a warming world, Morano uses his genial personality and effective talking points to underscore the debate was never over. The perfect antidote to An Inconvenient Truth’s hectoring host, Morano not only challenges the viewer with pesky facts, but he also engages us with historical precedents….The effervescent narrator gently guides you through a millennia of scientific misdeeds, consensus science, and green zealotry. Morano talks to over a dozen climatologists, a bevy of scientists, meteorologists, a couple of Nobel winners, all the while interspersing archival footage that will shock and infuriate you.
It’s difficult not to connect the delays to climate change….
It’s difficult not to blame climate change, after a generation of brainwashing.
So Phoenix got to 48.9C which made it nearly as hot as Marble Bar, Australia, last year (when it was 49C). After 80 years of deadly global warming both towns were nearly as hot as Marble Bar was in 1922.
As the world continues to warm, such plane delays will become more common, says Camilo Mora, an associate geography professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. And that’s just the beginning.
And imagine what associate professors of geology might forecast on flight patterns circa 2080? You’ll never know if you read Fortune, where anyone can forecast climate bad-news, but prize-winning atmospheric scientists remain invisible if they stick to things they know, like the failure rate of climate models.
Horror part II: You will spend all summer locked indoors and You Might Die
According to a study co-authored by Mora, if carbon emissions aren’t reduced, by 2100 New York City will experience about 50 days per year of heat and humidity conditions that has resulted in death (up from about two days now).
Meanwhile, in cities such as Orlando and Houston, this threshold will be crossed for the entire summer, making it unsafe to go outside for extended periods of time.
“We’ll become prisoners of our houses,” says Mora.
Mora is doing what he was paid to do. Apparently his role is to take predictions from broken climate models, extrapolate that failure for decades, and turn that bad news into a press release. What almost no one is paid to do is check the assumptions on failing GCM’s or find natural causes of climate change. Thus proving that evolution works in science funding, grants support research that supports more grants.
Horror part III: Power failures will kill you
Unlike the other predictions, this one may actually happen, but the deadly force is renewable subsidies:
Power outages, like the one that swept through Northeast and the Midwest in 2003 — leaving 50 million people without electricity—will no longer be an inconvenience, but a national emergency.
Horror Part IV: Roads and train tracks will melt and buckle under the heat.
Like chocolate, asphalt can grow mushy under the blazing sun. As the temperatures becomes more extreme in the summers, highways will “start to melt,” says Mora.
Do people in the US not know that asphalt and bitumen go soft in the high 40s? Did we need a study to see that?
Fortune subscribers like to hear that other people are more stupid than they are?
The Global Smugness is strong with Laura Entis and Assoc Prof Mona:
Unfortunately, as a species, “we suffer from short-term memory,” he says. When, earlier this week, a heat wave hit the Southwestern states, climate change was in the news. But “next week, when the heat wave is gone, everyone will be talking about something else.”
Instead of putting your head in the sand, Mora urges action, even if it’s minor: “consume less,” he says. Try to drive less, turn down your thermostat, or reduce your meat intake.
Why would people pay to be told they have memory loss, are short term, probably mentally deficient, selfish sods with their heads in the sand? Surely this patronizing preachy dictat is not written to convince the unwashed masses. So who wants to buy this — could it be the patsies who think that eating Tofu, catching a bus, and staying cold at home will help to improve the weather for their children’s children? Could be. People who hold those improbable notions might enjoy hearing how stupid everyone else is. This is self-congratulation as form of subscription driver.
I predict that Fortune subscriptions will be trending lower…
Al Gore’s new move is to wrap the global warming religion in with a bucket-list of “moral movements”, evidently targeting the naive souls who seek an Instant Life’s Mission, and / or approval from sorority girls:
The fight against global warming is one of humanity’s great moral movements, alongside the abolition of slavery, the defeat of apartheid, votes for women and gay rights, according to the former US vice-president and climate campaigner, Al Gore.
He forgets to add the defeat of Hitler and eradication of small pox. Though he gets points for finding a way to quote Martin Luther King Jnr: “No lie can live forever”.
Gore piles on the “industrial revolution” — apparently confusing actual working steam engines that move twenty thousand tons with solar cars whose weight is measured in kilograms and whose load bearing capacity is not even mentioned:
The battle to halt climate change can be won, he said, because the green revolution delivering clean energy is both bigger than the industrial revolution and happening faster than the digital revolution.
