The reaction has been known since 1920’s, if not sooner. It depends on hydrogen, which you can get either from electrolysis or by reforming with (high temperature) steam.
If they want to use “renewable” energy for hydrolysis then that rules out wind turbines and, to a lesser extent, solar panels.
Hydrolysis at low pressure is inefficient (50-60%) even when the power supply is steady. A fluctuating source, such as wind, makes it not worth doing. High pressure hydrolysis is a nominal 90-95% efficiency. This is based on the electricity usage, but the actual total is 120%, i.e. it relies on external heat as well. Again it requires a steady power supply, ruling out renewable electricity.
Cracking steam is endothermic, i.e. you must input lots of energy. It is usually done by burning coal in conjunction with the steam. This was the basis of the old town gas process, and the reaction for building up the carbon monoxide to a diesel fuel was used in the Fischer-Tropf process in WW2 and the South African SASOL plant. If you can produce methanol, then you can use the Mobil zeolite process to make petrol as used for a short time in NZ in the early 1980’s.
There is absolutely nothing new about this process except the press release. The appeal for further funding isn’t new either.
Interesting technology but the $64,000 dollar question remains what`s the conversion ratio like for the refineries ? I doubt You`d be able to run it off seabreezes and sunbeams so that leaves coal and nuclear with sufficient energy density to power it .
As long as there`s oil in the ground why would You burn a whole lot of coal to make a little bit of synthetic fuel oil ? It may well be a usefull technology one day and is certainly worth further research but until the conversion rate of kwh/litres of fuel is very good and the grid is powered by something reliable and energy dense other than coal it won`t be viable
The worry is too that , some green vote hungry government will cause the building of hundreds of early underdeveloped technology based air-fuel refineries by subsidising the crap out of them and crash Our already creaking power networks .
As a tech , it has possibilty as long as it`s
a) Well developed before widespread application
b) Has a cheap and plentiful supply of electricity to power it
This is brillant. Fix up one of these systems to the car exhaust, reclaim all the H20 and CO2 produced in petrol combustion, and you have …… …
An immediate perpetual power machine !!!!
Never need to buy petrol ever again, or plug into a wind turbine.
The latter being a VERY GOOD IDEA, not needing wind turbines means we can get rid of the monstrousities and preserve Australia’s environment; fauna, flora and avian.
Looks like mechanical engineers who know little chemistry playing around to get grants.
Good sarc AndyG55
There are better ways of capturing CO2 from than from air such as enriched CO2 exhaust from lime (used to make pure NaCO3 -soda ash)but the greens do not like lime (used in minerals processing and purifying water supply.
Sort of tale of research gone bad and some very fine detective work to uncover this. While not as bad as Patel, some unnecessary deaths may have happened.
Newchum,
It seems that this really is the new age of alchemy!
And so, if the electrical generation required for this process was from inefficient renewable sources like wind with a 20% max generating capacity, to then supply enormous amounts of power required to generate an inefficient form of petroleum-like fuel inefficiently, then it is actually much more likely that MORE CO2 would be generated to produce this fuel than if they had just used ordinary petroleum based fuel on it’s own in the first place without the various steps taken in between. And if they used coal to supply electricity to produce this petroleum-lite, it defeats the entire purpose, not to mention adding unreasonable extra burden on already stretched electricity generation. It’s a massive economic and practicality fail, no matter which way you slice it. Nice chemistry experiment though.
———————————————————————–
[Newchum, it is helpful if you write a short intro to any link (as you did at comment #1). That way we can see if there is a particular point or aspect you wish to raise – even though in this case we can see from the link the general story is about Germany’s renewable energy policy. Cheers. – Mod]
Plug away Bob, your knowledge of sea surface temperatures and the ENSO phenomena are well worth sharing.
I’d advice Jo Nova denizens to take a look at your book, well worth the time (and the pittance it costs).
Oh dear he we go again with more nonsense from the denizens of physical unreality.
Bob, a few quick questions:
If El Nino causes a regime shift to a new warmer climate state then why would doesn’t La Nina causes a regime shift to a cooler state? Under your scenario global temps should warm continuously.
How does ENSO cause warming, it’s an oceanic cycle that simly moves heat around the planet?
So where is the forcing causing oceans, the surface and the troposphere to warm? You can’t have it both ways! Conservation of Energy anybody?
All you are doing is using short term events to argue against AGW, while utilisng data from part of the globe to model global charateristics and then extrapolating these to your own conclusions a la Lindzen.
The main cause of the warming is the forcing from GHG emissions. Until you control those emissions, that forcing will still exist despite the natural cycles.
So blah blah blah (as they are so wont to say here!)
So blah blah blah (as they are so wont to say here!)
This is obviously a reference to this Comment of mine from an earlier Post of Joanne’s.
This tells us 2 things about you.
1. That you actually do come back here and read the replies to your comments.
2. By far the more important thing it tells us is that you have no response when we point out pertinent things to you that you need to be doing instead of just rabbiting on with your standard meme.
Your side of the debate have no concrete answers. All you do have is talk, and repetitive rabbiting on of the standard party line you run with.
sillyphilly says: “If El Nino causes a regime shift to a new warmer climate state then why would doesn’t La Nina causes a regime shift to a cooler state?”
La Niña is not the opposite of El Niño. Why would you think it was? An El Niño releases heat from tropical Pacific and redistributes warm water from it. A La Niña recharges the heat and warm water. So you’re not accounting for the warm water that remains after the El Niño that has been periodically released and redistributed from the west Pacific Warm Pool.
sillyphilly says: “Under your scenario global temps should warm continuously.”
The South Atlantic-Indian-West Pacific only warmed in response to the major East Pacific El Niño events of 1986/87/88 and 1997/98. (It’s still a little early to tell if the 2009/10 El Niño caused a minor shift). And it also cooled between the major El Niño events. http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-5-23.png
So that’s two subsets of the global oceans, representing about 86% of the surface of the global oceans, that would show no evidence of long-term warming without major El Niño events.
And that leaves the North Atlantic with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. For the past 35+ years, it has been warming at a rate that’s much higher than the natural warming of the other ocean basins, but it will eventually peak, flatten and then start to cool.
sillyphilly says: “How does ENSO cause warming, it’s an oceanic cycle that simly moves heat around the planet?”
Another error on your part. It’s not a cycle, as noted above.
sillyphilly says: “So where is the forcing causing oceans, the surface and the troposphere to warm? You can’t have it both ways! Conservation of Energy anybody?’”
If you understood how silly this made you look, you would not have asked the question, sillyphilly. It shows you don’t have the slightest grasp of ENSO basics. The process of ENSO is fueled by downward shortwave radiation. During a La Niña, the trade winds strengthen and reduce cloud cover which allows more downward shortwave radiation to warm the tropical Pacific to depth. The warm water collects in the Pacific Warm Pool for release during the next El Niño.
Surface temperatures outside of the tropical Pacific are warmed through the redistribution of warm water into the West Pacific and East Indian Oceans. AND also outside of the tropical Pacific, the surface temperatures are warmed via changes in atmospheric circulation, not by the transfer of heat. This has been known for decades, so there’s no concern about the conservation of energy, sillyphilly.
Overall, that’s why global temperatures warm during multidecadal periods when El Niño events are stronger, occur more frequently, and last longer than La Niña events, as we experienced from the mid-1970s until the mid-2000s, and from the late-1910s to the early-1940s. La Nina events dominated slightly from the early-1940s until the mid-1970s and surface temperatures cooled.
sillyphilly says: “The main cause of the warming is the forcing from GHG emissions. Until you control those emissions, that forcing will still exist despite the natural cycles.”
That myth, of course, is not supported by satellite-era sea surface temperature data or ocean heat content records. The fact that you can’t grasp what graphs tell you is telling, sillyphilly. GHG emissions MAY have a slight effect on land surface temperatures, but it is not a dominant forcing. It’s an also-ran.
When two are in phase the oceans absorb more energy, when two are out of phase the oceans cool.
Jean Dickey of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena:
“One possibility is the movements of Earth’s core (where Earth’s magnetic field originates) might disturb Earth’s magnetic shielding of charged-particle (i.e., cosmic ray) fluxes that have been hypothesized to affect the formation of clouds.
This could affect how much of the sun’s energy is reflected back to space and how much is absorbed by our planet.
Other possibilities are that some other core process could be having a more indirect effect on climate, or that an external (e.g. solar) process affects the core and climate simultaneously.”
During the last glacial period, it seems the North American tropical monsoon zone, which currently only extends to southern Arizona, extended around 500 kilometers further north. It also suggests that during glacial periods, the tropics extend further north (and presumably south) than during interglacials.
This suggests that glacial periods (ice ages) aren’t caused by the overall climate cooling, but because tropical heat is retained in the tropics, by some unknown mechanism.
The Wisconsin glaciation extended from approximately 110,000 to 10,000 years ago, between the Eemian interglacial and the current interglacial. The maximum ice extent occurred approximately 21,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum, also known as the Late Wisconsin in North America.
It’s interesting that this comment has received a number of thumbs up.
Sometimes I have given a thumbs up but on re-reading the comment, found a meaning I had missed.
But not in this case; I found the worm first.
Some of Brads comments seem innocuous or ambivalent but many contain the dreaded “Warmer Virus” that has infected the brains of mankind so tragically in recent times.
Brads comments want to perpetuate the idea that climate was stable until man became active on an industrial scale and produced more CO2 poison.
What Brad is trying to get you to believe is that the Earth has a finite amount of energy locked in the
biosphere and that occasionally this becomes REDISTRIBUTED over the Earth.
Oh yeah. Hallelujah brother.
In his latest thesis we have all the heat taken from the poles and accumulating in the tropical regions to
cause the salt lakes of Wisconsin or wherever that he describes in @7 plus the glaciation.
Read this a few times from No 7 above:
“This suggests that glacial periods (ice ages) aren’t caused by the overall climate cooling, but because
tropical heat is retained in the tropics, by some unknown mechanism.”
Of course, if you believe that, then its only a short jump to believe that: – The big melt at the end of
the last ice age was not caused by the Sun or any action external to the Earth, but to a simple
re-distribution of energy within the biosphere.
No nett change of energy so it must be obvious that the Earth’s AVERAGE temperature remained UNCHANGED.
The nugget at the heart of his comment is this; The way remains clear to show that the Earth’s temperature
only began to rise in concert with man’s industrial growth from 1850. QED.
Or, since this was an election, the political environment.
How about that Slayer thread? What a scream. In case you feel like summoning me by invoking my name in that thread, don’t waste your time. The whole thing is too ridiculous – on the same order of magnitude of ridiculous as this http://www.forbiddenarcheologist.com/ (one example among thousands I’m sad to say). I reckon the science behind every single established theory is wrong with at least 3 alternative theories proclaimed to be the real deal.
Fighting against the ridiculous is not what science is about.
This suggests that glacial periods (ice ages) aren’t caused by the overall climate cooling, but because tropical heat is retained in the tropics, by some unknown mechanism.
…possibly by alien force fields in order to manipulate the evolution of intelligent life on planet Earth… all because Mars needs women.
I am a Nobel Peace Laureate!
It is possible that you didn’t hear about me winning the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize? Well me and 500 million or so other members of the European Union. You see as well as being an Australian Citizen I also hold a British Passport and am therefore a British Citizen by birthright. That makes me a member of the European Union which was awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize.
OK, I have had some people scoff at my claim of being a Nobel Laureate. But I am just using the precedent set in 2007 when the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize jointly to the UN Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore. That was supposedly for their efforts to combat global warming.
By the way, they must have done an outstanding job because there has been no statistically significant warming for the last 16 years!But I digress.
Since 2007, every person I have read about who was involved in any way in compiling the 2007 IPCC Climate Report (commonly known as the Assessment Report No.4 – AR4), and there were thousands, has claimed to be a joint winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
“Steffen shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with many colleagues worldwide for contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Schneider “Stephen Schneider received a collective Nobel Peace Prize for his joint efforts with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2007).”
I have dozens of similar examples. So clearly, if I am a member of the EU, I must be able to claim that I am a Nobel Peace Prize Winner. And so too must any of you who are members of the EU! I mean, all those distinguished scientists couldn’t be wrong could they?
Unfortunately, a Nobel prize has become worth about as much as an arts or philosophy degree, neither of which functions well as toilet paper (so I’m told by arts degree holders)
At the UWA, Mens Toilet, a paper hand towel dispenser had written on it “Art Degrees, Please take one”. Someone had added “For Law Degees, wipe arse on it.”
These inter-faculty digs and the specific manner of their communication no longer have the transience of a joke, they have become ingrained in the University as an institution and subsequently a part of the subculture of all technical fields in academia and trade.
I saw the same joke dispensed in the same way at my old stomping ground in Qld in the late 1990s.
This was usually accompanied by an assessment of the quality of food served at that time in the Uni’s largest central student union building:
“Please flush twice, it’s a long way to the main refectory!”
“Members of the public are requested to be seated by 7.00pm.
Air Force officers are to be present by 19.00 hours.
Naval officers are to attend no later than two bells in the second dog watch.
Army officers must arrive before the little hand is on ‘7’, and the big hand is on ’12′”
Well by that reckoning Jaymez that Nobel Peace Prize for the European Union would make Christopher Monckton a Nobel Laureate twice over, after correcting errors in the AR4 report, together with the Rogues Gallery at UAE etc., I’m not so sure he would cherish the honour any more. (what’s the name for that ? ( Nobel with Bar ? ).
.
Perhaps we misunderstand Peace Prize though and it’s become the Piece Prize, awarded so that everyone can get a piece of it.
Walked into the living room this morning where my wife was watching the today show, I was just in time to catch the end of an interview about saving the ice bears from extinction. Don’t our journalist do any investigation about a subject before having these alarmist on their show.
If they did they might challenge them from time to time.
One of the most fantastic lies of our age is the myth of “global warming.” Seen the pictures of one of the last few polar bears floating on a pathetic little bit of ice? Sad isn’t it? Pass the collection tin. But did you know that the bears have had a population explosion? Their population has risen fivefold in 50 years. Read on, for more of the real story….
The Revenge of the Polar Bears
Let’s face it. Times are getting rough for radical ecologists.
It is bad enough that their global warming conferences seem to coincide with sub-zero weather patterns. And then there is the problem of fossil fuels. Just when they declare the world has reached “peak oil” production, the energy industry ruins everything and discovers another huge oilfield that pushes back the energy apocalypse another ten or twenty years. Now it seems the polar bears have turned upon the ecologists and thrown them under a biodiesel bus.
Bob ,
I reckon that , if/when the current interglacial ends , polar bears could be walking off the Arctic icecap into Northern Scotland to rummage around in dumpsters outside restaurants and there will be econuts claiming that diets high in junk food are endangering the poor delicate poley bears
I’ve just doen the research and it’s all ready to be published.
I will need the Millions of dollars to get it typed up though, but here’s a sneak peak of the abstract:
Polar Bears Are Carnivorous
There is not enough Meat in a Big Mac
Some tourists to scotland discard their food which poley bears might find becoz they have big noses.
Therefore, Big Macs need more meat, but just to be on the safe side, we need to increase the amount of meat in the worlds diet by 10,000% in order to save the poley bears.
If interested in funding this research, please contact me directly – governments spending other peoples money need only apply…
I had the same picture told to me about 5 years ago by none other than the director of Environment Canada — you can’t get any more authoritative than that. All I had to do was send email to their contact address and ask the question.
I guess that’s too hard to do when you’re an activist. They’ll never learn. They’ll certainly never be bothered a bit by the truth. And they’ll never care about the difference either.
I notice from that article that Charles Monnett, the guy responsible for turning 4 dead bears into an international crisis was suspended. The article is dated 01/08/2011 and the suspension is noted as happening in July (so 2010). Maybe there was some actual justice after all.
Yep Bob Malloy,
Good post on the revenge of the Polar bears.
Seems to ba a recurring theme in ‘eco science’.
Every time the MDBA turns up to do a presentation about a future affected by climate change and a future with less water….it rains.
Last time they turned up we immediately had one of the biggest floods on record!
We need a good drop of rain at the moment.
Maybe we should invite them back?
🙂
This is long, and I make no apology for that, because sometimes my blood just boils.
I’ve always tried to stress that the average person has little to zero understanding of power generation and more importantly consumption. So, I can say, whatever, and it means nothing because I’m really just a nobody, and when people who we perceive as knowing spout off, then they are the ones who the public needs to take notice of.
So, that’s what made my blood boil when I heard this small article on the ABC’s midday program The World Today on Thursday. It’s only just under 4 minutes, and it’s worth listening to the whole lot of it, because, to the average person it sounds so reasonable, hence believable.
The person who, er, knows, the person that the ABC went to is Dr. Lynne Chester, a researcher from the University of Sydney. What she says sounds so matter of fact, and is so loaded with inaccuracies at the same time, it leads me to believe that she has little idea, or is spinning the facts.
She comes in at the 3.10 mark. (The tape runs backward towards zero.)
Note where she specifically states the breakdown of consumers, where she says that electricity is consumed by 12% Business, and 88% Domestic. This is a very clever misrepresentation on her part, and without her explaining how she came by that figure, I will. This is the number of consumers.
Electrical power is consumed in Australia at the ratio of 25% for the Residential Sector, 45% for the Commerce Sector and 30% for the Industrial sector, as I explained at this link from a Post from Joanne’s site in August of this year.
Now, as I explained in a Comment a week or so back, Commerce and Industrial consumers, while they pay less per unit (KWH) for their power, they are much greater consumers, Commerce bills are around 8 times higher (on average) than the average Residential bill, and Industry bills are around 75 times higher than the average Residential bill. So, as you can see from that while both sectors consume way more power per business in percentage terms, there are way less actual consumers by number, and this is the figure that our researcher has used, in an attempt to make us think that the residential sector has the greatest consumption.
She also goes on to mention the ubiquitous poles and wires as the root cause of virtually all increases in power bills, again false and misleading.
She also makes another false statement, and I’ll come back to that.
A little later in that audio, after the researcher has finished, it is mentioned that the residential sector only consumes 25% of all generated power, but she has already made her points, and people have little comprehension of what that actually means anyway.
Then another Industry based commentator comes on and mentions the way we need to deal with Peak Demand is by better pricing structures, eg making people pay more during those Peak Power periods, but umm, he didn’t actually say that, just sort of alluded to it. In the last ten seconds, (oh by the way) it was mentioned how the roll out of smart meters will assist. Note here that these smart meters are for the residential sector, and are specifically aimed at exact costing of your power consumption, not just as it is with an overall power bill for KWH consumed based on the whole 90 or so days, but for actual consumption, time based for specific time periods, so they can introduce higher charges for Peak power consumption and charge you at the higher rate for that. See how it’s not aimed at better getting you to adjust your consumption, but for gouging as much money from you as they can, and again, let me stress how this is being specifically targeted at the Residential sector only, which is barely 25% of all power consumption.
So now, back to Dr. Lynne Chester, the researcher. Now go back to the 2.45 mark of the audio, and listen very carefully. She rabbits on about peak power and how it’s only a few days a year. Again, see how even she blames the Residential sector for increased peak demand only for a couple of days a year, when it rains (clothes dryers) and when it’s excessively hot, (aircon) and how she wants those consumers especially to pay the extra and those who don’t have these things to get relief in not having to pay the extra, and see how this ties in with those Smart meters, and how they will be able to know when you are (and how shall I word this) rorting the system, and beware, Smart meters will lead to the ability to switch off those levels of power at residences that have smart meters, because before, the only ability they had was to switch off whole areas of the grid, and with smart meters, they will be able to switch you off individually, on top of making you pay more, and all of this for only 25% of consumption.
So, then how often have I tried to explain peak power? It’s not some esoteric few days a year. It is EVERY day.
I even have some consumption charts that prove the point.
Here’s one for MidWinter (Monday July 16th) that best shows Peak power, third graph down, total consumption, for all the eastern sea board and SA. Note the two peaks, and than look at the X axis, which is time based across the 24 hours of the day from Midnight to Midnight. Note how there is a small peak in the early morning when people get out of bed, shower etc, cook brekky, turn on the heaters. Then it drops off to ordinary daily consumption as people then go off to work. Note then the second, and larger, and longer lasting peak, at around 5PM or so when they all come home from school, work, cook dinner do the clothes washing and drying watch TV, turn on the heaters etc. It’s the same every day of Winter. Incidentally, go back one day from this first graph, and look at this one for the Sunday 15th July. The two peaks are in the same place, as they always are, but note where the line dips back to 21,000MW as compared to the work day Monday when that area between the peaks is 24,000MW, and note that amount is required for the full 24 hours, even on non working days. That is what Base Load is.
Here’s one for MidSummer, (Monday January 16th) and note when the large peak is, around the middle of the day when the vast bulk of people are at work. Those two peaks so obvious in Winter are still there, only now hidden because power is required across the whole of the working day. Now, refer back just one day to the Sunday 15th January, not a working day. Note how even though still large consumption, those two peaks become visible again.
Now, here we are in Mid Spring, and this is the chart for yesterday 19th September. Note how it is heading towards looking like the average Summer Chart. Also note the distinct blip up at around 6PM, coming home time etc etc.
Now, what I’m getting at here is that this is Peaking Power, dedicated and set specific times EVERY day. That is the target of both commentators in the audio tape, and notice how the inference is that we need to change our habits to consume less during peaking power times.
Yeah! Right! How?
Have people get up in the morning earlier or later, change work times, change school hours, have half the public not eating their evening meals. Turn TV transmission off. People not allowed to use heaters in Winter and Coolers in Summer.
Then, and here of the utmost importance, note specifically how it is only aimed at the residential sector, already paying the most per KWH for their power, and now they not only want to make you pay more, but if you consume too much, they want the capability to isolate you with Smart meters.
People will NEVER change these habits where everything at home is done between those set hours. It has to be around those hours.
Note the mention of those filthy rotten disgusting air conditioners. They only want to turn of the residential sector, and the Summer peak is around the middle of the day when everyone is at work school etc. In every building higher than a couple of stories, they have air conditioning, not for heating and cooling, but the PRIME reason to supply recirculated breathing air into those buildings. They have to be on 24/7/365. Do they plan to turn them off too. No! Just those ones in residences.
Note how this is only aimed at 25% of all consumption.
And now for the absolute killer.
All of this is aimed at being able to cope with Peak demand.
Judas Priest. Build a new damned large scale coal fired power plant, and all of this is moot.
Note how despite the altruistic nature of what Dr Lynne Chester says, it’s really only about the money, and the same for that second commentator also.
And really, isn’t what both of these people said an abject admission that despite the ramping up of Wind Power over the last 4 years, it isn’t alleviating this problem one jot.
The last major scale power plants that went in were back in the 80’s and early 90’s. The population has expanded vastly since then, hence more homes are required, more Commerce to cater for that, more Industry to cater for that and supply all those extra jobs.
Have they built any new power plants to cater for that?
No!
No one in their right mind would even think a thought bubble on that point, with the CO2 Tax, emissions reduction legislation, and doing away with all fossil fuel power generation. Germany has seen the light, China has seen the light, India has seen the light, The UN through it’s World Bank has seen the light as they fund new large scale coal fired power. Instead, here in Australia, our Labor Government tells us we need to go back to the dark ages.
Now there is a perception that there is a problem with increasing demand and not being able to cope with that.
Hell’s Bells. Anyone can see exactly why.
And yet, the only thing they want to do is to make money from it. At every point. And who pays. The general public, and more pointedly, that residential sector who only consume 25% of the power, already pay the most for it, and now they want them to pay even more, and then cut them off into the bargain.
As I said at the top, sometimes my blood just boils.
what’s worth understanding here is that when you look at the Winter graph, with its two distinct peaks, that graph is the same for Summer, only instead of there being the two peaks showing, there is an increased overall demand which effectively hides those two peaks. This can be seen by comparing the total power at around 6 to 7 PM in Winter, and then looking at the same total power consumption in Summer. It is higher in Summer, and that then extends across the whole graph, mainly due to the hot weather, and every one of those breathing air circulation aircon units in every one of those buildings, taller than 2 levels. They have to work harder because of the outside ambient temperature being so much higher. It has virtually zero to do with residential aircon units at all.
The Summer peak is between midday and mid afternoon, naturally, when the day is hottest.
If they have such a problem with power availability, the simple answer is to construct more power plants that are actually capable of providing the power that is needed, and for when it is needed, not just cutting back what will amount to an absolute minute fraction of part of the residential consumption.
Also note how wind power is positively useless to cover that absolute set in stone time period of peak power consumption. Try telling the wind to blow at a specific time every day, at every wind plant across the Country. See again how useless wind really is.
It’s all a great big con being spun by people who have no concept of where power is actually being consumed.
The biggest most glaring thing here that virtually none of these ‘economists’ can see is that level of power required absolutely, 24/7/365. That’s not some arbitrary figure, as you only have to look at ANY of the total power charts on any day of any year to see that even while all Australia sleeps, that area of coverage, (which is almost 80% or more of all Australia) is still consuming almost 19,000MW.
About 5 years ago, Western Power in a (transparent to some of us) attempt to lessen the late afternoon summer peak, ran TV ads that told people they would save energy by running their aircon all day, rather than switching it on when they came home from work.
I like the one where the TV weather forecast in the UK was sponsored by Powergen, the Electricity generator. I’m sure they were only doing it to predict demand 😉
Rather than picking winners, a flat carbon tax takes decisions out of the hands of a small number of officials and puts decisions into the hands of the many engineers, economists and project planners in the energy sector.
To be clear, this isn’t libertarian politics, it’s simply the mass democratisation of decision making from the few to the many. Some companies will make the wrong call and lose out, while others will get it spectacularly right, as can been seen with those who took an early punt on shale gas in the United States.
At its best, Hayek’s freed market is a distributed optimisation algorithm. It allows rival ideas and technologies to measure up against each other, with the most efficient and productive gaining markets share. That’s of benefit to us all.