But he mixes up the exponential theoretical prospects of renewables with the exponential rising price of electricity.
He appears to be launching a new advertising theme for the climate change movement now that “the science” meme is wearing out:
“The climate movement should be seen in the context of the great moral causes that have transformed and improved the outlook for humanity,” he told the Ashden green energy awards ceremony.
Prophet Gore speaks to disciples:
“When the central issue was thus framed in stark relief because of who we are as human beings, the outcome became foreordained,” Gore said.
And Thus and Verily did the people come forth to hold back tides, stop storms and generally felt Very Self Important, fulfilled, and full of Global Smugness.
Let’s get Australia out of the pointless Paris Agreement which will cost trillions, hurt the poor, send Australian manufacturing overseas, kill birds, bats, whales, raise electricity prices, and not change global temperatures by any measurable amount. This is a very well reasoned petition written by someone very familiar with the details of IPCC proceedings. It is an official petition, and alas, needs to be limited to Australian signatories.
To the Hon. Speaker of the House of Representatives and Members of the House of Representatives
Certain citizens of Australia
(a) The damage and impairment to the Australian economy and the financial pain inflicted on our citizens and residents caused by inflated energy costs will be very significant and are very likely to be increased in future.
(b) Australian greenhouse gas emissions are insignificant and have no measurable influence on global average temperature, meaning that Australia’s involvement is merely a political gesture.
(c) The ratification of the Agreement seems to have ignored the following statements of IPCC’s Fifth Climate Assessment Report (5AR) of 2013:
(i) atmospheric carbon dioxide increased over the 15 years prior to the report,
(ii) there was no statistical certainty that average global temperature increased over that time and
(iii) 111 of 114 climate model runs predicted greater warming over that period than the temperature observations indicate. These statements undermine the notion of significant manmade warming and undermine the credibility of claims based on the output of climate models.
(d) The ratification appears to have ignored the detail of the Agreement, specifically “Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels”. The Agreement gives no indication of when “pre-industrial” refers to, no indication of how global average temperatures at that time were determined or of how the current average global temperature will be calculated for the purposes of the Agreement.
Australia to follow the lead of the USA and immediately withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.
Point (a) argues against Australian suffering rises in energy cost as a consequence of the Agreement and the likely increased suffering as the terms of the Paris Agreement are increased in future. (Even the UNFCCC admits that Paris was only a start.)
Point (b) argues that Australia’s contribution to total greenhouse gases is negligible and we’d be making a lot of effort but achieving virtually nothing.
Points in (c) are based on extracts from the 2013 IPCC Climate Assessment Report (5AR). The data on CO2 levels is from figure 2.1 (chapter 2, pg 167) and the other two points are from :
“… the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998–2012; 0.05 [–0.05 to 0.15] °C per decade) …” [WG I SPM, page 5, section B.1, bullet point 3, and in full Synthesis Report on page SYR-6]
“… an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 historical simulations (…) reveals that 111 out of 114 realisations show a GMST trend over 1998–2012 that is higher than the entire HadCRUT4 trend ensemble ….” [WGI contribution, chapter 9, text box 9.2, page 769, and in full Synthesis Report on page SYR-8]
POWER prices are set to rocket after three major retailers announced increases of up to 20 per cent and $600 a year for the average customer in some states.
Origin, EnergyAustralia and AGL have all announced price increases for electricity and gas starting from July 1.
Small businesses may be the hardest hit, especially Origin customers in South Australia, which will see prices rise by a whopping $1453 a year when increases to gas and electricity bills are combined.
The biggest increase for residential customers will be for AGL customers in ACT, who will pay an extra $579 a year for a combined electricity and gas rise.
In NSW, residential EnergyAustralia customers will see electricity prices increase by up to 19.6 per cent. Origin Energy customers will get a 16.1 per cent rise.
The price hikes will take effect from July 1.
Many are blaming a “failure of energy policy”, but miss the point entirely — this is not failure but success. The aim of those energy policies was to close down coal fired stations and it worked. The Renewable Energy Target, the carbon tax, and other anti “carbon” policies did what they were supposed to do and forced the closure of both the Port Augusta power stations and Hazelwood (which supplied as much as 5% of Australia’s electricity). That left us dependent on gas instead of having the flexibility to ignore the current gas price outlandish cost.
Don’t tell me that cold is nice and the climate was ever ideal
A few scientists thought that the climate was stable and well behaved during the Holocene until we invented coal power and the Ford Model T and everything fell apart “unprecedentedly”.
But 8200 years ago things apparently got pretty wild. See the GISP graph below where there was a three degree fall in temperatures suddenly (circled in red below). A new study found that at the same time China and California also cooled. Strangely, this cooling effect probably did not produce calm, happy days for the Californians at the time. Instead it looks like they got 150 years of intense winter storms and a lot of wet weather.
UPDATE: This graph shows the ice-core data up until 1855. The last 150 years (1705 to 1855) are highlighted in red to show the warming as the Earth began coming out of the LIA. Obviously that red line would continue up further if it was drawn to the present.
Looks like real climate change….
The reason for the sudden snap is possibly that a couple of massive glaciallakes in North East America collapsed and suddenly drained out into the Atlantic, dumping a bucketload of freshwater there. That is said to have changed a few oceanic currents and raised the seas by 2 – 10 feet. (1 – 3m). The effects appear to have been found around the world, also weakening the monsoons in Asia, and strengthening them in South America, while increasing drought in Africa.
And since we have stalagmites in Australia, hopefully someone can study our caves and tell us something about our own, largely unknown paleohistory. We may not have many deciduous trees to get nice tree rings from , but we certainly have caves.
Wet and stormy weather lashed California coast…8,200 years ago
The weather report for California 8,200 years ago was exceptionally wet and stormy.
That is the conclusion of a paleoclimate study that analyzed stalagmite records from White Moon Cave in the Santa Cruz Mountains published online Jun. 20 in Nature Scientific Reports.
It’s like an Easter Island moment for an advanced economy: somehow “cheap” energy can’t compete in a free market without government subsidy. A Nation of Serfs have forgotten what a free market is. Will cheap desirable stuff sell itself, or not?
The contradictions mount. Electricity and gas prices are hitting escape velocity:
The wholesale electricity spot prices was about $35 a megawatt hour during 2011, rose to $58 after the carbon tax was introduced and is now about $130 as gas prices push up energy generator costs.
Not surprisingly 70% of Australians want cheaper, more reliable electricity. Only one person in four would rather cut emissions than cut the bill. Yet the agitprop telling people that renewables are “cheap” has been so pervasive that fully 38% of Australians think the government should raise the renewable energy target, and 23% think it should stay the same. It follows that around 4 in 10 Australians apparently hold the bizarre idea that wind and solar are cheap and yet in need of government support, as if there are no investors willing to put money into supplying something that 100% of people want at a price cheaper than what they currently pay. So screwed is our national commentary that a large slab of the nation think a cheap and highly desired product can’t profit without complex schemes and assistance.
Message to Australia, if renewables were cheap they wouldn’t need a RET, LET or CET scheme. People would just buy them!
No wonder there is policy gridlock. The situation won’t be resolved until the propaganda bubble pops and the national debate advances to the point where people know how expensive renewables are. Find me one country in the world running on wind and solar that has cheap electricity and no interconnector supplying coal or nuclear powered electrons. Exactly.
The answer for the Liberal-conservatives is clear, unless they get the message out that renewables are a hideously expensive deadweight burning a hole in our wallets they can’t possibly win this debate. As long as the nation blindly drinks from the Kool-aid-Cauldron the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing — locked into endless cycles of “uncertainty” and hip-pocket pain.
Welcome to the clean green future — pack the whole family under one electric blanket while boat loads of our cheap coal set sail for China.
A few weeks ago I received a pamphlet from the ACT government on energy-saving tips. For winter it featured a picture of a family all in overcoats and beanies, huddled under an electric blanket.
Welcome to your clean green future huddled under an electric blanket, and reverting to wood fires to keep the house warm.
The Finkel report aims to provide incentives for all energy sources that produce electricity with lower greenhouse gas emissions, but the suggested benchmark means a high-efficiency, low-emissions power plant with carbon capture and storage would not qualify. That is why plenty of people think this is a backdoor attempt to block coal and even gas with an effective “tax on coal”.