Finally, let’s not forget, there’s only one thing more important than Hayek’s sound money in a developed economy, that’s cheap energy. Without it everything stops.
Tony since you’ve asked, in your #11 I have issues with the following:
“See how it’s not aimed at better getting you to adjust your consumption, but for gouging as much money from you as they can”
To me that is an assumption on your part.
“Again, see how even she blames the Residential sector for increased peak demand only for a couple of days a year, when it rains (clothes dryers) and when it’s excessively hot, (aircon) and how she wants those consumers especially to pay the extra and those who don’t have these things to get relief in not having to pay the extra”
Look att eh fancy graphs I’ve seen for little of Perth and the SWIS clearly shows a peak demand in summer at (approx) 5-7pm… this HAS to be a residential peak, and significantly discretionary use. It may not be thet same everywhere and every grid needs to figure out its own pricing regime.
“People will NEVER change these habits where everything at home is done between those set hours. It has to be around those hours.”
I think this is the main point of contention. You appear to have an opinion that is opposite to generally accepted theories of supply, demand, costs etc. These things do NOT have to be done in these times, and it IS a residential (not commercial) peak, and it IS the infrastructure to service the peak that is killing us in terms of having to put a qwhole heap of infrastructure in place jsut to service a 2 hr peak. Would you prefer instead that the cost be spread to industry and commerce “here Mr business man I’m going to make your electricity cost more so you can subsidise costs of somebody else’s peak use”.
“Build a new damned large scale coal fired power plant, and all of this is moot” – wow a wholre new large scale coal powered fire station for a 2 hour peak? Who is paying Tony… WHO IS PAYING?
“Note how despite the altruistic nature of what Dr Lynne Chester says, it’s really only about the money, and the same for that second commentator also.”
Fan bloody tastic – that is exactly wehat it SHOULD be about. No mumbo jumbo left rubbish but cold hard $$$.
“that residential sector who only consume 25% of the power,” BUT DOMINATE THE PEAKS!!!!!
“sometimes my blood just boils.” true – but with a decent pricing structure you may well choose to boil it in the off peak period;)
These things do NOT have to be done in these times, and it IS a residential (not commercial) peak, and it IS the infrastructure to service the peak that is killing us in terms of having to put a qwhole heap of infrastructure in place jsut to service a 2 hr peak.
You haven’t even bothered to go and check the graphs I linked to, have you? Then you haven’t bothered to read what I had to say about them. Either that, or you can’t understand it.
I linked to two graphs in Winter, and 2 in Summer, but Judas Priest, I could link to those charts for every day of the year, and you’ll see that they are all the same. I could link to charts like that anywhere on the Planet where there is a regulated constant supply of electricity, and they are all exactly the same.
Those Peaking Power peaks are from 6AM until 8.30AM, and from 5PM until 11PM, not some arbitrary 2 hour period, or as you wrote in a Comment further down, one hour. It’s when People get up in the morning, and when people get home from work in the afternoon and into the evening.
Mattb, please. oh please explain to me how you are going to change those habits. You seem to think it’s so damned simple. That’s when the Residential sector consumes it’s power, because Matt, that’s actually when they are at home. They do all the things at home that they always do, always have, always will. Tell me Matt, are you going to change that? Come on, don’t just waffle on. Tell us.
Note the Summer peak, and note where I specifically mention that those 2 peaks so obvious in Winter are still the same, only now they are hidden because of the overall increase in total power consumption across the board, and I even explained that as well. Note when that Summer peak is. It’s around Midday to 2 PM, every Summer day, when everyone’s off at work. That peak is larger than the residential peak in Summer, so that level of power has to be there anyway.
Those Winter peaks are obvious and the overall total power consumption is lower, and again note the times. What are you going to do Matt, make people pay extra or live in frozen homes. Legislate that they can’t cook their meals, turn on their lights, watch TV. Legislate that they can’t use washing machines, dry their clothes on the line during the night in Winter. Legislate that they can’t shower because that depletes the hot water hence consuming more power to heat it back up again. Will you have your power police going around looking for homes with their lights on.
That’s the f…… peak Matt, normal everyday household life.
It’s for 2 hours in the morning, and around 5 hours in the evening, and even then residential consumption is still only 25%. Even drastically lowering it makes diddly sqaut of a difference.
And here you are, advocating that people pay more to live their everyday life.
Try telling people they can’t use power in their homes, and then try and tell them what they can use, and what they cannot use. Good luck with that Matt.
Tony – I’m not advocating they not be able to use it. I’m advocating they pay a cost reflective of the costs of providing them with peak power, so the provider can afford to provide the peak power, and leaving the consumer with the choice of using the peak power or lowering their demand. Seems rational enough to me.
“significantly discretionary use”.. not sure which word you are stuck on Tony, but use that can be avoided… eg having aircon at a reasonable setting. having heating at a reasonable setting. not operating the pool pump. Bore pump. THinking about whether you need 3 beer fridges. (note you are free to do all these just pay up).
“significantly discretionary use”.. not sure which word you are stuck on Tony, but use that can be avoided… eg having aircon at a reasonable setting. having heating at a reasonable setting. not operating the pool pump. Bore pump. THinking about whether you need 3 beer fridges. (note you are free to do all these just pay up).
Matt, I’m only quoting exactly what you said, ‘significantly discretionary use’.
People who have 3 Beer fridges, (3 beer fridges Matt, on top of an ordinary food fridge. How many people does that apply to?) already pay way extra for what they use. No other consumer subsidises their 3 beer fridges etc. If they have all those extra items, they pay the cost.
“One of its key recommendations is for the introduction of cost-reflective pricing in conjunction with the rollout of smart meters, which would give households the ability to cut electricity supply when spot prices reach a certain level.
Committee chairman and Labor senator Matt Thistlethwaite said the change would mean that only those people using electricity at peak demand would have to pay.
“Effectively, low-income households without air conditioners are subsidising the cost of high-income households running air conditioners during peak times,” Senator Thistlethwaite said.
“Note when that Summer peak is. It’s around Midday to 2 PM, every Summer day, when everyone’s off at work. That peak is larger than the residential peak in Summer, so that level of power has to be there anyway.”
Again Tony you appear to be arguing with someone who thinks that peak pricing should only be applied to residences, and at times where total demand is not at its peak. Are you confusing this conversation with me with one you are having with someone else on another blog?
Tony sorry if I missed it but do you have a reference for “It’s for 2 hours in the morning, and around 5 hours in the evening, and even then residential consumption is still only 25%.” are you suggesting that when residential use peaks all the non resi demand peaks as well?
Don’t you know how to take a link, and then read a simple graph. I explained how to do it. You only need to look at the graph to see that consumption. I don’t need a reference. This is an ACTUAL graph of ACTUAL consumption. Surely you can see what’s in front of your eyes.
I understand it’s a concept you may not be familiar with, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve explained all this before.
Oh look, I give up.
There’s no point attempting to explain something that you do not want to understand.
Um I did say sorry if I missed the specific link. Yours was a long post with a lot of links. You’d have wasted less time just saying “third link in post 11.6 or something. And you’d not have sounded like a grumpy old man.
Ok so now I’ve wasted all my time and none of those links appear to give a break down by sector of demand in the 6-11pm time period you claim as the peak.
The intimation here is that you skim through the post, don’t take any of the links, and then just go off half cocked over any points you disagree with, without checking what has been said, because that’s what you’re saying here.
Then there’s this classic:
Ok so now I’ve wasted all my time and none of those links appear to give a break down by sector of demand in the 6-11pm time period you claim as the peak.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I have explained this, here at this site. If you can’t read a damned graph, and then extrapolate what it says, after I have explained it so many times, then you have less cdf than I gave you credit for. I’m not doing your damned research for you. You are the only one who can’t see this. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Try reading my earlier comments and think about them for a minute or two.
Ah, what’s the point, Tony, he’s just plain belligerent.
No Tony, that was unfair of you, so MattB, I apologise.
If you can’t understand what I have been saying all this time here, then there’s no way known you’ll be able to work understand anything at those two links.
If it was all in the previous links that you’ve berated me for not understanding, why is it you’ve provided 2 new links?
…none of which demonstrate that residential energy consumption makes up 25% of demand between 5pm and 11pm. I’m not actually arguing it does or does not, I’m just interested, as my claim is that it is worth looking a residential loading in that peak time and you say it is not – with an implication that residential is the same 25% of total demand.
Those two links have a lot of interesting graphs, but none that I can find that provide that data.
I grat you there are three options… they are not there, they are there and I don’t understand them, or they are there and I missed them.
FYI those links are the equivalent of me trying to convert a skeptic by jsut saying “read the IPCC reports” rather than specifying a chapter. i.e. unreasonable.
again you show your total inability to read something and then understand what I said. Either that, or you are deliberately misrepresenting what I said. You say here:
…none of which demonstrate that residential energy consumption makes up 25% of demand between 5pm and 11pm
At no stage have I EVER said that residential power consumption is 25% between those hours you quote. Here’s what I actually said had you bothered to read it.
Electrical power is consumed in Australia at the ratio of 25% for the Residential Sector, 45% for the Commerce Sector and 30% for the Industrial sector…..
That’s not for some arbitrary period of time. That’s the total power breakdown for each sector, so that Residential sector is only consuming 25% IN TOTAL of all electrical power on a 24/7/365 basis.
That is explained exactly at those most recent links I gave you, but again, you would not be able to comprehend what is being written there, so that is why I expressly gave that link to that detailed explanation in that original Comment number 10.
Here’s that link again for you Matt, carefully explained.
This isn’t something I just made up Matt. It’s from your own Labor Party puppet masters.
You also go on to say here:
…..as my claim is that it is worth looking a residential loading in that peak time and you say it is not…..
It’s really nice to see, Mattb, that you are all in favour of making life even more difficult for every Australian by increasing the cost of electricity for expressly the time when they are locked into using it the most.
See how you never stop making a fool of yourself. We don’t do that. You do it to yourself by having this false belief that we are liars with everything we say. Just because you cannot understand what is being said does not make us liars.
“That’s the f…… peak Matt, normal everyday household life.
It’s for 2 hours in the morning, and around 5 hours in the evening, and even then residential consumption is still only 25%. ”
I then quoted it and asked where you got that… ie 25% during the peak. You pointed to link after link after link but now say:
“At no stage have I EVER said that residential power consumption is 25% between those hours you quote.”
So sorry mate I’ve been crystal clear and you’ve made a mistake, and had you bothered to read my 10.4.1.4 you’d have seen that and we could have avoided all the banter from then on.
So to confirm: the statement you made (apparently in error), and which I questioned, has no basis in any data you are aware of, despite your pointing me to a heap of links in an effort to make it look like you did?
I can’t believe you’ve gone on so long about this. It’s partly my fault I suppose for leading you on like this, but at each step, you have shown how little you do actually read, because confirmation of what I say is in the Comment of pat’s directly below this one, and it has been directly below all these comments we have made since the stated time, long before you came in with your allegations.
Can you not even read.
This is not me ‘making stuff up’.
Read the Comment Matt, and realise now just how embarrassed you must be.
You are the only person I have ever known to not be able to see this.
Tony – I asked an honest question regarding a statement you made. You huffed and puffed and then claimed you never made the statement. Pat’s comment below is completely unrelated. Heck I don;t even disagree with a lot of your posts, but you said something, I was interested and I asked a question:
“Tony sorry if I missed it but do you have a reference for “It’s for 2 hours in the morning, and around 5 hours in the evening, and even then residential consumption is still only 25%.”
You could have just said “no, that’s not what I meant, I meant that overall domestic use is only about 25% of total use”. I agree with that. That would have been that.
Look, I’m sorry Matt. I naturally assumed that you could read, and then actually put two and two together.
This is not a case of my saying something incorrect. It’s just another case of your inherent ability to misrepresent everything.
If you can’t read something that is said that you cannot comprehend, then don’t attempt to put the blame back on me, and please, Matt, don’t call me a liar.
since you falsely misrepresented what I said, you have made 6 Comments , all of them based around your original misrepresentation.
Had you even bothered to read the original Comment number 10, a full 14 Comments earlier than your misrepresentation, and still in the same original Comment numbering system, you would have found this:
Electrical power is consumed in Australia at the ratio of 25% for the Residential Sector, 45% for the Commerce Sector and 30% for the Industrial sector, as I explained…..
and then this:
A little later in that audio ….. it is mentioned that the residential sector only consumes 25% of all generated power…..
And then this:
….. and again, let me stress how this is being specifically targeted at the Residential sector only, which is barely 25% of all power consumption.
Note the mention of the word …..ALL.
Then, as a distraction, you conveniently misrepresent ONE thing and hone in on that, when it is you has misrepresented it, and placed your own false interpretation on it in an attempt to blame me for your failings.
If you can’t even read correctly, then do not blame me for something that is your own failure.
Sorry Tony the confusion lies in your poorly worded statement “5 hours in the evening, and even then residential consumption is still only 25%”. You’ll note I didn’t reply to all the other times you claim 25% as I agree… but here you SPECIFICALLY referred to 25% in the peak… no amount of referring to other posts you’ve made can shy away from that fact. I then asked a pretty basic and polite question, to which you could have easily just said “oh no I’ll clarify, that 25% is just of total consumption averaged over all times of the day”. instead you argued and made out I was a moron when I at WORST misunderstood you (I maintain the reality is you expressed yourself poorly and I simply took your words as though you meant them).
YOur problem of course is that we now know that residential is > 25% at the peak times, meaning that peak costs are a perfectly valid tool to target the peak. Personally I’d apply to anyone using in the peak not just residents. But you are now agreeing with me that the resi use in the PEAK IS IMPORTANT! as it is not just the 25% you’ve implied.
Please Tony… go re read the thread, admit your wording was poor, admit that my interpretation was not a misrepresentation but what simply exactly what you had said, admit that you could have cleared it up in #10.4.1.4.1 because you are so convinced that the chances you made a mistake in your wording are so slim that you didn’t even read my post AND QUOTE carefully.
Feb 2012: Smart Metering – Ed Milliband’s Poisoned Chalice
Alex Henney1, Ross Anderson2
1. Former director of London Electricity; in 1987 the first person to propose a competitive restructuring of the electric industry in
England & Wales; author and publisher of The British Electric Industry 1990-2010: the rise and demise of competition.
2. FRS FREng, Professor of Security Engineering, University of Cambridge, Computing Laboratory http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SmartMetering-Feb82012.pdf
11 Oct: Guardian: John Naughton: So which bright spark thought of smart meters?
There’s a good case for rethinking the way we supply and charge for electricity, but the government’s take on smart meters is a recipe for disaster
Their introduction has been US policy since 2007, for example, when President George W Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act – and allocated $4.5bn (£2.8bn) for the development of a “smart” electricity grid. In 2009, the European Union followed suit with a directive mandating smart metering in households by 2022, which, in relation to the scale of what has to be done is, the blink of an eye.
Another is that smart metering will enable utility companies to vary the cost per unit on an hourly basis. So electricity might cost 2p a unit at 3am but 12p a unit at 6pm, when the nation gets home, starts cooking and switches on the TV…
What we have in the making is another multibillion-pound government IT disaster of the kind that Whitehall has made its unique speciality. And that’s only the half of it. Because embedded in the technology of smart metering is an even more worrying possibility about which the government (and the electricity utilities) has been strangely taciturn. The utilities love the technology because it will enable them to disconnect consumers remotely who don’t pay their bills… http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/11/smart-meters-dumb-idea-cybersecurity
Can you see what from what pat has linked to here, which is exactly what I’ve written about. 2p per KWH for off peak times at 2 AM, and then 6 times that amount when DOMESTIC consumers get home from work and cook dinner etc etc etc.
See how it has nothing to do with regulating consumption, just a money making exercise, because people are captively bound to consume power at those specific times.
Smart meters for a smart grid.
Absolute bovine excrement.
Do not EVER try and tell me this is being done for the sake of the environment. It’s done to make money for the only times when people use the most.
Everything associated with global warming, climate change, electricity consumption, renewable power, is only about the money.
I was at a conference last week, and the defence people were horrified. All that Smart Metering is complex electronics built to consumer quality, making the whole grid vulnerable to EMP, not to mention Solar Flares, as if the destabilising effects of connecting lots of sporadic Windmills and Solar Panels weren’t enough.
Like ‘Sciences’ that have to be called Science, some things called ‘Smart ‘ can be pretty Dumb.
That’s awesome. In a bad way. Never thought of the Smart Grid like that, but it’s obvious in hindsight.
I reckon our electrical grid presently is less threatened by an Electro Magnetic Pulse from China and more threatened by an Electro Magnetic Retreat from Canberra!
Talk about shock-and-awe tactics…you’ll be in awe that sticking a knife into the wall socket doesn’t shock you.
18 Oct: Business Green: Jessica Shankleman: Oracle predicts ‘huge’ market for UK water smart metering
*** Rodger Smith, senior vice-president of Oracle Utilities, added that the introduction of smart meters could require water companies to hire data analysts to process the 180-fold increase in data that they will be able to analyse.
***”Utilities for the first time are finding out they need those sorts of people and they haven’t in the past so that’s a huge difference, and they will have to prove why they are more exciting to work for than, say, Morgan Stanley or Google,” he said…
“We’ve noticed around the world that utilities wait for reams of data to come in and then they realise they don’t know how to do anything with it,” he said… http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/analysis/2218164/oracle-predicts-huge-market-for-uk-water-smart-metering
18 Oct: SmartGridNews: Colorado may let users opt-out of smart meters
Quick Take: After the flurry of negative publicity that resulted when Duke turned off power to a customer who refused a smart meter, we feel even more strongly that utilities should all offer opt-out programs.
Yes, the customer should pick up the extra cost of manual meter reading. Or the extra cost to mount the meter on a pole away from the customer residence. But they should not be forced to take a smart meter just because they hold extreme views about their health risks. And now it looks like Colorado may join the list of states that allow opt-out. – By Jesse Berst …
If those approvals come, customers may be able to opt out as of January and have their smart meters switched out for an analog meter, according to a KOAA news story.
Customers would be required to pay a one-time fee of $109 for the meter switch… http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/Technologies_Metering/Colorado-may-let-users-opt-out-of-smart-meters-5204.html
After it proved impossible to stop the power company from making wild-ass guesses instead of reading the meter we opted to have a smart meter put in.
So far so good. But I fear the ultimate intent is not to steal any kind of personal information that could be used against me as the Guam suit alleges (what could the thing get a hold of?) but to be able to charge me more for power during peak load times.
Tony is on the right crusade. Build more generating capacity. It’s a simple solution to a simple problem.
19 Oct: Guam: GPA sued over smart meters
COMMENT: Let me guess! The GPA workers do not need the monthly exercise to read power meters, much the same as postal delivery workers don’t need to deliver mail to residents of Guam, resulting in everyone renting a PO Box. What is next? Should we disconnect out power meters, take them down to GPA, stand in line, and have them jot down our readings? I suppose we will otherwise have our power disconnected without notices and eventually have our water disconnected so these ‘meter-jockeys’ can sit at their desk and misread our usage every month. http://www.kuam.com/story/19860390/2012/10/19/gpa-sued-over-smart-meters
TonyfromOz –
you make some other important points about the big picture, but i am also concerned about Councils – such as i documented recently re Logan Council in SE Qld – offering smart meters to low-income families under the guise of being concerned about their welfare.
the failure of the MSM – what else is there? – to inform the public fairly & honestly about everything pertaining to CAGW, including attempts to use people’s Super Funds (being run by ex-pollies in some cases) to actually fund the whole boondoggle, when they are funding it already thru subsidies, grants, higher electricity & water bills, etc., makes my blood boil too.
I see Bill Shorten has called for unemployment benefits to be increased. Some very nasty people have suggested that this is because Bill reckons he’ll be needing them soon. Which is incorrect and very unkind and I’ll explain why.
Heheh funny, but I see a serious side to the “cons don’t get the dole” joke. What they get is much better than the dole. Hell these days you have to work for the dole don’t you? (or was that a short-lived Howard policy?)
Prisoners receive 3 square meals a day, accommodation no worse or crowded than a backpacker hostel, free membership in a gym, access to regular exercise, free library loans, free trade skills training in some cases, a physically intimidating social environment where violence is rewarded with respect, routinely cruel treatment by guards that will undermine any faith in law and the government, and virtually compulsory attendance at an ongoing crime workshop in which crooks discuss the causes of their failed business ventures with a view to figuring out how to do it all better next time.
And we have the cheek to call these 3-star bully resorts a form of “punishment” and the audacity to call these extremely expensive crime training centres a “correctional services facility”. 😯
Now on top of that look what happens when they get out. They are a 2nd class citizen, forbidden from Jury duty, will never be trusted by employers to do any decent job again (perhaps not even the legal one they were originally good at), a black mark forever against their name. Still the fiction continues that these people have “paid their debt to society in full” and have been “rehabilitated” by these same “correctional services”.
What a sick joke.
It is not just a question of law and mandatory sentences etc, it’s a question of societal values.
Is the current situation preferable to just shooting them in the head on day one? I’m sure most of you are rightly repulsed by the spectre of eugenics. Not to mention the awful prospect of our wonderful justice system allowing a few innocents to go through to the keeper. Okay. If you do not want to cut prison costs by just killing convicts on day one, then we must seriously examine what hope there is, if any, of crooks ever being “corrected” and “rehabilitated” to the point that society can genuinely extend to them a 2nd chance in life.
Because right now crime is the best job going for an ex-con.
P.S : I’m NOT topher and my view should NOT be unpopular! 😀
how many battalions will it take to administer this? and every time the situaion changes, who notifies whom?
20 Oct: Bloomberg: Power Hogs Targeted by France in Big Brother Legislation
Heating a French home could soon require an income tax consultation or even a visit to the doctor under legislation to force conservation in the nation’s $46 billion household energy market.
A bill adopted by the lower house this month would set prices that homes pay based on wages, age and climate. Utilities Electricite de France SA and GDF Suez SA (GSZ) will use the data to reward consumers who cut power and natural gas usage and penalize those whom regulators decide are wasteful.
“It’s Orwellian,” opposition lawmaker Daniel Fasquelle said by telephone. “The law will create huge inequalities and infringe on people’s individual freedoms. It won’t work.” …
The legislation drew criticism from trade unions and industry groups. It will add layers of bureaucracy to a power system already attacked in court and antitrust probes for being oppressive for customers and competitors of EDF (EDF) and GDF Suez, the former state monopolies that still dominate supply, opponents said…
The proposed law was adopted by the National Assembly on Oct. 4 and is set for Senate debate later this month…
The new French law will add income and the number and age of occupants to the mix. Having a medical condition that requires electricity-powered equipment like respirators or wheelchairs will also enter into the equation…
Renters will be able to deduct from their monthly payments a part of the higher costs of heating a home deemed to have low energy use efficiency, maybe because it’s poorly insulated, while the elderly or households with certain yet-to-be specified heating installations will get higher base volumes of energy… http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/power-hogs-targeted-by-france-in-big-brother-legislation.html
during a break in the women’s tennis in moscow, i foolishly switched to sky news where the presenters were in panic mode because the liberals looked like getting 8 seats in ACT election to 7 for labor, and the liberal guy was declaring victory tho not stating he could form govt. he said greens had suffered – nearly 5% decrease in their vote – because of their alliance with labor, and he would be willing to negotiate with them on allowing budgets to go through and not blocking supply.
so what was the news ticker appearing on the screen repeatedly:
“says greens have suffered from their alliance with LIBERALS”!
sky news hack (never know their names, and don’t want to) then goes on to mock the liberal guy as a hypocrite, saying how he is putting down the greens, yet saying he will negotiate with them. which, by the way, is what one of the greens is also saying namely, if he wants to be chief minister, he will have to talk to them.
all the MSM headlines up to today have headlined a win for labor, with none allowing any possibility of a liberal win. plus:
20 Oct: Sky News: ACT voters tipped to return ALP
Betting markets were so sure the government would rack up another win, one bookmaker decided to pay out on Friday.
Sportsbet spokesman Shaun Anderson said his punters might as well enjoy their winnings a day early after Labor’s odds to win firmed from $1.50 to $1.04 and support for the Liberals moved from $3.50 to $5.50.
Mr Anderson said 99 per cent of all bets Sportsbet took on the election had gone on Labor…
Greens leader Meredith Hunter has told both sides her party is ready to negotiate, whatever the outcome. http://www.skynews.com.au/politics/article.aspx?id=807747
the above is why i avoid the MSM almost 100% of the time. and i’m not even a liberal voter. sheesh.
“all the MSM headlines up to today have headlined a win for labor, with none allowing any possibility of a liberal win”
If the Libs win AND form government with the a couple of the independants ( assuming there`s enough independants to do so )I suspect the MSM will have a collective head explosion
With Lib/lab holding 38.6% each the headlines now read
It isn’t a ‘proposal’, it is a philosophical discussion:
“The authors provocatively argue that there is no moral difference between a foetus and a newborn. Their capacities are relevantly similar. If abortion is permissible, infanticide should be permissible.”
Personally I think by raising such a confronting possibility, ‘the justifications for killing a new-born could be the same as the justifications for an abortion because there is no moral difference’, the authors are forcing people to re-think their positions on abortion.
I don’t read into it any proposal or move to introduce legal infanticide.
I went back and read that article again and I can’t avoid saying this. The argument that a newborn is not a person is unacceptable. This is the jump off the cliff that started with abortion on demand. Jaymez, don’t be blind to suggestions of coldblooded murder.
I have steadfastly refused to swallow abortion as birth control and I’m not going to swallow this.
The Journal of Medical Ethics is a sewer!
It’s time for anyone with a conscience to stand up and say NO.
Jaymez
October 21, 2012 at 2:15 am · Reply
It isn’t a ‘proposal’, it is a philosophical discussion:
I don’t read into it any proposal or move to introduce legal infanticide.