The crisis has arisen because of the over-reliance on wind and solar power. In South Australia, combined with the closure of two coal-fired power plants, one in SA and one in Victoria, it has destabilised the whole grid. Added to that is the shortage of gas and the lack of storage for renewables.
Meanwhile, despite the domestic opposition to coal, we send our coal to Japan and China to be used in high-efficiency, low-emissions coal-fired generators to produce cleaner and cheaper power where people don’t have to sit inside wearing beanies under an electric blanket.
What is the sound of a dying planet? Translating hard facts into feeling is the issue of our age – and it is the task Climate Symphony have appointed themselves. A collective of artists and scientists, the London-based team are inspiring action by transforming climate change data into music.
Wait til you see what it can do. This is a pretty powerful tool:
“Climate Symphony has developed a side-project – calling out lies in politics.”
“We want to create a formal record,” she says, “A method of fact-checking the things Trump is saying, of finding distortions. It’s revealing. You’re looking at it, and listening to it, and you find that it’s distorted. It’s all distorted.”
Musikiness could replace the US GAO. (Who needs auditors). But I worry about what happens if they use the wrong key.
Finally, twenty years late, EcoWorriers care about transparency and “hard facts”:
“…it isn’t just background noise… music is the data. “These are still hard facts – that’s the beauty of it.”
The data used is derived from a range of sources, all with the emphasis on transparency.
Climate data has been accumulated from NOAA and Nasa (sic)…
But what if the symphony is using adjusted data and it’s wrong — It’s not the sound of a dying planet, but a homogenized one?
I bet raw data would sound better. (Do you want to tell them or should I?)
Still, this may be the tool the Goddard Institute of Space has been waiting for to make their climate models work.
Borromeo and her team at Climate Symphony, including co-director Katharine Round and composer Jamie Perera, chart this data across musical notation, working with meteorologists, conservationists, sound artists and investigative journalists. Every bar of music in Climate Symphony is equivalent to one year of scientific data – with recordings amassing a total of 20 years from 1994 to 2014.
That’s a lot of “experts”. (Wonder who paid for them.)
Climate change is an area of politics in which facts are all-too-often purported as fiction.
In this case the facts are purporting to be “music”.
With these concern about transparency in politics, Borromeo stresses that Climate Symphony is committed to peer-reviewed science.
Yes, because all good artists are committed to supporting the grant-machine, sorry, establishment.
I’m glad these people are not building our bridges.
From public rallies to government legislation, Borromeo hopes that “any and all of these things” can arise from the project. Her message is simple: “Existence is resistance.”
Existence is resistance? It takes so little effort to be a reactionary these days — just keep breathing.
The warmists now want to transpose,
Climate data into work they compose,
For alarmists and greens,
As homogenized, means,
In their symphony, anything goes.
So things don’t look so good, no matter where we look. Yes, the victims in the animal world include scary apex predators that pose obvious threats to humans, like lions, whose numbers have dropped from 1 million at the time of Jesus to 450,000 in the 1940s to 20,000 today—a decline of 98 percent. But also included have been unexpected victims, like butterflies and moths, which have declined in abundance by 35 percent since the 1970s.
Is this a mini extinction?
…the only reason we know about mass extinctions in the first place is from the record of this incredibly abundant, durable, and diverse world of marine invertebrates, not the big, charismatic, and rare stuff like dinosaurs.“
So you can ask, ‘Okay, well, how many geographically widespread, abundant, durably skeletonized marine taxa have gone extinct thus far?’ And the answer is, pretty close to zero,” Erwin pointed out. In fact, of the best-assessed groups of modern animals—like stony corals, amphibians, birds and mammals—somewhere between 0 and 1 percent of species have gone extinct in recent human history. By comparison, the hellscape of End-Permian mass extinction claimed upwards of 90 percent of all species on earth.
When mass extinctions hit, they don’t just take out big charismatic megafauna, like elephants, or niche ecosystems, like cloud forests. They take out hardy and ubiquitous organisms as well—things like clams and plants and insects. This is incredibly hard to do. But once you go over the edge and flip into mass extinction mode, nothing is safe. Mass extinctions kill almost everything on the planet.
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