Doesn’t mean that that isn’t one of the authors’ goals. This may be a “trial balloon” — how people react to it determines their future direction. The 2010 video was another example of this.
Ever wonder why the Left exclusively pushes fetal stem cell research, even though it produces cancer about 25% of the time, so hasn’t resulted in any real therapies yet? At the same time, adult stem cells (which don’t require a fetus to be killed) are now being used in over 100 therapies. This successful research is invisible in leftist publications. The only significant differences (besides the tendency for fetal cells to initiate cancer) is that you have to kill for the kind they want, and not for the kind they ignore. Recently, equilivent fetal cells have been produced from adult cells.
Google “Liverpool care path” and read some of the English doctors’ horrifying testimony to see where ‘Progressives’ would like to go. (~29% of all patients who die in British hospitals are deliberately killed by the doctors — they are chosen because they are old, or have expensive or slow to cure diseases.)
This is the position of the Australian philosopher Peter Singer, now at Princeton. He argues with most anti abortionists that there is no moral difference between killing a fetus and killing a baby or even a grown human.
“Opponents of abortion ought to welcome articles arguing that there is no real difference of moral status between the fetus and the newborn, for they have been arguing that themselves for many years. Their problem, apparently, is that most of them do not know how to argue against anyone who agrees with them that the fetus and newborn infant have the same moral status, but then denies that merely existing as an innocent living human being is enough to give a being a right to life.”
He is an animal rights activist and that influences his “speciesism” or discrimination against the rights of animals which he finds as morally unacceptable. I think it is also a measure of an underlying contemporary paganism which whether acknowledged or not is philosophically foundational generally to AGW alarmism eg Gaiaism.
Thus I think a good argument can be made for the role of underlying Judeo/Christian or theistic presuppositions in the historic advancement of science.
Their problem, apparently, is that most of them do not know how to argue against anyone who agrees with them that the fetus and newborn infant have the same moral status, but then denies that merely existing as an innocent living human being is enough to give a being a right to life.
undermines both your argument and that of Jaymez. That’s a tacit argument that killing the newborn is as justified as killing it before birth.
The animal rights connection undermines Singer’s credibility because clearly his priorities are junk. And I’m an animal owner, lover and quite thoroughly opposed to intentional cruelty to animals. But I know the difference between the two and their relative importance.
And I know this. A generation that murders its unborn children just for the sake of the convenience of the mother is not going to stand forever. We are descending into chaos and have abandoned the one thing most worth saving about western civilization — the moral conviction that human life is sacred, not to be taken lightly. It’s being replaced by the moral sewer of people who will murder their daughters for some nitwit’s concept of “honor” because the daughter was raped. And that’s no moral code at all.
That moral breakdown that permits abortion on demand is what enables animal rights to gain a foothold; what enables fake and fudged research without a pang of conscience; enables liberalism and postmodernism in general and everything we fight against here. Morality does matter.
There was a day when no one would dare publish such a thing for fear of real consequences. What has happened to us?
Read that stuff and found it confusing, and because of that did not bother to go back and try to tease out
the real meaning.
The meaning we need to hold to is the one you have outlined so well.
The way we live and the PC traps that bind us in modern “civil” societies may need some additional tweaking however. Some hints may be had from other lifestyle largely from the last.
Primitive groups, from memory, had a practice of killing newly-borns which were deformed or unlikely to be able to sustain a life at maturity.
At the other end of the scale my parents and grandparents died at home or within a day or two of entering hospital.
Older Australian Aboriginals when they reached a time they felt was right apparently went off to a special place to sing themselves off to the next world.
Current practice at both ends is to save every life at whatever cost.
So we have nursing homes full of people who can’t feed themselves and do not know who they are let alone who their children are.
We also have new parents with children who have been “rescued” so that they can spend life in a wheel
chair, be incapable any much mental development and require constant attention.
I suspect that the philosophers like Peter Singer may be the ones putting enormous pressure on doctors to
“save every life” but at the same time I don’t expect to see them lining up to help the parents who have
the challenge of an incapacitated child.
The PC period has shown its colours and it may be time we got to a point where we can debate things in a practical open manner and give people more real options.
the moral sewer of people who will murder their daughters for some nitwit’s concept of “honor” because the daughter was raped.
It’s a romantic moment, isn’t it? Between mother and child. You know, that special moment when the mother looks down upon her baby and sees in its face the visage of her rapist.
Certainly a special moment that should be cherished and protected and prolonged indefinitely, instead of cowing to some nitwit’s concept of “love” and “commitment”.
And that’s no moral code at all.
Can’t argue with that. Well how could anyone argue against it, as every moral code is an island.
Just guessing here, but would there happen to be some Christian doctrine of the sanctity of life that directs your response on this one particular scenario of post-rape abortion?
Because it would be rather maddening, surely, to live a life devoted to truth and realistic planning and yet, to the extent that facts and logic contradict your religious principles, to allow religion to overrule logic.
That moral breakdown that permits abortion on demand is what […] enables liberalism and postmodernism in general
Abortion on demand is a moral breakdown because you say so. Sounds postmodernist to me.
Morality does matter.
Yes, but why? Consequences matter and consequence is real. Morality is imaginary, but it is important because it is our own internal model of how other minds are affected by stimulus, and in particular by the consequences of our own action or inaction.
By ignoring the effect on unwilling mothers of an outright abortion ban (ie making human life “sacred”) you demonstrate immorality. You ignore multiple consequences on the “sacred” lives of your fellow living breathing humans, precisely the opposite of the purpose of moral cognition. You would prefer to prematurely elevate a uterine tumour to baby status than take stock of how that unwanted tumour and its mother and her family will cope if it is allowed to naturally advance to real baby status. You would prefer to unquestioningly carry out a religious doctrine written by persons unknown 2000 years before technology had ever invented safe abortion chemicals. You are not “dense”, but you’ve not even begun to think empirically about the issues.
Well all the above has probably infuriated you beyond reason. Why then did I say it? Because I have the unpleasant character trait of privileging truth above human relationships. Knowing the truth, and having the wisdom to know when and how it should be applied, is one of the finest goals a mind can set itself towards. I am nowhere near that goal but thorny issues make good practice. Call me Cartesian, but I think reality has to be the starting point.
It would be wrong of me to make upsetting comments purporting a falsehood if either the comment itself is a lie, or the consequence of people operating under the falsehood is minor compared to the upset of its exposition.
When reminded of the first paragraph above it’s an easy decision to make.
You correctly state:
“he did not agree with abortion as birth control.”
But you think he still has some wriggle room after decrying this:
“they can kill you for convenience at any age.”
(my emph), and after also saying this:
“the one thing most worth saving about western civilization — the moral conviction that human life is sacred”
Note that nobody has even mentioned adoption thus far in the thread, it was not even a mooted option. Perhaps Roy also doesn’t mind a woman going through the pain of birth for nothing? How immoral could he be? But that is speculation, let’s focus on what he did actually say.
Roy said human life is sacred, further implying it is sacred even at the age of negative 7 months, so it’s entirely on-target to argue that point regardless of whatever else he said.
I still haven’t read all of the above and digested it but generally got the idea that most people, including you and I, would be OK with abortion in the case of rape..
Not sure whether Roy has excluded himself from that either.
Mostly agree with your comments here and your others spread around the blog but you seem to be a bit
intense about expressing things, but then so am I.
I always know I’m right when I get ridiculed instead of sound logical argument against me.
If you disagree with my position then tell me why.
If you ridicule me I know you can’t support your own position worth a toot and I write you off.
PS: I would hold the same position if I had never heard the word Christianity. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with basic right and wrong. Any society worth living in prohibits the killing of someone on only an individual’s personal authority. You cannot walk up and knock off your neighbor for any cause, not even in a very much degraded Australia. And not even if your neighbor is fully capable of fighting back and could defend successfully are you allowed to try it.
To not extend that protection to those who cannot defend themselves at all is a betrayal of everything that is good and decent about our very foundation as a society. If you really want the world where someone can, without penalty, murder his daughter because she was raped, then go for it. But let me off the world first because I want something much better.
I await your well reasoned and well argued response.
One of the problems I have when writing comment is that I have a tendency to make comment based on the first few lines I read.
Then I go back and read the rest of it and find extra material that makes my comment a bit premature.
On top of that there seem to be some topics like Abortion, as here, and “The Greenhouse Effect” where everybody has a slightly different understanding of what is meant.
If you look at the current discussion going round in circles here about the greenhouse effect you will see what I mean: a lot of very smart people butting heads over a very poorly defined and loaded concept.
Same with abortion and concepts about death at the end of life; I hope to go naturally but don’t agree with being kept alive by excessive intervention.
If you really want the world where someone can, without penalty, murder his daughter because she was raped, then go for it.
Well my response to this could not be better worded than you have said it already: You attribute things to me about murder that I did not say.
If you disagree with my position then tell me why.
I did, and in no uncertain terms.
Though I detect some potential confusion over one non-essential part of your previous comment. Just for completeness… In this sentence…
people who will murder their daughters for some nitwit’s concept of “honor” because the daughter was raped.
My understanding was that the two instances of “daughter” referred to two different human beings. ie that the mother, who is also a daughter, was raped to produce an unwanted female daughter (foetus/baby) which was then killed. That was the only interpretation consistent with the rest of the paragraph about “murders its unborn children”.
Was this the meaning you intended?
If not, then I am sure you will understand my misapprehension, given that you started off with “murders its unborn children” and finished by saying “[it’s a] moral breakdown that permits abortion on demand”. Wasn’t expecting you to talk about a totally different problem in the middle. As I said, it it non-essential and superfluous to your thesis.
Also, If you do not distinguish between murder and abortion, then we have located another important source of confusion.
I can’t help but think you have switched topics and are now talking about an entirely different problem than the original I responded to:
A generation that murders its unborn children just for the sake of the convenience of the mother is not going to stand forever. We are descending into chaos and have abandoned the one thing most worth saving about western civilization — the moral conviction that human life is sacred, not to be taken lightly.
I take it you have retreated from this earlier statement, as you completely ignored my precise argument against its universality, choosing instead to be huffy and claim victim’s rights.
My thesis, as you put it was morality. Period! If I expressed it in less than the best way perhaps you can forgive that in light of your response.
I don’t know what your point of confusion was because it’s quite common to punctuate a point with more than one example. That’s all I did. Murders unborn children refers to abortion for birth control. Murders their daughters refers to the interpretation of Islam that sanctions honor killing (did you not recognize it?). Both illustrate complete moral bankruptcy to me – the worst sort of disregard for other human beings.
I hope this makes the thing clear.
In addition, the suggestion, even philosophically, that it might be permissible to abort the child after birth is the same problem to me.
None of this has anything to do with religion for me. Absolutely none of it.
There are a few comments by others to the effect that they ” know ” Andrew.
They seem to know something about his motivation and its obvious, after his last tortured reply avoiding the issue, that he is not worth bothering with.
If there is some point to his comments I cannot see it.
KK, the point of argument is to persuade someone else of one’s own opinion.
As to your casting dispersions about my character, presumably you are trying to persuade Roy, or casual bystanders who have not bothered to read my comments, that I am some sort of evil troll.
I reckon the phenomenon you are now exhibiting is basically Poe’s Law operating in reverse. Because you A) are either incapable or unwilling to understand the argument I made, and B) cannot believe that anybody would ever disagree strongly with your own conclusion, you decide the only explanation must be that I don’t actually believe what I’m saying.
Once you have decided you cannot believe anything I say, there is literally nothing I can say that will convince you otherwise. I believe that counteracting such a spiral into oblivion is a phenomenon our culture calls “good faith”, and the expectation that claims can be substantiated.
Of course you are now the one showing not merely a lack of “good faith” that people are at least earnest in their stated beliefs, you are now actually making up crap. Nobody to my knowledge in these forums has ever said about me anything like the kind of statement you allude to.
Perhaps you have misunderstood a SINGLE recent comment by Wes in which he spoke commendably of me for strongly taking a position on the “back-radiation furphy” issue which he (unsurprisingly) agrees with.
Well clearly this thread has degenerated into a smelly morass. Funny this should arise in a discussion of morality in which I am the only one who as been able to defend my opinion from the ground up.
It’s one of the few benefits to being a moral consequentialist.
The rest of the time the deontologists have the last laugh as they are able to make decisions very quickly and easily.
I recently met an American engineer over here in Wales working on new installations for our LNG plants. He told me he has quite a few solar panels on the roof of his house back in the USA. They are used to drive his air conditioners which are used mainly when its hot and the sun is shining. Now this made sense to me.
Yes that does have a logic to it but I suspect that the most economic power supply, at the moment, is still through concentrated power supplied from large efficient units.
Not so good at night I’d expect 😉 Great idea if the engineer works from home … so long as the sun shines and the system is large enough to power household air-conditioning.
I wonder what the payback time period is ? It’d have to be considerably shorter than the unit real life cycle in order to be cost effective given maintenance and efficiency deterioration. BTW, 25 year panel guarantees are worthless.
The trouble is the sun isn;t shining when the actual peak on the grid occurs. At least not here in Perth. So all these PVs don’t reduce the amount of coal/gas fired power stations, which means don’t reduce infrastructure. What they do do is reduce the total kWh drawn from the grid, meaning that the infrastructure costs have to be recouped from fewer kWh which means the unit cost of electricity gets forced up. Regardless of your stance on renewables what we need is genuine peak pricing.
See Comment 10, and I tried to make it as simple as I could.
Right.
Now give us an explanation as to just how this is going to work.
As I mentioned, the Commerce sector consumes around 45% of all electrical power being consumed, and the (average) power bill for that Commerce sector is around 7 to 8 times the average Residential power bill, so that’s around $4000 for 90 days.
The Industrial sector consumes around 30% of all electrical power being consumed, and the (average) power bill for that Industrial sector is around 75 times the average residential power bill, so that’s around $38,000 for 90 days.
Because those two sectors consume so much power, they have dedicated contracts for the purchase of their power from the power retailing Companies.
Peak power is for dedicated periods of time, each and every day, times that never change because that’s when people get up in the morning and then get home from work. Those times will NEVER change.
However, both the Commerce and Industrial sectors are still consuming power during those same dedicated hours when the residential consumption spikes.
So, here you are, Mattb, advocating that we impose an extra cost for electricity on just that residential sector alone, who only consume 25% of electrical power. They are totally and utterly locked into consuming at those times.
This isn’t just a bunch of rich bastards you’re aiming your price increase at in your supposed moral stance to redistribute the wealth. It’s every single Australian. That’s when they get up in the morning. That’s when they get home from work to cold homes in the Winter, hot in Summer, they cook their evening meal. They do all the out of working hours things that need to be done at home. Those times are set in concrete.
What’s your plan, Mattb? Tell us all how you are going to change those things.
Your plan is to bump up the price of electricity Mattb, not for some perceived rorters who bludge off the rest of us by having airconditioning, but for every single home.
You’ve got no idea have you?
And Mattb, if you want fairness, then you could lower the cost of electricity by lowering the feed in tariff to the same as what providers pay for other electricity, not up to 10 times what other generating entities get.
Or if people want rooftop solar, tell them to go the whole hog and disconnect from the grid and just use the panels for their power, because, the truth is Mattb, those panel owners are bludging off the rest of us who have to pay higher electricity prices for their self righteous luxury, and bludging off the grid also, because two thirds off all residential power for rooftop solar panel owners still comes from the grid, during those dedicated peak times.
Ahh tony I jsut realised where your misunderstanding comes from:
“So, here you are, Mattb, advocating that we impose an extra cost for electricity on just that residential sector alone”
Well then be prepared to pay for it Roy. And Tony it is the poor bastards who have to pay higher for everything because rich bastards don’t pay enough for the honour of having enough capacity for their luxuries.
Did you notice my post was to Richard’s #19. If your #11 i the god damn gospel truth then hey lets shut down the blog and just leave it all over to you;)
If your #11 i the god damn gospel truth then hey lets shut down the blog and just leave it all over to you;)
Fair comment Mattb.
So then the simple thing to do is refute what I say. Off you go then.
Hmm! Just wondering here:
And Tony it is the poor bastards who have to pay higher for everything because rich bastards don’t pay enough for the honour of having enough capacity for their luxuries.
Er, what luxuries might they be now?
Also, keep in mind, Matt, you can’t have one rule for some and not for others. Set a costing regime in place for certain times, and everyone in that residential sector is then locked into paying those higher prices.
Also, surely then that same adage of yours applies to those rooftop solar owners who are making the poor pay extra for their power to pay for their, er, luxury.
ANd I guess stupid old me just listening to the direct words from the CEO of Western Power a fortnight ago.
Ever wondered why a power company CEO wants to increase the cost of his product in the specific time when everyone in the residential sector is captively locked into consuming the bulk of their electrical power.
Tony – you could have a regime in place where the 1st XkWh of power consumed in the peak (lets call this essential use) is charged at a set rate, with the remaining YkWh charged at higher rates.
I like a lot of your post in 11, thus there is not much to refute, but on the whole I see no reason that one could object to using the economic tools of demand management to do just that (manage demand) at the peak rather than build wasted infrastructure to cater for an hour a day in preference to making some decent but “brave” political decisions.
“Also, surely then that same adage of yours applies to those rooftop solar owners who are making the poor pay extra for their power to pay for their, er, luxury.”
Indeed it does Tony, indeed it does. A lot of your argument appears to be that you are arguing against some MattB who has a lot of strange ideas about energy supply, but that must be some other MattB that I’ve not had the pleasure to meet.
Artificially cheap energy for the masses sounds a tad socialist to me though Tony:)
The current retail cost of electricity is around 24 cents per KWH
Coal fired power costs around 3 cents per KWH to generate, and that’s the same cost as it was back in the 70’s, and hasn’t changed. This Government has doubled that cost to 6 cents per KWH with its introduction of the CO2 Tax. Coal fired power is so cheap because all the costs are extrapolated over the life of the plant anything up to 50 years and more, a lifespan renewables can only dream of.
It’s not artificially cheap.
It IS cheap.
Everything else is expensive.
You could build a brand spanking new recent technology coal fired plant, and it would immediately solve the demand problem. The cost of the generated electricity would still be cheaper than any of the renewables, any of them. The trouble with that is that no one in their right mind would even consider thinking about a new coal fired plant.
The perceived problem is not that the cost is artificially cheap.
It’s that it is artificially expensive.
Now, everything points to them wanting to make it even more expensive. They can raise the cost to whatever they want it set at. Coal fired power will still be generated for 3 cents per KWH.
Instead of artificially trying to use cost as a the limiter, literally making it too expensive for people to use, why not just increase demand.
That cost is raised artificially by (subsidised) renewable power plants, raised artificially by that ridiculous feed in tarrif, raised artificially by the CO2 Tax.
Take all of them away, and we go back (figuratively speaking) to a situation similar to what it was like in the 1980’s when electricity was retailing for around 12 cents per KWH or less, when coal fired power was 3 cents per KWH, exactly what it costs to generate now. (without the added CO2 Tax that is)
Then we have existing Nuclear power plants in the U.S. and I know this is an argument that is useless here in Australia. Electricity generated from those existing Nuclear sources costs around 1.6 cents per KWH to generate, probably cheaper, because the Plant has to make some profit. That is borne out at this link, a personal Blog from someone who has worked at a Nuke for 20 years. Scroll down two thirds of the way to that area under the wild flowers image and read what he has to say there.
Why is it, like coal fired power so cheap?
Because they generate monumentally huge amounts of power on a constant and regular basis, and do that for 50 years or more, hence they can spread the unit cost (per KWH) over a much longer period.
Electrical power is not kept artificially cheap. It has been made more expensive.
That Peaking power period is not just the one essential hour you quote either Matt, It’s around 2 hours in the morning and for almost 4 to 6 hours in the evening. It has been the same since a regular and constant supply of electricity has been available, in fact since electricity was first available at that residential sector, so, it’s not just some recent thing.
Then, on top of that, there’s something not many people would read into this, and in fact it screams it out loudly to me.
No new major scale coal fired plants have been constructed since the 80’s. Population has increased by a factor that now means we are stretched for Demand, because all those extra people need homes, places to shop, Commerce and Industry for jobs etc, hence demand has now outstripped supply.
The only plants that are being constructed are wind and solar plants, and that has added (In Nameplate Capacity only) the equivalent of 2 large scale coal fired plants. Now with this perceived problem of Demand, what it screams out to me is that these new Renewables have not alleviated that problem in any manner at all.
I know I make my Comments long at times, but people’s perceptions are controlled by spin making something out to be a huge problem, when it is relatively easy to solve. Build a damned power plant that actually can provide huge amounts of power ….. and do that on a 24/7/365 basis. Now, State Governments and Private operators are too scared to even contemplate that idea.
Instead, we are being conditioned to believe the only way out of this is to ramp up the price, for one sector only, the one already using the least and paying the most now. This of itself will not alleviate this problem, because people are locked in absolutely to using their electrical power at those specific times.
Tony – on tomorrow night’s agenda we are considering a WEstern Power request to put a new transformer in a park to service big increases in demand in a residential area. Where is this covered by your 3c/kWh. Where are the costs for upgrading the network to deliver this unlimited power approach you propose, where we build new massive plants and encourage everyone to use the electricity the supply?
Your transformer in the park has nothing whatsoever to do with the generating of power by the power plant. The plant will generate the same amount of power it always has. The generating entity generates the power and then sells that power to the grid, and that is the end of what they do. The actual power that they generate will still cost the same as it always has.
That transformer is a distribution matter for actually getting the power to the area where it is needed, an addition to the grid now that there are those extra consumers.
Also, without it, what do you expect those extra added consumers to do? Move, or go without power. I would say that the town planning authority has a case to answer here. Fancy allowing so many people to move into an area not serviced with an adequate power supply.
You have X number of KWH available at the grid for residential purposes in that area, and on average, homes in that grid consume Y number of KWH. With X available, you can only have a number of Y consumers equal to or less than X KWH.
More homes in that area means you need to increase X, not make Y consume less to cater for the increase. People will live where they want to live, and will consume what they need.
But you still have to pay for the network costs. Sure increasing density plays a role too.
If you build a 2MW power station to cater for a small peak spike then the costs of that power station need to be paid from somewhere. It can’t just be wished away over 50 years of infrastructure lifespan. This is why even in the world of traditional power generation they build peaking gas fired plants, not another hulking brute of a coal station.
I’m quite willing to pay for it Matt. The trouble is, I’m going to be made to pay for it and then not get it. And if you can’t see that then no one can help you.
Frankly that doesn’t please me at all and it shouldn’t please you either. You think like politician bent on “fixing” everything and you need to get out from under that hat into the fresh air and take a good look at your own real interest.
Climate alarmism is worth a lot of money; $82 billion(US) for 4 hours work – not bad.
“Roger Pielke Jr.’s Blog: The $82 Billion Prediction
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune has an revealing article today about the creation in 2006 of a “short-term” hurricane risk prediction from a company called Risk Management Solutions. The Herald-Tribune reports that the prediction was worth $82 billion to the reinsurance industry. It was created in just 4 hours by 4 hurricane experts, none of whom apparently informed of the purposes to which their expertise was to be put.” (written in 2010)
OT. However just to let you know I am from SA and despite having lived with all of the competition between us I want to say I enjoy your blog. It is a must read every morning…thanks.
(It is hard to be off topic in an un-threaded post) CTS
and Risk Management Solutions is owned by the UK Daily Mail group, which puts the lie to CAGW alarmists who claim the Daily Mail is sceptical of CAGW. even the recent David Rose/Met Office article “Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it” ended with:
Wikipedia: Daily Mail and General Trust
DMG Information invests in business to business information-driven companies. It aims to invest in high-growth businesses offering information to niche markets. DMG Information is headquartered in the US, with its main office in Connecticut and other offices in California and Massachusetts. Foremost amongst these are Landmark Information Group, Risk Management Solutions and Environmental Data Resources. In 2006 DMG Information bought Genscape, a US company that supplies information on the energy market for $196m (£110m).Genscape is the market-leading provider of real-time energy generation and transmission information to the energy trading markets in North America and Europe. The company has more than 130 customers, including utilities, investment banks, energy traders and hedge funds. It also has operations in the UK, Australia, France, Germany and India…
MSRisk Management Solutions (RMS), a catastrophe risk modelling company, is a subsidiary of the DMGT group. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail_and_General_Trust
btw since Rose’s article appeared, virtually no MSM has covered the story, but all the usual suspects get prominence in google searches attempting to debunk what the Rose article set out and the Met Office, Phil Jones and Judith Curry agreed on.
on “The Carbon Brief”? website, a Roz Pidcock points to the following – ThinkProgress, Guardian, SkepticalScience, Media Matters, Bob Ward, Potholer – in an attempt to debunk the Met Office’s own data. only one comment below the article:
19 Oct: Carbon Brief: Roz Pidcock: This week’s top six rebuttals to David Rose’s “warming has stopped” claim
COMMENT: Terrible Carbon Brief. These are a collection of ad hominem attacks – potholer for instance doesn’t even look at the technical details of the graph, and why don’t you quote Judy Curry who writing in her blog says that the Guardian’s analysis is shallow, or that in their blog the Met Office actually agreed with David Rose.
Shallow, partisan, biased, uninformed, one-sided. Judy Curry is right – you ought to raise your game, though I don’t suppose many people read this anyway. http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/10/this-weeks-top-six-rebuttals-of-david-roses-warming-has-stopped-claims
The Carbon Brief About Us
Carbon Brief reports on the latest developments in climate science, and fact-checks stories about climate and energy online and in the press. We provide briefings on the people and organisations talking about climate change, and we produce background materials on science issues and news stories.
We are grateful for the funding and support provided by the European Climate Foundation. Carbon Brief’s Director, Tom Brookes, is director of the Energy Strategy Centre (ESC) the communications unit funded by the European Climate Foundation (ECF)…
Christian Hunt heads up Carbon Brief and writes about science and energy in the media. He previously worked as an editor for Greenpeace and as a researcher for the Public Interest Research Centre. He holds an MA in Conflict Resolution, and a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from the University of York.
Robin Webster covers energy policy and analysis. She holds an MSc in Conservation from University College London (UCL) and previously studied biology at Bristol University. She worked for Friends of the Earth for six and half years, including as a Senior Campaigner on Climate and Energy, and has worked as a freelance environmental researcher…ETC http://www.carbonbrief.org/about
Newspaper’s claim that ‘world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago’ is simply wrong, says Met Office.
“Summary
To sum up, Rose and Curry were simply incorrect in virtually every assertion made in this Mail article.
Global surface temperatures have most likely increased since 1997.
Focusing on short-term temperature changes confuses short-term noise and long-term signal.
Most global warming goes into heating the oceans, and as Nuccitelli et al. (2012) showed, global warming has not slowed.
Natural variability is much smaller than the long-term global warming signal, and smaller even than the global warming signal over the past two decades.”
It pays to be sceptical!
The slowed rate of global surface warming over the past decade is consistent with individual model runs, which show that these ‘hiatus decades’ are entirely expected.
Over the long-term, the Earth has warmed as much as expected.
Carbon pricing will result in a net benefit the economy as compared to doing nothing and trying to adapt to the consequences.
Congratulations on finding someone willing to try and repudiate the fact that there has been no statistically significant warming of the planet over the last 16 years….
.
Ah, hobby horse – or should I say Phillip – back again.
See you got yourself banned from yet another blog, for yet again attempting to flood a thread with off-topic, ill-informed non-comments. At least it explains why you keep showing up here – you haven’t many other places left where you are welcome – or at least tolerated.
Anyway, to your post.
Interesting follow-up article in the Mail today, totally shredding both your Guardian article and the pathetic excuses by the MeT Office to hide their incompetence.
The Met Office now confirms on its climate blog that no significant warming has occurred recently: ‘We agree with Mr Rose that there has only been a very small amount of warming in the 21st Century.’
How embarrassing. What a climb-down.
Could we say the MeT has had to do a Gergis?
I suggest you follow the link and have a read, Phillip.
Especially the very last hypothetical question asked, and the answer offered.
Who knows, maybe you’ll get to make an INFORMED comment – just for once.
That would be a more productive use of time than rather than protecting the business interests of the Money-Men.
Which seems to be your sole raison d’etre in life at the moment.
meant to excerpt the following from Pidcock’s Linkedin:
Rosalind Pidcock: Science Writer
University of the West of England
I am a science and environment writer for the University of the West of England. I currently write news articles and special reports on emerging areas in science and environmental research, as part of several European Commission projects. I also write freelance, most recently for BBC online and AAAS Science Careers.
I am also a freelance copy editor, specialising in the preparation of primary scientific and medical research papers for journal submission…
April 2011 – Present (1 year 7 months)
Researching and writing regular news articles, features and reports for Science for Environment Policy – a free European Commission news service for researchers and policymakers. http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/rosalind-pidcock/38/758/a75
what is interesting to me is that it seems is right wing voters who swell the greens vote when they think their own side is a rabble, and return to the fold when they’ve had enough of Labor govt.
What makes you think that? Do you think when the rights vote falls and the Greens vote rises, it automatically means the votes of the right went directly to the Greens?
You’re a wannabe politician Matt. A wannabe leader of your community. Your community deserves much much better than that.
hint: Swing voters who voted for the Liberals, shift left by voting for Labor. Swing voters who voted Labor, shift left by voting Greens.
Converse happens when there is a general shift to the right.
There are a lot of Liberals for forests types though Bah. For a lot of traditional Lib voters a swing to the Greens has been much more palatable than a swing to the ALP.
“hint: Swing voters who voted for the Liberals, shift left by voting for Labor. Swing voters who voted Labor, shift left by voting Greens.”
and to think for a second there I thought you were accusing ME of being simplistic!
I offered you an alternative, maybe I should have made that clear.
It was you who was being simplistic. e.g
what is interesting to me is that it seems is right wing voters…etc
The issue of voter drift isn’t a one size fits all, people drift for all sorts of reasons. However, looking at the recent political history of Oz, it is fair to say that people-in the main- drift from left to right for a period, then back again. That’s why the parties at the end of the line tend to disappear, (e.g. DLP, Democrats, P Hanson and even the nationals) not the 2 in the middle.
The dangerous Greens will go the same way…eventually.
I thought the Democrats were in the middle and got squeezed?
I’m fairly confident that in the ACT a lot of Liberals who had previously decided it was a bit hip to vote Green changed their mind. ALso when the chips are down in a tight contest you’ll find people don’t risk the symbolic green vote.
MattB has a point, but the Labor/Green coalition ended the day when right leaning voters sometimes voted Green.
My Melbourne mother-in-law, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative sometimes voted Green in the past because she loves animals. What about the cute koala bears, she’d say. Ahhhhhhhhhhh…. And the whales, Oh, My, What a shame, We must save the whales!
She was gobsmacked when I told her years ago that Greens were basically communists who used cuddly animals to disguise their collectivist agenda. She didn’t believe me, when I describe how an anarchist American in Germany started the party in the 1970’s and most of their political alliances were with socialist and communists and anti-semitic hate groups. They aren’t even fair dinkum Aussie grown, I told her, but an alien imported radical ideology.
I described how the ideological roots of the early German Greens, although strictly speaking were communist, carried on a cultural gestalt that started in Nazi Germany. Hitler was the greatest of all Green leaders. He outlawed cruelty to animals, including live medical experiments, preferring instead to conduct vivisections on Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals.
The first tenet of the Greens is that human life is cheap.
But what really outed the Greens was when their blood soaked hands got a grip on the levers of real power under Gillard.
No right-minded person will vote green for a long long time after this government!
Btw, Matt have you told your electorate that you support surrendering Australian sovereignty to the UN through the ideals expressed in Agenda 21?
I didn’t think so.
That’s how the Greens work. In secret while hiding behind a cuddly poster of a koala.
The origins of the political party we know as the Greens go back the 1930’s in fascist Germany:
“We recognize that separating humanity from nature, from the whole of life, leads to humankind’s own destruction and to the death of nations. Only through a re-integration of humanity into the whole of nature can our people be made stronger. That is the fundamental point of the biological tasks of our age. Humankind alone is no longer the focus of thought, but rather life as a whole . . . This striving toward connectedness with the totality of life, with nature itself, a nature into which we are born, this is the deepest meaning and the true essence of National Socialist thought.”
–Ernst Lehmann, Biologischer Wille. Wege und Ziele biologischer Arbeit im neuen Reich, München, 1934, pp. 10-11. Lehmann was a professor of botany who characterized National Socialism as “politically applied biology.”
but you said greens treat nature as greater than humans, and that humans are not nature… and you prove this by showing that some socialist said we need to reintegrate humanity with nature? weird. I hope you have some better quotes that actually back you up Wes?
“She was gobsmacked when I told her years ago that Greens were basically communists who used cuddly animals to disguise their collectivist agenda. She didn’t believe me, when I describe how an anarchist American in Germany started the party in the 1970′s and most of their political alliances were with socialist and communists and anti-semitic hate groups. They aren’t even fair dinkum Aussie grown, I told her, but an alien imported radical ideology.
I described how the ideological roots of the early German Greens, although strictly speaking were communist, carried on a cultural gestalt that started in Nazi Germany. Hitler was the greatest of all Green leaders. He outlawed cruelty to animals, including live medical experiments, preferring instead to conduct vivisections on Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals.
The first tenet of the Greens is that human life is cheap.”
Seriously WEs have you considered therapy? These are some deep seated issues you have here.
I’d be happy to come give your electorate a powerpoint presentation on the topic.
Btw, did I mention that Green policies screw the poor and favour the rich?
Here’s an analysis of the Green carbon tax proposals currently being considered by the Obama Administration:
…because basic commodities such as food, electricity, and fuel are bought in similar amounts per capita regardless of income (i.e., a working-class family living on $30,000 per year in Harlem uses about the same amount of electricity and food as the family of a money manager living on $30 million per year on Park Avenue; and rural Americans, of whatever class, spend much more on gasoline than either), the $2.78 trillion green tax would be spread nearly evenly on all Americans, not as a fixed “flat tax” percentage of income, but as a fixed cost regardless of income.
Divided evenly among 300 million Americans, the green tax works out to a burden of $9,270 imposed on every man, woman, and child. While this would be a pittance for the most affluent Americans, it would take away 40 percent of the total income of a family of four supported by two wage earners making the average U.S. salary of $45,000 each, and it would be a virtually fatal burden for the poor.
“(i.e., a working-class family living on $30,000 per year in Harlem uses about the same amount of electricity and food as the family of a money manager living on $30 million per year on Park Avenue”
HA HA HA HA HA BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! comedy gold!
Also any reasonable reader would assume that the nationalreview link you provide may actually lead to an article that involves greens supporting culling of the poor! Of course it does not.
Wes I’d love to have you give a shonky powerpoint as I’m sure your frooty froot froot loops of fruit are amusing entertainment.
Rarely do I cut and paste stuff onto these pages but even more rarely do we get a national leader talking such common sense. Noel Pearson should be in Federal Cabinet – at the very least! Contrast this with the noble, empty words and the ignoble, wasteful actions of what passes for government in Canberra.
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Think big but start small: human rights, like charity, should be nurtured in the home
by: Noel Pearson From: The Australian October 20, 2012
“WHERE, after all, do universal human rights begin?
“In small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world … Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”
I was not familiar with this quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt, but it is probably the best articulation of our reform work in Cape York Peninsula.
I have always been taken by another pearl from Roosevelt that speaks the same truth: “There is nothing that government can do for you, that you are unwilling to do for yourself.”
Human rights are most usually talked about in the “big places”, in international and national declarations, standards and conventions. They are supposed to be upheld and guaranteed by law and democracy. Human rights in normal public discourse is a matter of big politics and big law, concerning public law and public power.
Human rights are supposed to be secured primarily as matters of politics and laws. They are guaranteed and delivered (or denied and abused) by governments and their instrumentalities. The state is the party that flouts or upholds the human rights of people.
Human rights lawyers and politicians tend to see human rights as something that must be tackled in the “big places”, far from home, in the courts, tribunals, commissions, and national and international forums.
There is of course great romance and no small prideful posturing attached to human rights advocacy and defence in the “big places”. Generations of ambitious law students have seen Geneva as the place where they will do greatest service to humankind.
I have long been sceptical of this view. There is a role for the pursuit of human rights in the “big places”. But I think too often the prevalent pursuit of human rights is naive – most human rights cannot be delivered as a matter of political or legal fiat – or a cruel hoax on those whose human rights are at stake.
Rather, there is a harder, messier and less glamorous starting place for taking action so that human rights can be enjoyed by those who stand vulnerable in the absence of such enjoyment.
That starting place is the place that Roosevelt is talking about, in the “small places”, in the families, in the households, in the villages and in the communities.
It is in the family and the household where the most basic human rights must start. If charity should begin at home, then human rights too must begin at home.
The right to safety, food, family, shelter, inheritance, culture, language – these are all human rights that must first be enjoyed within the family, within the household. For these rights to be enjoyed in practice, there must be practical functioning of families and households, villages and neighbourhoods.
This means that individuals – parents, adults, community leaders – must take responsibility for realising abstract rights in terms of practical enjoyment. True, governments and their functionaries must fulfil their responsibilities and create and uphold environments that enable individuals and families to uphold their responsibilities and enjoy their rights, but it won’t happen if the people who hold responsibilities in the “small places” don’t carry out their responsibilities.
The Cape York Agenda seeks the human rights of our people at both levels. In the “big places” we seek constitutional reform and we are unequivocal in our advocacy of our land and cultural rights in the arenas of law and politics.
But we place a heavy emphasis on human rights in the “small places”. Indeed, we have a very strong jaundice in favour of the human rights of our people to material sustenance and livelihood, to freedom from hunger and want, to shelter in good homes, to healthcare and other services, and for children to be educated and have opportunities and capabilities to choose lives they have reason to value.
That is why our first program was about budgeting and money management. It was called Family Income Management in 2000 and is now called MPower. As the MPower slogan says: “A better life begins with a budget.”
In my view there is no use talking about the human rights of our mob in Cape York if our people are hungry, our children are neglected, our families are broken down, and our communities unsafe.
Helping families to attend to their basic, material needs is about achieving human rights.
Ensuring children are looked after, and have access to the best education we can muster for them, is about achieving human rights.
Helping mothers to look after their families, and helping fathers take charge of their households, is about achieving human rights.
Noel Pearson is the director of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership.
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Big government has its limitations and you can’t abdicate the basic responsibilities of looking after yourself and your family to a bureacracy! Throwing money at a person without getting them to accept responsibility for their life is a waste of time. Government can only help people who want to help themselves.
.
Mr. Noel Pearson has connections with Paga Hill demolition in PNG.
On 12 May 2012, one hundred police officers descended on the prominent Port Moresby landmark, Paga Hill. Armed with assault rifles, machetes and sticks, they had come to demolish one of the city’s oldest settlements. The forced eviction was designed to make way for the Paga Hill Estate, an “exclusive” property development that promises to turn the 13.7 hectare site into “the icon of the new progressive Papua New Guinea”. When the demolition was stopped mid-course by a National Court injunction, lower Paga lay in ruin.
The driving force behind this proposed development is the Paga Hill Development Company (PHDC). Characterised by Papua New Guinea’s own Public Accounts Committee as a “private, foreign speculator”, to date those intimately connected with the developer have been cited in no less than nine official inquiries into corruption and public mismanagement. And their connections extend into the very heart of Australia’s political establishment – indeed the Chairman and Secretary of PHDC, Gudmundur V Fridriksson, is the current CEO of Queensland’s Cape York Institute, and the Director of the controversial Welfare Reform Trial.
Paga Hill Development Company (PHDC) shareholders include a number of individuals with links to senior serving leaders in Papua New Guinea and Australia. Specifically, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Michael Nali, who owns shares in PHDC via Kwadi Inn, and Tracey Kluck, the wife of aboriginal leader, Noel Pearson.
pat:
Further to your previous response a week ago, I note that the race to the bottom between Australia and the USA continues unabated.
The current USA president has already obsoleted the USA Constitution 2nd Amendment right for people in Chicago, has presided over a clandestine operation to deliver assault weapons specifically to drug gangs in Mexico, and if re-elected wants to disarm the public even further.
When asked about it in the last debate, the presidential second choice candidate claims he does not want to infringe the 2nd amendment with any new legislation, but then quickly changed the topic. Interesting that this remark could be interpreted as meaning that he believes it is a possible option for him to overrule the 2nd Amendment with legislation, whereas under law the executive cannot do this by themselves, even a 2/3 majority vote in Congress is not enough, it would still have to be a Constitutional Amendment ratified by 3/4 of the States.
Both of these people are Manchurian candidates (I mean the hidden corporate sponsorship, not the neural implant mind control stuff in the movie). Given the amount of voting fraud carried out by the Romney and Santorum campaigns during the primaries to prevent Ron Paul’s grassroots support from condensing into a visible poll result, it is clear there is big money is behind Romney.
It’s the Bain Capital/Monsanto candidate versus the Goldman Sachs/General Electric candidate. Even after insider rumours are considered, it is still anyone’s guess as to which stooge will be installed as the next dictator of the Bankers Republic of America.
I conclude that on matters of personal protection the USA is falling towards being level with Australia, and in democratic processes it has already fallen behind the Land Down Under.
I was wrong about the US Presidential election, which I have repeated argued in the past was in the pocket for Obama, given the demographics of the US electoral college combined with the advantage of having the multi-billion dollar mass media industry shilling for him 24/7/365.
Of course, if you’re getting your US news primarily from the shills at the ABC or SBS it will be news to you that Obama has tanked in the polls even though they biased in his favour.
If you look at the latest electoral college map, it is too close to call. That’s a big change from 6 months ago when Obama was tipped for a second landslide.
But I’m punting that the opinions polls dramatically underestimate the amount of angst and drive among independent and conservative voters sick of Obamaworld. They’ll turn out in unprecedented droves to have a chance to vote against what they perceive as the ruin of America and its values.
Likewise, the same opinions polls are overestimating the Left’s commitment to a lack luster Obama administration which has let them down repeated, taking their support for granted. In the US no one forces you to vote, so not turning up at the polls is a statement in and of itself. Passion and a sense of civic responsibility are required to inspire Americans to vote. The later is always in short supply among the left, while the former is non-existent for Obama this time.
IMO, Obama going to lose. Florida will go to Romney now. Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio might be too close to call for the media, but I think the tea party organisations in those states will turn them to red states. Same with Nevada and Colorado. Game over for Obama.
The implications of a Romney win for Australia are huge. It is possible that Romney with a solid Republican congress might quickly enact much of Ryan’s economic plans, leading to a surging economic recovery in the US similar to the Reagan years after the Carter malaise. This might postpone the bursting of the global monetary bubble by years or even decades, while ameliorating China’s own investment overreaches. End result is that the good economic run for Australia – as a mining resource colony for Asia – continues. If we can kick the Gillard and Green insane clown posse out of Canberra, we’ll have one last chance to transform the Australian economy into a 21st-century-ready dynamo before the future smacks Labor’s regressive anti-productive “reformed” economy comatose.
Meanwhile, after Obama’s foreign policy of leading from backside, America’s traditional enemies are on the march. They are not likely to go quietly back into the box. The Middle East, always playground of devils, is now home to ever more failed states. The West’s best hope lies not in picking winners and losers in places like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and now Syria. But to develop our own oil-shale, gas and coal deposits to become energy independent of the middle east. If starved of our petro-dollars the middle east will recede to the level of geo-political importance it deserves. Meanwhile, four years of Obama is four years closer to the Iranian mullahs owning a nuclear weapon with which they might well change the meaning of mutual assured destruction.
Wes have you actually ever tried reading the ABC as a news source. It would appear not or you’d notice gems like this:
“National opinion polls now put Barack Obama and Mitt Romney so close that one analyst has told the ABC he would not rule out a re-run of the contested 2000 election, where the final result took weeks to be resolved.”
“The race is virtually a dead heat, according to several polls, and it will likely come down to a few swing states.”
“There is a scenario where Obama narrowly loses the national popular vote but precisely because he is winning those small swing states, he wins the election.
You can’t rule out that scenario at this point. It’s that close.”
The poop hit the fan on the night of the first presidential debate which almost every American media outlet, including the most lefty leftists ones called an unmitigated disaster for Obama. Yet, the ABC somehow found a Prefesser of Polly Sci-fi somewhere who called it a draw!
Even the crap analysis you posted is heavily biased in favour of Obama in a number of subtle ways. First, the past crap analysis the ABC has been spouting for a year now about how Obama was going to win in a landslide has gone down the memory hole. Second, the allusion to a possible battle of the hanging chads is about casting doubt on the legitimacy of a possible Romney victory. After all, it is completely unimaginable to the ABC culture that Obama could lose without foul play.
And finally, notice that the ABC is so deep in denial they cannot bring themselves to say that words, “There is a chance that Obama might lose, that’s how far public opinion of his administration has shifted over the last four years.”
Of course, it would be asking for miracles for the ABC to report that the last time a presidential incumbent came from back this far in the polls to win a presidential election was the Truman/Dewey election of 1948!
Te US ‘elections’ (read fake democracy) are nothing more than a sham for two complete fascist idiots that will BOTH start wars and destroy America. Romney is a Mormon polygamist war monger “The Romney family later moved to Mexico to avoid the ban on polygamy in the US.” see much more on http://www.tarpley.net. Obama is a puppet of the Wall St banksters. As the US govt is the most corrupt despot Gov in the world. No matter who gets in Obamromey presidency means “bomb bomb bomb..bomb bomb bomb Iran…”
British engineers produce amazing ‘petrol from air’ technology – Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/fuel/9619269/British-engineers-produce-amazing-petrol-from-air-technology.html
10
The reaction has been known since 1920’s, if not sooner. It depends on hydrogen, which you can get either from electrolysis or by reforming with (high temperature) steam.
If they want to use “renewable” energy for hydrolysis then that rules out wind turbines and, to a lesser extent, solar panels.
Hydrolysis at low pressure is inefficient (50-60%) even when the power supply is steady. A fluctuating source, such as wind, makes it not worth doing. High pressure hydrolysis is a nominal 90-95% efficiency. This is based on the electricity usage, but the actual total is 120%, i.e. it relies on external heat as well. Again it requires a steady power supply, ruling out renewable electricity.
Cracking steam is endothermic, i.e. you must input lots of energy. It is usually done by burning coal in conjunction with the steam. This was the basis of the old town gas process, and the reaction for building up the carbon monoxide to a diesel fuel was used in the Fischer-Tropf process in WW2 and the South African SASOL plant. If you can produce methanol, then you can use the Mobil zeolite process to make petrol as used for a short time in NZ in the early 1980’s.
There is absolutely nothing new about this process except the press release. The appeal for further funding isn’t new either.
250
Interesting technology but the $64,000 dollar question remains what`s the conversion ratio like for the refineries ? I doubt You`d be able to run it off seabreezes and sunbeams so that leaves coal and nuclear with sufficient energy density to power it .
As long as there`s oil in the ground why would You burn a whole lot of coal to make a little bit of synthetic fuel oil ? It may well be a usefull technology one day and is certainly worth further research but until the conversion rate of kwh/litres of fuel is very good and the grid is powered by something reliable and energy dense other than coal it won`t be viable
The worry is too that , some green vote hungry government will cause the building of hundreds of early underdeveloped technology based air-fuel refineries by subsidising the crap out of them and crash Our already creaking power networks .
As a tech , it has possibilty as long as it`s
a) Well developed before widespread application
b) Has a cheap and plentiful supply of electricity to power it
50
This is brillant. Fix up one of these systems to the car exhaust, reclaim all the H20 and CO2 produced in petrol combustion, and you have …… …
An immediate perpetual power machine !!!!
Never need to buy petrol ever again, or plug into a wind turbine.
The latter being a VERY GOOD IDEA, not needing wind turbines means we can get rid of the monstrousities and preserve Australia’s environment; fauna, flora and avian.
81
How long before the Australian Government creates a “Department of Perpetual Energy” – aka DOPE.
And then starts subsidizing this marvelous technology.
Having a negative EROEI hasn’t stopped the Australian Government before – look at Biofuels.
70
Looks like mechanical engineers who know little chemistry playing around to get grants.
Good sarc AndyG55
There are better ways of capturing CO2 from than from air such as enriched CO2 exhaust from lime (used to make pure NaCO3 -soda ash)but the greens do not like lime (used in minerals processing and purifying water supply.
30
I can see 2 options #1 tax it till it dies.#2 put some green vegetable dye in it and call it “BIO FUEL”
30
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7398476n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox
Sort of tale of research gone bad and some very fine detective work to uncover this. While not as bad as Patel, some unnecessary deaths may have happened.
http://videolectures.net/cancerbioinformatics2010_baggerly_irrh/
An entertaining 30 minutes on how this was uncovered. Unfortunately it was a lie not the Maths that was the critical turning point.
00
Newchum,
It seems that this really is the new age of alchemy!
And so, if the electrical generation required for this process was from inefficient renewable sources like wind with a 20% max generating capacity, to then supply enormous amounts of power required to generate an inefficient form of petroleum-like fuel inefficiently, then it is actually much more likely that MORE CO2 would be generated to produce this fuel than if they had just used ordinary petroleum based fuel on it’s own in the first place without the various steps taken in between. And if they used coal to supply electricity to produce this petroleum-lite, it defeats the entire purpose, not to mention adding unreasonable extra burden on already stretched electricity generation. It’s a massive economic and practicality fail, no matter which way you slice it. Nice chemistry experiment though.
Thanks for the link.
20
http://sppiblog.org/news/germanys-new-renewable-energy-policy
———————————————————————–
[Newchum, it is helpful if you write a short intro to any link (as you did at comment #1). That way we can see if there is a particular point or aspect you wish to raise – even though in this case we can see from the link the general story is about Germany’s renewable energy policy. Cheers. – Mod]
40
Shameless Plug: If you’re interested in understanding how the sea surface temperature records for the past 30 years explain that Mother Nature (not anthropogenic greenhouse gases) is responsible for their warming, please have a look at the free preview of my book:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/preview-of-who-turned-on-the-heat-v2.pdf
The following post provides an overview:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/everything-you-every-wanted-to-know-about-el-nino-and-la-nina-2/
Regards
120
Plug away Bob, your knowledge of sea surface temperatures and the ENSO phenomena are well worth sharing.
I’d advice Jo Nova denizens to take a look at your book, well worth the time (and the pittance it costs).
50
Oh dear he we go again with more nonsense from the denizens of physical unreality.
Bob, a few quick questions:
If El Nino causes a regime shift to a new warmer climate state then why would doesn’t La Nina causes a regime shift to a cooler state? Under your scenario global temps should warm continuously.
How does ENSO cause warming, it’s an oceanic cycle that simly moves heat around the planet?
So where is the forcing causing oceans, the surface and the troposphere to warm? You can’t have it both ways! Conservation of Energy anybody?
All you are doing is using short term events to argue against AGW, while utilisng data from part of the globe to model global charateristics and then extrapolating these to your own conclusions a la Lindzen.
The main cause of the warming is the forcing from GHG emissions. Until you control those emissions, that forcing will still exist despite the natural cycles.
So blah blah blah (as they are so wont to say here!)
14
Oh dear, sillyfilly, open mouth, change feet!
How interesting it is that you say this:
This is obviously a reference to this Comment of mine from an earlier Post of Joanne’s.
This tells us 2 things about you.
1. That you actually do come back here and read the replies to your comments.
2. By far the more important thing it tells us is that you have no response when we point out pertinent things to you that you need to be doing instead of just rabbiting on with your standard meme.
Your side of the debate have no concrete answers. All you do have is talk, and repetitive rabbiting on of the standard party line you run with.
No answers, just talk.
Tony.
41
sillyphilly says: “If El Nino causes a regime shift to a new warmer climate state then why would doesn’t La Nina causes a regime shift to a cooler state?”
La Niña is not the opposite of El Niño. Why would you think it was? An El Niño releases heat from tropical Pacific and redistributes warm water from it. A La Niña recharges the heat and warm water. So you’re not accounting for the warm water that remains after the El Niño that has been periodically released and redistributed from the west Pacific Warm Pool.
sillyphilly says: “Under your scenario global temps should warm continuously.”
Wrong. In the last 30 years, the east Pacific hasn’t warmed. In fact, if you adjust that subset for the impacts of volcanic eruptions, it shows that it’s cooled over 3 decades.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/3-east-pac.png
The South Atlantic-Indian-West Pacific only warmed in response to the major East Pacific El Niño events of 1986/87/88 and 1997/98. (It’s still a little early to tell if the 2009/10 El Niño caused a minor shift). And it also cooled between the major El Niño events.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-5-23.png
So that’s two subsets of the global oceans, representing about 86% of the surface of the global oceans, that would show no evidence of long-term warming without major El Niño events.
And that leaves the North Atlantic with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. For the past 35+ years, it has been warming at a rate that’s much higher than the natural warming of the other ocean basins, but it will eventually peak, flatten and then start to cool.
sillyphilly says: “How does ENSO cause warming, it’s an oceanic cycle that simly moves heat around the planet?”
Another error on your part. It’s not a cycle, as noted above.
sillyphilly says: “So where is the forcing causing oceans, the surface and the troposphere to warm? You can’t have it both ways! Conservation of Energy anybody?’”
If you understood how silly this made you look, you would not have asked the question, sillyphilly. It shows you don’t have the slightest grasp of ENSO basics. The process of ENSO is fueled by downward shortwave radiation. During a La Niña, the trade winds strengthen and reduce cloud cover which allows more downward shortwave radiation to warm the tropical Pacific to depth. The warm water collects in the Pacific Warm Pool for release during the next El Niño.
Surface temperatures outside of the tropical Pacific are warmed through the redistribution of warm water into the West Pacific and East Indian Oceans. AND also outside of the tropical Pacific, the surface temperatures are warmed via changes in atmospheric circulation, not by the transfer of heat. This has been known for decades, so there’s no concern about the conservation of energy, sillyphilly.
Overall, that’s why global temperatures warm during multidecadal periods when El Niño events are stronger, occur more frequently, and last longer than La Niña events, as we experienced from the mid-1970s until the mid-2000s, and from the late-1910s to the early-1940s. La Nina events dominated slightly from the early-1940s until the mid-1970s and surface temperatures cooled.
sillyphilly says: “The main cause of the warming is the forcing from GHG emissions. Until you control those emissions, that forcing will still exist despite the natural cycles.”
That myth, of course, is not supported by satellite-era sea surface temperature data or ocean heat content records. The fact that you can’t grasp what graphs tell you is telling, sillyphilly. GHG emissions MAY have a slight effect on land surface temperatures, but it is not a dominant forcing. It’s an also-ran.
Have a nice day.
10
Earth has a magnetic ‘ripple’ originating in the core and the sun has its cycles.
When two are in phase the oceans absorb more energy, when two are out of phase the oceans cool.
“One possibility is the movements of Earth’s core (where Earth’s magnetic field originates) might disturb Earth’s magnetic shielding of charged-particle (i.e., cosmic ray) fluxes that have been hypothesized to affect the formation of clouds.
This could affect how much of the sun’s energy is reflected back to space and how much is absorbed by our planet.
Other possibilities are that some other core process could be having a more indirect effect on climate, or that an external (e.g. solar) process affects the core and climate simultaneously.”
.
Carbon dioxide and ‘scientific’ taxes alone do not regulate climate.
More possibilities:
* Scientists link magnetic reversal, climate change and super volcano to same time period
~ See entire press release along with a map of the polar migration:
http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/portal/gfz/Public+Relations/Pressemitteilungen/aktuell/121016_PolarReversal?template=gfz
* Muscheler retracts? Offers a NEW excuse for why solar activity can’t be responsible for post-70′s warming
40
I thought this from a couple of weeks ago was interesting.
http://www.futurity.org/earth-environment/did-tropical-rain-create-great-salt-lake/
During the last glacial period, it seems the North American tropical monsoon zone, which currently only extends to southern Arizona, extended around 500 kilometers further north. It also suggests that during glacial periods, the tropics extend further north (and presumably south) than during interglacials.
This suggests that glacial periods (ice ages) aren’t caused by the overall climate cooling, but because tropical heat is retained in the tropics, by some unknown mechanism.
62
Hi Brad
You are either very stupid, a troll, or a stupid warmer.
The incident you declare as being “during the last glacial period” was in fact described even in the article
as being during the very well established Big Melt.
It was not during the Glacial period and you know that just from reading the article.
New York is 4 or 5 degrees further North than Arizona which puts it’s equivalent location in the southern hemisphere as being South of Melbourne.
New York was at the time depicted in your article, in the process of melting it’s 1500 metre thick covering of ice.
This may surprise you Brad but ice doesnt melt when it is cold.
It needs to be Warm. Funny thing when it’s warm it also rains and places get flooded.
And yes this ice melt and this rain were both caused by the same animal
HIGHER GLOBAL TEMPERATURES DUE TO
the sun.
KK 🙂
ps. How is your grant application doing?
100
That would be at the peak of the Wisconsin glaciation.
03
OK
So you and Gee are related.
Big Deal.
30
If you REALLY are that stupid, and just in case you think this has any meaning (apart from at Sks):
“That would be at the peak of the Wisconsin glaciation.”
The peak of the last Glaciation was 5,000 years earlier Brad.
It takes a long while to get a melt going.
Unlike the IPCC models which can switch from hot to cold in a month real glaciations take thousands of years to melt.
kk 🙁
50
03
So what you are saying now Phillip, is that 21,000 years ago, the deserts in the American Southwest
were NOT covered with enormous lakes because all the water was tied up as ICE and that this had nothing
to do with sequestration of HEAT in the Equatorial zones?
I understand that you are also confirming that the lakes which showed up 20,000 years ago were a
result of the melting of the Wisconsin glaciation.
Great.
KK
20
It’s interesting that this comment has received a number of thumbs up.
Sometimes I have given a thumbs up but on re-reading the comment, found a meaning I had missed.
But not in this case; I found the worm first.
Some of Brads comments seem innocuous or ambivalent but many contain the dreaded “Warmer Virus” that has infected the brains of mankind so tragically in recent times.
Brads comments want to perpetuate the idea that climate was stable until man became active on an industrial scale and produced more CO2 poison.
What Brad is trying to get you to believe is that the Earth has a finite amount of energy locked in the
biosphere and that occasionally this becomes REDISTRIBUTED over the Earth.
Oh yeah. Hallelujah brother.
In his latest thesis we have all the heat taken from the poles and accumulating in the tropical regions to
cause the salt lakes of Wisconsin or wherever that he describes in @7 plus the glaciation.
Read this a few times from No 7 above:
“This suggests that glacial periods (ice ages) aren’t caused by the overall climate cooling, but because
tropical heat is retained in the tropics, by some unknown mechanism.”
Of course, if you believe that, then its only a short jump to believe that: – The big melt at the end of
the last ice age was not caused by the Sun or any action external to the Earth, but to a simple
re-distribution of energy within the biosphere.
No nett change of energy so it must be obvious that the Earth’s AVERAGE temperature remained UNCHANGED.
The nugget at the heart of his comment is this; The way remains clear to show that the Earth’s temperature
only began to rise in concert with man’s industrial growth from 1850. QED.
Well I’ll be doggone.
KK 🙂
91
Good analysis KK.
I must admit, I didn’t see the trap when I first read his initial comment.
‘… by some unknown mechanism.”
Yeah, right.
50
Thanks RW
I’ve been watching him for a while and he/she is very subtle but persistent.
I thought it might have been Gee for a while. Similar low key style.
KK
30
hmm low key with style
20
Gee, if I was aggressive I would accuse you of misrepresenting my comment.
KK
20
It is unthreaded, we can say what we like!
So how about that drop in green votes in the ACT!
20
Hi Gee
I don’t live in the ACT.
KK
20
If there was a drop in green votes it may have had something to do with the environment.
The financial environment.
KK
20
Or, since this was an election, the political environment.
How about that Slayer thread? What a scream. In case you feel like summoning me by invoking my name in that thread, don’t waste your time. The whole thing is too ridiculous – on the same order of magnitude of ridiculous as this http://www.forbiddenarcheologist.com/ (one example among thousands I’m sad to say). I reckon the science behind every single established theory is wrong with at least 3 alternative theories proclaimed to be the real deal.
Fighting against the ridiculous is not what science is about.
10
The slayer thread reminds me of that description of a bloke who was going round and around and round
in ever diminishing circles until eventually he disappeared up his own —- in a blinding blue flash
of light.
Hopefully is will all be over by tomorrow.
KK
ps. all the argument on the slayer thread is about definition of terms.
I suspect everyone agrees on the basics.
10
…possibly by alien force fields in order to manipulate the evolution of intelligent life on planet Earth… all because Mars needs women.
20
Spooky.
10
I am a Nobel Peace Laureate!
It is possible that you didn’t hear about me winning the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize? Well me and 500 million or so other members of the European Union. You see as well as being an Australian Citizen I also hold a British Passport and am therefore a British Citizen by birthright. That makes me a member of the European Union which was awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize.
OK, I have had some people scoff at my claim of being a Nobel Laureate. But I am just using the precedent set in 2007 when the Nobel Committee awarded the Peace Prize jointly to the UN Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore. That was supposedly for their efforts to combat global warming.
By the way, they must have done an outstanding job because there has been no statistically significant warming for the last 16 years!But I digress.
Since 2007, every person I have read about who was involved in any way in compiling the 2007 IPCC Climate Report (commonly known as the Assessment Report No.4 – AR4), and there were thousands, has claimed to be a joint winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
For example our over paid Climate Commissioner, Professor Will Steffan, who is also Director of the Climate Institute at the ANU included this in his CV here:http://www.coast2coastaustralia.com/coast-to-coast-2008/keynote-and-plenary-speakers/#steffen
“Steffen shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with many colleagues worldwide for contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report.”
The CSIRO list about 150 of their employees who they claim shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize here: http://vic-www.csiro.au/en/Organisation-Structure/Divisions/Marine–Atmospheric-Research/NobelPeacePrizeWinners.aspx. Surely we should not question the authority of the CSIRO?
Then there is our headline grabbing Professor of Meteorology, David Karoly here:http://www.thefifthestate.com.au/archives/19502
“Professor Karoly, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with Al Gore,”
There are plenty more examples:
http://mankatofreepress.com/local/x1241960619/48th-annual-Nobel-Conference-to-tackle-the-ocean/print
“Chris Sabine, an oceanographer, co-wrote two papers in the journal Science on how much human-derived carbon dioxide was stored in the ocean and how it’s affecting marine life. For this and other work, he shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the International Panel on Climate Change.”
http://www.csiro.au/people/Kevin.Hennessy.aspx
“Mr Hennessy has been involved with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 1996, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 (shared amongst IPCC contributors and Al Gore).
http://www.ballarat.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/32170/December-2008.pdf“
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Schneider
“Stephen Schneider received a collective Nobel Peace Prize for his joint efforts with the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) (2007).”
http://www.londoninternational.ac.uk/our-global-reputation/our-history/notable-past-students
“Dr Rolph Payet, of Seychelles, was a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 as a member of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change“
http://www.becasadslatam.org/archivos/universidades/monash_university.pdf
“Professor Dave Griggs, joint winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace prize for his work on Climate Change.”
http://www.kuoni.com/docs/external_challenges_1_0.pdf
“Prof. Mohan Munasinghe was joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 as the Vice-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC-AR4.”
I have dozens of similar examples. So clearly, if I am a member of the EU, I must be able to claim that I am a Nobel Peace Prize Winner. And so too must any of you who are members of the EU! I mean, all those distinguished scientists couldn’t be wrong could they?
120
Unfortunately, a Nobel prize has become worth about as much as an arts or philosophy degree, neither of which functions well as toilet paper (so I’m told by arts degree holders)
90
I think this says it all:
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/mmmmm-free-nobel-peace-prize-with-an-order-of-shrimp-tacos
—————————————————-
[Very funny! – Mod]
80
At the UWA, Mens Toilet, a paper hand towel dispenser had written on it “Art Degrees, Please take one”. Someone had added “For Law Degees, wipe arse on it.”
80
These inter-faculty digs and the specific manner of their communication no longer have the transience of a joke, they have become ingrained in the University as an institution and subsequently a part of the subculture of all technical fields in academia and trade.
I saw the same joke dispensed in the same way at my old stomping ground in Qld in the late 1990s.
This was usually accompanied by an assessment of the quality of food served at that time in the Uni’s largest central student union building:
“Please flush twice, it’s a long way to the main refectory!”
40
The same applies to the military:
Seen on a Combined Services notice board:
“Members of the public are requested to be seated by 7.00pm.
Air Force officers are to be present by 19.00 hours.
Naval officers are to attend no later than two bells in the second dog watch.
Army officers must arrive before the little hand is on ‘7’, and the big hand is on ’12′”
80
ps.. I also could claim to be part of the same Nobel prize, but I refuse to accept it, on the grounds I would demean myself.
70
Not to mention associating with known war criminals!
70
Well by that reckoning Jaymez that Nobel Peace Prize for the European Union would make Christopher Monckton a Nobel Laureate twice over, after correcting errors in the AR4 report, together with the Rogues Gallery at UAE etc., I’m not so sure he would cherish the honour any more. (what’s the name for that ? ( Nobel with Bar ? ).
.
Perhaps we misunderstand Peace Prize though and it’s become the Piece Prize, awarded so that everyone can get a piece of it.
70
Walked into the living room this morning where my wife was watching the today show, I was just in time to catch the end of an interview about saving the ice bears from extinction. Don’t our journalist do any investigation about a subject before having these alarmist on their show.
If they did they might challenge them from time to time.
One of the most fantastic lies of our age is the myth of “global warming.” Seen the pictures of one of the last few polar bears floating on a pathetic little bit of ice? Sad isn’t it? Pass the collection tin. But did you know that the bears have had a population explosion? Their population has risen fivefold in 50 years. Read on, for more of the real story….
The Revenge of the Polar Bears
Let’s face it. Times are getting rough for radical ecologists.
It is bad enough that their global warming conferences seem to coincide with sub-zero weather patterns. And then there is the problem of fossil fuels. Just when they declare the world has reached “peak oil” production, the energy industry ruins everything and discovers another huge oilfield that pushes back the energy apocalypse another ten or twenty years. Now it seems the polar bears have turned upon the ecologists and thrown them under a biodiesel bus.
That’s right. The polar bears, the poster beasts of the climate change lobby, have refused to cooperate with their own extinction. Reports from up north claim the polar bears are doing just fine.
80
Link to the piece from the today show.
Geoff York, from WWF: enough said.
30
Bob ,
I reckon that , if/when the current interglacial ends , polar bears could be walking off the Arctic icecap into Northern Scotland to rummage around in dumpsters outside restaurants and there will be econuts claiming that diets high in junk food are endangering the poor delicate poley bears
50
Bryon,
This is just begging for some big government funded research on the effects of a high cholesterol McDonalds diet on the Polar bear population.
It might result in some more money made by signwriters warning the scottish do think of the poley bears when disposing of their leftover Big Macs.
I figure a few million in funding out to do it.
Oh and by the way it’s related to gorebal worming as well (just to get the stamp of approval).
40
I’ve just doen the research and it’s all ready to be published.
I will need the Millions of dollars to get it typed up though, but here’s a sneak peak of the abstract:
Polar Bears Are Carnivorous
There is not enough Meat in a Big Mac
Some tourists to scotland discard their food which poley bears might find becoz they have big noses.
Therefore, Big Macs need more meat, but just to be on the safe side, we need to increase the amount of meat in the worlds diet by 10,000% in order to save the poley bears.
If interested in funding this research, please contact me directly – governments spending other peoples money need only apply…
50
Obama will help I’m sure.
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington DC
USA
20
PS: The research I did below didn’t cost anything.
Amazing. Amazing. And amazing…
20
‘Polar Bears Are Carnivorous There is not enough Meat in a Big Mac”
But Polar bears like salty blubber !!!
00
Andy:
Good point. This will add a whole new angle to the research and probably another 500k.
I should add the following abstract – add some baby seal blubber into the special sauce to help save the Poley bears.
Time to go clubbing all you greenies….
10
Here’s the rub… polar bears are LAND creatures.
With the somewhat reduced Arctic sea ice, they don’t have to travel as far to the edge of the ice to catch food.
In winter, when the ice is at its largest, they have to do a lot more work to catch food, or they choose to go into partial hybernation.
41
Aww but al gore showed me this really crap animation of a poley bear drowning and everything.
Say it ain’t so!
20
ps less circumference around the Arctic sea ice, means that the seal population is also more densely distributed.
Polar bear smorgasbord, all you can eat !!!
No wonder the pb population is climing 🙂
20
I had the same picture told to me about 5 years ago by none other than the director of Environment Canada — you can’t get any more authoritative than that. All I had to do was send email to their contact address and ask the question.
I guess that’s too hard to do when you’re an activist. They’ll never learn. They’ll certainly never be bothered a bit by the truth. And they’ll never care about the difference either.
30
PS: I posted what I got back right here on JN as I remember.
The trouble with the truth is that it wears off. Lies and stupid assumptions stick like glue. Amazing!
20
I notice from that article that Charles Monnett, the guy responsible for turning 4 dead bears into an international crisis was suspended. The article is dated 01/08/2011 and the suspension is noted as happening in July (so 2010). Maybe there was some actual justice after all.
30
I found this which is a fair summary of Charles Monnett’s case. Looks like just a reprimand.
A Google search on his name will find a lot of stuff. But the end of it seems clear — nothing near what the trouble he caused demands.
10
Yep Bob Malloy,
Good post on the revenge of the Polar bears.
Seems to ba a recurring theme in ‘eco science’.
Every time the MDBA turns up to do a presentation about a future affected by climate change and a future with less water….it rains.
Last time they turned up we immediately had one of the biggest floods on record!
We need a good drop of rain at the moment.
Maybe we should invite them back?
🙂
10
This is long, and I make no apology for that, because sometimes my blood just boils.
I’ve always tried to stress that the average person has little to zero understanding of power generation and more importantly consumption. So, I can say, whatever, and it means nothing because I’m really just a nobody, and when people who we perceive as knowing spout off, then they are the ones who the public needs to take notice of.
So, that’s what made my blood boil when I heard this small article on the ABC’s midday program The World Today on Thursday. It’s only just under 4 minutes, and it’s worth listening to the whole lot of it, because, to the average person it sounds so reasonable, hence believable.
The person who, er, knows, the person that the ABC went to is Dr. Lynne Chester, a researcher from the University of Sydney. What she says sounds so matter of fact, and is so loaded with inaccuracies at the same time, it leads me to believe that she has little idea, or is spinning the facts.
Link to Audio Article
She comes in at the 3.10 mark. (The tape runs backward towards zero.)
Note where she specifically states the breakdown of consumers, where she says that electricity is consumed by 12% Business, and 88% Domestic. This is a very clever misrepresentation on her part, and without her explaining how she came by that figure, I will. This is the number of consumers.
Electrical power is consumed in Australia at the ratio of 25% for the Residential Sector, 45% for the Commerce Sector and 30% for the Industrial sector, as I explained at this link from a Post from Joanne’s site in August of this year.
Now, as I explained in a Comment a week or so back, Commerce and Industrial consumers, while they pay less per unit (KWH) for their power, they are much greater consumers, Commerce bills are around 8 times higher (on average) than the average Residential bill, and Industry bills are around 75 times higher than the average Residential bill. So, as you can see from that while both sectors consume way more power per business in percentage terms, there are way less actual consumers by number, and this is the figure that our researcher has used, in an attempt to make us think that the residential sector has the greatest consumption.
She also goes on to mention the ubiquitous poles and wires as the root cause of virtually all increases in power bills, again false and misleading.
She also makes another false statement, and I’ll come back to that.
A little later in that audio, after the researcher has finished, it is mentioned that the residential sector only consumes 25% of all generated power, but she has already made her points, and people have little comprehension of what that actually means anyway.
Then another Industry based commentator comes on and mentions the way we need to deal with Peak Demand is by better pricing structures, eg making people pay more during those Peak Power periods, but umm, he didn’t actually say that, just sort of alluded to it. In the last ten seconds, (oh by the way) it was mentioned how the roll out of smart meters will assist. Note here that these smart meters are for the residential sector, and are specifically aimed at exact costing of your power consumption, not just as it is with an overall power bill for KWH consumed based on the whole 90 or so days, but for actual consumption, time based for specific time periods, so they can introduce higher charges for Peak power consumption and charge you at the higher rate for that. See how it’s not aimed at better getting you to adjust your consumption, but for gouging as much money from you as they can, and again, let me stress how this is being specifically targeted at the Residential sector only, which is barely 25% of all power consumption.
So now, back to Dr. Lynne Chester, the researcher. Now go back to the 2.45 mark of the audio, and listen very carefully. She rabbits on about peak power and how it’s only a few days a year. Again, see how even she blames the Residential sector for increased peak demand only for a couple of days a year, when it rains (clothes dryers) and when it’s excessively hot, (aircon) and how she wants those consumers especially to pay the extra and those who don’t have these things to get relief in not having to pay the extra, and see how this ties in with those Smart meters, and how they will be able to know when you are (and how shall I word this) rorting the system, and beware, Smart meters will lead to the ability to switch off those levels of power at residences that have smart meters, because before, the only ability they had was to switch off whole areas of the grid, and with smart meters, they will be able to switch you off individually, on top of making you pay more, and all of this for only 25% of consumption.
So, then how often have I tried to explain peak power? It’s not some esoteric few days a year. It is EVERY day.
I even have some consumption charts that prove the point.
Here’s one for MidWinter (Monday July 16th) that best shows Peak power, third graph down, total consumption, for all the eastern sea board and SA. Note the two peaks, and than look at the X axis, which is time based across the 24 hours of the day from Midnight to Midnight. Note how there is a small peak in the early morning when people get out of bed, shower etc, cook brekky, turn on the heaters. Then it drops off to ordinary daily consumption as people then go off to work. Note then the second, and larger, and longer lasting peak, at around 5PM or so when they all come home from school, work, cook dinner do the clothes washing and drying watch TV, turn on the heaters etc. It’s the same every day of Winter. Incidentally, go back one day from this first graph, and look at this one for the Sunday 15th July. The two peaks are in the same place, as they always are, but note where the line dips back to 21,000MW as compared to the work day Monday when that area between the peaks is 24,000MW, and note that amount is required for the full 24 hours, even on non working days. That is what Base Load is.
Here’s one for MidSummer, (Monday January 16th) and note when the large peak is, around the middle of the day when the vast bulk of people are at work. Those two peaks so obvious in Winter are still there, only now hidden because power is required across the whole of the working day. Now, refer back just one day to the Sunday 15th January, not a working day. Note how even though still large consumption, those two peaks become visible again.
Now, here we are in Mid Spring, and this is the chart for yesterday 19th September. Note how it is heading towards looking like the average Summer Chart. Also note the distinct blip up at around 6PM, coming home time etc etc.
Now, what I’m getting at here is that this is Peaking Power, dedicated and set specific times EVERY day. That is the target of both commentators in the audio tape, and notice how the inference is that we need to change our habits to consume less during peaking power times.
Yeah! Right! How?
Have people get up in the morning earlier or later, change work times, change school hours, have half the public not eating their evening meals. Turn TV transmission off. People not allowed to use heaters in Winter and Coolers in Summer.
Then, and here of the utmost importance, note specifically how it is only aimed at the residential sector, already paying the most per KWH for their power, and now they not only want to make you pay more, but if you consume too much, they want the capability to isolate you with Smart meters.
People will NEVER change these habits where everything at home is done between those set hours. It has to be around those hours.
Note the mention of those filthy rotten disgusting air conditioners. They only want to turn of the residential sector, and the Summer peak is around the middle of the day when everyone is at work school etc. In every building higher than a couple of stories, they have air conditioning, not for heating and cooling, but the PRIME reason to supply recirculated breathing air into those buildings. They have to be on 24/7/365. Do they plan to turn them off too. No! Just those ones in residences.
Note how this is only aimed at 25% of all consumption.
And now for the absolute killer.
All of this is aimed at being able to cope with Peak demand.
Judas Priest. Build a new damned large scale coal fired power plant, and all of this is moot.
Note how despite the altruistic nature of what Dr Lynne Chester says, it’s really only about the money, and the same for that second commentator also.
And really, isn’t what both of these people said an abject admission that despite the ramping up of Wind Power over the last 4 years, it isn’t alleviating this problem one jot.
The last major scale power plants that went in were back in the 80’s and early 90’s. The population has expanded vastly since then, hence more homes are required, more Commerce to cater for that, more Industry to cater for that and supply all those extra jobs.
Have they built any new power plants to cater for that?
No!
No one in their right mind would even think a thought bubble on that point, with the CO2 Tax, emissions reduction legislation, and doing away with all fossil fuel power generation. Germany has seen the light, China has seen the light, India has seen the light, The UN through it’s World Bank has seen the light as they fund new large scale coal fired power. Instead, here in Australia, our Labor Government tells us we need to go back to the dark ages.
Now there is a perception that there is a problem with increasing demand and not being able to cope with that.
Hell’s Bells. Anyone can see exactly why.
And yet, the only thing they want to do is to make money from it. At every point. And who pays. The general public, and more pointedly, that residential sector who only consume 25% of the power, already pay the most for it, and now they want them to pay even more, and then cut them off into the bargain.
As I said at the top, sometimes my blood just boils.
Tony.
260
Very interesting, Tony.
I always thought the 5pm to 7pm peak was real, but your graphs say not, at least in the summer.
I’d be interested to see hourly price graphed against consumption. I searched for this information, but failed to find it.
20
Philip,
what’s worth understanding here is that when you look at the Winter graph, with its two distinct peaks, that graph is the same for Summer, only instead of there being the two peaks showing, there is an increased overall demand which effectively hides those two peaks. This can be seen by comparing the total power at around 6 to 7 PM in Winter, and then looking at the same total power consumption in Summer. It is higher in Summer, and that then extends across the whole graph, mainly due to the hot weather, and every one of those breathing air circulation aircon units in every one of those buildings, taller than 2 levels. They have to work harder because of the outside ambient temperature being so much higher. It has virtually zero to do with residential aircon units at all.
The Summer peak is between midday and mid afternoon, naturally, when the day is hottest.
If they have such a problem with power availability, the simple answer is to construct more power plants that are actually capable of providing the power that is needed, and for when it is needed, not just cutting back what will amount to an absolute minute fraction of part of the residential consumption.
Also note how wind power is positively useless to cover that absolute set in stone time period of peak power consumption. Try telling the wind to blow at a specific time every day, at every wind plant across the Country. See again how useless wind really is.
It’s all a great big con being spun by people who have no concept of where power is actually being consumed.
The biggest most glaring thing here that virtually none of these ‘economists’ can see is that level of power required absolutely, 24/7/365. That’s not some arbitrary figure, as you only have to look at ANY of the total power charts on any day of any year to see that even while all Australia sleeps, that area of coverage, (which is almost 80% or more of all Australia) is still consuming almost 19,000MW.
Tony.
90
Tony, this might amuse you.
About 5 years ago, Western Power in a (transparent to some of us) attempt to lessen the late afternoon summer peak, ran TV ads that told people they would save energy by running their aircon all day, rather than switching it on when they came home from work.
20
I like the one where the TV weather forecast in the UK was sponsored by Powergen, the Electricity generator. I’m sure they were only doing it to predict demand 😉
10
Somewhat relevant to this discussion is Prof. Colin McInnes’ Fear the boom and bust
Concluding paragraphs:
(emphasis mine)
70
Great work, Tony. A must read for everyone! Thumbs up.
30
Tony since you’ve asked, in your #11 I have issues with the following:
“See how it’s not aimed at better getting you to adjust your consumption, but for gouging as much money from you as they can”
To me that is an assumption on your part.
“Again, see how even she blames the Residential sector for increased peak demand only for a couple of days a year, when it rains (clothes dryers) and when it’s excessively hot, (aircon) and how she wants those consumers especially to pay the extra and those who don’t have these things to get relief in not having to pay the extra”
Look att eh fancy graphs I’ve seen for little of Perth and the SWIS clearly shows a peak demand in summer at (approx) 5-7pm… this HAS to be a residential peak, and significantly discretionary use. It may not be thet same everywhere and every grid needs to figure out its own pricing regime.
“People will NEVER change these habits where everything at home is done between those set hours. It has to be around those hours.”
I think this is the main point of contention. You appear to have an opinion that is opposite to generally accepted theories of supply, demand, costs etc. These things do NOT have to be done in these times, and it IS a residential (not commercial) peak, and it IS the infrastructure to service the peak that is killing us in terms of having to put a qwhole heap of infrastructure in place jsut to service a 2 hr peak. Would you prefer instead that the cost be spread to industry and commerce “here Mr business man I’m going to make your electricity cost more so you can subsidise costs of somebody else’s peak use”.
“Build a new damned large scale coal fired power plant, and all of this is moot” – wow a wholre new large scale coal powered fire station for a 2 hour peak? Who is paying Tony… WHO IS PAYING?
“Note how despite the altruistic nature of what Dr Lynne Chester says, it’s really only about the money, and the same for that second commentator also.”
Fan bloody tastic – that is exactly wehat it SHOULD be about. No mumbo jumbo left rubbish but cold hard $$$.
“that residential sector who only consume 25% of the power,” BUT DOMINATE THE PEAKS!!!!!
“sometimes my blood just boils.” true – but with a decent pricing structure you may well choose to boil it in the off peak period;)
01
MattB, you say here:
You haven’t even bothered to go and check the graphs I linked to, have you? Then you haven’t bothered to read what I had to say about them. Either that, or you can’t understand it.
I linked to two graphs in Winter, and 2 in Summer, but Judas Priest, I could link to those charts for every day of the year, and you’ll see that they are all the same. I could link to charts like that anywhere on the Planet where there is a regulated constant supply of electricity, and they are all exactly the same.
Those Peaking Power peaks are from 6AM until 8.30AM, and from 5PM until 11PM, not some arbitrary 2 hour period, or as you wrote in a Comment further down, one hour. It’s when People get up in the morning, and when people get home from work in the afternoon and into the evening.
Mattb, please. oh please explain to me how you are going to change those habits. You seem to think it’s so damned simple. That’s when the Residential sector consumes it’s power, because Matt, that’s actually when they are at home. They do all the things at home that they always do, always have, always will. Tell me Matt, are you going to change that? Come on, don’t just waffle on. Tell us.
Note the Summer peak, and note where I specifically mention that those 2 peaks so obvious in Winter are still the same, only now they are hidden because of the overall increase in total power consumption across the board, and I even explained that as well. Note when that Summer peak is. It’s around Midday to 2 PM, every Summer day, when everyone’s off at work. That peak is larger than the residential peak in Summer, so that level of power has to be there anyway.
Those Winter peaks are obvious and the overall total power consumption is lower, and again note the times. What are you going to do Matt, make people pay extra or live in frozen homes. Legislate that they can’t cook their meals, turn on their lights, watch TV. Legislate that they can’t use washing machines, dry their clothes on the line during the night in Winter. Legislate that they can’t shower because that depletes the hot water hence consuming more power to heat it back up again. Will you have your power police going around looking for homes with their lights on.
That’s the f…… peak Matt, normal everyday household life.
It’s for 2 hours in the morning, and around 5 hours in the evening, and even then residential consumption is still only 25%. Even drastically lowering it makes diddly sqaut of a difference.
And here you are, advocating that people pay more to live their everyday life.
Try telling people they can’t use power in their homes, and then try and tell them what they can use, and what they cannot use. Good luck with that Matt.
Tony.
20
And pray tell us, Mattb, what constitutes
Tony.
20
Tony – I’m not advocating they not be able to use it. I’m advocating they pay a cost reflective of the costs of providing them with peak power, so the provider can afford to provide the peak power, and leaving the consumer with the choice of using the peak power or lowering their demand. Seems rational enough to me.
“significantly discretionary use”.. not sure which word you are stuck on Tony, but use that can be avoided… eg having aircon at a reasonable setting. having heating at a reasonable setting. not operating the pool pump. Bore pump. THinking about whether you need 3 beer fridges. (note you are free to do all these just pay up).
00
MattB:
Matt, I’m only quoting exactly what you said, ‘significantly discretionary use’.
People who have 3 Beer fridges, (3 beer fridges Matt, on top of an ordinary food fridge. How many people does that apply to?) already pay way extra for what they use. No other consumer subsidises their 3 beer fridges etc. If they have all those extra items, they pay the cost.
The consumer only pays for what he uses.
Tony.
20
But they do not pay a cost that reflects the PEAK DEMAND. They instead have that peak cost paid for by everyone else. Somebody has to pay the piper.
00
Maybe I have what it takes to become a Senator?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-01/household-power-bill-ideas/4346560
“One of its key recommendations is for the introduction of cost-reflective pricing in conjunction with the rollout of smart meters, which would give households the ability to cut electricity supply when spot prices reach a certain level.
Committee chairman and Labor senator Matt Thistlethwaite said the change would mean that only those people using electricity at peak demand would have to pay.
“Effectively, low-income households without air conditioners are subsidising the cost of high-income households running air conditioners during peak times,” Senator Thistlethwaite said.
“This is unfair.”
00
“Note when that Summer peak is. It’s around Midday to 2 PM, every Summer day, when everyone’s off at work. That peak is larger than the residential peak in Summer, so that level of power has to be there anyway.”
Again Tony you appear to be arguing with someone who thinks that peak pricing should only be applied to residences, and at times where total demand is not at its peak. Are you confusing this conversation with me with one you are having with someone else on another blog?
00
Tony sorry if I missed it but do you have a reference for “It’s for 2 hours in the morning, and around 5 hours in the evening, and even then residential consumption is still only 25%.” are you suggesting that when residential use peaks all the non resi demand peaks as well?
00
Mattb.
Don’t you know how to take a link, and then read a simple graph. I explained how to do it. You only need to look at the graph to see that consumption. I don’t need a reference. This is an ACTUAL graph of ACTUAL consumption. Surely you can see what’s in front of your eyes.
I understand it’s a concept you may not be familiar with, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve explained all this before.
Oh look, I give up.
There’s no point attempting to explain something that you do not want to understand.
Tony.
30
Um I did say sorry if I missed the specific link. Yours was a long post with a lot of links. You’d have wasted less time just saying “third link in post 11.6 or something. And you’d not have sounded like a grumpy old man.
01
Ok so now I’ve wasted all my time and none of those links appear to give a break down by sector of demand in the 6-11pm time period you claim as the peak.
01
Mattb,
so, let me see if I have got this right.
The intimation here is that you skim through the post, don’t take any of the links, and then just go off half cocked over any points you disagree with, without checking what has been said, because that’s what you’re saying here.
Then there’s this classic:
I’ve lost count of the number of times I have explained this, here at this site. If you can’t read a damned graph, and then extrapolate what it says, after I have explained it so many times, then you have less cdf than I gave you credit for. I’m not doing your damned research for you. You are the only one who can’t see this. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Try reading my earlier comments and think about them for a minute or two.
Ah, what’s the point, Tony, he’s just plain belligerent.
Here Mattb, here’s the links.
Energy Use In The Australian Residential Sector Part 1
Energy Use In The Australian Residential Sector Part 2
Knock yourself out.
Tony.
01
No Tony, that was unfair of you, so MattB, I apologise.
If you can’t understand what I have been saying all this time here, then there’s no way known you’ll be able to work understand anything at those two links.
Tony.
10
If it was all in the previous links that you’ve berated me for not understanding, why is it you’ve provided 2 new links?
…none of which demonstrate that residential energy consumption makes up 25% of demand between 5pm and 11pm. I’m not actually arguing it does or does not, I’m just interested, as my claim is that it is worth looking a residential loading in that peak time and you say it is not – with an implication that residential is the same 25% of total demand.
Those two links have a lot of interesting graphs, but none that I can find that provide that data.
I grat you there are three options… they are not there, they are there and I don’t understand them, or they are there and I missed them.
FYI those links are the equivalent of me trying to convert a skeptic by jsut saying “read the IPCC reports” rather than specifying a chapter. i.e. unreasonable.
01
Mattb,
again you show your total inability to read something and then understand what I said. Either that, or you are deliberately misrepresenting what I said. You say here:
At no stage have I EVER said that residential power consumption is 25% between those hours you quote. Here’s what I actually said had you bothered to read it.
That’s not for some arbitrary period of time. That’s the total power breakdown for each sector, so that Residential sector is only consuming 25% IN TOTAL of all electrical power on a 24/7/365 basis.
That is explained exactly at those most recent links I gave you, but again, you would not be able to comprehend what is being written there, so that is why I expressly gave that link to that detailed explanation in that original Comment number 10.
Here’s that link again for you Matt, carefully explained.
Comment at JoNova site August 5, 2012 at 2:37 pm
This isn’t something I just made up Matt. It’s from your own Labor Party puppet masters.
You also go on to say here:
It’s really nice to see, Mattb, that you are all in favour of making life even more difficult for every Australian by increasing the cost of electricity for expressly the time when they are locked into using it the most.
See how you never stop making a fool of yourself. We don’t do that. You do it to yourself by having this false belief that we are liars with everything we say. Just because you cannot understand what is being said does not make us liars.
Tony.
10
Sorry TOny this is what you said in 10.4.1
“That’s the f…… peak Matt, normal everyday household life.
It’s for 2 hours in the morning, and around 5 hours in the evening, and even then residential consumption is still only 25%. ”
I then quoted it and asked where you got that… ie 25% during the peak. You pointed to link after link after link but now say:
“At no stage have I EVER said that residential power consumption is 25% between those hours you quote.”
So sorry mate I’ve been crystal clear and you’ve made a mistake, and had you bothered to read my 10.4.1.4 you’d have seen that and we could have avoided all the banter from then on.
So to confirm: the statement you made (apparently in error), and which I questioned, has no basis in any data you are aware of, despite your pointing me to a heap of links in an effort to make it look like you did?
01
Oh, Mattb, nyuk nyuk nyuk,
I can’t believe you’ve gone on so long about this. It’s partly my fault I suppose for leading you on like this, but at each step, you have shown how little you do actually read, because confirmation of what I say is in the Comment of pat’s directly below this one, and it has been directly below all these comments we have made since the stated time, long before you came in with your allegations.
Can you not even read.
This is not me ‘making stuff up’.
Read the Comment Matt, and realise now just how embarrassed you must be.
You are the only person I have ever known to not be able to see this.
Tony.
10
Tony – I asked an honest question regarding a statement you made. You huffed and puffed and then claimed you never made the statement. Pat’s comment below is completely unrelated. Heck I don;t even disagree with a lot of your posts, but you said something, I was interested and I asked a question:
“Tony sorry if I missed it but do you have a reference for “It’s for 2 hours in the morning, and around 5 hours in the evening, and even then residential consumption is still only 25%.”
You could have just said “no, that’s not what I meant, I meant that overall domestic use is only about 25% of total use”. I agree with that. That would have been that.
Simple.
Honest.
Question.
01
Look, I’m sorry Matt. I naturally assumed that you could read, and then actually put two and two together.
This is not a case of my saying something incorrect. It’s just another case of your inherent ability to misrepresent everything.
If you can’t read something that is said that you cannot comprehend, then don’t attempt to put the blame back on me, and please, Matt, don’t call me a liar.
Tony.
01
“5 hours in the evening, and even then residential consumption is still only 25%”
is not a case of me not being able to read and comprehend.
01
Mattb,
since you falsely misrepresented what I said, you have made 6 Comments , all of them based around your original misrepresentation.
Had you even bothered to read the original Comment number 10, a full 14 Comments earlier than your misrepresentation, and still in the same original Comment numbering system, you would have found this:
and then this:
And then this:
Note the mention of the word …..ALL.
Then, as a distraction, you conveniently misrepresent ONE thing and hone in on that, when it is you has misrepresented it, and placed your own false interpretation on it in an attempt to blame me for your failings.
If you can’t even read correctly, then do not blame me for something that is your own failure.
Tony.
10
Sorry Tony the confusion lies in your poorly worded statement “5 hours in the evening, and even then residential consumption is still only 25%”. You’ll note I didn’t reply to all the other times you claim 25% as I agree… but here you SPECIFICALLY referred to 25% in the peak… no amount of referring to other posts you’ve made can shy away from that fact. I then asked a pretty basic and polite question, to which you could have easily just said “oh no I’ll clarify, that 25% is just of total consumption averaged over all times of the day”. instead you argued and made out I was a moron when I at WORST misunderstood you (I maintain the reality is you expressed yourself poorly and I simply took your words as though you meant them).
YOur problem of course is that we now know that residential is > 25% at the peak times, meaning that peak costs are a perfectly valid tool to target the peak. Personally I’d apply to anyone using in the peak not just residents. But you are now agreeing with me that the resi use in the PEAK IS IMPORTANT! as it is not just the 25% you’ve implied.
Please Tony… go re read the thread, admit your wording was poor, admit that my interpretation was not a misrepresentation but what simply exactly what you had said, admit that you could have cleared it up in #10.4.1.4.1 because you are so convinced that the chances you made a mistake in your wording are so slim that you didn’t even read my post AND QUOTE carefully.
00
TonyfromOz –
have u read these:
Feb 2012: Smart Metering – Ed Milliband’s Poisoned Chalice
Alex Henney1, Ross Anderson2
1. Former director of London Electricity; in 1987 the first person to propose a competitive restructuring of the electric industry in
England & Wales; author and publisher of The British Electric Industry 1990-2010: the rise and demise of competition.
2. FRS FREng, Professor of Security Engineering, University of Cambridge, Computing Laboratory
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SmartMetering-Feb82012.pdf
11 Oct: Guardian: John Naughton: So which bright spark thought of smart meters?
There’s a good case for rethinking the way we supply and charge for electricity, but the government’s take on smart meters is a recipe for disaster
Their introduction has been US policy since 2007, for example, when President George W Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act – and allocated $4.5bn (£2.8bn) for the development of a “smart” electricity grid. In 2009, the European Union followed suit with a directive mandating smart metering in households by 2022, which, in relation to the scale of what has to be done is, the blink of an eye.
Another is that smart metering will enable utility companies to vary the cost per unit on an hourly basis. So electricity might cost 2p a unit at 3am but 12p a unit at 6pm, when the nation gets home, starts cooking and switches on the TV…
What we have in the making is another multibillion-pound government IT disaster of the kind that Whitehall has made its unique speciality. And that’s only the half of it. Because embedded in the technology of smart metering is an even more worrying possibility about which the government (and the electricity utilities) has been strangely taciturn. The utilities love the technology because it will enable them to disconnect consumers remotely who don’t pay their bills…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/oct/11/smart-meters-dumb-idea-cybersecurity
30
Can you see what from what pat has linked to here, which is exactly what I’ve written about. 2p per KWH for off peak times at 2 AM, and then 6 times that amount when DOMESTIC consumers get home from work and cook dinner etc etc etc.
See how it has nothing to do with regulating consumption, just a money making exercise, because people are captively bound to consume power at those specific times.
Smart meters for a smart grid.
Absolute bovine excrement.
Do not EVER try and tell me this is being done for the sake of the environment. It’s done to make money for the only times when people use the most.
Everything associated with global warming, climate change, electricity consumption, renewable power, is only about the money.
Tony.
160
I was at a conference last week, and the defence people were horrified. All that Smart Metering is complex electronics built to consumer quality, making the whole grid vulnerable to EMP, not to mention Solar Flares, as if the destabilising effects of connecting lots of sporadic Windmills and Solar Panels weren’t enough.
Like ‘Sciences’ that have to be called Science, some things called ‘Smart ‘ can be pretty Dumb.
60
That’s awesome. In a bad way. Never thought of the Smart Grid like that, but it’s obvious in hindsight.
I reckon our electrical grid presently is less threatened by an Electro Magnetic Pulse from China and more threatened by an Electro Magnetic Retreat from Canberra!
Talk about shock-and-awe tactics…you’ll be in awe that sticking a knife into the wall socket doesn’t shock you.
00
18 Oct: Business Green: Jessica Shankleman: Oracle predicts ‘huge’ market for UK water smart metering
*** Rodger Smith, senior vice-president of Oracle Utilities, added that the introduction of smart meters could require water companies to hire data analysts to process the 180-fold increase in data that they will be able to analyse.
***”Utilities for the first time are finding out they need those sorts of people and they haven’t in the past so that’s a huge difference, and they will have to prove why they are more exciting to work for than, say, Morgan Stanley or Google,” he said…
“We’ve noticed around the world that utilities wait for reams of data to come in and then they realise they don’t know how to do anything with it,” he said…
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/analysis/2218164/oracle-predicts-huge-market-for-uk-water-smart-metering
18 Oct: Topanga Messenger: Cheney Residents Move to Remove Smart Meters
One pressing concern is the fire hazard caused by smart meters that have a history of overheating and exploding in cities throughout the country – http://articles.philly.com/2012-09-14/business/33818402_1_smart-meter-installation-program-smart-meters-new-meters
http://www.topangamessenger.com/story_detail.php?ArticleID=5647
18 Oct: SmartGridNews: Colorado may let users opt-out of smart meters
Quick Take: After the flurry of negative publicity that resulted when Duke turned off power to a customer who refused a smart meter, we feel even more strongly that utilities should all offer opt-out programs.
Yes, the customer should pick up the extra cost of manual meter reading. Or the extra cost to mount the meter on a pole away from the customer residence. But they should not be forced to take a smart meter just because they hold extreme views about their health risks. And now it looks like Colorado may join the list of states that allow opt-out. – By Jesse Berst …
If those approvals come, customers may be able to opt out as of January and have their smart meters switched out for an analog meter, according to a KOAA news story.
Customers would be required to pay a one-time fee of $109 for the meter switch…
http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/Technologies_Metering/Colorado-may-let-users-opt-out-of-smart-meters-5204.html
20
After it proved impossible to stop the power company from making wild-ass guesses instead of reading the meter we opted to have a smart meter put in.
So far so good. But I fear the ultimate intent is not to steal any kind of personal information that could be used against me as the Guam suit alleges (what could the thing get a hold of?) but to be able to charge me more for power during peak load times.
Tony is on the right crusade. Build more generating capacity. It’s a simple solution to a simple problem.
20
19 Oct: Guam: GPA sued over smart meters
COMMENT: Let me guess! The GPA workers do not need the monthly exercise to read power meters, much the same as postal delivery workers don’t need to deliver mail to residents of Guam, resulting in everyone renting a PO Box. What is next? Should we disconnect out power meters, take them down to GPA, stand in line, and have them jot down our readings? I suppose we will otherwise have our power disconnected without notices and eventually have our water disconnected so these ‘meter-jockeys’ can sit at their desk and misread our usage every month.
http://www.kuam.com/story/19860390/2012/10/19/gpa-sued-over-smart-meters
TonyfromOz –
you make some other important points about the big picture, but i am also concerned about Councils – such as i documented recently re Logan Council in SE Qld – offering smart meters to low-income families under the guise of being concerned about their welfare.
the failure of the MSM – what else is there? – to inform the public fairly & honestly about everything pertaining to CAGW, including attempts to use people’s Super Funds (being run by ex-pollies in some cases) to actually fund the whole boondoggle, when they are funding it already thru subsidies, grants, higher electricity & water bills, etc., makes my blood boil too.
80
Morning all.
I see Bill Shorten has called for unemployment benefits to be increased. Some very nasty people have suggested that this is because Bill reckons he’ll be needing them soon. Which is incorrect and very unkind and I’ll explain why.
You don’t get the dole in gaol.
Cheers,
Speedy
131
Heheh funny, but I see a serious side to the “cons don’t get the dole” joke. What they get is much better than the dole. Hell these days you have to work for the dole don’t you? (or was that a short-lived Howard policy?)
Prisoners receive 3 square meals a day, accommodation no worse or crowded than a backpacker hostel, free membership in a gym, access to regular exercise, free library loans, free trade skills training in some cases, a physically intimidating social environment where violence is rewarded with respect, routinely cruel treatment by guards that will undermine any faith in law and the government, and virtually compulsory attendance at an ongoing crime workshop in which crooks discuss the causes of their failed business ventures with a view to figuring out how to do it all better next time.
And we have the cheek to call these 3-star bully resorts a form of “punishment” and the audacity to call these extremely expensive crime training centres a “correctional services facility”. 😯
Now on top of that look what happens when they get out. They are a 2nd class citizen, forbidden from Jury duty, will never be trusted by employers to do any decent job again (perhaps not even the legal one they were originally good at), a black mark forever against their name. Still the fiction continues that these people have “paid their debt to society in full” and have been “rehabilitated” by these same “correctional services”.
What a sick joke.
It is not just a question of law and mandatory sentences etc, it’s a question of societal values.
Is the current situation preferable to just shooting them in the head on day one? I’m sure most of you are rightly repulsed by the spectre of eugenics. Not to mention the awful prospect of our wonderful justice system allowing a few innocents to go through to the keeper. Okay. If you do not want to cut prison costs by just killing convicts on day one, then we must seriously examine what hope there is, if any, of crooks ever being “corrected” and “rehabilitated” to the point that society can genuinely extend to them a 2nd chance in life.
Because right now crime is the best job going for an ex-con.
P.S : I’m NOT topher and my view should NOT be unpopular! 😀
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
In Ludwig We Trust.
51
how many battalions will it take to administer this? and every time the situaion changes, who notifies whom?
20 Oct: Bloomberg: Power Hogs Targeted by France in Big Brother Legislation
Heating a French home could soon require an income tax consultation or even a visit to the doctor under legislation to force conservation in the nation’s $46 billion household energy market.
A bill adopted by the lower house this month would set prices that homes pay based on wages, age and climate. Utilities Electricite de France SA and GDF Suez SA (GSZ) will use the data to reward consumers who cut power and natural gas usage and penalize those whom regulators decide are wasteful.
“It’s Orwellian,” opposition lawmaker Daniel Fasquelle said by telephone. “The law will create huge inequalities and infringe on people’s individual freedoms. It won’t work.” …
The legislation drew criticism from trade unions and industry groups. It will add layers of bureaucracy to a power system already attacked in court and antitrust probes for being oppressive for customers and competitors of EDF (EDF) and GDF Suez, the former state monopolies that still dominate supply, opponents said…
The proposed law was adopted by the National Assembly on Oct. 4 and is set for Senate debate later this month…
The new French law will add income and the number and age of occupants to the mix. Having a medical condition that requires electricity-powered equipment like respirators or wheelchairs will also enter into the equation…
Renters will be able to deduct from their monthly payments a part of the higher costs of heating a home deemed to have low energy use efficiency, maybe because it’s poorly insulated, while the elderly or households with certain yet-to-be specified heating installations will get higher base volumes of energy…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-18/power-hogs-targeted-by-france-in-big-brother-legislation.html
20
And it’s coming soon to a home near you.
And still people knuckle under.
30
during a break in the women’s tennis in moscow, i foolishly switched to sky news where the presenters were in panic mode because the liberals looked like getting 8 seats in ACT election to 7 for labor, and the liberal guy was declaring victory tho not stating he could form govt. he said greens had suffered – nearly 5% decrease in their vote – because of their alliance with labor, and he would be willing to negotiate with them on allowing budgets to go through and not blocking supply.
so what was the news ticker appearing on the screen repeatedly:
“says greens have suffered from their alliance with LIBERALS”!
sky news hack (never know their names, and don’t want to) then goes on to mock the liberal guy as a hypocrite, saying how he is putting down the greens, yet saying he will negotiate with them. which, by the way, is what one of the greens is also saying namely, if he wants to be chief minister, he will have to talk to them.
all the MSM headlines up to today have headlined a win for labor, with none allowing any possibility of a liberal win. plus:
20 Oct: Sky News: ACT voters tipped to return ALP
Betting markets were so sure the government would rack up another win, one bookmaker decided to pay out on Friday.
Sportsbet spokesman Shaun Anderson said his punters might as well enjoy their winnings a day early after Labor’s odds to win firmed from $1.50 to $1.04 and support for the Liberals moved from $3.50 to $5.50.
Mr Anderson said 99 per cent of all bets Sportsbet took on the election had gone on Labor…
Greens leader Meredith Hunter has told both sides her party is ready to negotiate, whatever the outcome.
http://www.skynews.com.au/politics/article.aspx?id=807747
the above is why i avoid the MSM almost 100% of the time. and i’m not even a liberal voter. sheesh.
50
“all the MSM headlines up to today have headlined a win for labor, with none allowing any possibility of a liberal win”
If the Libs win AND form government with the a couple of the independants ( assuming there`s enough independants to do so )I suspect the MSM will have a collective head explosion
With Lib/lab holding 38.6% each the headlines now read
“Libs could win vote but not govt”
20
How far will we let this go?
After birth abortion, read it please. And then get involved and active in opposing what can only be described as a proposal for coldblooded murder.
If they can kill you for convenience as a newborn they can kill you for convenience at any age.
30
It isn’t a ‘proposal’, it is a philosophical discussion:
“The authors provocatively argue that there is no moral difference between a foetus and a newborn. Their capacities are relevantly similar. If abortion is permissible, infanticide should be permissible.”
Personally I think by raising such a confronting possibility, ‘the justifications for killing a new-born could be the same as the justifications for an abortion because there is no moral difference’, the authors are forcing people to re-think their positions on abortion.
I don’t read into it any proposal or move to introduce legal infanticide.
30
BS!
I’m too old to be conned by philosophical discussions, Jaymez.
30
I went back and read that article again and I can’t avoid saying this. The argument that a newborn is not a person is unacceptable. This is the jump off the cliff that started with abortion on demand. Jaymez, don’t be blind to suggestions of coldblooded murder.
I have steadfastly refused to swallow abortion as birth control and I’m not going to swallow this.
The Journal of Medical Ethics is a sewer!
It’s time for anyone with a conscience to stand up and say NO.
70
Doesn’t mean that that isn’t one of the authors’ goals. This may be a “trial balloon” — how people react to it determines their future direction. The 2010 video was another example of this.
Ever wonder why the Left exclusively pushes fetal stem cell research, even though it produces cancer about 25% of the time, so hasn’t resulted in any real therapies yet? At the same time, adult stem cells (which don’t require a fetus to be killed) are now being used in over 100 therapies. This successful research is invisible in leftist publications. The only significant differences (besides the tendency for fetal cells to initiate cancer) is that you have to kill for the kind they want, and not for the kind they ignore. Recently, equilivent fetal cells have been produced from adult cells.
Google “Liverpool care path” and read some of the English doctors’ horrifying testimony to see where ‘Progressives’ would like to go. (~29% of all patients who die in British hospitals are deliberately killed by the doctors — they are chosen because they are old, or have expensive or slow to cure diseases.)
50
what on earth makes you think that stem cell research advocating doctors are left wing?
00
This is the position of the Australian philosopher Peter Singer, now at Princeton. He argues with most anti abortionists that there is no moral difference between killing a fetus and killing a baby or even a grown human.
“Opponents of abortion ought to welcome articles arguing that there is no real difference of moral status between the fetus and the newborn, for they have been arguing that themselves for many years. Their problem, apparently, is that most of them do not know how to argue against anyone who agrees with them that the fetus and newborn infant have the same moral status, but then denies that merely existing as an innocent living human being is enough to give a being a right to life.”
He is an animal rights activist and that influences his “speciesism” or discrimination against the rights of animals which he finds as morally unacceptable. I think it is also a measure of an underlying contemporary paganism which whether acknowledged or not is philosophically foundational generally to AGW alarmism eg Gaiaism.
Thus I think a good argument can be made for the role of underlying Judeo/Christian or theistic presuppositions in the historic advancement of science.
30
Maybe I’m more dense than I think I am or this
undermines both your argument and that of Jaymez. That’s a tacit argument that killing the newborn is as justified as killing it before birth.
The animal rights connection undermines Singer’s credibility because clearly his priorities are junk. And I’m an animal owner, lover and quite thoroughly opposed to intentional cruelty to animals. But I know the difference between the two and their relative importance.
And I know this. A generation that murders its unborn children just for the sake of the convenience of the mother is not going to stand forever. We are descending into chaos and have abandoned the one thing most worth saving about western civilization — the moral conviction that human life is sacred, not to be taken lightly. It’s being replaced by the moral sewer of people who will murder their daughters for some nitwit’s concept of “honor” because the daughter was raped. And that’s no moral code at all.
That moral breakdown that permits abortion on demand is what enables animal rights to gain a foothold; what enables fake and fudged research without a pang of conscience; enables liberalism and postmodernism in general and everything we fight against here. Morality does matter.
There was a day when no one would dare publish such a thing for fear of real consequences. What has happened to us?
70
A very useful illumination of the issue Roy.
Read that stuff and found it confusing, and because of that did not bother to go back and try to tease out
the real meaning.
The meaning we need to hold to is the one you have outlined so well.
The way we live and the PC traps that bind us in modern “civil” societies may need some additional tweaking however. Some hints may be had from other lifestyle largely from the last.
Primitive groups, from memory, had a practice of killing newly-borns which were deformed or unlikely to be able to sustain a life at maturity.
At the other end of the scale my parents and grandparents died at home or within a day or two of entering hospital.
Older Australian Aboriginals when they reached a time they felt was right apparently went off to a special place to sing themselves off to the next world.
Current practice at both ends is to save every life at whatever cost.
So we have nursing homes full of people who can’t feed themselves and do not know who they are let alone who their children are.
We also have new parents with children who have been “rescued” so that they can spend life in a wheel
chair, be incapable any much mental development and require constant attention.
I suspect that the philosophers like Peter Singer may be the ones putting enormous pressure on doctors to
“save every life” but at the same time I don’t expect to see them lining up to help the parents who have
the challenge of an incapacitated child.
The PC period has shown its colours and it may be time we got to a point where we can debate things in a practical open manner and give people more real options.
Your comment was well put.
KK 🙂
30
should read: largely from the past.
10
Saint Roy says:
It’s a romantic moment, isn’t it? Between mother and child. You know, that special moment when the mother looks down upon her baby and sees in its face the visage of her rapist.
Certainly a special moment that should be cherished and protected and prolonged indefinitely, instead of cowing to some nitwit’s concept of “love” and “commitment”.
Can’t argue with that. Well how could anyone argue against it, as every moral code is an island.
Just guessing here, but would there happen to be some Christian doctrine of the sanctity of life that directs your response on this one particular scenario of post-rape abortion?
Because it would be rather maddening, surely, to live a life devoted to truth and realistic planning and yet, to the extent that facts and logic contradict your religious principles, to allow religion to overrule logic.
Abortion on demand is a moral breakdown because you say so. Sounds postmodernist to me.
Yes, but why? Consequences matter and consequence is real. Morality is imaginary, but it is important because it is our own internal model of how other minds are affected by stimulus, and in particular by the consequences of our own action or inaction.
By ignoring the effect on unwilling mothers of an outright abortion ban (ie making human life “sacred”) you demonstrate immorality. You ignore multiple consequences on the “sacred” lives of your fellow living breathing humans, precisely the opposite of the purpose of moral cognition. You would prefer to prematurely elevate a uterine tumour to baby status than take stock of how that unwanted tumour and its mother and her family will cope if it is allowed to naturally advance to real baby status. You would prefer to unquestioningly carry out a religious doctrine written by persons unknown 2000 years before technology had ever invented safe abortion chemicals. You are not “dense”, but you’ve not even begun to think empirically about the issues.
Well all the above has probably infuriated you beyond reason. Why then did I say it? Because I have the unpleasant character trait of privileging truth above human relationships. Knowing the truth, and having the wisdom to know when and how it should be applied, is one of the finest goals a mind can set itself towards. I am nowhere near that goal but thorny issues make good practice. Call me Cartesian, but I think reality has to be the starting point.
It would be wrong of me to make upsetting comments purporting a falsehood if either the comment itself is a lie, or the consequence of people operating under the falsehood is minor compared to the upset of its exposition.
When reminded of the first paragraph above it’s an easy decision to make.
10
Hi Andrew
Saint Roy did mention he did not agree with abortion as birth control.
I can’t say I have read and totally digested all of this set of comments but his first comment above
may have made some of your commentary a bit off target.
We both, and perhaps the three of us, seem to agree that a woman should not be faced with rearing the
child forced upon her in rape.
KK 🙂
00
KK you’re having a bad week aren’t you?
You correctly state:
“he did not agree with abortion as birth control.”
But you think he still has some wriggle room after decrying this:
“they can kill you for convenience at any age.”
(my emph), and after also saying this:
“the one thing most worth saving about western civilization — the moral conviction that human life is sacred”
Note that nobody has even mentioned adoption thus far in the thread, it was not even a mooted option. Perhaps Roy also doesn’t mind a woman going through the pain of birth for nothing? How immoral could he be? But that is speculation, let’s focus on what he did actually say.
Roy said human life is sacred, further implying it is sacred even at the age of negative 7 months, so it’s entirely on-target to argue that point regardless of whatever else he said.
00
Actually I’m having a pretty good week Andrew.
I still haven’t read all of the above and digested it but generally got the idea that most people, including you and I, would be OK with abortion in the case of rape..
Not sure whether Roy has excluded himself from that either.
Mostly agree with your comments here and your others spread around the blog but you seem to be a bit
intense about expressing things, but then so am I.
KK 🙂
00
Very well then.
Perhaps it is me that is having an “intense” week.
10
Andrew,
I always know I’m right when I get ridiculed instead of sound logical argument against me.
If you disagree with my position then tell me why.
If you ridicule me I know you can’t support your own position worth a toot and I write you off.
PS: I would hold the same position if I had never heard the word Christianity. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with basic right and wrong. Any society worth living in prohibits the killing of someone on only an individual’s personal authority. You cannot walk up and knock off your neighbor for any cause, not even in a very much degraded Australia. And not even if your neighbor is fully capable of fighting back and could defend successfully are you allowed to try it.
To not extend that protection to those who cannot defend themselves at all is a betrayal of everything that is good and decent about our very foundation as a society. If you really want the world where someone can, without penalty, murder his daughter because she was raped, then go for it. But let me off the world first because I want something much better.
I await your well reasoned and well argued response.
20
KK,
He attributes things to me about abortion that I did not say and did not intend to say. I hope he will respond in a more reasond way.
10
Hi Roy
One of the problems I have when writing comment is that I have a tendency to make comment based on the first few lines I read.
Then I go back and read the rest of it and find extra material that makes my comment a bit premature.
On top of that there seem to be some topics like Abortion, as here, and “The Greenhouse Effect” where everybody has a slightly different understanding of what is meant.
If you look at the current discussion going round in circles here about the greenhouse effect you will see what I mean: a lot of very smart people butting heads over a very poorly defined and loaded concept.
Same with abortion and concepts about death at the end of life; I hope to go naturally but don’t agree with being kept alive by excessive intervention.
KK 🙂
00
St.Roy opines:
Well my response to this could not be better worded than you have said it already: You attribute things to me about murder that I did not say.
I did, and in no uncertain terms.
Though I detect some potential confusion over one non-essential part of your previous comment. Just for completeness… In this sentence…
My understanding was that the two instances of “daughter” referred to two different human beings. ie that the mother, who is also a daughter, was raped to produce an unwanted female daughter (foetus/baby) which was then killed. That was the only interpretation consistent with the rest of the paragraph about “murders its unborn children”.
Was this the meaning you intended?
If not, then I am sure you will understand my misapprehension, given that you started off with “murders its unborn children” and finished by saying “[it’s a] moral breakdown that permits abortion on demand”. Wasn’t expecting you to talk about a totally different problem in the middle. As I said, it it non-essential and superfluous to your thesis.
Also, If you do not distinguish between murder and abortion, then we have located another important source of confusion.
I can’t help but think you have switched topics and are now talking about an entirely different problem than the original I responded to:
I take it you have retreated from this earlier statement, as you completely ignored my precise argument against its universality, choosing instead to be huffy and claim victim’s rights.
00
Andrew,
My thesis, as you put it was morality. Period! If I expressed it in less than the best way perhaps you can forgive that in light of your response.
I don’t know what your point of confusion was because it’s quite common to punctuate a point with more than one example. That’s all I did. Murders unborn children refers to abortion for birth control. Murders their daughters refers to the interpretation of Islam that sanctions honor killing (did you not recognize it?). Both illustrate complete moral bankruptcy to me – the worst sort of disregard for other human beings.
I hope this makes the thing clear.
In addition, the suggestion, even philosophically, that it might be permissible to abort the child after birth is the same problem to me.
None of this has anything to do with religion for me. Absolutely none of it.
10
Hi Roy
There are a few comments by others to the effect that they ” know ” Andrew.
They seem to know something about his motivation and its obvious, after his last tortured reply avoiding the issue, that he is not worth bothering with.
If there is some point to his comments I cannot see it.
KK
00
KK, the point of argument is to persuade someone else of one’s own opinion.
As to your casting dispersions about my character, presumably you are trying to persuade Roy, or casual bystanders who have not bothered to read my comments, that I am some sort of evil troll.
I reckon the phenomenon you are now exhibiting is basically Poe’s Law operating in reverse. Because you A) are either incapable or unwilling to understand the argument I made, and B) cannot believe that anybody would ever disagree strongly with your own conclusion, you decide the only explanation must be that I don’t actually believe what I’m saying.
Once you have decided you cannot believe anything I say, there is literally nothing I can say that will convince you otherwise. I believe that counteracting such a spiral into oblivion is a phenomenon our culture calls “good faith”, and the expectation that claims can be substantiated.
Of course you are now the one showing not merely a lack of “good faith” that people are at least earnest in their stated beliefs, you are now actually making up crap. Nobody to my knowledge in these forums has ever said about me anything like the kind of statement you allude to.
Perhaps you have misunderstood a SINGLE recent comment by Wes in which he spoke commendably of me for strongly taking a position on the “back-radiation furphy” issue which he (unsurprisingly) agrees with.
Well clearly this thread has degenerated into a smelly morass. Funny this should arise in a discussion of morality in which I am the only one who as been able to defend my opinion from the ground up.
It’s one of the few benefits to being a moral consequentialist.
The rest of the time the deontologists have the last laugh as they are able to make decisions very quickly and easily.
00
On the bright side — or at least brighter — it’s beginning to look like Romney will be victorious in November.
I’m not counting chickens just yet but for the first time in a long time I’m optimistic again.
20
I recently met an American engineer over here in Wales working on new installations for our LNG plants. He told me he has quite a few solar panels on the roof of his house back in the USA. They are used to drive his air conditioners which are used mainly when its hot and the sun is shining. Now this made sense to me.
20
Hi Richard
Yes that does have a logic to it but I suspect that the most economic power supply, at the moment, is still through concentrated power supplied from large efficient units.
KK
20
Not so good at night I’d expect 😉 Great idea if the engineer works from home … so long as the sun shines and the system is large enough to power household air-conditioning.
I wonder what the payback time period is ? It’d have to be considerably shorter than the unit real life cycle in order to be cost effective given maintenance and efficiency deterioration. BTW, 25 year panel guarantees are worthless.
20
The trouble is the sun isn;t shining when the actual peak on the grid occurs. At least not here in Perth. So all these PVs don’t reduce the amount of coal/gas fired power stations, which means don’t reduce infrastructure. What they do do is reduce the total kWh drawn from the grid, meaning that the infrastructure costs have to be recouped from fewer kWh which means the unit cost of electricity gets forced up. Regardless of your stance on renewables what we need is genuine peak pricing.
00
Mattb,
you say here:
Can’t you read?
See Comment 10, and I tried to make it as simple as I could.
Right.
Now give us an explanation as to just how this is going to work.
As I mentioned, the Commerce sector consumes around 45% of all electrical power being consumed, and the (average) power bill for that Commerce sector is around 7 to 8 times the average Residential power bill, so that’s around $4000 for 90 days.
The Industrial sector consumes around 30% of all electrical power being consumed, and the (average) power bill for that Industrial sector is around 75 times the average residential power bill, so that’s around $38,000 for 90 days.
Because those two sectors consume so much power, they have dedicated contracts for the purchase of their power from the power retailing Companies.
Peak power is for dedicated periods of time, each and every day, times that never change because that’s when people get up in the morning and then get home from work. Those times will NEVER change.
However, both the Commerce and Industrial sectors are still consuming power during those same dedicated hours when the residential consumption spikes.
So, here you are, Mattb, advocating that we impose an extra cost for electricity on just that residential sector alone, who only consume 25% of electrical power. They are totally and utterly locked into consuming at those times.
This isn’t just a bunch of rich bastards you’re aiming your price increase at in your supposed moral stance to redistribute the wealth. It’s every single Australian. That’s when they get up in the morning. That’s when they get home from work to cold homes in the Winter, hot in Summer, they cook their evening meal. They do all the out of working hours things that need to be done at home. Those times are set in concrete.
What’s your plan, Mattb? Tell us all how you are going to change those things.
Your plan is to bump up the price of electricity Mattb, not for some perceived rorters who bludge off the rest of us by having airconditioning, but for every single home.
You’ve got no idea have you?
And Mattb, if you want fairness, then you could lower the cost of electricity by lowering the feed in tariff to the same as what providers pay for other electricity, not up to 10 times what other generating entities get.
Or if people want rooftop solar, tell them to go the whole hog and disconnect from the grid and just use the panels for their power, because, the truth is Mattb, those panel owners are bludging off the rest of us who have to pay higher electricity prices for their self righteous luxury, and bludging off the grid also, because two thirds off all residential power for rooftop solar panel owners still comes from the grid, during those dedicated peak times.
C’mon Mattb, show us your plan.
Tony.
40
Ahh tony I jsut realised where your misunderstanding comes from:
“So, here you are, Mattb, advocating that we impose an extra cost for electricity on just that residential sector alone”
I see it now… you are making shit up! carry on.
11
No Matt! What you need is adequate capacity.
20
Well then be prepared to pay for it Roy. And Tony it is the poor bastards who have to pay higher for everything because rich bastards don’t pay enough for the honour of having enough capacity for their luxuries.
Did you notice my post was to Richard’s #19. If your #11 i the god damn gospel truth then hey lets shut down the blog and just leave it all over to you;)
10
ANd I guess stupid old me just listening to the direct words from the CEO of Western Power a fortnight ago.
01
Fair comment Mattb.
So then the simple thing to do is refute what I say. Off you go then.
Hmm! Just wondering here:
Er, what luxuries might they be now?
Also, keep in mind, Matt, you can’t have one rule for some and not for others. Set a costing regime in place for certain times, and everyone in that residential sector is then locked into paying those higher prices.
Also, surely then that same adage of yours applies to those rooftop solar owners who are making the poor pay extra for their power to pay for their, er, luxury.
Ever wondered why a power company CEO wants to increase the cost of his product in the specific time when everyone in the residential sector is captively locked into consuming the bulk of their electrical power.
Tony.
00
Tony – you could have a regime in place where the 1st XkWh of power consumed in the peak (lets call this essential use) is charged at a set rate, with the remaining YkWh charged at higher rates.
I like a lot of your post in 11, thus there is not much to refute, but on the whole I see no reason that one could object to using the economic tools of demand management to do just that (manage demand) at the peak rather than build wasted infrastructure to cater for an hour a day in preference to making some decent but “brave” political decisions.
“Also, surely then that same adage of yours applies to those rooftop solar owners who are making the poor pay extra for their power to pay for their, er, luxury.”
Indeed it does Tony, indeed it does. A lot of your argument appears to be that you are arguing against some MattB who has a lot of strange ideas about energy supply, but that must be some other MattB that I’ve not had the pleasure to meet.
Artificially cheap energy for the masses sounds a tad socialist to me though Tony:)
00
Matt,
it’s not artificially cheap.
The current retail cost of electricity is around 24 cents per KWH
Coal fired power costs around 3 cents per KWH to generate, and that’s the same cost as it was back in the 70’s, and hasn’t changed. This Government has doubled that cost to 6 cents per KWH with its introduction of the CO2 Tax. Coal fired power is so cheap because all the costs are extrapolated over the life of the plant anything up to 50 years and more, a lifespan renewables can only dream of.
It’s not artificially cheap.
It IS cheap.
Everything else is expensive.
You could build a brand spanking new recent technology coal fired plant, and it would immediately solve the demand problem. The cost of the generated electricity would still be cheaper than any of the renewables, any of them. The trouble with that is that no one in their right mind would even consider thinking about a new coal fired plant.
The perceived problem is not that the cost is artificially cheap.
It’s that it is artificially expensive.
Now, everything points to them wanting to make it even more expensive. They can raise the cost to whatever they want it set at. Coal fired power will still be generated for 3 cents per KWH.
Instead of artificially trying to use cost as a the limiter, literally making it too expensive for people to use, why not just increase demand.
That cost is raised artificially by (subsidised) renewable power plants, raised artificially by that ridiculous feed in tarrif, raised artificially by the CO2 Tax.
Take all of them away, and we go back (figuratively speaking) to a situation similar to what it was like in the 1980’s when electricity was retailing for around 12 cents per KWH or less, when coal fired power was 3 cents per KWH, exactly what it costs to generate now. (without the added CO2 Tax that is)
Then we have existing Nuclear power plants in the U.S. and I know this is an argument that is useless here in Australia. Electricity generated from those existing Nuclear sources costs around 1.6 cents per KWH to generate, probably cheaper, because the Plant has to make some profit. That is borne out at this link, a personal Blog from someone who has worked at a Nuke for 20 years. Scroll down two thirds of the way to that area under the wild flowers image and read what he has to say there.
Why is it, like coal fired power so cheap?
Because they generate monumentally huge amounts of power on a constant and regular basis, and do that for 50 years or more, hence they can spread the unit cost (per KWH) over a much longer period.
Electrical power is not kept artificially cheap. It has been made more expensive.
That Peaking power period is not just the one essential hour you quote either Matt, It’s around 2 hours in the morning and for almost 4 to 6 hours in the evening. It has been the same since a regular and constant supply of electricity has been available, in fact since electricity was first available at that residential sector, so, it’s not just some recent thing.
Then, on top of that, there’s something not many people would read into this, and in fact it screams it out loudly to me.
No new major scale coal fired plants have been constructed since the 80’s. Population has increased by a factor that now means we are stretched for Demand, because all those extra people need homes, places to shop, Commerce and Industry for jobs etc, hence demand has now outstripped supply.
The only plants that are being constructed are wind and solar plants, and that has added (In Nameplate Capacity only) the equivalent of 2 large scale coal fired plants. Now with this perceived problem of Demand, what it screams out to me is that these new Renewables have not alleviated that problem in any manner at all.
I know I make my Comments long at times, but people’s perceptions are controlled by spin making something out to be a huge problem, when it is relatively easy to solve. Build a damned power plant that actually can provide huge amounts of power ….. and do that on a 24/7/365 basis. Now, State Governments and Private operators are too scared to even contemplate that idea.
Instead, we are being conditioned to believe the only way out of this is to ramp up the price, for one sector only, the one already using the least and paying the most now. This of itself will not alleviate this problem, because people are locked in absolutely to using their electrical power at those specific times.
Tony.
00
Tony – on tomorrow night’s agenda we are considering a WEstern Power request to put a new transformer in a park to service big increases in demand in a residential area. Where is this covered by your 3c/kWh. Where are the costs for upgrading the network to deliver this unlimited power approach you propose, where we build new massive plants and encourage everyone to use the electricity the supply?
00
Your transformer in the park has nothing whatsoever to do with the generating of power by the power plant. The plant will generate the same amount of power it always has. The generating entity generates the power and then sells that power to the grid, and that is the end of what they do. The actual power that they generate will still cost the same as it always has.
That transformer is a distribution matter for actually getting the power to the area where it is needed, an addition to the grid now that there are those extra consumers.
Also, without it, what do you expect those extra added consumers to do? Move, or go without power. I would say that the town planning authority has a case to answer here. Fancy allowing so many people to move into an area not serviced with an adequate power supply.
You have X number of KWH available at the grid for residential purposes in that area, and on average, homes in that grid consume Y number of KWH. With X available, you can only have a number of Y consumers equal to or less than X KWH.
More homes in that area means you need to increase X, not make Y consume less to cater for the increase. People will live where they want to live, and will consume what they need.
Surely you can see that.
Tony.
10
But you still have to pay for the network costs. Sure increasing density plays a role too.
If you build a 2MW power station to cater for a small peak spike then the costs of that power station need to be paid from somewhere. It can’t just be wished away over 50 years of infrastructure lifespan. This is why even in the world of traditional power generation they build peaking gas fired plants, not another hulking brute of a coal station.
00
I’m quite willing to pay for it Matt. The trouble is, I’m going to be made to pay for it and then not get it. And if you can’t see that then no one can help you.
Frankly that doesn’t please me at all and it shouldn’t please you either. You think like politician bent on “fixing” everything and you need to get out from under that hat into the fresh air and take a good look at your own real interest.
Tony is on exactly the right crusade.
10
Climate alarmism is worth a lot of money; $82 billion(US) for 4 hours work – not bad.
“Roger Pielke Jr.’s Blog: The $82 Billion Prediction
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune has an revealing article today about the creation in 2006 of a “short-term” hurricane risk prediction from a company called Risk Management Solutions. The Herald-Tribune reports that the prediction was worth $82 billion to the reinsurance industry. It was created in just 4 hours by 4 hurricane experts, none of whom apparently informed of the purposes to which their expertise was to be put.” (written in 2010)
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2012/10/extreme-weather-reinsurance.html
20
Well it looks like the Labor Comrades can’t survive without their communist partners -even in the ACT.
Oh Boy oh boy oh boy I just cannot wait until the next election.
The Words “Death Spiral” come to mind – the ALP and the greens are like two biplanes with their wires hopelessly entangled, plummetting to the ground.
By the way – do Thomsons lawyers accept payment by Credit Card?
60
MJ
You’re not suggesting he might repudiate the transaction?
KK 🙂
10
Surely williamson can help him out? oh wait a minute….!
10
News summary:
1. Maxine McKew and Robert Manne have start rearguard actions to try and save some of the “progressive” furniture.
2. Police in NSW and Victoria considering bring criminal charges against Federal politician(s).
3. ALP/Greens lose out in the “land of the free lunch” election.
4. S&G principals reported to be unloading their shareholdings, at the same time that they report they have lost JG’s file
Could it be that something is rotten in the system?
70
OT. However just to let you know I am from SA and despite having lived with all of the competition between us I want to say I enjoy your blog. It is a must read every morning…thanks.
(It is hard to be off topic in an un-threaded post) CTS
10
Don B –
and Risk Management Solutions is owned by the UK Daily Mail group, which puts the lie to CAGW alarmists who claim the Daily Mail is sceptical of CAGW. even the recent David Rose/Met Office article “Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it” ended with:
So let’s be clear. Yes: global warming is real, and some of it at least has been caused by the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels. But the evidence is beginning to suggest that it may be happening much slower than the catastrophists have claimed – a conclusion with enormous policy implications.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released–chart-prove-it.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
Wikipedia: Daily Mail and General Trust
DMG Information invests in business to business information-driven companies. It aims to invest in high-growth businesses offering information to niche markets. DMG Information is headquartered in the US, with its main office in Connecticut and other offices in California and Massachusetts. Foremost amongst these are Landmark Information Group, Risk Management Solutions and Environmental Data Resources. In 2006 DMG Information bought Genscape, a US company that supplies information on the energy market for $196m (£110m).Genscape is the market-leading provider of real-time energy generation and transmission information to the energy trading markets in North America and Europe. The company has more than 130 customers, including utilities, investment banks, energy traders and hedge funds. It also has operations in the UK, Australia, France, Germany and India…
MSRisk Management Solutions (RMS), a catastrophe risk modelling company, is a subsidiary of the DMGT group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Mail_and_General_Trust
10
btw since Rose’s article appeared, virtually no MSM has covered the story, but all the usual suspects get prominence in google searches attempting to debunk what the Rose article set out and the Met Office, Phil Jones and Judith Curry agreed on.
on “The Carbon Brief”? website, a Roz Pidcock points to the following – ThinkProgress, Guardian, SkepticalScience, Media Matters, Bob Ward, Potholer – in an attempt to debunk the Met Office’s own data. only one comment below the article:
19 Oct: Carbon Brief: Roz Pidcock: This week’s top six rebuttals to David Rose’s “warming has stopped” claim
COMMENT: Terrible Carbon Brief. These are a collection of ad hominem attacks – potholer for instance doesn’t even look at the technical details of the graph, and why don’t you quote Judy Curry who writing in her blog says that the Guardian’s analysis is shallow, or that in their blog the Met Office actually agreed with David Rose.
Shallow, partisan, biased, uninformed, one-sided. Judy Curry is right – you ought to raise your game, though I don’t suppose many people read this anyway.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/10/this-weeks-top-six-rebuttals-of-david-roses-warming-has-stopped-claims
The Carbon Brief About Us
Carbon Brief reports on the latest developments in climate science, and fact-checks stories about climate and energy online and in the press. We provide briefings on the people and organisations talking about climate change, and we produce background materials on science issues and news stories.
We are grateful for the funding and support provided by the European Climate Foundation. Carbon Brief’s Director, Tom Brookes, is director of the Energy Strategy Centre (ESC) the communications unit funded by the European Climate Foundation (ECF)…
Christian Hunt heads up Carbon Brief and writes about science and energy in the media. He previously worked as an editor for Greenpeace and as a researcher for the Public Interest Research Centre. He holds an MA in Conflict Resolution, and a degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from the University of York.
Robin Webster covers energy policy and analysis. She holds an MSc in Conservation from University College London (UCL) and previously studied biology at Bristol University. She worked for Friends of the Earth for six and half years, including as a Senior Campaigner on Climate and Energy, and has worked as a freelance environmental researcher…ETC
http://www.carbonbrief.org/about
Rosalind Pidcock
Science Writer and Freelance Copy Editor
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/rosalind-pidcock/38/758/a75
10
From the Guardian UK:
Why the Mail on Sunday was wrong to claim global warming has stopped
Newspaper’s claim that ‘world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago’ is simply wrong, says Met Office.
“Summary
To sum up, Rose and Curry were simply incorrect in virtually every assertion made in this Mail article.
Global surface temperatures have most likely increased since 1997.
Focusing on short-term temperature changes confuses short-term noise and long-term signal.
Most global warming goes into heating the oceans, and as Nuccitelli et al. (2012) showed, global warming has not slowed.
Natural variability is much smaller than the long-term global warming signal, and smaller even than the global warming signal over the past two decades.”
It pays to be sceptical!
The slowed rate of global surface warming over the past decade is consistent with individual model runs, which show that these ‘hiatus decades’ are entirely expected.
Over the long-term, the Earth has warmed as much as expected.
Carbon pricing will result in a net benefit the economy as compared to doing nothing and trying to adapt to the consequences.
05
You keep hanging in there sillyfilly….
Congratulations on finding someone willing to try and repudiate the fact that there has been no statistically significant warming of the planet over the last 16 years….
20
.
Ah, hobby horse – or should I say Phillip – back again.
See you got yourself banned from yet another blog, for yet again attempting to flood a thread with off-topic, ill-informed non-comments. At least it explains why you keep showing up here – you haven’t many other places left where you are welcome – or at least tolerated.
Anyway, to your post.
Interesting follow-up article in the Mail today, totally shredding both your Guardian article and the pathetic excuses by the MeT Office to hide their incompetence.
Full article here
I especially liked this bit:
How embarrassing. What a climb-down.
Could we say the MeT has had to do a Gergis?
I suggest you follow the link and have a read, Phillip.
Especially the very last hypothetical question asked, and the answer offered.
Who knows, maybe you’ll get to make an INFORMED comment – just for once.
That would be a more productive use of time than rather than protecting the business interests of the Money-Men.
Which seems to be your sole raison d’etre in life at the moment.
50
Glad to see someone out Phillip,”filly” here. If memory serves, It’s Phil of UNSW. I wonder If he still uses a publicly funded PC to do his blogging.
30
meant to excerpt the following from Pidcock’s Linkedin:
Rosalind Pidcock: Science Writer
University of the West of England
I am a science and environment writer for the University of the West of England. I currently write news articles and special reports on emerging areas in science and environmental research, as part of several European Commission projects. I also write freelance, most recently for BBC online and AAAS Science Careers.
I am also a freelance copy editor, specialising in the preparation of primary scientific and medical research papers for journal submission…
April 2011 – Present (1 year 7 months)
Researching and writing regular news articles, features and reports for Science for Environment Policy – a free European Commission news service for researchers and policymakers.
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/rosalind-pidcock/38/758/a75
00
Reading about Maxime Mckew’s book and the ACT’s rejection of the Greens and somewhat Labor has made my day!
50
what is interesting to me is that it seems is right wing voters who swell the greens vote when they think their own side is a rabble, and return to the fold when they’ve had enough of Labor govt.
01
What makes you think that? Do you think when the rights vote falls and the Greens vote rises, it automatically means the votes of the right went directly to the Greens?
You’re a wannabe politician Matt. A wannabe leader of your community. Your community deserves much much better than that.
hint: Swing voters who voted for the Liberals, shift left by voting for Labor. Swing voters who voted Labor, shift left by voting Greens.
Converse happens when there is a general shift to the right.
10
There are a lot of Liberals for forests types though Bah. For a lot of traditional Lib voters a swing to the Greens has been much more palatable than a swing to the ALP.
“hint: Swing voters who voted for the Liberals, shift left by voting for Labor. Swing voters who voted Labor, shift left by voting Greens.”
and to think for a second there I thought you were accusing ME of being simplistic!
00
I offered you an alternative, maybe I should have made that clear.
It was you who was being simplistic. e.g
The issue of voter drift isn’t a one size fits all, people drift for all sorts of reasons. However, looking at the recent political history of Oz, it is fair to say that people-in the main- drift from left to right for a period, then back again. That’s why the parties at the end of the line tend to disappear, (e.g. DLP, Democrats, P Hanson and even the nationals) not the 2 in the middle.
The dangerous Greens will go the same way…eventually.
00
I thought the Democrats were in the middle and got squeezed?
I’m fairly confident that in the ACT a lot of Liberals who had previously decided it was a bit hip to vote Green changed their mind. ALso when the chips are down in a tight contest you’ll find people don’t risk the symbolic green vote.
00
MattB has a point, but the Labor/Green coalition ended the day when right leaning voters sometimes voted Green.
My Melbourne mother-in-law, a dyed-in-the-wool conservative sometimes voted Green in the past because she loves animals. What about the cute koala bears, she’d say. Ahhhhhhhhhhh…. And the whales, Oh, My, What a shame, We must save the whales!
She was gobsmacked when I told her years ago that Greens were basically communists who used cuddly animals to disguise their collectivist agenda. She didn’t believe me, when I describe how an anarchist American in Germany started the party in the 1970’s and most of their political alliances were with socialist and communists and anti-semitic hate groups. They aren’t even fair dinkum Aussie grown, I told her, but an alien imported radical ideology.
I described how the ideological roots of the early German Greens, although strictly speaking were communist, carried on a cultural gestalt that started in Nazi Germany. Hitler was the greatest of all Green leaders. He outlawed cruelty to animals, including live medical experiments, preferring instead to conduct vivisections on Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals.
The first tenet of the Greens is that human life is cheap.
But what really outed the Greens was when their blood soaked hands got a grip on the levers of real power under Gillard.
No right-minded person will vote green for a long long time after this government!
Btw, Matt have you told your electorate that you support surrendering Australian sovereignty to the UN through the ideals expressed in Agenda 21?
I didn’t think so.
That’s how the Greens work. In secret while hiding behind a cuddly poster of a koala.
30
Did your mother in law weep for her daughter?
01
The origins of the political party we know as the Greens go back the 1930’s in fascist Germany:
–Ernst Lehmann, Biologischer Wille. Wege und Ziele biologischer Arbeit im neuen Reich, München, 1934, pp. 10-11. Lehmann was a professor of botany who characterized National Socialism as “politically applied biology.”
From:
Fascist Ecology: The “Green Wing” of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents
00
but you said greens treat nature as greater than humans, and that humans are not nature… and you prove this by showing that some socialist said we need to reintegrate humanity with nature? weird. I hope you have some better quotes that actually back you up Wes?
00
“She was gobsmacked when I told her years ago that Greens were basically communists who used cuddly animals to disguise their collectivist agenda. She didn’t believe me, when I describe how an anarchist American in Germany started the party in the 1970′s and most of their political alliances were with socialist and communists and anti-semitic hate groups. They aren’t even fair dinkum Aussie grown, I told her, but an alien imported radical ideology.
I described how the ideological roots of the early German Greens, although strictly speaking were communist, carried on a cultural gestalt that started in Nazi Germany. Hitler was the greatest of all Green leaders. He outlawed cruelty to animals, including live medical experiments, preferring instead to conduct vivisections on Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals.
The first tenet of the Greens is that human life is cheap.”
Seriously WEs have you considered therapy? These are some deep seated issues you have here.
03
What? Are you a holocaust denier, Matt?
Read the history of the Greens.
I’d be happy to come give your electorate a powerpoint presentation on the topic.
Btw, did I mention that Green policies screw the poor and favour the rich?
Here’s an analysis of the Green carbon tax proposals currently being considered by the Obama Administration:
The Greens support culling the poor!
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/315369/green-war-poor-robert-zubrin
00
“What? Are you a holocaust denier, Matt?”
No – but you are a fruitloop.
“(i.e., a working-class family living on $30,000 per year in Harlem uses about the same amount of electricity and food as the family of a money manager living on $30 million per year on Park Avenue”
HA HA HA HA HA BWAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! comedy gold!
Also any reasonable reader would assume that the nationalreview link you provide may actually lead to an article that involves greens supporting culling of the poor! Of course it does not.
Wes I’d love to have you give a shonky powerpoint as I’m sure your frooty froot froot loops of fruit are amusing entertainment.
00
Morning All.
Rarely do I cut and paste stuff onto these pages but even more rarely do we get a national leader talking such common sense. Noel Pearson should be in Federal Cabinet – at the very least! Contrast this with the noble, empty words and the ignoble, wasteful actions of what passes for government in Canberra.
————————————————————————–
Think big but start small: human rights, like charity, should be nurtured in the home
by: Noel Pearson From: The Australian October 20, 2012
“WHERE, after all, do universal human rights begin?
“In small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world … Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”
I was not familiar with this quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt, but it is probably the best articulation of our reform work in Cape York Peninsula.
I have always been taken by another pearl from Roosevelt that speaks the same truth: “There is nothing that government can do for you, that you are unwilling to do for yourself.”
Human rights are most usually talked about in the “big places”, in international and national declarations, standards and conventions. They are supposed to be upheld and guaranteed by law and democracy. Human rights in normal public discourse is a matter of big politics and big law, concerning public law and public power.
Human rights are supposed to be secured primarily as matters of politics and laws. They are guaranteed and delivered (or denied and abused) by governments and their instrumentalities. The state is the party that flouts or upholds the human rights of people.
Human rights lawyers and politicians tend to see human rights as something that must be tackled in the “big places”, far from home, in the courts, tribunals, commissions, and national and international forums.
There is of course great romance and no small prideful posturing attached to human rights advocacy and defence in the “big places”. Generations of ambitious law students have seen Geneva as the place where they will do greatest service to humankind.
I have long been sceptical of this view. There is a role for the pursuit of human rights in the “big places”. But I think too often the prevalent pursuit of human rights is naive – most human rights cannot be delivered as a matter of political or legal fiat – or a cruel hoax on those whose human rights are at stake.
Rather, there is a harder, messier and less glamorous starting place for taking action so that human rights can be enjoyed by those who stand vulnerable in the absence of such enjoyment.
That starting place is the place that Roosevelt is talking about, in the “small places”, in the families, in the households, in the villages and in the communities.
It is in the family and the household where the most basic human rights must start. If charity should begin at home, then human rights too must begin at home.
The right to safety, food, family, shelter, inheritance, culture, language – these are all human rights that must first be enjoyed within the family, within the household. For these rights to be enjoyed in practice, there must be practical functioning of families and households, villages and neighbourhoods.
This means that individuals – parents, adults, community leaders – must take responsibility for realising abstract rights in terms of practical enjoyment. True, governments and their functionaries must fulfil their responsibilities and create and uphold environments that enable individuals and families to uphold their responsibilities and enjoy their rights, but it won’t happen if the people who hold responsibilities in the “small places” don’t carry out their responsibilities.
The Cape York Agenda seeks the human rights of our people at both levels. In the “big places” we seek constitutional reform and we are unequivocal in our advocacy of our land and cultural rights in the arenas of law and politics.
But we place a heavy emphasis on human rights in the “small places”. Indeed, we have a very strong jaundice in favour of the human rights of our people to material sustenance and livelihood, to freedom from hunger and want, to shelter in good homes, to healthcare and other services, and for children to be educated and have opportunities and capabilities to choose lives they have reason to value.
That is why our first program was about budgeting and money management. It was called Family Income Management in 2000 and is now called MPower. As the MPower slogan says: “A better life begins with a budget.”
In my view there is no use talking about the human rights of our mob in Cape York if our people are hungry, our children are neglected, our families are broken down, and our communities unsafe.
Helping families to attend to their basic, material needs is about achieving human rights.
Ensuring children are looked after, and have access to the best education we can muster for them, is about achieving human rights.
Helping mothers to look after their families, and helping fathers take charge of their households, is about achieving human rights.
Noel Pearson is the director of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership.
—————————————————————-
Big government has its limitations and you can’t abdicate the basic responsibilities of looking after yourself and your family to a bureacracy! Throwing money at a person without getting them to accept responsibility for their life is a waste of time. Government can only help people who want to help themselves.
Cheers,
Speedy
30
.
Mr. Noel Pearson has connections with Paga Hill demolition in PNG.
On 12 May 2012, one hundred police officers descended on the prominent Port Moresby landmark, Paga Hill. Armed with assault rifles, machetes and sticks, they had come to demolish one of the city’s oldest settlements. The forced eviction was designed to make way for the Paga Hill Estate, an “exclusive” property development that promises to turn the 13.7 hectare site into “the icon of the new progressive Papua New Guinea”. When the demolition was stopped mid-course by a National Court injunction, lower Paga lay in ruin.
The driving force behind this proposed development is the Paga Hill Development Company (PHDC). Characterised by Papua New Guinea’s own Public Accounts Committee as a “private, foreign speculator”, to date those intimately connected with the developer have been cited in no less than nine official inquiries into corruption and public mismanagement. And their connections extend into the very heart of Australia’s political establishment – indeed the Chairman and Secretary of PHDC, Gudmundur V Fridriksson, is the current CEO of Queensland’s Cape York Institute, and the Director of the controversial Welfare Reform Trial.
Paga Hill Development Company (PHDC) shareholders include a number of individuals with links to senior serving leaders in Papua New Guinea and Australia. Specifically, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, Michael Nali, who owns shares in PHDC via Kwadi Inn, and Tracey Kluck, the wife of aboriginal leader, Noel Pearson.
Everything is fine as long as it’s not my backyard? See full article Controversy over forced eviction in Papua New Guinea extends into the heart of Australia’s political establishment
Guess who else loves delving into PNG’s profitable side – Garnaut chooses strange bedfellows on PNGSDP board
There seems many double standards operating in both these cases.
10
Dave
Suprising.
Not a good association for Noel Pearson to have.
KK
10
Hi Speedy
Have read a lot of Noel Pearson’s newspaper items.
Always full of common sense.
KK
10
Hi Speedy
Just finished ready Noel Pearson’s comment.
The change in thinking that he represents is essential to Australia and it is not just thinking: he is there
doing what he preaches right in the middle of his community.
If our politicians followed his example they would go and help those addicted to and dis-empowered by
decades of joblessness and social security dependence.
That so many people are in this situation is an indictment of all Australian Politicians from the late 1960 onwards.
All have sought to buy votes with social security spending and sadly much of the buying has come from those
supposedly most closely allied with the jobless.
His concept of human dignity involves governments creating work and education opportunities and obligations
for ALL.
KK
00
pat:
Further to your previous response a week ago, I note that the race to the bottom between Australia and the USA continues unabated.
The current USA president has already obsoleted the USA Constitution 2nd Amendment right for people in Chicago, has presided over a clandestine operation to deliver assault weapons specifically to drug gangs in Mexico, and if re-elected wants to disarm the public even further.
When asked about it in the last debate, the presidential second choice candidate claims he does not want to infringe the 2nd amendment with any new legislation, but then quickly changed the topic. Interesting that this remark could be interpreted as meaning that he believes it is a possible option for him to overrule the 2nd Amendment with legislation, whereas under law the executive cannot do this by themselves, even a 2/3 majority vote in Congress is not enough, it would still have to be a Constitutional Amendment ratified by 3/4 of the States.
Both of these people are Manchurian candidates (I mean the hidden corporate sponsorship, not the neural implant mind control stuff in the movie). Given the amount of voting fraud carried out by the Romney and Santorum campaigns during the primaries to prevent Ron Paul’s grassroots support from condensing into a visible poll result, it is clear there is big money is behind Romney.
It’s the Bain Capital/Monsanto candidate versus the Goldman Sachs/General Electric candidate. Even after insider rumours are considered, it is still anyone’s guess as to which stooge will be installed as the next dictator of the Bankers Republic of America.
I conclude that on matters of personal protection the USA is falling towards being level with Australia, and in democratic processes it has already fallen behind the Land Down Under.
30
OT, but since we are unthreaded…
I was wrong about the US Presidential election, which I have repeated argued in the past was in the pocket for Obama, given the demographics of the US electoral college combined with the advantage of having the multi-billion dollar mass media industry shilling for him 24/7/365.
Of course, if you’re getting your US news primarily from the shills at the ABC or SBS it will be news to you that Obama has tanked in the polls even though they biased in his favour.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/2012_elections_electoral_college_map.html
If you look at the latest electoral college map, it is too close to call. That’s a big change from 6 months ago when Obama was tipped for a second landslide.
But I’m punting that the opinions polls dramatically underestimate the amount of angst and drive among independent and conservative voters sick of Obamaworld. They’ll turn out in unprecedented droves to have a chance to vote against what they perceive as the ruin of America and its values.
Likewise, the same opinions polls are overestimating the Left’s commitment to a lack luster Obama administration which has let them down repeated, taking their support for granted. In the US no one forces you to vote, so not turning up at the polls is a statement in and of itself. Passion and a sense of civic responsibility are required to inspire Americans to vote. The later is always in short supply among the left, while the former is non-existent for Obama this time.
IMO, Obama going to lose. Florida will go to Romney now. Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio might be too close to call for the media, but I think the tea party organisations in those states will turn them to red states. Same with Nevada and Colorado. Game over for Obama.
The implications of a Romney win for Australia are huge. It is possible that Romney with a solid Republican congress might quickly enact much of Ryan’s economic plans, leading to a surging economic recovery in the US similar to the Reagan years after the Carter malaise. This might postpone the bursting of the global monetary bubble by years or even decades, while ameliorating China’s own investment overreaches. End result is that the good economic run for Australia – as a mining resource colony for Asia – continues. If we can kick the Gillard and Green insane clown posse out of Canberra, we’ll have one last chance to transform the Australian economy into a 21st-century-ready dynamo before the future smacks Labor’s regressive anti-productive “reformed” economy comatose.
Meanwhile, after Obama’s foreign policy of leading from backside, America’s traditional enemies are on the march. They are not likely to go quietly back into the box. The Middle East, always playground of devils, is now home to ever more failed states. The West’s best hope lies not in picking winners and losers in places like in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and now Syria. But to develop our own oil-shale, gas and coal deposits to become energy independent of the middle east. If starved of our petro-dollars the middle east will recede to the level of geo-political importance it deserves. Meanwhile, four years of Obama is four years closer to the Iranian mullahs owning a nuclear weapon with which they might well change the meaning of mutual assured destruction.
20
At least one person in the U.S. is smiling, and I suppose it’s an old joke, but that person would be Jimmy Carter.
Finally, he won’t have that odious record as the worst President in U.S. history.
This Obama Presidency was Carter’s second term.
Tony.
30
Wes have you actually ever tried reading the ABC as a news source. It would appear not or you’d notice gems like this:
“National opinion polls now put Barack Obama and Mitt Romney so close that one analyst has told the ABC he would not rule out a re-run of the contested 2000 election, where the final result took weeks to be resolved.”
“The race is virtually a dead heat, according to several polls, and it will likely come down to a few swing states.”
“There is a scenario where Obama narrowly loses the national popular vote but precisely because he is winning those small swing states, he wins the election.
You can’t rule out that scenario at this point. It’s that close.”
00
Well, yeah, NOW they tell us!
The poop hit the fan on the night of the first presidential debate which almost every American media outlet, including the most lefty leftists ones called an unmitigated disaster for Obama. Yet, the ABC somehow found a Prefesser of Polly Sci-fi somewhere who called it a draw!
Even the crap analysis you posted is heavily biased in favour of Obama in a number of subtle ways. First, the past crap analysis the ABC has been spouting for a year now about how Obama was going to win in a landslide has gone down the memory hole. Second, the allusion to a possible battle of the hanging chads is about casting doubt on the legitimacy of a possible Romney victory. After all, it is completely unimaginable to the ABC culture that Obama could lose without foul play.
And finally, notice that the ABC is so deep in denial they cannot bring themselves to say that words, “There is a chance that Obama might lose, that’s how far public opinion of his administration has shifted over the last four years.”
Of course, it would be asking for miracles for the ABC to report that the last time a presidential incumbent came from back this far in the polls to win a presidential election was the Truman/Dewey election of 1948!
00
Apparently there is a UNFCC conference in Doha this week.
I noticed this recent article in my local paper,
http://express-advocate-gosford.whereilive.com.au/news/story/hayden-williams-of-budgewoi-off-to-un-framework-convention-on-climate-change/
It is about a 16 yo who is travelling to Doha to attend the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to put pressure on government representatives to sign Kyoto II.
Expenditure of billions of taxpayer dollars is to be influenced by 16yo’s dressing for attention and carrying out flash mob stunts.
00
Te US ‘elections’ (read fake democracy) are nothing more than a sham for two complete fascist idiots that will BOTH start wars and destroy America. Romney is a Mormon polygamist war monger “The Romney family later moved to Mexico to avoid the ban on polygamy in the US.” see much more on http://www.tarpley.net. Obama is a puppet of the Wall St banksters. As the US govt is the most corrupt despot Gov in the world. No matter who gets in Obamromey presidency means “bomb bomb bomb..bomb bomb bomb Iran…”
00
Just over the news:-
NSW Fraud Sqaud has raided the house of Federal MHR Craig Thomson.
00